My task is to try and uncover the semi-happy ending that was hidden back at the story’s beginning. Only then, I am told, will I have a chance at creating a real and satisfying resolution. There may be no other way. It’s crucial to get back to the original flash of inspiration .. a time when all plot lines were equally possible ..and remember to read the signs I missed along the way.
James Fowler, a professor of psychology at UCSD, found that messages from our peers are more likely to initiate action than messages delivered by a political committee [ link ]. Last year, Obama’s reelection committee learned the same thing. They developed a system that leverages database technology and social-media to deliver their messages. In an instant, this system allows them to:
- mobilize grassroots support for White House concerns
- provide White House support for local concerns
Apparently they took an extra step, conducted surveys ..and learned that nothing energizes participation better than ‘reciprocity’. Brilliant use of technology combined with Obama’s experience as a community organizer. Politically I’m independent and pretty damn naïve ..but I can see why this might give Republicans cause for alarm.
“We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to separate anticipatory neural activity from what’s occurring while performing math. Increased activity in frontoparietal regions of the cortex, involved with focusing attention and suppressing anxiety, were better predictors of math scores than activity in regions associated with arithmetic calculation (the left intraparietal sulcus of the cortex) [link].”
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| Senator Russell Pearce |
I have a theory. People who rate themselves as highly ‘consistent and uncompromising’ on issues are slower to adapt to the unexpected and less likely to learn from their mistakes. To put it bluntly, “I think inflexibility leads to arrested development”. Roger Shank has a model of speech comprehension that says people only tune-in long enough to retrieve the most likely script from memory. After that, communication becomes a process of listening for information that fills-in the missing pieces. Tom Trabasso says script-based processing is a useful strategy but only when matters are highly predictable ..like listening to a kidnapping story where you can safely narrow your attention to the parts that talk about “what kind of force was used” or “what the kidnapper’s demands are.” My theory says that over-reliance on script-based processing is sort of like Procrustes bed in Greek mythology .. reception becomes limited to what conforms to a standard set of precedents in the listeners head. The rest is quickly dismissed as either immaterial, inconceivable or unacceptable (take for example John Boehner’s “Hell, no!” anti-Obama strategy, or Senator Russell Pearce’s claim that all opposing views are “treasonous”). I talked to Dr Thompson about it. Although he generally considers theories a dime a dozen, he thinks it merits attention and even suggested some ‘assessment tools’ I could use to measure ‘willingness to yield’ on issues. I didn’t think it would be hard getting people to admit to having an uncompromising nature and I have tests that measure how swiftly people handle unexpected events in a narrative. Now I’m interested in getting started and seeing what turns-up in the literature. Perhaps it’s already been done. I mean, you’d think it’d be a factor in Alzheimer’s or something. Considering the political atmosphere around here there’s bound to be some interest in the subject.
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| Sian Beilock |
Writing has been shown to replace ruminating. Ruminating is generally thought of as the mental activity devoted to replaying past traumatic experience. It is a well-known contributor to clinical depression. That’s why writing workshops are often included in the treatment of depression. However, ruminating over future events, such as taking a high-stakes exam or something, can be equally disruptive. In this case, ruminating often leads to “choking” where students perform more poorly than expected given their skill level, especially when there are large incentives for optimal performance and negative consequences for poor performance. University of Chicago Psychologist Sian Beilock has found that the simple act of writing about anxiety can significantly reduce students’ chances of choking, especially if it’s done just prior to test-taking [link]. She says that when students are able to express their fears in writing, they’re given the satisfaction that they’ve dealt with them enough to move on and stop ruminating over them. This, in turn, releases space in working memory ..making it available to work on the task at hand.
In 1998, psychologist Arthur Graesser examined components of speech and reading comprehension in ‘real-time’. See [Einstein’s Dreams]. Components of comprehension include things like ‘unexpected event-handling’ and ‘outcome-resolution’. They are measured in milliseconds. Using an interactive computer-presentation, he recorded the time students spent at each step. Sort of like a reaction-time study. What he found was counter-intuitive. Comprehension scores were actually higher for students who took longer to process unexpected events in a narrative. Students who spent less time had lower scores. On closer examination, he found they were interpreting events way too quickly. Consequently, they were missing the bridge to ‘explanatory’ events presented elsewhere in the narrative. What this tells me is that receptivity is more important than reaching conclusions while listening to someone speak.
The other day students asked me why we waste money on research that doesn’t have immediate medical or commercial value. It was a fair question. I told them I thought it was because progress often depends on research that was originally done for non-commercial purposes ..like scientific advancement. The Internet came to mind. The Internet and all the social networking and businesses it hosts ..did not start out as a texting or commercial enterprise. It was an experiment that relied on research coming out of fields such as cybernetics and neuropsychology. The head of the project was a psychologist from MIT named Joseph Licklider [link]. He was a leading expert on the nature of the auditory system. His research involved understanding the way signals travel across the nervous system and get converted to sound by the auditory centers in the brain. His findings became the basis for ‘packet switching’ in computer networks, without which the Internet would have never progressed much farther than the telephone [link]. These studies were not originally intended for use by the computer industry ..nor were they funded by drug companies. The Internet would have never come about through corporate sponsorship alone. That’s the reason why scientific inquiry needs to be conducted in a neutral setting.
The kind of focused attention ordinarily required in a classroom is not always helpful overcoming obstacles outside the classroom. A wider focus of attention, which is usually associated with ADD, is actually more adaptive according to neuroscientists John Kounios and Mark Beeman [link]. And from what I’ve seen, I believe it ..! They found that when students are more open to distraction, they do better navigating a computer-simulated labyrinth than when they are focused and blocking out distractions (as seen on an fMRI). Students actually see and hear more .. finding their way faster by heuristic than by analytic reasoning. In other words, in many situations, discovering relationships between vague and loosely connected information is more advantageous than step-by-step analysis.
Brain surgeon Wilder Penfield [link] found that whenever he tugged at one place in childhood memory, he pulled the rest of childhood experience with it. His patients would report : “I can hear the sound of my mother’s voice calling me for dinner ..I smell the scent of fresh baked bread like I did then ..I see my mother waiting for me on the porch .. I feel her warmth ..I actually feel like I did as a child right now.” Psychologists see the same thing going on with their clients while they’re talking about present-day relationships. For example, when they report talking to somebody who has a voice or manner similar to one of their parents ..it often triggers the feelings they experienced in the presence of that parent. Could be feelings of warmth and pleasure ..or feelings of intimidation and submission. They may pass through these states during the day without even knowing it. What they do remember, however, is a feeling that tells them whether or not they enjoy someone’s company.
My first boss, Tony, was a commanding presence. He looked like a mafia don ..with a deep baritone voice and a quick temper. He shouted at people a lot and often in a disparaging manner. He intimidated my colleagues, which made them cringe in his presence. For some reason his behavior didn’t bother me. I even got a chuckle out of them. I think I figured out why ..and I believe I owe it to Dr Penfield. Although my father didn’t live with us very long, what I remember about him most is that he was gentle and reasonable. He would explain things I did wrong and never scolded. I don’t have memories of growing up with a ‘bully’ like many of my colleagues. Consequently, Tony didn’t evoke the same feelings in me as he did in them. I always figured there was a method to his madness and he always treated me with civility, while my colleagues always felt like they were getting a whipping.
