Natalie Angier reviews recent studies in the field of embodied cognition, which recognizes that we process information not only with our minds but with our entire bodies. For example, a person who thinking about the future may lean forward slightly, and person reflecting on the past my tip backwards. It seems the body can be very literal-minded. Someone holding a warm drink is more likely to think well of other people than if they were holding a cold drink. Gesturing can help children master math. Our Cartesian mindset insists that thinking is the brain’s domain, but these studies hint at a nuanced two-way communication with the body.
Tag Archives: assimilating information
Surprising gaps in your self-knowledge
Jeremy Dean frequently highlights classic social psychology research that helps us understand why we think and act the way we do. He turns to self-schema theory and a 1977 study by Hazel Markus for insight into why many of us are blissfully unaware of certain aspects of our personalities. Self-schema refer to the beliefs we have about ourselves. We use them to understand and explain our behaviour, especially when that behaviour is significant to our self-conception. Once we have developed a schema, it is remarkably resilient. In this study Markus examined women who identified with independent/dependent schema and those who did not (that is, aschematic). Some of the participants believed they were independent, some did not, and the others didn’t know or, apparently, did not care. The aschematics are the most interesting category because they did not seam to realize whether or not they were independent — a surprising gap in their self-knowledge. Markus’s original paper is available at PyscNET.
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The Brain at the Edge of Chaos
It seems precarious to have a brain that operates on the edge of chaos, one that vacillates randomly between states of quiescence and an avalanche of neural activity. Yet, according to a review of recent studies in the New Scientist, hovering near disorder is actually essential to the brain’s capacity to process information and react to an ever-changing environment, and has even been linked to memory and intelligence. This vital balance makes me wonder what happens if we stray too far towards stability or chaos? Are we also hovering precariously near mental instability? They say it’s a fine line between genius and madness,
acknowledges neuroscientist David Liley. Maybe we’re finally beginning to understand the wisdom of this statement.
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How Our Internal Clock Ticks
Time helps us to infer relationships of cause and effect, to make sense of the world and to learn. But our ability to perceive time and use time is rather faulty. We regularly misestimate seconds, minutes and hours by 15% to 25% in either direction. We see and move within an optimal now period, about 2 1/2 seconds long (give or take 1 to 2 seconds). Neurosurgeon Jamshid Ghajar also makes this interesting claim: You can explain a lot of pathologies, including schizophrenia, autism and ADHD, as problems of time perception.
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How To Save New Brain Cells
There may be some neurological truth to those claims that memorizing lists or daily Sudoku encourages mental limberness. Even more importantly, the results lend some support that people in early stages of Alzheimers disease may slow their cognitive decline by keeping their minds actively engaged. Tracey J. Shors maps some of the promising territory that connects learning, memory and neurogenesis (the process by which new neurons are generated).
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Just How Slow is Your Perception?
We are always living nearly one-half second in the past. Now, it isn’t surprising that there is some delay between an event and our becoming aware of it. This is the normal unfolding of cause and effect. And this might not be a concern if we were just passive spectators, watching the world unfold before us like a film. But given that we must also respond to events, neuroscientist David Eagleman wonders, will you perceive the event that kills you?
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The Gospel According the Darwin
Today marks the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. If evolution is the true story of why we all exist, then why is there any doubt to its veracity? Richard Dawkins tackles the “evolution is just a theory” narrative, which implies evolution is merely an unfalsified scientific hypothesis, with this practical definition of truth:
Evolution is true in whatever sense you accept it as true that New Zealand is in the Southern Hemisphere. If we refused ever to use a word like “true”, how could we conduct our day-to-day conversations? Or fill in a census form: “What is your sex?” “The hypothesis that I am male has not so far been falsified, but let me just check again”. As Douglas Adams might have said, it doesn’t read well. Yet the philosophy that imposes such scruples on science has no basis for absolving everyday facts from the same circumlocution. It is in this sense that evolution is true – provided, of course, that the scientific evidence for it is strong. It is very strong.
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New Tools Help Information Overload
Take a scientific question like the genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees. Would you prefer to plough through an essay on the subject, or to glance at the visualization created by Ben Fry in which the 75,000 letters of coding in the human genome form a photographic image of a chimp’s head? Virtually all of our genetic information is identical, and Fry highlights the discrepancies by depicting nine of the letters as red dots. No contest. Alice Rawsthorn explains why.
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Overload!
“The tragedy of the news media in the information age is that in their struggle to find a financial foothold,” writes Bree Nordenson, “they have neglected to look hard enough at the larger implications of the new information landscape — and more generally, of modern life.” That is, information overload. Most of us lack the skills — not to mention the time, attention, and motivation — to make sense of today’s unrelenting torrent of information. Far from precipitating the demise of journalists and news organizations, it spells out why journalism won’t disappear. Paul Duguid explains: “[Information] needs a recommendation, a seal of approval, something that says this is reliable or true or whatever. And so journalists, but also the institutions of journalism as one aspect of this, become very important.”
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The idea that different kinds of learners (such as “auditory learners” and “visual learners”) learn best when they are taught in their preferred learning style modality has had a tenacious grip in classroom settings in recent decades. Here is yet another report, this one commissioned by Psychological Science in the Public Interest, that condemns the use of learning styles in school settings. Frankly, it’s interesting if you are a teacher, trainer, parent or employed in the vast industry of learning style assessments, but it is less interesting if you are a learner or interested in personalized learning in non-structured settings. School is such a narrow slice of the learning landscape, and it distressing to hear of all the resources spent on promoting a suspect proposition, then again to quell it. These findings are not relevant to unstructured learning environments, and the strict type of randomized research designs advocated (e.g., classify learners into categories, then randomly assign the learners to use one of several different learning methods and assess effectiveness of the learning methods with a test given to all participants) is a steep hurdle. Thanks to Will Thalheimer for pointing to the study.