Originally posted on April 5, 2014. Each year, the American government spends billions of dollars to help students who struggle to meet their potential. These students languish in traditional school programs. They struggle socially. And they ultimately have less impact on society than they might if they had received educational opportunities that maximized their abilities. New research suggests that students who occupy this group are the ones we often worry about the least: super smart kids. The study followed several hundred students from age 13 to 38. At age 13, all of the students showed testing ability that placed them in the top 0.01 percent of students their age. Put another way, the study participants outscored students in the top 1 percent by a factor of ten. That’s pretty smart! The super smart kids flourished. Their rate of earned doctorates dwarfed the average American rate: 44 percent compared to 2 percent. They held jobs that gave them influence over millions of dollars and, in some cases, millions of lives. It’s easy to shut the book there. Super smart kids succeed. Big deal. But these super smart kids often experience challenges that also plague so-called “at-risk” students. They don’t have class material that pushes them intellectually. Before their first day of class, they know the course material. What happens next? What do they do for the next six to eight hours while their peers struggle to understand the material they’ve already mastered? The super smart kids might also struggle to connect socially. If academics are such a breeze, might it be difficult to relate to your peers? Might you experience stress when your peers have to study at night while you look for other opportunities to pique your intellectual interests? Might you act less intelligent to fit in? ... View more

Originally posted on May 5, 2014. From an early age, I wanted to be an astronaut. I memorized Mercury astronaut missions. I dreamt of using a manned maneurvering unit to glide through space. I cried when the Challenger exploded. I still dream of going to space, but I know it’s a long shot. Still, space exploration captivates me. What will be the biggest obstacle to a successful Mars mission? It won’t be inadequate fuel, faulty aerodynamics, or clunky helmets. Social isolation is the greatest barrier to interplanetary travel. Don’t believe me? Think about the past 520 days of your life (about a year and five months). That’s how long it takes to travel to Mars and return. How many people did you see during that time? How many conversations did you have? Did you attend a sporting event? A play? A worship service? Maybe a loved one was born or passed away. Now wipe those experiences away. Instead, imagine that during this period of your life you lived in cramped quarters with only five other people, no fresh air, and no sunlight. This is not a mere thought experiment. The experiment happened, with funds from the Russian Academy of Sciences. What happened? Quite a bit. In research recently reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the six volunteer marsonauts completed lots of tasks to keep their minds fresh. They also slept like babies without the daily rigmarole of daily work commutes, grocery shopping, or other daily drivel. Then the guys started sleeping like polar bears in hibernation. Then they started doing less, becoming even more sedentary amidst almost endless boredom. Space is only cool for so long. The good news? They all made it. There weren’t any major scuffles, and the guys probably formed lifelong friendships. They even showed signs of cognitive improvement. But the marsonaut volunteers each handled the prolonged social isolation differently. One of them shifted to a 25-hr sleep-wake schedule, which meant that he was alone (awake or asleep) 20% of the 520 day mock mission. As the researchers sift through their massive data set (to put it in perspective, they measured 4.396 million minutes of sleep!), I’m sure we’ll learn more about the psychological consequences of prolonged social isolation. For now, we can still look into the night sky, find the Red Planet, and dream of people visiting sometime in our generation. We know they’ll sleep well—and a lot. ... View more

Originally posted on July 17, 2014. Lloyd Cosgrove was his town’s city manager, butcher, and Presbyterian minister. He had a shiny head, bushy eyebrows, and a whooping laugh. If you want Lloyd to remain unique, try not to think about him too much. Why? Repetition breeds bland memories. Our brain’s memory center, the hippocampus, leaves different traces of information each time we call up something from our past. This is why our memories of the same past events shift. What gets left behind are the details. You might forget that Lloyd was a butcher or blocked out his whooping laughter. Or you might invent new details about him. Was he a Presbyterian or Lutheran minister? A city manager or a city councilman? Memory is a funny thing. In a recent study, people who rehearsed an event three times recalled fewer details compared with people who rehearsed the same event once. Repetition improved how well people recognized pieces of information, but it squeezed out the details. We might romanticize details. Do I need to remember the outfit my wife wore on our first date? (I do.) Do I need to remember where I ate my first taco? (I don’t.) Or should I become content that the details that add color, meaning, and spice to my daily experiences will become gray, hallow, and bland the more my memory plays them back? Ask me tomorrow. I’ll have a different memory of the question than I do today. ... View more

