The cognitive control mechanisms that bilingual people rely on to keep from mixing up two languages also operate in people who speak two dialects, research from an international team of researchers has shown. Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland partnered with RWTH Aachen University, Germany, to study how quickly the brain can react when asked to…
Category: Cognitive Science
Daydreaming may be a sign you are intelligent and creative, new research from Georgia Tech suggests. “People with efficient brains may have too much brain capacity to stop their minds from wandering,” said Eric Schumacher, Georgia Tech associate psychology professor and coauthor of the study. Schumacher and his students and colleagues, including lead coauthor Christine…
Dual n-back training, one of the two methods most scientists use in cognitive training research, is significantly better in improving memory and attention, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found. It also results in more significant changes in brain activity. The exercise didn’t make anyone smarter, but it did greatly improve skills people need to…
Some people find it more difficult to focus on certain tasks as they get older. But even though distractions can be frustrating, they may not be as bad as you think. There may actually be some benefits to reduced focus, especially in people over 50, researchers at the University of Toronto and Harvard University suggest.…
Confusion is a common aspect of our lives but it can be useful and perhaps even necessary, particularly when we are trying to learn something. Confusion is typically experienced when we are confronted with new information. It is particularly likely to happen when the information we encounter is complex, counter-intuitive or unlike anything we’ve experienced…
Children learn words best when they hear them in a context that’s understandable, a new study shows. This context is critical for understanding why some words may be easier for kids to learn than others, according to study authors Michael Frank, an associate professor of psychology at Stanford University, and colleagues. The findings suggest that…
Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals. It is one of the most important aspects of personal development, determining almost everything else. That includes whether you are able to stay motivated and achieve your goals. “To have greater self-awareness or…
Would you be able to live a healthy, normal life without the ability to re-experience in your mind personal events from your past as memory? What if you learned all the details about past episodes from your life and can recite these to family and friends, but you can’t mentally travel back in time to…