Neuroscience
Why have I had such a hard time learning to change a light bulb, fix a car and cook dinner, while for others it seems such a breeze? Generally I did pretty well in school but ran into deep problems with analytic geometry, inorganic chemistry and differential equations. Others do it, why not me? I am well aware that many will say just try harder, but I think it must be something other than that.
After more than 50 years of psychology I think I am just beginning to understand. We are learning about neural networks underlying skills and how they are shaped by genetic variation and early experience. New skills often reshape old networks: my problems in sequential movement in handwriting might make other multistep tasks difficult to learn. My learning handicaps are still a mystery but now I know where to look.
Mike Posner is Professor Emeritus at the University of Oregon and Adjunct Professor at the Weill Medical College in New York (Sackler Institute). He is a pioneer in the field of attention and in 2002 was listed among the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century by the Review of General Psychology.
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Return to menu for One Nagging Thing.
- Elizabeth Loftus: Nightmares
After struggling mightily, and not particularly successfully, to have a thought about this, I broached a Friday after-work happy hour group and asked them what they would say about themselves. To a person, each looked uncomfortable with the mere question....
- Jerome Kagan: Methodological Flaws
I remain puzzled over what appears to be a compulsion, that I cannot tame, to publish papers and books that summarize the empirical evidence pointing to serious problems with popular procedures and assumptions that permeate many domains in psychology....
- Martin Seligman: Self-control
Some theorists, like my friend Roy Baumeister, believe that self-control is a general trait. My experience with weight-loss versus exercise belies this. I have weighed 95 kg for the last twenty years, and I have dieted a dozen times only to return to...
- Robert Sternberg: Career Masochism
In psychology, you are rewarded (1) partly for the research you do, and (2) partly for (a) the topic on which you do the research and (b) the methods you use. The first point (1) is what you learn explicitly about throughout graduate school. The second...
- Why Is Learning Slow?
Richard Gregory: "Why is learning slow? Is it set by physiological (hardware) limitations, or is it due to cognitive (software) strategy? As learning can be single-trial, in dangerous situations, the general slowness may well be a cognitive strategy -...
Neuroscience
Mike Posner: Learning difficulties
Why have I had such a hard time learning to change a light bulb, fix a car and cook dinner, while for others it seems such a breeze? Generally I did pretty well in school but ran into deep problems with analytic geometry, inorganic chemistry and differential equations. Others do it, why not me? I am well aware that many will say just try harder, but I think it must be something other than that.
After more than 50 years of psychology I think I am just beginning to understand. We are learning about neural networks underlying skills and how they are shaped by genetic variation and early experience. New skills often reshape old networks: my problems in sequential movement in handwriting might make other multistep tasks difficult to learn. My learning handicaps are still a mystery but now I know where to look.
Mike Posner is Professor Emeritus at the University of Oregon and Adjunct Professor at the Weill Medical College in New York (Sackler Institute). He is a pioneer in the field of attention and in 2002 was listed among the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century by the Review of General Psychology.
--
Return to menu for One Nagging Thing.
- Elizabeth Loftus: Nightmares
After struggling mightily, and not particularly successfully, to have a thought about this, I broached a Friday after-work happy hour group and asked them what they would say about themselves. To a person, each looked uncomfortable with the mere question....
- Jerome Kagan: Methodological Flaws
I remain puzzled over what appears to be a compulsion, that I cannot tame, to publish papers and books that summarize the empirical evidence pointing to serious problems with popular procedures and assumptions that permeate many domains in psychology....
- Martin Seligman: Self-control
Some theorists, like my friend Roy Baumeister, believe that self-control is a general trait. My experience with weight-loss versus exercise belies this. I have weighed 95 kg for the last twenty years, and I have dieted a dozen times only to return to...
- Robert Sternberg: Career Masochism
In psychology, you are rewarded (1) partly for the research you do, and (2) partly for (a) the topic on which you do the research and (b) the methods you use. The first point (1) is what you learn explicitly about throughout graduate school. The second...
- Why Is Learning Slow?
Richard Gregory: "Why is learning slow? Is it set by physiological (hardware) limitations, or is it due to cognitive (software) strategy? As learning can be single-trial, in dangerous situations, the general slowness may well be a cognitive strategy -...