Originally posted on October 16, 2014. One of my earliest memories is my dad giving me a high five. He was training for a marathon and agreed to take me, his talkative four year-old, on a run. I ran an entire mile. When I finished, red-faced and smiling, he said, “Give me five, son.” It was my first high five. According to a new study, high fives go a long way in motivating children. Five and six year-old children completed a task in which they imagined experiencing success. Next, the children received different types of praise. Some children received verbal praise that would highlight an individual trait (“You are a good drawer”), whereas other children received a high five. What motivated the children more, clear praise for being good at something or a high five? The high five won handedly. When the children bumped into a setback, those who received a high five persisted more than the other kids did. We might reconsider how we praise children’s behavior. If we tell children they’re geniuses, we’ve told them that they have a stable trait that isn’t under their control. If they fail a test, the responsibility can’t be theirs because they have a trait that should guarantee success on all intelligence test. Blame the teacher. Criticize the test. Give up and find something else to do. Don’t find a better way to study. By giving a high five, children know they have done something well. They also know that their success is under their control. I have run many miles since my first high five, but that first one with my dad will always hold a special place in my heart. It motivated me, either consciously or unconsciously, to continue to push my limits. For that high five, I’m grateful. ... View more

Originally posted on October 23, 2014. No matter how many babies I meet, I’m always left wondering what they want. Does a short squeak followed by a shrill squeal signal that the baby is hungry? That I left the dog outside by accident again? Or is the baby simply testing out her developing vocal chords? Driven by confusion and frustration, I might insert a pacifier into the baby’s mouth. The baby seems soothed, and I can take a breather. But according to one recent study, pacifiers disrupt our ability to understand a baby’s emotional state. Adult participants viewed pictures of happy and distressed babies. Sometimes the babies wore pacifiers and others times they didn’t. When the baby wore a pacifier, adults showed less intense facial reactivity and also rated the baby’s emotions as less intense. It didn’t matter whether the babies were happy or sad. The pacifiers numbed adults to baby facial expressions. Why did this happen? The idea hinges on the belief that we automatically mimic others’ emotional expressions. When I see people smile, I naturally mimic them because it helps me understand them and show empathy. Mimicking others is a great way to make friends. It lets others know we’re on the same team. Those who feel starved of social connection are the most likely to mimic others. Pacifiers are mimic roadblocks. With a gadget covering your face, I can’t make out what you’re feeling. As a result, I mimic you less, empathize with you less, and ultimately judge your experience as less intense than it really is. I don’t have a strong opinion about pacifiers. My sisters used them with their children, my parents used them with me, and I might use them when I have my own children. Like any consumer of knowledge, I’ll use this science to inform the choices I make. One thing is certain: I’ll never look at a pacifier in the same way. ... View more

