Motivation and learning environments: neuroscience and didactic pathways in the hospital context

Abstract

There are several factors that affect the normal evolution of the learning of a hospitalized individual, because he or she is subtracted from a heterogeneous series of circumstances that feed his/her wealth, complexity and organization. The development of learning makes use of spatio-temporal contexts that are functional to human growth and to the modification of all his behavior. The adaptation of an individual evolves by its nature within a space and a time that interact within experiences in which the human relationship, from birth, acts as a guide through the stimulation of functional motor, sensory, emotional and cognitive dynamics, slowly constructing implicit procedural memories, automatisms and stratifications of experiential data that will subsequently allow the cognitive activity to organize the thought, and to abstract it in concepts, making our actions and interactions more and more sophisticated. The condition of a hospitalized individual mortifies and exhausts completely this natural path, and neutralizes the very purposes of the normal school procedure. The hospital space represents a strong downsizing of the learning environment as conceived and structured at school, consequently even the time undergoes an inevitable alteration of the different sequential stages dedicated to the acquisition of skills and abilities.