Imagine a real-life mind meld, in which one brain communicates directly with another. New advances are making this possible—taking people “beyond the confines of their bodies, creating a sort of extended cognition,” writes Laura Sanders in Science News. She points to the research of neuroscientist Rajesh Rao of the University of Washington. In his lab,
Paying attention, together, changes the way we think Continue Reading >
Our bodies are repositories of knowledge that we can draw on to make better decisions—if only we can access that knowledge. In a recent column for the Wall Street Journal, financial writer Jason Zweig provides some fascinating insight into how we can do so. What we call a “gut feeling” actually “encompasses a multitude of
Creating conditions that promote learning from the body Continue Reading >
Moving our bodies can help us express, and even to understand, an abstract concept. One very enjoyable example of this phenomenon is the annual “Dance Your Ph.D.” contest, in which scientists explain their research through dance. NPR just reported on this year’s winners. “The winning entry came from three atmospheric science graduate students at the
To understand an abstract concept, get moving Continue Reading >
Teaching others what we know can help us understand the material more thoroughly. Science writer John Horgan has just introduced me to another benefit of “teaching to learn”: it can make us excited about and awed by the subject again. In a wonderful piece for Scientific American, Horgan writes that over many years of reporting,
Teaching others can reignite our passion for the subject Continue Reading >
At Barnard, a women’s college, most of the employees are women—”but a lot of the ones who show up at the office these days are men,” writes Barnard president Sian Beilock in a recent piece for the Washington Post. Remote-work arrangements may end up hurting women, she says, if it means that female employees are
An important cue of belonging: the people who are present Continue Reading >
It’s often been noted that search engines and other technological tools act as a kind of “external memory”— they “remember” facts so that we don’t have to. But, write a group of UCLA researchers in a recent paper, “some cognitive costs may arise from our reliance on such external memories.” In particular, the frictionless nature
Guess before you Google Continue Reading >
We know that the capacity to self-regulate—to focus one’s attention and control one’s behavior—is really important. Self-regulation in early childhood is linked with later academic success and general well-being. But we tend to think of self-regulation as something that’s generated internally, through an exertion of will or “grit.” A new study suggests that the resources
Exposure to nature helps kids to self-regulate Continue Reading >
Physical movement affects the way we think. For example: we are able to understand abstract concepts by linking them to the very concrete and familiar experiences of our bodies. We construct metaphors that link the two. For example: I understand what it means for a project to “move forward”—and I describe the project’s progress using
Fluid movements promote fluid thinking Continue Reading >
Research tells us that language emerges out of gesture: infants and toddlers can use their hands to communicate before they’re able to speak. A study published in 2020 by researchers at the University of Calgary reports that babies’ gestures at one year of age predicted stronger communication skills at age five, when those same children
For young children, more gestures now mean more words later Continue Reading >
Lots of research has shown that students learn better when their teachers’ words are accompanied by gesture. A new study offers insight into when, and why, gesture is helpful. Researcher Casey Hall of the University of Chicago notes that gesture represents implicit, non-declarative knowledge: information that we “know” but can’t put into words. When it
How teachers’ gestures help students learn Continue Reading >