Originally posted on November 13, 2014. Success is mystery. What is it? How do we achieve it? And why does it often fail to live up our expectations? Success puzzles us because we don’t appreciate failure. In “What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars,” University of Kentucky alum and multimillionaire Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan suggest that there are a million ways to succeed. If you want to earn more money, you can start a business or sell a business. To improve your mental health, you can get hired or resign. One person’s path to weight loss will be paved with fruit and no fat; another person’s caveman diet will encourage fat consumption to lose weight. The point is that there are at least as many ways to succeed as there are people on the planet. This is good and bad news. The good news is that everyone can find a unique path to success. The bad news is that your unique path won’t teach you much about success. To learn how to succeed, you must learn why you fail and how to avoid it. This topic is near and dear to my heart. Last weekend, I completed the Javelina Jundred 100 mile ultramarathon. It was my best race yet. I knocked well over an hour off of my personal record time. Throughout the race, I felt good and ran a steady pace. After the race, I was happy and calm. (For proof, see my finishing picture.) Failure was the key to my success. Two times earlier this year, I failed to finish 100 mile races. Both times I got sick and the medical team pulled me. Last weekend, I didn’t focus on how to run faster. Instead, I concentrated on how to avoid the things that caused me to lose out on finishing those earlier races. By learning from failure, I could achieve my definition of success.  I don’t know why failure is great learning medicine. One reason is that bad is stronger than good. When we fail, it grabs our attention more than success. Others argue that there are only a few ways to fail. Either way, failure is a great teacher that we should embrace instead of fear. ... View more

Originally posted on February 5, 2015. Even though the smartphone has only been around for the past seven or eight years, it’s sometimes difficult to remember what life was like before we had so much information at our fingertips. You could argue with a friend about what year “Back to the Future, Part 2” came out, or in what year the “future” was set. (It was released in 1989. The future, filled with flying cars and floating skateboards, was set in 2015.) Back then, you couldn’t resolve discussions by swiping a screen and touching a button. Siri wasn’t even a twinkle in Steve Jobs’s eye. If you got lost, you had to consult a map or stop and ask for directions, and if you got bored while waiting in line, you couldn’t pass the time by playing Candy Crush or perusing Instagram. Luddites argue that life was better before the smart phone, whereas others tout the benefits of instant communication and information. But one thing is certain: The smartphone has changed our lives. And our thumbs. Yes, when we spend time on smartphones using a touchscreen, it changes the way our thumbs and brains work together, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich in Switzerland. Our obsession with smartphones presented the perfect opportunity to explore the everyday plasticity of our brains. With smartphones, we are using our fingertips—especially our thumbs—in a new way, and we do it a lot. And because our phones keep track of how we use them, they carry a wealth of information that can be studied. In the study, the research team used electroencephalography (EEG) to record brain response to the touch of the thumb, index finger, and middle fingerprints of touchscreen phone users compared to people who still use flip phones or other old-school devices. They found that the electrical activity in the brains of smartphone users was enhanced when all three fingertips were touched. The amount of activity in the brain’s cortex associated with the thumb and index fingertips was directly proportional to the amount of phone use. Repetitive movements over the touchscreen surface might reshape sensory processing from the hand. Cortical sensory processing in our brains is constantly shaped by personal digital technology. So, the next time you use your thumbs to tweet, answer email, or jot yourself a note, remember that you’re training your brain. Keep in mind, too, that excessive phone usage is linked with motor dysfunction and pain. Remember the so-called “BlackBerry thumb”? ... View more

Originally posted on April 16, 2015. Our brains are amazing. I am endlessly fascinated by how the brain works. In nearly every interview I do, the reporter asks, “What part of the brain lights up when that happens?” Now reread the previous sentences. As you came upon each word, how did you read them? Did you look at each letter and arrange it into a word? Have you ever thought how we read? How can we skim so quickly through a passage and absorb its contents? Our brains don’t look at letters. So says a new study. Instead of seeing a group of letters, our brain sees the entire word as an image. Neurons in our brain’s visual word form area remember how the whole word looks, using what one researcher called a “visual dictionary.” Researchers tested their theories by teaching 25 adult participants a set of 150 nonsense words and investigating (using fMRI) how the brain reacted to the words before and after learning them. The results: The participants’ visual word form area changed after they learned the nonsense words. Pretty cool stuff. But, it’s also useful. Knowing how our brains process words could help us design interventions to help people with reading disabilities. People who have trouble learning words phonetically might have more success by learning the whole word as a visual object. Pavelen/E+/Getty Images ... View more

