Rewriting Your Thinking

Today I heard this story from the New Year's Day edition of NPR's "All Things Considered":
Lulu Miller's Editing Your Life's Stories Can Create Happier Endings

Or, as I'll definitely remember it, I Peed on Frankenstein!

In the piece, Miller and psychologist Tim Wilson discuss how "editing" one's own storytelling can help resolve issues and lead to happier endings.  In particular, the work of psychologist James Pennebaker who has pioneered this work in life story editing.

Here's Pennebaker's page on "Writing and Health." It is a simple "how to" guide.

They also discuss how Miller's nephew rewrote his story of his Frankenstein encounter.

!

This method of revision makes sense on sooooo many levels.

First, consider how neural patterning occurs:   neural pathways become more strongly connected (patterned) with use over time.  This is how the brain creates thought, memory, and learning.  The more a person does something -- or the more associated that learning is with something else, such as a strong emotion at the time of learning (or see this talk for more) -- the more this brain patterning (way of thinking) becomes the norm. 

Second, consider learning at more "macro" levels, such as morning routines or driving routes which have become routine and not "consciously" thought about.  This automaticity makes many other functions possible.  (Seriously, how many of us really would want to have to discuss all the steps in tooth-brushing each and every day?)  While it took deliberate conscious effort (that neural patterning again) to create some of these routines -- for example, it took one father and three boyfriends to teach me to drive stick -- they stick, once they have been successfully repeated enough times.

(This reminds me of the chapter about learning to drive from Patty Chang Anker's Some nerve: lessons learned while becoming brave.  Read it for a great appreciation of what happens when emotion and learning conflict, resulting in a lack of automaticity!)

Third, we do this socially all the time.  Revise ourselves, our stories, and our view of the world, I mean.  Think about all the things you have said to yourself in front of the mirror before a date, a job interview, a dinner with the relatives....

For example,  I have a girlfriend who believes strongly in affirmations, which seem like the verbal effort to positively edit the stories she tells herself about herself.   She is always stronger and more capable in her affirmations.  Actually, she is that in real life as well.  Here is a woman to traveled to India and Tibet by herself!  Yet, somehow, she learned the version of herself that is the opposite.....

The repetition makes the story part of you.

Finally, as any Southerner would tell you:  why ruin a good story with the truth?  A tale should get taller, i.e. better, with each retelling.  And Southerners stand testament to revising themselves.  See RuPaul for one example.  Tullalah Bankhead for another.  John Shelton Reed's chapters on "Editing the South" in Whistling Dixie: Dispatches from the South stand as a case in point for an entire region.

As we launch into a New Year, like the NPR piece noted, it is time to address both what is troubling and what is possible....

So why not rewrite your thinking?

For the good!


Image from Wikimedia Commons

Exercise and Memory

Yes, I do remember this tournament!

Just a brief news flash.

The number of news items about the positive effects of exercise (and, perhaps by extension, movement) on brain function has been growing.

Today the BBC News released this story:
Exercise 'significant role' in reducing risk of dementia, long-term study finds

Earlier this year, the New York Times online posted this piece: 
Getting a Brain Boost Through Exercise

Some days I feel much more mentally functional after I fence.
Except, of course, last night -- when I fell asleep on the couch after coaching!

Perhaps because I had stopped moving and was being a "coach potato"?

Well, you can try this experiment at home, courtesy of the PBS Kids program DragonflyTV:
Exercise and Memory

Feel free to post other links to this topic!

"The Inner Chimp"

Serendipity is the harmonic convergence of unexpected events or objects at an expected time (or place) to the benefit of those witnessing the event.

Serendipity happens.

Like yesterday (March 10, 2012). I was driving back from the fencing club -- a usual occurence for a Saturday afternoon -- and tuned into the local public radio station (WGBH) into the middle of an RadioLab episode, something I occasionally do. The episode was one I had never heard before: "Morality."

In particular, it was the segment "Chimp Fights and Trolley Rides," an interview with neuroscientist/philosopher Josh Greene about whether or now morality is biologically and evolutionarily based.

Greene argues "yes."

It seems that there are some basic, emotional decisions which correspond to activity parts of the brain corresponding to the instinctual, primate parts that have helped us as a species survive.

This emotional part, in the words of host/commentator Bob Krulwich, is the "inner chimp."

