Child's play

As a BIG proponent of the use of Play in learning and education in general, I absolutely love to hear stories like this:

Child's play may revolutionize video gaming, police work

It's not specifically related to play, but the idea that "gaming" is not just a throw-away pass-time is an idea I've been promoting for a long time. It's good to see research that shows how we can learn from gaming (an incredibly complex and difficult activity).

Brain Power

Check out this very fun infographic about the abilities of the human brain:

Superhuman: the Incredible Savant Brain

Supercharge your study habits

Just in time for the start of the semester, here is something for all of you students out there:

BPS Research Digest: 9 evidence-based study tips

Psychoactive drugs in medical use

There have been a few articles about this popping up recently.

Psychoactive drugs: From recreation to medication - health - 01 September 2010 - New Scientist

It seems that there is a resurgence in the interest around using "recreational" drugs as a part of psychiatric medication. LSD, for example, was used in the 1950s and 60s as a drug to help aid in Freudian psychotherapy both here and in Europe.

Apparently current experiments are finding that there are indeed practical uses and in fact potential medical benefits for using psychoactive drugs in certain types of disorders.

Email’s Dark Side

This was just too good to pass up.

Email’s Dark Side: 10 Psychology Studies — PsyBlog

Who knew? Well, everyone knows if you sit down and really think about it.

Good news for all you doodlers out there

FuturePundit: Doodling While Listening Improves Memory Recall

Good news indeed! Although, the caveat is that the doodling was as "non-conscious" as possible, so distracted doodling is better than directive doodling of specific designs as drawn from an individual's imagination.

Bring a coloring book to class!

US Life Expectancy Up To 77.9 Years

In a growing trend the current life-expectancy for people in the United States has gone up:

FuturePundit: US Life Expectancy Up To 77.9 Years

The rate of increase is about 1.5 years increase every decade. That means that for todays college students they will potentially have a life expectancy of 86 years or so.

BUT, if you add on that the rate will probably increase at a faster rate as medical advances progress, you might be looking at an average life expectancy rate of over 90.

I even saw one author who projected the life expectancy rate for todays 20 year olds could be will into the century mark.

Multitasking: I don't think it means what you think it means

I've posted plenty about this before, but a good reminder now and then doesn't hurt.

Can You Multitask? Probably Not Well | World of Psychology

What we actually engage in could be better described as "switch-tasking". Cognitively speaking our brains simply aren't wired for handling what most people define as "multitasking" - and only a very small minority of people are capable of efficient switch-tasking.

Changing education

Here is a wonderfully thoughtful article by the truly essential Zen Habits blog authored by Leo BaBauta:

Education Needs to Be Turned on Its Head | zen habits

I wish everyone gave the kind of careful consideration he gives to the needs and outcomes of education. What he is describing is a model of cognitive education that has been theorized about and put into limited practice in a number of places over the years since at least the 1960's (Jerome Bruner was one of the early advocates of this type of learning). There are even a limited number of universities that use this model.

I'd love to see it implemented to a larger degree but that is a fight against a culture that is resistant to change, and a system that is even entrenched and even more resistant to change.

Cognitive Enhancement via Pharmacology AND Neuropsychology

The debate rages on: would you willingly take drugs to enhance your cognitive ability if it meant getting a significant edge over the competition?

Cognitive Enhancement via Pharmacology AND Neuropsychology, in The New Executive Brain | SharpBrains

It is absolutely no different from the steroid debate. We're not 100% sure of the side-effects of most of the psychoactive drugs out there, and they differ dramatically between individuals as well. How big a price are you willing to pay later for that extra edge now?

Is religion good for your health?

The author is correct: there is not a clear "Yes" or "No" answer to this question:

Is religion good for your health? | Psychology Today

As with most things it depends on the type of behavior you engage in. Fanatical religious behavior probably leads to unhealthy behavior in most cases, whereas a moderate approach to religion probably leads to more overall health.

The moderate behavior I'm speaking about is actually coming out more and more to be related to most health benefits as almost any activity, when taken to the extreme, leads to unhealthy behaviors or results. Moderation in all things seems to be a pretty healthy way to go.

No such thing as ethnic groups, genetically speaking

While not technically about psychology, this does speak to psychological behavior such as prejudice and racism. I always try to tell my students that between any given culture there are FAR more similarities than differences. We do, however, focus on the outward obvious differences which are generally superficial.

No such thing as ethnic groups, genetically speaking

It would be nice to be able to move past the superficialities.

Guilt and atonement in child development.