At the 2016 Stanford Psych One Conference, Linda Woolf (Webster University) suggested that during the Intro Psych learning chapter we talk about Hero Rats. This is a very nice way to help students see an example of the contributions psychological science is making to promote human rights around the world.   After covering operant conditioning, show Bart Weetjens 12-minute 2010 TED talk, How I Taught Rats to Sniff Out Land Mines (below). (Why rats, other than they are easy and cheap to train? They are too light to set off the mines.) In the second half of his talk, Weetjens discusses his new work on training rats to detect tuberculosis.   Video Link : 1669   Alternatively, show students this 11-minute 2007 Frontline segment on Hero Rats. Before you play it, inform students that there is an error in the video. Can they identify it? [In the video, the conditioning is called classical/Pavlovian, but it's actually operant. The rats are clicker-trained. The rats learn that when they hear a click, they can run to a location, such as back to their trainer, to get a tasty treat. The click is a discriminative stimulus - "that sound is my cue to go get a snack".]   This website provides a nice written explanation of the process used to train the rats.   Is your class, psych club, or honor society looking for a project? Consider raising funds to support Weetjeens organization, Apopo.   Besides, Gambian (aka African) pouched rats are pretty darn cute. Even if (or because) their bodies can be a foot and a half long with a tail that matches their body length. (Photo source: Gambian pouched rat - Wikipedia) ... View more

Originally posted on September 24, 2015. This past weekend, I gave myself an odd birthday present. I entered an ultramarathon. If you’ve read my posts, you know I like to run. For my birthday, I wanted to run 100 miles as fast as I could. Luckily, I had a perfect opportunity. There was a 24 hour running race within driving distance of my house. There was a bigger purpose in my run. I could determine whether a recent test of my speed and endurance would replicate. Two weeks ago, I ran 100 miles in 22 hours and 10 minutes. Replication is important. It tells whether repeating the essence of an experiment will produce the same result. The more the same sequence of events produces a similar outcome, the more we can depend on it.  Psychology is embroiled in a current debate about replicability. All psychologists agree that replication is important. That is a requirement before you get your card when you join the psychologist club. The debate centers on the meaning of non-replication. A recent report found that 64 percent of the tested psychological effects did not replicate. Some have declared a war on current scientific practices, hoping to inch the non-replication rate down to a less newsworthy percentage. Others, such as Lisa Feldman Barrett, argue that non-replication is a part of science. It tells us just as much about why things do happen as to why they don’t. My birthday run had everything I needed to make a replication attempt. Nearly everything was identical to the last time I ran 100 miles. The course consisted of a flat, concrete loop that was nearly one mile long. I ate the same foods, drank the same amount of water, and got the same amount of sleep the night before. All signs pointed to an exact replication. Then the race started. The first 50 miles breezed by. I was over an hour faster than my previous run, but I felt pretty good. By mile 65, I was mentally fatigued. By mile 70, my body was exhausted. By the time I hit mile 75, I was done. Less than 16 hours had passed, but I was mentally and physically checked out. No replication. There are at least two ways I can deal with this non-replication. The first is to panic. Either the people who counted my laps at the previous race did something wrong, I reported something wrong, or something else is wrong. It is as if it never happened. The next time someone asks me my personal record, I can tell them. But I must tell them that I don’t trust it. “Probably just a one-off,” I might say. “Tried to replicate it two weeks later and came up short.” A second approach is to try to understand what contributed to the non-replication. Most things were the same. But some things were different, among them the wear and tear that long running has on the body and mind. Maybe I wasn’t fully recovered from the previous race. Maybe I ran too fast too soon. Or maybe I’m just not that fast. Either way, it tells us a different story about replication. Replication science is possible, but we will always have non-replications. And those non-replications aren’t badges of shame. They tell us as much about the complexity of human psychology as the truth about how certain situations make us think, feel, and act. It would be great if psychology’s non-replication rate dwindled to less than 5 percent. I doubt that will ever happen. Humans are squirrely animals. No matter how much we want to do the same thing twice, sometimes it doesn’t happen. ... View more