Based on his brain scans of people making moral decisions of varying degrees of complexity, Greene has found that different centers of the brain "light up" in response to different types of questions. For really complex questions that involve a "moral calculus" -- such as deciding to sacrifice one for the good of the many -- brain activity is fast, furious, and wide-spread. As Greene and Krulwich described it, the brain is "at war with itself." The frontal lobe, the area that develops later in a person's life, registers more activity when the decision-maker is counting how many others would be affected by the choice. It's "the thinker" vs. the "the inner chimp."

I love the term "inner chimp." It seems so right.

Later in the episode, the RadioLab team discusses actual primates -- with an interview with primatologist Frans de Waal at the Yerkes Center -- and their consistent moral behavior. Chimps and other primates are social animals with moral systems, as de Waal's examples show. (Click here for a 2005 article, too.) Empathy is a significant part of being a primate -- and it seems to be the moral core of the "inner chimp."

The research into what works in the brain when also is fascinating. And the issue of how people make decisions based on their emotionally-held beliefs is one of current importance.

Now, the serendipity:

1) See above. Although I have been a fan of Robert Krulwich since about 1990, I don't catch RadioLab often and this episode I had not heard before.

2) Although this episode was broadcast in 2007, on the day that would have been my mother's birthday had she not passed away earlier in the year, this episode coincides with a my current inner discourse about education and how to help adolescents grow up. More on that in a future post.

3) Joshua Greene is now a professor at Harvard, the site of my own cognitive science training. You can read much more in depth about the moral dilemmas Greene poses for research at his homepage.

4) Today's newspaper published a piece that connects to this RadioLab episode. More on that next post....

Fascinating stuff, serendipity!

Below is an embed for the podcast of the RadioLab episode "Morality":




image credit: Chimpanzees at Gombe Stream National Park, 2010, by ikiwaner, at Wikimedia Commons.

Internet Changing Memory?

In an article posted yesterday (July 15, 2011) in Boston.com, the Boston Globe's Internet newspaper, reports from the recent issue of Science that the Internet is changing how people think and remember.

The headline says it all: "Memory slips caught in the Net: Web changing how people recall facts, study says." The author is Carolyn Y. Johnson.

To quote from one of the scientists interviewed for the Boston.com piece:
“Our memories are changing,’’ said Daniel Wegner, a psychology professor at Harvard and the senior author of the study. “So we remember fewer facts and we remember more sources, which website you saw it on or whose e-mail to look in to find that. . . . It’s like having information at our fingertips makes us always go to our fingertips.’’

Well, the fingertips do have grey matter!

Ok, obvious puns about kinesthetic memory aside, the articles does make the point that people are using Internet searches a lot and that this experience is shaping 1) how they look for information and 2) how they store (or forget) information. It seems that people remember the information that is either unusual or is not "stored" somewhere on the computer. Also, they remember how they looked for and found this information.

Frankly, this isn't surprising. Studies have shown that people "off-load cognition" into objects as a way to decrease short-term memory load and as a way to improve memory. If the stone you picked up on the beach on vacation is a memory-marker, you don't have to think about your vacation all the time.... but each time you pick up that stone you probably will access those memories.

Also, given the way that neural networks are constructed, the more we perform an action, the more connections and speed that action will have in the neural network. Given the number of times in a day most of us perform Internet searches, it is no surprise to me that we don't remember what we've searched for and found especially after we've "bookmarked" that item, but we do recall the steps that got us to this information.

Just last weekend, I did the same thing in Reno, Nevada when I took a girlfriend to the bakery I had been to the day before: I drove, got lost, and corrected in exactly the same way as before -- only the second time I laughed at myself the entire time!
(By the way, it was Josef's Bakery and Cafe -- excellent breakfast.)

The other charming thing about the Sparrow, Liu and Wegner study is that it provides hope for our interaction with the Internet and learning.... having a memory aid is no bad thing. One of their points, however, is that while information may be saved to "the Cloud" and its social network, important information may need to be personally retained.

Like all tools, the use is what's important!

Study: Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips
Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu, Daniel M. Wegner,
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1207745,
Published Online 14 July 2011,
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/07/13/science.1207745

The Best of North and South

Dear Y'all--

Below are photos of last weekend's serendipitous discovery: RED VELVET WHOOPIE PIES!




