study finds walking improves creativity Stanford Report, April 24, 2014 Stanford researchers found that walking boosts creative inspiration. They examined creativity levels of people while they walked versus while they sat. A person's creative output increased by an average of 60 percent when walking. By May Wong L.A. Many people claim they do their best thinking while walking. Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple, was known for his walking meetings. A new study by Stanford researchers provides an explanation for this. Creative thinking improves while a person is walking and shortly thereafter, according to a study co-authored by Marily Oppezzo, a Stanford doctoral graduate in educational psychology, and Daniel Schwartz, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education. The study found that walking indoors or outdoors similarly boosted creative inspiration. "Many people anecdotally claim they do their best thinking when walking. Walking vs. sitting Gauging creative thinking No link to focused thinking
Can I increase my brain power? | Science What happens when you attach several electrodes to your forehead, connect them via wires to a nine-volt battery and resistor, ramp up the current and send an electrical charge directly into your brain? Most people would be content just to guess, but last summer a 33-year-old from Alabama named Anthony Lee decided to find out. "Here we go… oooahh, that stings a little!" he says, in one of the YouTube videos recording his exploits. The scientific establishment, it's fair to say, remains far from convinced that it's possible to enhance your brain's capacities in a lasting way – whether via electrical jolts, brain-training games, dietary supplements, drugs or anything else. One problem with Brain TonIQ is that it's disgusting, albeit not as disgusting as Nawgan ("What To Drink When You Want To Think"), which tastes so metallic, it's like drinking the can that it comes in. Yes, yes, I'm aware that this is all hopelessly unscientific.
Het wegoefenen van foutjes Deliberate practice, wat je zou kunnen vertalen als doelbewust oefenen, komt erop neer dat je geconcentreerd werkt aan (deel)taken waar jij nu nog niet betrouwbaar competent op kunt functioneren. Je zoekt hierbij dus de grens van je eigen competentie op, het punt waar het moeilijk begint te worden voor jou. Dat is wat je gaat oefenen. Je oefent kleine stukjes en je oefent ze steeds opnieuw. Daarbij is het belangrijk dat je één of andere vorm van betrouwbare feedback hebt om te beoordelen of je progressie boekt. Bij deliberate practice oefen je dus kleine stukjes en zo gauw je een foutje ziet, probeer je het meteen opnieuw te doen en nu beter, totdat het foutje weg is. Dit wegoefenen van foutjes is de kracht van deliberate practice.
De plakfactor: de Vloek van Kennis In het boek De plakfactor (Made to Stick) van Dan en Chip Heath wordt de Vloek van Kennis genoemd als een van de belangrijkste oorzaken waarom er in de praktijk weinig 'briljant geformuleerde beklijvende ideëen' zijn. Bij de Vloek van Kennis gaat het om een natuurlijke neiging die ons tegenhoudt plakkende ideëen te lanceren. De gebroeders Heath illustreren de Vloek van Kennis met het Kloppen en luisteren-experiment van Elizabeth Newton uit 1990. Bij het experiment werden mensen ingedeeld in kloppers en luisteraars. Volgens de Heath broeders vallen de tegenvallende resultaten te verklaren omdat de klopper het lied dat hij of zij klopt in het hoofd hoort. De Vloek van Kennis is nu dat je als klopper kennis hebt (de titel van het liedje) waardoor je je niet meer kunt voorstellen hoe het is als je die kennis niet hebt. Een ceo die het heeft ‘aandeelhouderwaarde genereren’ heeft zelf een melodie in zijn of haar hoofd, maar de medewerkers kunnen deze niet horen.
