The relationship between technology use and cognition

At least as far back as Lev Vygotsky, psychological scientists and others interested in human cognition have considered the relationship between humans’ technology use and cognition. Vygotsky, for example, saw humans’ mediation of ‘tools and signs’ (i.e., technological innovations, both concrete and abstract) as a key part of the learning process, while psychologist Jerome Bruner argues that using technology has a recursive relationship with cognition – as we use tools to accomplish some task, our thinking about the task itself can change.

In this article from The Atlantic, writer Ross Anderson examines the growing body of technologies and methods explicitly designed for ‘cognitive enhancement:’

It could be that we are on the verge of a great deluge of cognitive enhancement. Or it’s possible that new brain-enhancing drugs and technologies will be nothing compared to how we’ve transformed our minds in the past. If it seems that making ourselves “artificially” smarter is somehow inhuman, it may be that similar activities are actually what made us human.

New science of bilingualism offers fresh insights into language acquisition, learning

The New York Times reports:

Once, experts feared that young children exposed to more than one language would suffer “language confusion,” which might delay their speech development. Today, parents often are urged to capitalize on that early knack for acquiring language…

But there is more and more research to draw on, reaching back to infancy and even to the womb. As the relatively new science of bilingualism pushes back to the origins of speech and language, scientists are teasing out the earliest differences between brains exposed to one language and brains exposed to two.

Amazonian tribe has no abstract concept of time, researchers find

Update: Originally, this post omitted the link to the TIME Magazine article. I’ve added the link – sorry for the oversight. –MGS

TIME Magazine reports:

Researchers from the University of Portsmouth and the Federal University of Rondonia in Brazil have found that the Amazonian tribe Amondawa, has no abstract concept of time. “In English we say things like, her birthday is coming up, or he worked through the night,” researcher Chris Sinha told NewsFeed. “But they (the Amondawa) don’t use such expressions of movement in space to metaphorically talk about time.”

The study was carried out via interviews, observations, questionnaires and experiments, and the results came as a surprise to the researchers, because it’s the first language in which it’s been established that space to time mappings don’t occur.

But although the Amondawa, who were first contacted by the outside world in 1986, don’t have anything like a clock, they do talk in time periods. “They’re just not as strict,” says Sinha. That means that if two members of a tribe were to meet up, they’d say something like “We’ll meet in the afternoon,” or “we’ll meet tomorrow morning.”  This is also explained by the fact that they have a small number system which only goes up to four.

The “science of self-delusion”

 

Update: My original post omitted the link to Mother Jones’ article. Sorry for any confusion. –MGS

Mother Jones Magazine reports:

An array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. This tendency toward so-called “motivated reasoning” helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, “death panels,” the birthplace and religion of the president, and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.

The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience: Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call “affect”). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we’re aware of it. That shouldn’t be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It’s a “basic human survival skill,” explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.

Teenagers in a group are more prone to risk-taking

The New York Times reports:

In studies at Temple University, psychologists used functional magnetic resonance imaging scans on 40 teenagers and adults to determine if there are differences in brain activity when adolescents are alone versus with their friends. The findings suggest that teenage peer pressure has a distinct effect on brain signals involving risk and reward, helping to explain why young people are more likely to misbehave and take risks when their friends are watching.

The human inclination to gossip might have evolutionary benefits, new study suggests

Many psychologists argue that psychological traits found in modern human beings exist not merely by happenstance but because our distant ancestors who possessed a given trait were better adapted to their environment and thus survived (at least long enough to propagate their genes) while humans possessing other, less well-adapted traits died out.

USA Today reports on a new study in this vein:

Gossip, whether “delicious or destructive,” serves a function, according to the study [by Anderson et. al.], to be published online May 19 by the journal Science. In lieu of direct experience, social tittle-tattle allows people to learn about others across a very wide group, the team say. That, in turn, gives people cues on who to befriend (or not) without having to actually have to spend lots of time with them first.

The Anderson et. al. article is available online here (subscription required).

