Reading Kafka Improves Learning

Encountering an unexpected, bizarre situation—like a a story by Franz Kafka— can improve learning :

According to research by psychologists at UC Santa Barbara and the University of British Columbia, exposure to the surrealism in, say, Kafka’s “The Country Doctor” or Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” enhances the cognitive mechanisms that oversee implicit learning functions. The researchers’ findings appear in an article published in the September issue of the journal  Psychological Science .

“The idea is that when you’re exposed to a meaning threat—something that fundamentally does not make sense—your brain is going to respond by looking for some other kind of structure within your environment,” said Travis Proulx, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSB and co-author of the article. “And, it turns out, that structure can be completely unrelated to the meaning threat.”

Unfortunately, the practical effects of the research are rather limited: “‘It’s important to note that sitting down with a Kafka story before exam time probably wouldn’t boost your performance on a test,’ said Proulx.”