Originally posted on May 2, 2014. Many faculty fret over students’ in-class use of computers—ostensibly there for note taking, but often also used for distracting e-mail, messaging, and checking social media.  A soon-to-be-published study by Pam Mueller (Princeton University) and Daniel Oppenheimer (UCLA) offers faculty an additional justification for asking students not to use computers. In three experiments, they gave students either a laptop or a notebook and invited them to take notes on a lecture (a TED lecture in two of the studies).  Later, when they tested their memory for the lecture content, they found no difference in recall of factual information.  But taking notes in longhand, which required participants to summarize content in their own words, led to better performance on conceptual-application questions. “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard” is the apt title for their article, to appear in Psychological Science. “Participants using laptops were more inclined to take verbatim notes,” explained Mueller and Oppenheimer.  Better to synthesize and summarize, they conclude:  “laptop use in classrooms should be viewed with a healthy dose of caution; despite their growing popularity, laptops may be doing more harm in classrooms than good.” For one of my colleagues, this study, combined with the unwanted distractions of in-class computer use, inspires a new class policy:  for better learning, no computer use in class. ... View more

Originally posted on August 26, 2014. In a recent New York Times essay (here), Henry Roediger explains the insights gleaned from his research on “the testing effect”— the enhanced memory that follows actively retrieving information, rather than simply rereading it. Psychologists sometimes also refer to this phenomenon as “test-enhanced learning,” or as the “retrieval practice effect” (because the benefits derive from the greater rehearsal of information when self-testing rather than rereading). As Roediger explains, “used properly, testing as part of an educational routine provides an important tool not just to measure learning, but to promote it.” For students and teachers, I offer a 5-minute animated explanation of the testing effect and how to apply it in one’s own study.  (I intend this for a class presentation or viewing assignment in the first week of a course.) See Make Things Memorable!  How to Study and Learn More Effectively. ... View more

Originally posted on September 5, 2014. Feeling stressed by multiple demands for your time and attention?  Daniel Levitin, director of McGill University’s Laboratory for Music, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University and author of The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, has some suggestions.  In a recent New York Times essay, he advises structuring our day to give space both for undistracted task-focused work and for relaxed mind-wandering: If you want to be more productive and creative, and to have more energy, the science dictates that you should partition your day into project periods. Your social networking should be done during a designated time, not as constant interruptions to your day. Email, too, should be done at designated times. An email that you know is sitting there, unread, may sap attentional resources as your brain keeps thinking about it, distracting you from what you’re doing. What might be in it? Who’s it from? Is it good news or bad news? It’s better to leave your email program off than to hear that constant ping and know that you’re ignoring messages. Increasing creativity will happen naturally as we tame the multitasking and immerse ourselves in a single task for sustained periods of, say, 30 to 50 minutes. Several studies have shown that a walk in nature or listening to music can trigger the mind-wandering mode. This acts as a neural reset button, and provides much needed perspective on what you’re doing. As one who is distracted by a constant stream of e-mails and the temptations of favorite web sites, this is advice I should take to heart.  But I have benefitted from an e-mail system that diverts e-mails that come to my public e-mail address (including political fund-raising appeals and list mail) from those that come to a private e-mail address known to family and colleagues.  The public e-mails are sent my mail only at the day’s end. I also find it helpful to take work out to coffee shops, including one that doesn’t have Internet access.  “They should charge your extra for that,” observed one friend. In our upcoming Psychology, 11th Edition, Nathan DeWall and I offer some further advice: In today’s world, each of us is challenged to maintain a healthy balance between our real-world and online time. Experts offer some practical suggestions for balancing online connecting and real-world responsibilities. • Monitor your time. Keep a log of how you use your time. Then ask yourself, “Does my time use reflect my priorities? Am I spending more or less time online than I in­tended? Is my time online interfering with school or work performance? Have family or friends commented on this?” • Monitor your feelings. Ask yourself, “Am I emotionally distracted by my online inter­ests? When I disconnect and move to another activity, how do I feel?” • “Hide” your more distracting online friends. And in your own postings, practice the golden rule. Before you post, ask yourself, “Is this something I’d care about reading if someone else posted it?” • Try turning off your mobile devices or leaving them elsewhere. Selective attention—the flashlight of your mind—can be in only one place at a time. When we try to do two things at once, we don’t do either one of them very well (Willingham, 2010). If you want to study or work productively, resist the temptation to check for updates. Disable sound alerts and pop-ups, which can hijack your attention just when you’ve managed to get focused. (I am proofing and editing this chapter in a coffee shop, where I es­cape the distractions of the office.) • Try a social networking fast (give it up for an hour, a day, or a week) or a time-con­trolled social media diet (check in only after homework is done, or only during a lunch break). Take notes on what you’re losing and gaining on your new “diet.” • Refocus by taking a nature walk. People learn better after a peaceful walk in the woods, which—unlike a walk on a busy street—refreshes our capacity for focused attention (Berman et al., 2008). Connecting with nature boosts our spirits and sharpens our minds (Zelenski & Nisbet, 2014). ... View more