Multitasking, redux: New research finds ‘mindset switching’ impacts self-regulation

I’ve posted in the past on multitasking (see this update, for example). Generally, researchers have found that without special training (such as that received by airplane pilots or other specialists), true multitasking is difficult, and even if we believe we are successfully multitasking, the impact on our decision-making processes can be greater than we consciously understand.

In this new article by Hamilton et. al., published in the May 2011 issue of the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, the researchers examined not multitasking but rather mindset switching. A mindset is a mental state that is intended to achieve a certain goal. Thus, a mindset is a kind of forerunner of multitasking. Interestingly, just as multitasking drains our cognitive capacity, mindset switching appears to impact our capacity to self-regulate – that is, to alter our typical or ‘normal’ actions.

Hamilton et. al. write:

Our findings suggest that the benefits of switching mindsets to accommodate changing situational demands should be weighed against the drawbacks of mindset switching. The results from five experiments demonstrated that switching mindsets taxes limited self-regulatory resources… Repeatedly switching mindsets can impair executive functioning and cause self-regulatory failures on subsequent tasks.

New research on the debate over nature, nurture, and parenting

The New  York Times reports:

Research has found that lifestyle differences — discipline, consistent mealtimes, reading and television watching — account for some differences between lower- and middle-income children in their readiness for school. But does a wealthier parent who forces a child to practice piano 20 hours a week make a huge difference to her overall well-being? “We don’t really know,” said Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, a professor of child development at Columbia. Paradoxically, the kind of parents who follow debates about parenting — typically more affluent and educated — are those who may have the least to worry about. But there is a group for whom the debate is really important: low-income parents. Differences in parenting can matter a lot to poor, underprivileged children, and research shows that better parenting could help improve their opportunities in many ways…

“In one sense you can say parenting doesn’t matter very much if you’re looking at a bunch of upper-middle-class parents who are all basically good parents,” said Janet Currie, an economist at Columbia University. “Then variations don’t matter. But if you’re looking at people who are in difficult situations and aren’t able to be good parents, then improvements in parenting would make a huge difference. That’s part of the problem with the discussion.”

Paradoxically, the kind of parents who follow debates about parenting — typically more affluent and educated — are those who may have the least to worry about. But there is a group for whom the debate is really important: low-income parents. Differences in parenting can matter a lot to poor, underprivileged children, and research shows that better parenting could help improve their opportunities in many ways.

How do you know that you actually know what you think you know?

The New York Times reports:

Psychologists have long known that people’s instincts about how well they’ve learned a subject are often way off. The feel of a study session can be a poor reflection of its nutritional value: Concepts that seem perfectly clear become fuzzy at exam time, and those that are hard to grasp somehow click into place when it counts.

In recent years, researchers have begun to clarify why this is so, and in some cases how to correct for it. The findings are especially relevant nowadays, experts say.

“So much of the learning that we do now is unsupervised, on our own,” said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, “that it’s crucial to be able to monitor that learning accurately; that is, to know how well we know what we know, so that we avoid fooling ourselves.”

New studies suggest direct instruction can constrain very young children’s cognition

Note: This is cross-posted with my Education Blog.

Dr. Alison Gopnik of UC-Berkeley writes in Slate:

Shouldn’t very young children be allowed to explore, inquire, play, and discover [in a setting less 'school-like' than is the case with many pre-schools today]? Perhaps direct instruction can help children learn specific facts and skills, but what about curiosity and creativity—abilities that are even more important for learning in the long run? Two forthcoming studies in the journal Cognition—one from a lab at MIT and one from my lab at UC-Berkeley—suggest that the doubters are on to something. While learning from a teacher may help children get to a specific answer more quickly, it also makes them less likely to discover new information about a problem and to create a new and unexpected solution…

As so often happens in science, two studies from different labs, using different techniques, have simultaneously produced strikingly similar results. They provide scientific support for the intuitions many teachers have had all along: Direct instruction really can limit young children’s learning. Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific—this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions.