The Biology of Reality Testing - Implications for Cognitive Education

• This report explores the proposition that teaching effectiveness can be enhanced by accommodating the key differences between two complementary and deeply engrained modes of reality testing, each predominantly centered in different hemispheres of the brain. • (1) Correspondence involves “reality-testing” of a percept, the cerebral representation of an experience in the world. • (2) Coherence involves “textualizing”, that is, reality-testing of a percept by how easily it relates to previous and ongoing parallel and collateral experiences. • Confidence in the validity of any percept throughout development is related to the interplay of these key processes. • As organisms develop, the “reference base” of previous experiences is enlarged and refined. • Motivation to enlarge the “reference base” is more or less intentionally energized by two variables: developmentally: an initial intrinsic desire to explore followed by the real or apparent need for additional experience and, ecologically, the costs and benefits of obtaining that experience.