Description: Here is a scientific creativity problem for you. What might it mean to say that, in terms of how their minds are organized and how they engage with the world, that human adults and human small children are basically different species? Puzzle on that for a little bit, drawing upon what you know or… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Basic Cognitive Functions In Aging: Information Processing Attention Memory
Why Are Some Old Memories So Much Stronger Than New Memories?
Description: What was the name of your best friend in grade 1? What did you have for lunch the day before yesterday? We most often find that the older memory is still there but the more recent one is not, or is, at least, harder to recover. I have no doubt that you could come… Read more »
New Canadian Cannabis Laws and Teenage Brains
Description: This next Wednesday the use of cannabis or marijuana will become legal in Canada. If you live in Canada you cannot have missed the torrent of media on things like the formation and marketing of companies to produce, market and sell marijuana or the public service ads pointing out that toking/ingesting and driving are… Read more »
Aging Brains: Fewer Neurons or Other Things?
Description: What were you told about the cells in the human brain and aging? That our neurons die off as we age and are not replaced? That we have the most neurons we are ever going to have at birth and things go downhill from there? Well if so, it may be time to rethink… Read more »
Nobel Prizes, Nudges, and Ethics: A LOT to think about
Description: An economist named Richard Thaler just won the Nobel prize in Economics for his work in an area called Behavioral Economics. What is behavioral economics? Well it is the study of how human beings make decisions. Sound like Psychology, well yes it does because it really is. I am not getting Psychologically petty and… Read more »
Used to be we worried about TV time but now it is Screen Time that has us in a knot!
Description: Back when I was a child (a loooong time ago) one of the biggest parental concerns was whether or not they should limit the amount of time we spent watching television. After a couple of decades of research it was decided that the amount of television watched mattered partly because of what was watched… Read more »
SES and Academic Success: The Importance of Early Vocabulary
Description: Children raised in low socioeconomic status (SES) families do not do as well in school as children from high SES families. Why do you think that might be the case? You should be able to generate a long list of possible hypotheses. Perhaps the schools they go to are not as well supplied or… Read more »
Theory of Mind in Preschoolers: What’s in the Brain?
Description: We know that preschoolers have trouble with (but are quite cute about) their understanding of other people’s thoughts, especially when other people’s thoughts are different than their own. If you show a 3.5 year old that a box of smarties (they are like M and M’s but are British/Canadian) contains short golf pencils rather… Read more »
Brain Cohesiveness During Information Processing: Individual Differences and Aging Effects
Description: Over time, research into what happens in the brain as humans age has moved beyond looking at issues related to the loss of specific neurons or areas of the brain as a result of things like stroke damage and begun to look in more complex manners at how the various regions of the brain… Read more »
The Relationship Between Age and Scientific Innovation: Exercise Causal Caution
Description: Have you heard the arguments that have been made about the relationship between age and success across a variety of fields? Based on the young ages of Mozart, Marie Curie, and Einstein when they made some of their most impressive contributions to their areas of endeavor, it has been argued that the sorts of… Read more »
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