Persistence and Video Games

An interesting piece on The Genius in All of Us about persistence. It conjured up memories of the book by Steven Johnson, Everything Bad is Good For You. From TGIAOU:

Robert Cloninger, at Washington University in St. Louis, who not only zeroed in on the persistence circuitry in the brain (Gusnard, Cloninger et al, 1993), but also trained mice and rats to develop persistence. “The key is intermittent reinforcement,” explains Cloninger. “A person who grows up getting too frequent rewards will not have persistence, because they’ll quit when the rewards disappear.” In other words, yes, according to Cloninger, the animal mind can actually be trained to reward itself for slow and steady progress rather than the more thrilling instant gratification.

Boy, that sounds a lot like Steven Johnson's findings in Everything. In the book Johnson says video games, if designed well, teach us persistence by giving us well timed rewards. We have got to find a way to bring this kind of reward system to students.