Originally posted on November 11, 2014. A  recent Beijing visit left me marveling at students’ academic enthusiasm.  In explaining Asian students’ outperformance of North American students, researchers have documented cultural differences in conscientiousness. Asian students spend more time in school and much more time studying (and see here for one recent study of the academic diligence of Asian-Americans). The Beijing experience gave me several glimpses of this culture difference in achievement drive and eagerness to learn.  For example, as I dined more than a half hour before speaking at the Peking University psychology department, word came that 160 students were already present.  After my talk in the overfilled auditorium (below), student hands across the room were raised, with some waving hands or standing up, pleading to be able to ask their questions.  And this was a Friday evening. Later that weekend, I met with teachers of AP psychology, whose students at select Beijing high schools pay to take AP courses in hopes of demonstrating their capacity to do college-level work in English, and thus to gain admission to universities outside China.  Several of the teachers were Americans, one of whom chuckled when explaining that, unlike in the USA, she sought to demotivate her overly motivated students, encouraging them to lighten up and enjoy life. The plural of these anecdotes of culture difference is not data. (My China sample was biased—high achieving students who had gained admission to the most elite schools.) But the experiences, which replicated what I experienced in a 2008 visit to Beijing, were memorable. ... View more

Originally posted on March 4, 2015. When was the last time you studied without distractions? Or did any one activity without simultaneously doing another? Multitasking pops up everywhere. While we work, we check our phones for messages, tweet our thoughts, listen to music, and update our Facebook status. At least that’s what my students tell me they do in their other classes. You may think listening to music while you prep for a big test helps you relax so you can concentrate and study. I used to think so. In college, I’d sit down with my textbooks, pop in my headphones, and turn on my favorite music to set the mood for studying.  Then I’d spend hours going over the material—and play my make-believe drums or air guitar! Yes, I studied alone in college. A lot. Listening to music may help college-aged students stay focused, but one new study found that older adults had more trouble remembering information they had learned while music was played in the background. The study challenged younger and older adults to listen to music while trying to remember names. For the older adults, silence was golden. But when the researchers made the older adults listen to music while they tried to remember the names, their memory lapsed. College-aged participants’ performance did not suffer regardless of whether they listened to music while memorizing names. Before you turn up the tunes to study, consider your age first. If you’re a younger college student, keep pressing play. Older students might be better off studying in silence. Regardless of our age, we might do well by taking a few minutes each day to set aside distractions, slow down, and become mindful of our thoughts, feelings, and environment.  ... View more