In recent years, cognitive scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what matters most: how much a student learns from studying.

The findings can help anyone, from a fourth grader doing long division to a retiree taking on a new language. But they directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they have not caught on.

For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.

Read the article on the NY Times website.

I find it interesting that a lot of the findings — such as varying study location, and varying what you study — parallel findings from animal training, as reported in Karen Pryor’s book Don’t Shoot the Dog!: The New Art of Teaching and Training.

Have you read the book Zimbaro mentions, The Geography of Time? (I haven’t.) If so, what do you think of it?

Abstract thought prompts literal physical responses

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/science/02angier.html

Researcher subjects literally lean forward when thinking about the future, backward when thinking about the past. According to Nils B. Jostmann of the University of Amsterdam, “How we process information is related not just to our brains but to our entire body. We use every system available to us to come to a conclusion and make sense of what’s going on.”

Music in speech correlates with empathy in heart

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127085550.htm

The same brain region (Broca’s area) understands and produces intonation in speech. The higher a person scores on standard tests of empathy, the more activity they have in their prosody-producing areas of the brain.

In NLP terms, I suspect that more prosody and more empathy correlate with association — something we NLPers have all observed in practice.

Brain scans show how hypnosis can paralyze a limb

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2009-06-24-paralyzed-hypnosis_N.htm

Under hypnotic suggestion that they couldn’t move their hand, the subjects’ motor cortex prepared for movement as usual. But then, instead of communicating with the brain area used in controlling movement, the motor cortex instead acted more in sync with an area used in mental imagery and memory about oneself.

More detailed article about brain scans exploring hypnosis:

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/47697/title/The_Mesmerized_Mind

Deciphering the brain’s dictionary

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100112201347.htm

Using nouns in different categories, researchers were able to correlate which brain areas activated to think about different types of nouns. They were then able to predict which brain areas would light up when exposed to novel nouns. They could even identify which of a list of 60 terms subjects were thinking of.

What does this have to do with NLP? For years researchers have known that human brains have functional modules, called inference systems, for perceiving and thinking about certain types of information. Information that “interests” one or more inference system tends to be more memorable. This experiment identified 3 factors the brain uses to categorize nouns:

1. how you physically interact with the object (how you hold it, kick it, twist it, etc.);
2. how it is related to eating (biting, sipping, tasting, swallowing); and
3. how it is related to shelter or enclosure.

Folk tales, which persist because they are memorable, often include odd combinations of these factors — such as a pumpkin big enough to live in (food + shelter), or a house made out of a giant shoe (physical interaction + shelter). Can we NLPers use these categories to help people memorize information?

Brain scans show similarities between memories and imagination

http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0710-brain_scans_of_the_future.htm

Brain scientists used to think that imagining the future happened almost entirely in the brain’s frontal lobes. This 2007 study showed that “All the regions that we know are important for memory are just as important when we imagine our future,” according to researcher Karl Szpunar.

We NLPers know that imagining the future involves sensory representations, so we could have predicted that sensory and motor areas of the brain would activate.

For years I have read accounts of research in neuroscience and neuropsychology, and wondered, “Why don’t these labs have skilled NLP modelers on staff?” I’m still wondering…

Joy

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Extra: video “The world needs all kinds of minds” by autistic Temple Grandin.

Flubbing a field goal kick doesn’t just bruise your ego — new research shows it may actually change how your brain sees the goal posts.

In a study of 23 non-football athletes who each kicked 10 field goals, researchers found that players’ performance directly affected their perception of the size of the goal: After a series of missed kicks, athletes perceived the post to be taller and more narrow than before, while successful kicks made the post appear larger-than-life.

Professional athletes have long claimed that their perception changes when they’re playing well — they start hitting baseballs as large as grapefruits, or aiming at golf holes the size of a bucket — but many scientists have been slow to accept that performance can alter visual perception.

“The reason why this is so radical is that perception has always been conceived as being all about information received by the eye,” said psychology researcher Jessica Witt of Purdue University, who co-authored the paper published last month in Perception. “In my studies we keep all the optical information constant, so the eye is seeing the exact same info — but it looks different depending on performance.”…

Interestingly, the change in players’ perception didn’t just depend on how many goals they missed — it also mattered how they missed their goals. Folks who failed because they didn’t kick high enough perceived the crossbar to be taller, while those who kicked to the side viewed it as more narrow.

Read the entire article here: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/goal-perception/

I find it fascinating and logical that the brain changes perceptions in ways likely to improve performance. Someone who sees the crossbar as taller will tend to kick the ball higher.

I suspect the brain uses other submodality changes to make the goal posts appear important and distinct from the background, and to emphasize cues that tell the player the distance to the goal.

As NLPers, how can we use these types of perception changes to increase performance and help people learn faster?

Joy