A Brief Overview of Working Memory
Working memory refers to your ability to manipulate and remember information over a short period of time (about two minutes). It’s very similar to short term memory, but when we use the term working memory we are emphasizing the manipulation of information. For example, if someone gave you a telephone number to write down, you…
Conducting Research Projects in Collaboration with Teachers
These examples show that applied research is important and more applied research is needed. It can point researchers to limitations of research findings and at the same time motivate new research questions to tackle. Thus, applied research does not only help to provide teachers and students with practical tips, but also informs research itself. Applied research…
Lessons from The Science of Learning in the Field
Over the past few months, I have had the pleasure of working on a Science of Learning grant through the Learning Agency, funded by the Overdeck Family Foundation (see here). Through this grant, professors and researchers with expertise in the science of learning have been paired with K-12 teachers across the country. Each team is…
New Findings Inform the Laptop versus Longhand Note-Taking Debate
While there may be very good reasons to be cautious about laptop use in the classroom – e.g., laptops with internet access may invite multitasking which is detrimental to the learning of the student engaging in multi-tasking, but also has negative effects on students sitting in proximity of the multitasker (2) – their use to…
Good Interventions Do NOT Have to be Expensive
A common misconception that we hear is that education and neuroscience are related disciplines and that those who study the brain must know how we learn. While one can inform the other, I promise that training in neuroscience does NOT include an understanding of how those brain processes translate into classroom practices. We often talk…
Tips for Implementing Evidence-Based Learning Strategies in your Classes
At the same time, we are also transitioning to putting out a variety of resources on the blog and podcast once per week. So, I’d like to take this opportunity to invite everyone to listen to our podcast, as it will soon be a part of our weekly rotation on Thursdays! You can listen to…
Hocus Focus
From a cognitive psychologist’s point of view, these results are particularly impressive because they demonstrate transfer. There are a number of training tools that are marketed as improving mental processes. While a number of these show improvement on the training task itself, very few show improvement on things outside of the task (4). In other…
Have You Forgotten Your Childhood?
By Yana Weinstein Imagine if I asked you this question: “Are there large parts of your childhood after age 5 that you cannot remember?”. How would you answer: Yes, or no? Are you sure? And what might influence your answer? (Note that the “after age 5” part is important, because most of us do not…
Understanding Sample Sizes and the Word “Significant”
One big issue related to sample size requires us to talk about what the word significance means in a scientific context. In “the real world,” significant means noteworthy, or worthy of attention. However, this is not what scientists typically mean when they say significant. Often, we are talking about statistical significance, and this is a…
Forgetting to Remember
Another explanation for how and why we forget has been in terms of disuse or decay (2, 3). Sometimes we forget things simply because we haven’t remembered it in awhile. For example, you can probably remember what you had for lunch yesterday. How about last week? Last month? Unless there was a reason for you…
