Tag Archives: Cognition

Adversity as educator?

September 25, 2012 Roy A. Ackerman, Ph.D., E.A. 10 Comments

Roy A. Ackerman, PhD, EA

Here we go, another nature vs. nurture argument. Why do we succeed? Most folks (lets keep the politicians out of this discussion and limit our considerations to facts) think this is related to our abilities, our cognitive skills. In other words, our ability to detect patterns, to perform analyses (calculations and logic), and to recognize letters and words. And, that we should practice these skills often and early. (It should be clear that we are talking about the intelligence that is manifested on IQ tests).

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Another problem with our propensity towards obesity

September 6, 2012 Roy A. Ackerman, Ph.D., E.A. 8 Comments

You know that we are getting heftier. Oh, let’s cut the crap. We are becoming obese. And, we know that a 0.1 change in BMI is associated with a 1% change (for the worse, of course) in our well-being (as we age).

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Your brain is smarter than you think- really!

February 21, 2012 Roy A. Ackerman, Ph.D., E.A. 27 Comments

Dr. Grayden Solman, Allan Cheyne and Daniel Smilek from the University of Waterloo (Canada) published “Found and missed: Failing to recognize a search target despite moving it” in Cognition. They describe what they term an “unpacking” experience- our ability to search and find an object. The issue is that while searching for an item, we often have already found the object we seek- we just don’t realize it’s in our grasp. It seems that our various executive functions are all operating at different speeds- and our perception, our ability to coalesce this knowledge, is not able to keep pace.

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