Tough problem? Nonsense!

Trying to solve a tough engineering problem? Try reading some nonsense. That’s one conclusion you might reach based on recent studies, including “Connections From Kafka: Exposure to Meaning Threats Improves Implicit Learning of an Artificial Grammar,” by Travis Proulx at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Steven J. Heine, University of British Columbia.The author’s state, “…we tested the prediction that learning of novel patterns of association would be enhanced in response to unrelated meaning threats.” One of the “meaning threats” used in the study was an absurd short story by Franz Kafka. Study participants who read the story, the researchers report, “…demonstrated both a heightened motivation to perceive the presence of patterns within letter strings and enhanced learning of a novel pattern actually embedded within letter strings….” (The participants were asked to study 45 strings of six to nine letters and subsequently choose which ones they had seed before from a series of 60 strings.)

The researchers continue, “These results suggest that the cognitive mechanisms responsible for implicitly learning patterns are enhanced by the presence of a meaning threat.”

“The fact that the group who read the absurd story identified more letter strings suggests that they were more motivated to look for patterns than the others,” Dr. Heine told the New York Times. “And the fact that they were more accurate means, we think, that they’re forming new patterns they wouldn’t be able to form otherwise.”

Notes the Times, “Researchers familiar with the new work say it would be premature to incorporate film shorts by David Lynch, say, or compositions by John Cage into school curriculums. For one thing, no one knows whether exposure to the absurd can help people with explicit learning, like memorizing French. For another, studies have found that people in the grip of the uncanny tend to see patterns where none exist-becoming more prone to conspiracy theories, for example.”

Still, if you are facing a tough circuit or software design challenge, it might be worth a try reading some Kafka or listening to some Cage. Better yet, try a nap, especially if you are prone to surreal dreams. Paul McLellan, writing in “EDA Graffiti” about learning French, noted, “Dreaming seems to be some sort of mental garbage collection, and there’s a lot of foreign garbage to be collected when you are learning so much.” Perhaps being mental garbage needing to be carried off, bizarre dreams play an adaptive role that help us seek out patterns and solve problems when we wake up.