Bespreking van Mindware: tools for smart thinking (2015) door Richard Nisbett. Psycholoog Richard Nisbett heeft een nieuw boek geschreven getiteld Mindware: tools for smart thinking. Ik vind het een must-read voor studenten psychologie. Hier is mijn bespreking van het boek. Als psychologiestudent in de jaren ’80 hoorde ik voor het eerst van het werk van Richard Nisbett. Samen met Lee Ross (die de term fundamentele attributiefout bedacht, waarover later meer) schreef hij de klassieker Human Inference (1980) over hoe mensen vuistregels gebruiken bij sociale oordeels- en besluitvorming en hoe we aan de lopende band systematische fouten maken in de manier waarop we gebeurtenissen en mensen beoordelen. Het werk van Nisbett & Ross bouwde voort op en was sterk verwant met het werk van Amos Tversky en Daniel Kahneman (auteur van Ons feilbare denken). Nisbett was onder psychologen ook bekend vanwege werk dat hij had gedaan met zijn voormalige student Timothy Wilson over hoe veel mentale processen ontoegankelijk zijn voor ons bewustzijn. www.progressfocused.com
Intelligence is getable Did you read the 1996 book Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book) and did it make you feel uneasy because you did not (want to) agree with its conclusions but did not exactly know how to refute them? Among its conclusions were (loosely formulated): 1) that intelligence is highly important in many areas of life, 2) that differences in intelligence are largely responsible for societal stratification, 3) that differences in intelligence are largely heritable, and 4) that intelligence gaps between (racial) groups are hard to close (if that is possible at all). If you felt (feel) uneasy about these conclusions read How to get on to the system;: A guide to the A.I. by psychologist Dick Nisbett. , David Perkins' Outsmarting IQ: The Emerging Science of Learnable Intelligence , and Joshua Aronson's Improving Academic Achievement: Impact of Psychological Factors on Education (Educational Psychology) .
“The Geography of Thought,” Richard E. Nisbett Is human cognition the same everywhere? Or do styles of cognition differ depending on geographic or cultural boundaries? Richard Nisbett explores these questions in his 2003 book “The Geography of Thought.” Nisbett primarily focuses on differences between Eastern and Western thought, defining Westerners as people of European culture and Easterners as East Asian (including China, Korea, and Japan). Nisbett opens his argument by comparing the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Chinese as emblems of Western and Eastern thought respectively. Nisbett next discusses the social origins of the mind, where he establishes that cognitive processes are dependent on ecology (location), economy, social structure, attention, metaphysics, and epistemology, or in other words culture. (33) He argues that the unique positions of the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Chinese in relation to each of these categories eventually led to the development of Eastern and Western styles of thought.
Book Review | 'Intelligence and How to Get It,' by Richard E. Nisbett Success in life depends on intelligence, which is measured by I.Q. tests. Intelligence is mostly a matter of heredity, as we know from studies of identical twins reared apart. Since I.Q. differences between individuals are mainly genetic, the same must be true for I.Q. differences between groups. So the I.Q. ranking of racial/ethnic groups — Ashkenazi Jews on top, followed by East Asians, whites in general, and then blacks — is fixed by nature, not culture. What I have just summarized, with only a hint of caricature, is the hereditarian view of intelligence. Photo Richard E. Intellectually, the I.Q. debate is a treacherous one. Nisbett himself proceeds with due caution. However, Nisbett bridles at the hereditarian claim that I.Q. is 75 to 85 percent heritable; the real figure, he thinks, is less than 50 percent. Even if genes play some role in determining I.Q. differences within a population, which Nisbett grants, that implies nothing about average differences between populations.
7 Skills To Become Super Smart People aren’t born smart. They become smart. And to become smart you need a well-defined set of skills. Here are some tips and resources for acquiring those skills. Memory If you can’t remember what you’re trying to learn, you’re not really learning. If you want to amaze your friends with remembering faces, names, and numbers, look to the grand-daddy of memory training, Harry Lorayne. Reading Good scholars need to be good readers. Evelyn Woodski Slow Reading Course Announcer … Dan Aykroyd Man … Garrett Morris Woman … Jane Curtin Surgeon … Bill Murray … Ray Charles Announcer V/O: [The following words rapidly appear on a blue screen as they are read by the fast-talking announcer:] This is the way you were taught to read, averaging hundreds or thousands of words per minute. Psychologists have found that many people who take speed reading courses increase their reading speed for a short time but then fall right back to the plodding pace where they started. Writing Speaking Numeracy Empathy
Types of creative thinking - The Second Principle Creative thinking is much more than using your imagination to crank out lots of new ideas. Creative thinking is a lifestyle, a personality trait, a way of perceiving the world, a way of interacting with other people, and a way of living and growing. Gary Davis © Leslie Owen Wilson email To create – the most complex type of cognitive thinking: Since the 1950s cognitive psychologists and researchers have been trying to explain the differences in diverse types of types of thinking. To be frank the original progressive array never set quite right with me as I always thought to synthesize something surely one had to evaluate it first. Apparently I was not alone in this criticism because in 2000-2001 a revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy was put forth and reworked. Unfortunately much of what we do in school concentrates, not on creating, but on remembering, understanding and applying. Convergence and divergence – two necessary types of thinking for being creative:
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