“One of the ways we can move the field farther is to look at the ways older people seek out information, relative to younger people.” ~ Michiko Sakaki
If I told you there was one little thing you could do that would help you maintain cognitive functioning, mental health, and physical health as you age, would you want to know more?
Michiko Sakaki, PhD. and her team look at emotions and learning, aging and emotion, and individual differences in brain development. They think about learning across the lifespan. She’s helping us rethink what happens in aging, especially when it comes to curiosity.
Curiosity is pretty much driven by our prior knowledge. We tend to be curious about something we partially know about. Of course we are not curious about something we completely master, but at the same time we gain knowledge we generate more questions about the topic and these sorts of self-generated questions are important triggers of curiosity.
Listen to Choose to be Curious #216: Curiosity & Aging, with Michiko Sakaki
Michiko Sakaki, PhD. is the Principal Investigator at the Affect and Learning Science Lab at the Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology at the University of Tübingen (Germany). Check out her lab: https://affectlearningscience.org
Read the research on the adaptive nature of aging here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S014976341730653X
If you’re interested in hearing more about learning and curiosity across the lifespan, try these other C2BC episodes: Education & Learning, with Micaela Pond; Adolescence with Kate McCauley & Michael Swisher; Early Childhood with Kate Graham; Curious & Not Old, with Marjorie Varner; Student-Led Research with Shane McCarty; Why Should This Be So? with Susan Engel; Curiosity & Learning in Two Languages, with Marleny Perdomo; The Montessori Method, with Chandra Fernando; Mirrors & Windows: Reading & Kids, with Jennifer Sauter-Price; When You Are Curious, with Veronika Darwell.
And here’s the conversation with Kristy Johnson about neurodiveregent curiosity and thinking of curiosity as they way we each excel at exploration.
Theme music by Sean Balick; “Darn That Weasel” by Love and Weasel, via Blue Dot Sessions.
You can subscribe to Choose to be Curious on Apple Podcasts and now on Spotify.
Wear your curiosity on your sleeve. Check out the Choose to be Curious shop.