Red Velvet Cake is truly a Southern delicacy. In fact, in sixth grade, at Millington South Elementary School (TN), I demonstrated how to make Red Velvet Cake as a class project. My great-aunt had instructed me on how to make it (the trick is both cocoa powder and red food dye) and this cooking lesson was also cultural introduction. Sessel's grocery stores always had this cake as the special Christmas bakery item. Red Velvet Cake is right up there with Co-Cola Cake as THE Southern thing to eat (along with Moon Pies, which these are not, despite what Spouse thought.)

Whoopie Pies, as most of you know, are quintessentially a New England delight. Really good ones are like eating the tops of two of the best cupcakes you've ever had, with the frosting in the middle. The frosting on my favorites is always a vanilla buttercream. Yum-o!, as a certain Boston-New York Cajun-Sicilian girl would say.





So imagine my surprise when I was in the North Billerica Market Basket last weekend and discovered Red Velvet Whoopie Pies from a bakery in Maine--!

They were DELICIOUS!



The point for this blog is this: Sensory experiences carry many things with them, including memory and cultural knowledge. In my case, I could immediately recognize the red velvet whoopie pies for what they were. Quickly I figured out their rarity as well (but I'm used to thinking in these terms). It took me a while to regain the memories of part experiences of Red Velvet Cake (off-line cognition?). And for you, dear Reader, these items now serve as a cultural tool for you to use in the future (in the ways that Michael Tomasello argues). What do I hope you will do with these things that are "good to think with"?* Remember this embodiment of regional cooperation and eat something yummy very soon!

*To paraphrase Claude Levi-Strauss

All Work and No Play -- Thoughts about Developing Brains...

Sometimes being a teacher, even one with no children of her own (or, perhaps, at least 30 of her own per year!), leads me to think about child-rearing and school-based education, and a comparison of the two and of how things used to be....

Add to this, waking up to NPR and hearing stories on two successive Thursdays about brain-based research about emotional and cognitive development, after reading about said topics for two courses, makes me wonder how to fit it all together. My "fit" would be how we define the activity of learning and how we construct the school experience based on that belief.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=76838288
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514

Well, in the HT100 project I'm working on, there's something to be said about physical activity and its benefits for helping people think better. In the NPR stories linked to this entry, there's something to be said about playing (aka, "goofing off") that helps social and emotional development. So, playing is a good thing. Playing with others--as these stories show (look at the cites of the research!)--is even better. As the stories demonstrate, play can lead to development, even of self-regulation.

I wonder about the conclusions posited in the second story (from this past Thursday, Feb. 28), however. Modelling of process, even affective process, is helpful for the learner. But isn't being instructed by your teacher (being guided through a questionnaire about what you will do while playing) the antithesis of "free play"? It smacks of overdirection and, seriously, I wonder if this use of executive cortex will have some emotional burnout effects later in life. This executive cortex training is eerily reminiscient of what many Boomer parents do when overscheduling their children. I have worked with some of these kids. "Go and play by yourself" is hardly an option in their world, because they're too busy "excelling." To these children, what they've learned to do in school is to find to right answers to they can get good jobs--and they're can be screaming emotional messes when they can't get the knowledge necessary to excel in the commodified educational system. You know who these kids are--they demand to know "Will that be on the test?!"

(Yes, I told you I had opinions...).

School should include play-- running around recess and in-classroom playtime. This would be the opposite of "studying" for standardized tests. The rest of the day should include play and not school.* This does not exclude learning, however.

Some of the most important learning that occurs in the school years is social. Socialization is vital because these children will ultimately live, work, compete with, and love their peer group. (That's peer group, not parents as best friends.) That means knowing how to interact and figure out how to interact with others one's own age and process information by oneself. It means getting hit on the head by Allejandro when you call him bad names. It means learning to share your toys with Keisha. It means letting Carrie get her hair brushed for a change. It means jumping bikes off of ramps, hopscotch and jumprope, and wandering around aimlessly. Later on it means working in a quality circle or living in a democracy. Play is where children practice skills for cognition and for affect that will make them good species members later in life.

Closer to home, it means that running around the Southern Illinois countryside with five other kids, chasing Luna moths and hunting for snipe, was a valuable childhood experience, and I couldn't agree more...

*Depending on the age. Homework can be valuable practice for thinking skills if it is an authentic activity (see Grant Wiggins for more info in this area!)
http://www.grantwiggins.org/

[working on adding tags--will revise...]