Home - Visual Thinking Strategies How Memory Works: 10 Things Most People Get Wrong Human memory and recall works nothing like a computer, but that’s what makes it all the more fascinating to understand and experience. “If we remembered everything we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.” ~William James It’s often said that a person is the sum of their memories. Your memory and recall is what makes you who you are. Despite this, memory and recall is generally poorly understood, which is why many people say they have ‘bad memories’. Here is my 10-point guide to the psychology of memory and recall (it is based on an excellent review chapter by the distinguished UCLA memory expert, Professor Robert A. 1. Everyone has experienced the frustration of not being able to recall a fact from memory. So it seems obvious that memories decay, like fruit going off. But what on earth is the point of a brain that remembers everything but can’t recall most of it? 2. Obviously the only one that’s of interest is the most recent. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
People forage for memories in the same way birds forage for berries Humans move between ‘patches’ in their memory using the same strategy as bees flitting between flowers for pollen or birds searching among bushes for berries. Researchers at the University of Warwick and Indiana University have identified parallels between animals looking for food in the wild and humans searching for items within their memory – suggesting that people with the best ‘memory foraging’ strategies are better at recalling items. Scientists asked people to name as many animals as they could in three minutes and then compared the results with a classic model of optimal foraging in the real world, the marginal value theorem, which predicts how long animals will stay in one patch before jumping to another. Dr Thomas Hills, associate professor in the psychology department at the University of Warwick, said: “A bird’s food tends to be clumped together in a specific patch – for example on a bush laden with berries. “But then as this patch becomes depleted, they look elsewhere.
100+ Awesome Open Courseware Links for Artists | ArtCareer.net Posted by Site Administrator in Learning Tools Nov 20th, 2008 By Kelsey Allen Whether you’re into art theory, studying ancient art or making art yourself, you can find a range of online courses and lectures that can help educate you on your field of interest. Introductory Courses Learn the basics from these courses geared towards the beginner. Introduction to Sculpture : This course will deal with issues central to modern sculpture like site, context, process, psychology and aesthetics as well as helping students to work with some more non-traditional materials. Images and Online Exhibits These museums and online exhibits are wonderful places to find free and public domain images for inspiration or scholarly art study . Smithsonian American Art Museum Online Exhibitions : The SAAM has a number of online exhibits that range from landscape painting to modern photography. Studio Arts Lectures and Seminars Theory and Advanced Study Technology Training Photography and Film Graphic Design and New Media
What Works in Schools: Translating Research Into Action - Dr Robert J Marzano How can I improve my short term memory? Q: How can I improve my memory? Is there a daily exercise I can do to improve it? A: The most important component of memory is attention. By choosing to attend to something and focus on it, you create a personal interaction with it, which gives it personal meaning, making it easier to remember. Elaboration and repetition are the most common ways of creating that personal interaction. One common technique used by students, is actually, not that helpful. These techniques do help you improve your memory on a behavioral level, but not on a fundamental brain structure level. Focus Alertness, focus, concentration, motivation, and heightened awareness are largely a matter of attitude. If you want to learn or remember something, concentrate on just that one thing. Strategy: When you learn something new, take breaks so that the facts won’t interfere with one another as you study them. Keep reading…
Kaleidoscope: Contemporary and Classic Readings in Education - Kevin Ryan, PH., Cooper, James Mrs, James Michael Cooper 60 Small Ways to Improve Your Life in the Next 100 Days Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to make drastic changes in order to notice an improvement in the quality of your life. At the same time, you don’t need to wait a long time in order to see the measurable results that come from taking positive action. All you have to do is take small steps, and take them consistently, for a period of 100 days. Below you’ll find 60 small ways to improve all areas of your life in the next 100 days. Home 1. Day 1: Declutter MagazinesDay 2: Declutter DVD’sDay 3: Declutter booksDay 4: Declutter kitchen appliances 2. If you take it out, put it back.If you open it, close it.If you throw it down, pick it up.If you take it off, hang it up. 3. A burnt light bulb that needs to be changed.A button that’s missing on your favorite shirt.The fact that every time you open your top kitchen cabinet all of the plastic food containers fall out. Happiness 4. 5. 6. How many times do you beat yourself up during the day? 7. Learning/Personal Development 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
Free online mind mapping software | MAPMYself (Mapul) Time on the Brain: How You Are Always Living In the Past, and Other Quirks of Perception I always knew we humans have a rather tenuous grip on the concept of time, but I never realized quite how tenuous it was until a couple of weeks ago, when I attended a conference on the nature of time organized by the Foundational Questions Institute. This meeting, even more than FQXi’s previous efforts, was a mashup of different disciplines: fundamental physics, philosophy, neuroscience, complexity theory. Crossing academic disciplines may be overrated, as physicist-blogger Sabine Hossenfelder has pointed out, but it sure is fun. Neuroscientist Kathleen McDermott of Washington University began by quoting famous memory researcher Endel Tulving, who called our ability to remember the past and to anticipate the future “mental time travel.” McDermott outlined the case of Patient K.C., who has even worse amnesia than the better-known H.M. on whom the film Memento was based. Tellingly, not only can he not recall the past, he can’t envision the future. Alas, they couldn’t.
Visual thinking school Visual thinking is a way to organize your thoughts and improve your ability to think and communicate. It’s a way to expand your range and capacity by going beyond the linear world of the written word, list and spreadsheet, and entering the non-linear world of complex spacial relationships, networks, maps and diagrams. It’s also about using tools — like pen and paper, index cards and software tools — to externalize your internal thinking processes, making them more clear, explicit and actionable. Why is visual thinking important? There’s more information at your fingertips than ever before, and yet people are overwhelmed by it. We think in pictures. Think you can’t draw? Squiggle birds (I learned squiggle birds from my friend Chris Glynn). So why is visual thinking important? The whirl. Visualization is increasingly used in business and science to simplify complexity: a picture is worth a thousand words. Drawing is a natural process for thinking, exploring ideas and learning. 1. 2. 3. 4.
Identify a Lie with 6 Simple Questions post written by: Marc Chernoff Email We all fall victim to at least a few lies during the course of our lifetime. Some lies may be extremely troublesome to our personal wellbeing, while other “white lies” may be far more innocuous. Either way, a lie is meant to deceive. A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.- Mark Twain How do you know this? If you enjoyed this article, check out our new best-selling book. And get inspiring life tips and quotes in your inbox (it's free)... Today Is Your Day To Win