Most people look at guilt as a bad thing. Recent research points out that the development of guilt happens alongside other mechanisms of self-control and may, in fact, aid in the development of overall self-control

Deric Bownds' MindBlog: Guilt and atonement in child development.

Flash Brain!

Check out this extremely cool interactive educational graphic of the brain.

Brain, Brain Information, Facts, News, Photos -- National Geographic

Do yourself a favor and "stimulate" the brain with the feather. Hilarious.

Improving on Maslow (from the evoluitonary psychologists)

Evolutionary psychologists have made some changes to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Essentially the top "Esteem" and "Actualization" needs are replaced with stuff related to sex. Pretty typical for evolutionary psychologists. It's all about passing on the old genetic material!

Consciousness: the debate rages on

An interesting discussion on consciousness if for no other reason than it reference a number of other theories on what is or is not consciousness.

This is currently one of the biggest active debates in psychology and science in general. The current iteration is revolving more around free will (see any of the numerous prior entries), but make no mistake, the experimentation and debate over free will has direct impacts and is rooted very firmly in the debate over consciousness.

Language is not logical [/Spock]

Despite language theories to the contrary it seems that a little experimentation has determined that language itself is not the root of logical thought.

Do you want to succeed, or simply not fail?

Fear of failure is a surprisingly common motivational behavior. Here are a couple of articles that do an excellent job explaining about the two poles of the motivational spectrum: motivation for success or fear of failure.

Part 1 and part 2.

Don't forget the Glial cells!

Our brains are actually made up of mostly Glial cells - and yet they are some of the least studied neural cells. I like the analogy of the article of Glials being the "dark matter of the brain" - even though the analogy breaks down when you consider that dark matter is still theoretical, but we can definitely see Glial cells - we just don't know a lot about them.

Seems like a ripe area for research if you are looking for a PhD in neurobiology.

How good is your teacher?

The problem of measuring the quality of a teacher is similar to almost any effort to measure "quality." Simply deciding on what your definition of quality includes can be controversial at best. Then deciding how to measure your definition can be even more problematic. Quality, as with nearly any subjective term, is often distinguished by each individual's interpretation. Therein lies the problem: how do you reconcile the varied preferences of individuals to create a collective measure?

Not. Easy.

How to motivate someone....

The science behind motivation is actually a bit counter-intuitive from what we traditionally understand as motivation in the popular culture. The biggest problem with most peoples understanding of motivation is a lack of understanding the difference between short and long-term motivation. Short-term motivation can be pretty easy to achieve (how motivated would you be with a gun to your head?) - but getting someone to be self-motivated over the long term (the ultimate goal of most motivational efforts) is far, far more difficult to achieve.

Are you a multitasker? You probably stink at it.

There was a lot of news about this earlier in the year, but this is an excellent article that does a little more of explaining how self-proclaimed multi-taskers are really very horrible at it (along with a very heavy percentage of the population).

More fat = less brain

More bad news for the long term effects of an increasingly portly populace.

Am I being vague?

Vagueness seems to be structured into the very fabric of language. And this can be a good thing. Just imagine having to live life exactly like a computer and having to have unbelievably precise language just to accomplish the simplest tasks. I mean, have you seen the amount of code it takes to do even the simplest actions in, say, MS Word? It would take you a few weeks to read it.

So, be happy that our brains and our language can handle a bit of vagueness and are capable of interpreting things based on vagueness.

How many books are on your shelf?

It seems that the more books you have at home the better chance your children have of being successful. Even more interestingly that is a result that holds true across all the countries in the world that were studied.

Exceedingly. Cool.

What is fMRI analysis?

Here is your answer in 1000 words or less.

Fantastic introduction to what is actually an incredibly difficult and complex process that produces those pretty images we all love to look at of which areas of a brain "light up."

Correlation is not causation

I tell this to my students over and over: correlation is NOT causation. Never was, never will be. While the effects that correlate could potentially be related through causation, linking two or more things through correlation cannot show causation.

Mind-map your behaviors

Here is an interesting idea: use a mind-map of your behaviors in order to find better ways of altering your "bad" behaviors.

Self-esteem - not what you think it's about

The pervasive movement in education and general child psychology for "boosting" self-esteem in children leaves a lot to be desired. Looking at the various "self-esteem" efforts and practices through the lens of strong motivational theories (such as Banduras Self-efficacy theories, or Self-determination theories) basically tells you that the practices may be worthless at best and actually detrimental in the long term at worst.

Here is a good article describing some of the problems in specific.

Talk therapy is trending downward

The prevalence of medication seems to be having an effect on the frequency of talk therapy usage.