Blogs

Maybe it has nothing to do with self-control

Submitted by Fiona McPherson on Wed, 04/24/2013 - 17:31

Academic and career success have been linked to self-regulation abilities early in life.

However, new research suggests a re-thinking of the meaning of the classic 'marshmallow test'.

Failure to delay gratification may reflect a perfectly rational response to the situation rather than a lack of 'will-power'.

Three critical variables may determine your willingness to delay gratification in a situation: temporal beliefs, reward difference, and temporal discount rate (the value you put on shorter waiting times).

We may be better off paying more attention to perceived reward and temporal discount rate - factors that are situational as well as personal - than to any 'character' assessments of 'self-control'.

I recently reported on Mynd about a finding that refines a widely-reported association between self-regulation and academic achievement. This association relates to the famous ‘marshmallow test’, in which young children were left alone with a marshmallow, having been told that if they could hold off eating it until the researcher returns, they would get two marshmallows.

Introducing Mynd

Submitted by Fiona McPherson on Tue, 03/26/2013 - 14:11

Everyday, I come across reports and articles on the Web that bear on the topic of memory and learning, and I faithfully file them away, with the intention of doing 'something' with them. Many get put in my file of articles to discuss, or riff off, in my blog - which grows and grows, until I end up with huge Word documents containing articles NOT discussed in 2009, 2010, 2011 ... I have tried a variety of ways to at least spin off those worthy of mention that I don't have the time or inclination to discuss. None of these have proved satisfactory.

Shaping your cognitive environment for optimal cognition

Submitted by Fiona McPherson on Fri, 02/22/2013 - 12:48

Urbanization appears to increase working memory capacity, and decrease focus.

This may reflect the increased cognitive demands of the urban environment.

The reduced ability to ignore distraction typically seen in aging may reflect not only physiological changes such as decreases in processing speed, but also the speed and complexity of the modern environment.

To increase working memory capacity, specific training programs may be the wrong approach. Instead, we should incorporate challenging activities into our daily routine.

To improve focus, we should regularly engage in activities that absorb and challenge us.

Humans are the animals that manipulate their cognitive environment.

Daydreaming nurtures creativity?

Submitted by Fiona McPherson on Fri, 02/08/2013 - 10:49

A small study adds to evidence that time immersed in the natural environment, or perhaps time free of electronic devices, improves creativity. Another suggests it may be the opportunity to daydream that drives this effect.

Back in 2010, I read a charming article in the New York Times about a bunch of neuroscientists bravely disentangling themselves from their technology (email, cellphones, laptops, …) and going into the wilderness (rafting down the San Juan River) in order to get a better understanding of how heavy use of digital technology might change the way we think, and whether we can reverse the problem by immersing ourselves in nature.

Online courses coming!

Submitted by Fiona McPherson on Sat, 01/26/2013 - 12:23

[Apologies to anyone trying to access these pages in the last few days! I had an url clash, and have had to set new url addresses for these pages. The links should now work.)

I hope to have online courses up and running by March. There are three courses I have started to put together, in response to requests. If you are interested in these, do register your interest, as this will determine the relative priority I give them. (It will also get you a significant discount!) The courses are:

How to remember what you learn

Seeing without words

Submitted by Fiona McPherson on Fri, 01/25/2013 - 20:21

I was listening on my walk today to an interview with Edward Tufte, the celebrated guru of data visualization. He said something I took particular note of, concerning the benefits of concentrating on what you’re seeing, without any other distractions, external or internal. He spoke of his experience of being out walking one day with a friend, in a natural environment, and what it was like to just sit down for some minutes, not talking, in a very quiet place, just looking at the scene.

Why asking the right questions is so important, and how to do it

Submitted by Fiona McPherson on Tue, 01/08/2013 - 16:36

Questions prime your answers, affecting what you remember and think about.

When you let others frame the questions, you let them shape what and how you think.

In learning, problem-solving and decision-making, asking the right question is crucial, and you shouldn't assume you've got it right first time.

Questions need to be repeatedly revisited through the information process.

To assess the effectiveness of a question, you need to understand the questions and assumptions it is nested within.

Questions are examples of retrieval cues, and your repeated revision of them is an example of a generation strategy - one of the few effective retrieval strategies we have.

Research; study; learning; solving problems; making decisions — all these, to be done effectively and efficiently, depend on asking the right questions. Much of the time, however, people let others frame the questions, not realizing how much this shapes how they think.

Resource update

Submitted by Fiona McPherson on Fri, 01/04/2013 - 11:16

Every month in my newsletter I have a list of web links to articles and resources that have come my way. These do, eventually, find their way to my various resource pages. I have now brought them up to date.

Should ‘learning facts by rote’ be central to education?

Submitted by Fiona McPherson on Wed, 11/21/2012 - 10:29

Being able to read or discuss a topic requires you to have certain concepts well-learned, so that they are readily accessible when needed.

Rote memorization is a poor tool for acquiring this base knowledge.

‘Core’ knowledge is smaller than you might think.

Building up strong concepts is best done by working through many, diverse examples.

Education is not solely or even mainly about stuffing your head with ‘facts’. Individualized knowledge, built up from personally relevant examples illuminating important concepts, needs to be matched by an equal emphasis on curating knowledge, and practice in replacing outdated knowledge.

Michael Gove is reported as saying that ‘Learning facts by rote should be a central part of the school experience’, a philosophy which apparently underpins his shakeup of school exams. Arguing that "memorisation is a necessary precondition of understanding", he believes that exams that require students to memorize quantities of material ‘promote motivation, solidify knowledge, and guarantee standards’.

The value of intensive practice

Submitted by Fiona McPherson on Thu, 11/08/2012 - 20:56

Changing your brain - which is what happens when you learn, and when yoe encode new experiences, or have new thoughts - is crucial for keeping your brain 'young'.

Learning a new language may be especially beneficial for keeping your brain flexible and thus fighting age-related cognitive decline.

Intense periods of learning may be especially beneficial.

Let’s talk about the cognitive benefits of learning and using another language.

In a recent news report, I talked about the finding that intensive learning of a very novel language significantly grew several brain regions, of which two were positively associated with language proficiency. These regions were the right hippocampus and the left superior temporal gyrus. Growth of the first of these probably reflects the learning of a great many new words, and the second may reflect heavy use of the phonological loop (a part of working memory).

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