Health: Disability ‘Higher Cognitive’ Frequently Asked If Age ‘Father Increases : http://newish.info/21939-health-disability-higher-cognitive-frequently-asked-if-age-father-increases
Why Smart People Are Stupid
newyorker.comJonah Lehrer has a post about how our mental shortcuts and unconscious bias can fool our conscious decision-making process. Here he reports on some new research that suggests more intelligent people could be extra prone to these blind biases:
Perhaps our most dangerous bias is that we naturally assume that everyone else is more susceptible to thinking errors, a tendency known as the “bias blind spot.” This “meta-bias” is rooted in our ability to spot systematic mistakes in the decisions of others—we excel at noticing the flaws of friends—and inability to spot those same mistakes in ourselves.
Logical thinking would lead you to believe that intelligence would make you less susceptible to errors of thought. But, either through conscious or unconscious means, the higher our level of intelligence the less we are able to identify errors in our own thought process.
More at The New Yorker.
By the way, this dovetails nicely with recent research on why we deny science. While the knee-jerk reaction would be to assume that less education leads less belief in science (evolution, climate change, etc.), it is becoming clear that more education and possessing tightly-held moral values can actually reinforce incorrect ideas, a bias of confirmation.
Martial Arts And Cognitive Psychology:toward Further Research In The Cognitive Aspects Of Martial Arts By John C. Price
espn1460.comWhile Asian Martial Arts have become very popular in the western world, many scientific circles do not take the study of the Martial Arts seriously as a topic of research.
Ergonomics
Ergonomics is the study of how equipment that involves repetitive or dangerous tasks can be made safer and more comfortable for the user.
There are three types of ergonomics: physical, cognitive, and organizational. Physical ergonomics are used for physical tasks and how equipment can be designed to make them easier.
Cognitive ergonomics are focused on how the human brain works, and how work can be made easier by studying and improving decision making, motor skills, human reliability, etc.
Finally, organizational ergonomics are used for social structures. These are used to improve on teamwork, work times, communication, and more.
The neuroscience of Story Telling
http://bigthink.com/ideas/41943
The neuroscience of storytelling - great short explanation by Cognitive scientist Michael Gazzaniga, pioneer of the hemispheric specialization that gave rise to left brain vs. right brain mythology
Cognitive Computing, a breakthrough
skepticfreethought.comOne of the few things left that religious people can cling too, and say, “See! We still don’t understand how the brain works. HA! That’s why I believe in God…you see, he gives us thought and emotions.” is under attack. IBM has released a newly designed computer chip, which mimics the brain in how it does calculations. IBM uses neurobiology, in which the computer chip is wired such that neurons, synapses, and axons are mimicked by the computer chip. This is a huge breakthrough in computational science, and one of the first major steps in creating a truly cognitive computer process. more…
vitamin D and your brain?
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“Imagine traffic lights that can integrate sights, sounds and smells and flag unsafe intersections before disaster happens or imagine cognitive co-processors that turn servers, laptops, tablets, and phones into machines that can interact better with their environments.”
—Quote by Dharmendra Modha, project leader, IBM Research. Quote found at “IBM Unveils Cognitive Computing Chips”
Cognitive Distortions
We all tend to think in extremes…and when traumatic events happen we think that way even more. Here are some common cognitive distortions. Take a look and see if any of them are getting in your way.
- All-or-nothing thinking: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
- Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
- Mental filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.
- Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. You maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.
- Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.
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- Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don’t bother to check it out.
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- The Fortune Teller Error: You anticipate that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.
- Magnification (catastrophizing) or minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.”
- Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”
- Should statements: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.
- Labeling and mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him, “He’s a damn louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.
- Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event for which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ATTITUDE
Attitude: a positive or negative evaluation of a person, object, or idea.
- Affectively Based Attitude: an attitude based primarily on people’s emotions and feelings about an attitude object. (eg. deciding to buy a car because it feels good driving one)
- Cognitively Based Attitude: an attitude based primarily on a person’s belief about the properties of an attitude object. (eg. identifying helps get you from place to place as reason to buy a car)2.
- Behaviourally Based Attitude: an attitude based primarily on observations of how one behaves toward an attitude object. (eg. deciding that you like the car after you drove it)
Cognitive Dissonance: a feeling of discomfort caused by the realization that one’s behaviour is inconsistent with one’s attitudes or that one holds two conflicting attitudes (eg. you don’t recycle pop but thinks recycling is important or you think recycling is important but you think only other people should recycle). This conflicting attitude results in anxiety and threat to self image. Three strategies can be used to reduce cognitive dissonance. They are:
- changing behavior (starts recycling more pop)
- changing thoughts (thinks that you don’t actually care about recycling)
- make a special exception (I don’t recycle pop, but I still recycle other things)
External Justification: a person’s reason or explanation for dissonant behavior that resides outside the individual. It occurs when you can attribute cognitive dissonance to something else. (eg. In The Grasshopper Study (Zimbardo et al., 1964) the external justification is participants think they are doing the nice experimenter a favor by eating the grasshopper.) Consequently, there is no need to engage in cognitive dissonance reducing strategies.
Attitude Change Approach: The Elaboration Likelihood Model
Persuasive appeal occurs through two modes of thinking:
- Central (systematic) route: careful and deliberate thinking about the evidence and logic behind the content of the message
- Information processing involves assessing the quality of arguments. (eg. looks to see if argument is logical and backed up by empirical evidence)
- Peripheral (heuristic) route: thinking that involves using rules of thumb placing emphasis on superficial aspects of the message.
- Information processing is about looking at the number and length of arguments (more points equal good), sources of credibility (does the speaker have a pHD?), attractiveness of the speaker or content (does speaker have a dazzling smile?), or popularity (does other people agree or endorse?)
- Different motivation affects whether a persuasive message is processed via the Central or the Peripheral route.
- Information gets processed via the Central route when the message is relevant (you have heart problems and you are listening in to a conference about new treatments), and/or when you are more knowledgeable, responsible and analytical (you are a cardiologist and you are listening in to a conference trying to promote new treatments for heart problems)
- Information gets processed via the peripheral route when the message is not relevant, you are distracted (tired), not knowledgeable or analytical (eg. elementary students listening in to D.A.R.E. speakers talking about condom use).
IBM chips mimic elements of human brain
“Researchers at IBM have been working on a cognitive computing project called Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE). By reproducing the structure and architecture of the brain—the way its elements receive sensory input, connect to each other, adapt these connections, and transmit motor output—the SyNAPSE project models computing systems that emulate the brain’s computing efficiency, size and power usage without being programmed.” — IBM SyNAPSE Research
This DARPA funded project represents an amazing leap forward in silicon architecture and there are many excellent ways to learn more about it, including:
- IBM Press Release - August 18, 2011
- Dharmendra Modha’s Cognitive Computing Blog
- IBM Quicksilver Minds Blog
- Bloomberg.com
- Kurzweil.net
