Learning In A Changing Environment In Octavia Butler's Dawn

After reading Dawn, by Octavia Butler, the question arose on how humans are able to learn in a socially changing environment. In Dawn, a large group of humans were forced to adjust to an extraterrestrial lifestyle and figure out how to learn based on their surroundings and the limited information given to them. Based on research on neuroscience and adult learning, implicit and explicit memory, human motor memory, and how humans learn in a changing environment, it can be determined that the the brain is a social organ which learns through shared experiences. When it is placed in a socially changing setting, adults must learn to first explicitly accept the change so they can adapt to it and implicitly enhance their long-term memory storage. …show more content…
According to Speekenbrink in Shanks in “Learning in a Changing Environment,” sometimes rather than humans adapting a representation of the environment to inferred changes in the environmental structure after an abrupt change, the previous representation is abandoned due to favoring the new one. An example of this was when Lilith adjusted to living with the Oankali and did not want to interact with the newly awakened humans anymore, When speaking to an Oankali, Lilith said, I’ve learned too… I wish I could stay here.. Rather than go with strangers… rather than be sent to teach a lot of frightened suspicious humans” (Butler 106), abandoning her previous environment of earth. Although there can be debate whether or not Lilith’s awakening was a gradual or abrupt change since she was briefly woken up for moments over multiple centuries, some of her adjustments fit the mold of abrupt change results more than gradual. Furthermore, “abrupt changes will result in a relatively large unexpected uncertainty, whereas gradual changes will result in relatively little unexpected uncertainty” (268). The uncertainty of change is what causes a fear and unwillingness to accept