Tag: cognition
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The Cognitive Impact of Evaluative ‘Grade’ Letters
Priming students with “evaluative letters” (i.e. letters used to grade papers, such as A and F) has a significant influence on their performance on cognitive tests. As you can imagine, primed with an A their performance on the cognitive tests improve, while those primed with an F displayed degraded performance. That’s what researchers found when…
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Paper Maps vs. GPS vs. Personal Directions
Noting that “a device can be precise without being accurate” and contemplating the possible effects the simultaneous rise in digital maps and a decline in the use of paper maps could have, John McKinney looks at some studies comparing the efficacy of different navigational aids: Studies by the British Cartographic Society show that high-tech maps…
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How Different Cultures Define Choice
In her book The Art of Choosing, psychologist Sheena Iyengar—the experimenter who conducted the original studies leading to the paradox of choice theory—looks at the cultural differences in the definition and acceptance of choice. Take a mundane question: Do you choose to brush your teeth in the morning? Or do you just do it? Can a habit…
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Fertility, Maternal Age and Child Development
In suggesting alternatives to the status quo of high-status women delaying childbirth further and further, Robin Hanson notes that, unlike advanced paternal age, advanced maternal age does not correlate with poor learning and social outcomes in children (in fact, older mothers had children who scored higher). In all cases, we find evidence that children of…
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The Influence of Cognitive Fluency
We’ve seen before how the cognitive fluency (how ‘easy’ it is to think of or comprehend something) of restaurant menus, stock ticker codes and physical exercises influence how complex, risky and even beautiful we perceive them to be. A recent PsyBlog article provides a summary of a number of cognitive fluency studies and here are…
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Bilingualism and Dementia
I’ve noted previously how child bilingualism improves the “executive functions” and a recent study has corroborated these findings while also discovering how bilingualism can stave off dementia in old age: [Psychologist Ellen Bailystok] wanted to explore whether enhanced executive control actually has a protective effect in mental aging—specifically, whether bilingualism contributes to the “cognitive reserve” that comes…
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Accents and Second Language Comprehension
When teaching a second language, it may be better to speak in the accent of the student’s first language rather than attempting to imitate the accent of the target language, suggests research looking at how accents may hinder or expedite language learning and comprehension. The study that discovered this looked at how much aural information speakers of…
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The Cognitive Importance of Good Sleep
After a week of surviving on minimal sleep you may assume that a lazy weekend will allow you to recover in time for the coming days. Not so: research has shown that not even a full week of quality sleep can reverse the cognitive and physiological ‘damage’ just five days of poor sleep can inflict on…
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Typography, Pronunciation and Cognitive Fluency
How easy something is to read and understand significantly affects how we perceive it in terms of its risk, beauty, difficulty, credibility and truthfulness. Factors that influence this cognitive fluency include typography (typeface choice, contrast, etc.), ease of pronunciation, familiarity and how much the words rhyme. The cover story of this month’s The Psychologist is…
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Realising Metaphors
Deciding which part of this article on how we internalise metaphorical concepts to quote was proving troublesome, then David came along with this take on the article: Though Drake Bennet’s piece feels a little shallow — like he’s pointing to this really interesting thing and rather than explain it is merely puzzling at it beside you — he does…