If you love visual art and are around Metro-Vancouver this month, then consider attending the exhibition of Lam Wong’s paintings on “Relation, perception and meaning”. It runs from Sept 2 to Sept 27 at the Arts Council Gallery of New Westminster in Queen’s Park (closed Mondays).
You can tell from the title of this exhibition that Lam Wong’s interests overlap with those of cognitive scientists.
In 1996, acclaimed CBC host Peter Gzowski interviewed Alice Munro, well before she won a Nobel prize in literature. Here are a few knowledge gems from Rewind with Michael Enright, today’s republication of this fabulous interview:
Today, I added an opening quotation to a chapter in Cognitive Productivity that deals with challenges knowledge workers face in their quest to use knowledge to become profoundly effective. <1> The section in question deals with demands on our time. A distinctive feature of humans is the amount and kinds of mental processing that can take place between stimulus (information) and response. But how can we produce great cognitive products if we don’t sufficiently exploit our own mental abilities? This means we need to disconnect ourselves from the Internet firehose several times a week and create quiet time for ourselves… time to integrate what we have read, select problems of understanding to address, and provide solutions to them in the form of knowledge that will guide subsequent action.
Continue reading Nelson Mandela Missed the Time to Think that Prison Provided
Luiz Pessoa Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland has recently published The Cognitive-Emotional Brain: From Interactions to Integration a book that lends neuroscientific support to one of the major tenets of CogZest and Cognitive Productivity. I haven’t read the book yet; but I’ve heard Pessoa interviewed by Ginger Campbell on one of my favourite podcasts, the Brain Science Podcast. In this compelling episode, which I highly recommend, they focus mainly on the amygdala and a region of the thalamus, debunking several myths while conveying very deep ideas about the brain, not the least of which is the importance of embracing complexity.
Continue reading Two Sides of the Same Coin: Pessoa’s Cognitive-Emotional Brain
Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer recently published a peer reviewed article in Psychological Science provocatively titled “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking”.[1] Their claim would herald a significant discovery if it were true. For there are many important reasons to believe using a laptop, at least in certain ways, can increase cognitive productivity: Delving, assessing, comprehending, understanding, knowledge building, retention, learning, mastery and even mental development (deep learning). We need not retreat to the to lab refute their titular conclusion. This post, I believe, does the trick.
This one is dedicated to my dad for father’s day.
This being Father’s Day and me being well into my 40’s, the time is right to develop a conjecture about some of the influences my father has had on me. I’ve put this in conjectural terms because there is no way to tease out with any certainty the various causes of one’s current state: genetics (too oft underestimated), parents, siblings, the media, society, teachers, role models, friends, and ultimately our own selves. Furthermore, our own state is largely also conjectural — a “self-concept”.
Continue reading Things I Learned From My Dad — Reflections and Gratitude on Father’s Day
While differing widely in the little bits we know, or rather guess, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal. (Karl Popper).
Tom Monahan (Chairman and CEO at CEB) published an interesting article on LinkedIn yesterday: “If I Were 22: Embrace Your Ignorance”. He admitted that he graduated from Harvard feeling that he was “master of not only my own nascent trade, but pretty much anything else under the sun”. I.e., overconfident about his knowledge and abilities. Looking back, he would embrace his own ignorance, be a curator of good questions, and ask questions of more people. Good advice!
Continue reading Response to Tom Monahan’s “If I Were 22: Embrace Your Ignorance”
To extend our own effectiveness, it is, of course, not sufficient to study. We often need to turn to experts. Often, they are consultants. Success here is partly a matter of finding the right person. It equally is a matter of being an excellent client.
Continue reading Working with a Great Graphic Designer: A Case Study of Extended Cognitive Productivity
Sheryl Guloy and I will be giving a presentation on the cognitive shuffle and cognitive productivity on Friday May 9 at the SFU Learning Together 2014 Conference. That’s an annual conference put on by the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University.
The title of our presentation is:
Decreasing sleep-onset latency for better cognitive performance in faculty and students: Super-somnolent mentation and the new “cognitive shuffle” technique compared with monotonous imagery training.
I’ve released a substantial update to Cognitive Productivity today. The changes are summarized on the release notes page.
The main change here is that I have renamed and completely rewritten Chapter 15, Meta-effectiveness framework and clinical psychology.
Continue reading Cognitive Productivity and Clinical Psychology