The so-called "Mozart effect" refers to two quite different phenomena. The one that has received the most media play concerns the almost magical (and mythical) effect of Mozart's music on intelligence. It is the result of a…
Strategies for Better Memory & Learning
The more hyped and less plausible passive Mozart Effect
The two types of first-letter mnemonics
First-letter mnemonics are, as their name suggests, memory strategies that use the initial letters of words as aids to remembering. This can be an effective technique because initial letters are helpful retrieval cues, as anyone who has endeavored to…
The evidence that diet, physical exercise, and mental stimulation all help prevent age-related cognitive decline and reduce the risk of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s, is now very convincing.
Studies of mice and (rather intriguingly) beagles, have provided evidence that ‘…
On my walk today, I listened to a downloaded interview from the On Being website. The interview was with ‘vocal magician and conductor’ Bobby McFerrin, and something he said early on in the interview really caught my attention.
In response to a question about why he’d once (in his teens…
Does photographic memory exist?
"Photographic" or eidetic memory is said to occur in some 8% of children, but almost all of these grow out of it. The phenomenon is extremely rare in adults, and indeed the very existence of photographic memory is still somewhat contentious. However, it may be…
Here’s an interesting study that’s just been reported: 72 seven- and eight-month-old infants watched video animations of familiar fun items being revealed from behind a set of colorful boxes (see the 3-minute YouTube video). What the researchers found is that the babies reliably lost interest…
We don’t deliberately practice our memories of events — not as a rule, anyway. But we don’t need to — because just living our life is sufficient to bring about the practice. We remember happy, or unpleasant, events to ourselves, and we recount our memories to other people. Some will become…
Most people find numbers — phone numbers, personal identification numbers, dates, and so on — more difficult to remember than words. That is, of course, why businesses try to get phone numbers that correspond to some relevant word. The system whereby this is possible — the linking of certain…
Humans are the animals that manipulate their cognitive environment.
I reported recently on an intriguing study involving an African people, the Himba. The study found that the Himba, while displaying an admirable amount of focus (in a visual perception task) if they were living a…
The thing to remember about Ericsson’s famous expertise research, showing us the vital importance of deliberate practice in making an expert, is that it was challenging the long-dominant view that natural-born talent is all-important. But Gladwell’s popularizing of Ericsson’s “10,000 hours”…