Cognition Archives - Farther to Go!

Emotional Intelligence 2.0

November 2, 2018 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Emotion is a natural part of intelligence, so the term emotional intelligence might be somewhat misleading, especially considering the popular view of it. Emotional intelligence 1.0 is based on two beliefs. First, that we can detect emotions accurately in other people based on their facial and bodily expressions. And second, that emotions are automatically triggered by events, but we can learn how to control them. Neither belief has held up to rigorous testing.

Emotional intelligence 2.0 is based on the brain being predictive—which means it is always assessing the situation to determine what action we should take—as well as the concept of emotional granularity: putting feelings into words with a high degree of complexity. So the more precisely we can identify and recognize our emotions, the faster and more accurate our brain will be in assessing the situation to determine the most appropriate response.

For the brain, the payoff of higher emotional granularity is efficiency. For us, the payoffs include a greater ability to identify our desired outcomes, enhanced experience, and improved critical thinking and decision-making. Developing an appreciation for a variety of nuanced emotional states is preferable to trying to maintain any particular emotional state.

Nuance and Experience

Artists tend to have a more nuanced perception of colors than non-artists, as do musicians in regard to music, architects in regard to buildings, botanists in regard to plants, and sailors in regard to the sea. Their training alters their experience and with it their sense of who they are.

We can similarly train ourselves to distinguish, appreciate, and detect more nuanced emotions than we habitually identify, which can, in turn, alter what is possible for us to experience and, therefore, who we are, who we can be, and what we can do.

Your personal experience is actively constructed by your actions. You tweak the world, and the world tweaks you back. You are, in a very real sense, an architect of your environment as well as your experience. —Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made

Our emotional vocabulary reflects the concepts we have for emotions, and those concepts influence our experience because they help our brain “construct” our emotional states.

Research shows that increased emotional granularity doesn’t just add words to our vocabulary; it also leads to a greater ability to experience emotions without getting swamped or tossed around by them. Remarkably, high emotional granularity also leads to better health.

We don’t perceive reality so much as we interact with what’s “out there” in a particular way that creates our conscious perceptions of the world. Although they are internal, we do the same thing with emotions. There are no circuits for fear or anger or happiness or anticipation that are automatically triggered by events, forcing us to experience the resulting feeling. Emotions don’t simply happen to us. They’re conscious reflections of our engagement in and with the world—signs of life, so to speak.

Yes, things happen to us. But more importantly, they happen to us.

Note: For those who want to understand these concepts as they might relate to trauma, including PTSD, here’s a link to an article written by Michael K. Suvak and Lisa Feldman Barrett and published in 2011 in the Journal of Traumatic Stress: Considering PTSD from the Perspective of Brain Processes: a Psychological Construction Approach.

To Improve Your Brain, Exercise Your Body

January 15, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Sitting in front of a computer screen to play brain games is not the best way to enhance or maintain your cognitive abilities. First of all it doesn’t really work. And second, it involves sitting. Standing is only marginally better. (And playing brain games on a portable electronic device while walking is just an accident waiting to happen.)

As John Medina writes in Brain Rules:

The brain appears to be designed to (1) solve problems (2) related to surviving (3) in an unstable outdoor environment, and (4) to do so in nearly constant motion.

The links between physical exercise and brain health have been getting a lot of attention lately. Here are summaries of some of the research with links to the articles (click on the titles). The last two of these studies were included in my post last fall on Five Ways to Improve Your Brain; the first three are more recent.

Get Moving

A neuroscientist (Wendy A. Suzuki) says there are powerful benefits to exercise that are rarely discussed.

When I was about to turn 40, I started working out regularly after years of inactivity. As I sweated my way through cardio, weights, and dance classes, I noticed that exercise wasn’t just changing my body. It was also profoundly transforming my brain—for the better.

The immediate effects of exercise on my mood and thought process proved to be a powerful motivational tool. And as a neuroscientist and workout devotee, I’ve come to believe that these neurological benefits could have profound implications for how we live, learn and age as a society.

Exercise combats stress.
Increased levels of physical exercise can result in improved memory
Exercise improves our ability to shift and focus attention.
Exercise could help students better absorb everything from history lessons to chemistry experiments–and they’d be happier too.
Exercise could make students more imaginative at school and adults more creative at work.
The longer and more regularly you exercise through your life, the lower your chances are of suffering from cognitive decline and dementia as you age.

Do… build your body

We often make a distinction between brains and brawn. In fact, getting in shape is one of the surest ways to build your mind. Physical activity not only establishes a better blood flow to the brain; it also triggers a surge of proteins such as “nerve growth factor” that can help stimulate the growth and maintenance of neural connections in the brain.

The benefits seem to stretch from cradle to grave: children who walk to school get better grades, while taking a leisurely stroll seemed to boost pensioner’s concentration and memory. What’s more, a wide variety of exercises can help, from gentle aerobic exercise to weight training and body building; just choose a training regime that suits your current fitness.

Study suggests physical activity makes it easier for the brain to change

Learning, memory, and brain repair depend on the ability of our neurons to change with experience. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 7 have evidence from a small study in people that exercise may enhance this essential plasticity of the adult brain.

The findings focused on the visual cortex come as hopeful news for people with conditions including amblyopia (sometimes called lazy eye), traumatic brain injury, and more, the researchers say.

“We provide the first demonstration that moderate levels of physical activity enhance neuroplasticity in the visual cortex of adult humans,” says Claudia Lunghi of the University of Pisa in Italy.

“By showing that moderate levels of physical activity can boost the plastic potential of the adult visual cortex, our results pave the way to the development of non-invasive therapeutic strategies exploiting the intrinsic brain plasticity in adult subjects,” she adds.

While further study is needed, the researchers think that this effect may result from a decrease with exercise in an inhibitory neurotransmitter called GABA. As concentrations of this inhibitory nerve messenger decline, the brain becomes more responsive.

Regardless of the mechanism, the findings suggest that exercise plays an important role in brain health and recovery. They come as especially good news for people with amblyopia, which is generally considered to be untreatable in adults.

“Our study suggests that physical activity, which is also beneficial for the general health of the patient, could be used to increase the efficiency of the treatment in adult patients,” Lunghi says.

Lifting weights, twice a week, may aid the brain

Most studies of exercise and brain health have focused on the effects of running, walking or other aerobic activities. A few encouraging past studies have suggested that regular, moderate aerobic exercise such as walking may slow the progression of white matter lesions in older people.

But Teresa Liu-Ambrose, a professor of physical therapy and director of the Aging, Mobility, and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, wondered whether other types of exercise would likewise be beneficial for white matter. In particular, she was interested in weight training, because weight training strengthens and builds muscles.

After a year-long study, women aged 65-75 who had lifted weights twice per week displayed significantly less shrinkage and tattering of their white matter than the other women. Their lesions had grown and multiplied somewhat, but not nearly as much. They also walked more quickly and smoothly than the women in the other two groups.

Note that the result was only achieved in the group who lifted weights twice per week, not in a group who lifted only once a week.

Regular exercise changes the brain to improve memory, thinking skills

In a study done at the University of British Columbia, researchers found that regular aerobic exercise, the kind that gets your heart and your sweat glands pumping, appears to boost the size of the hippocampus, the brain area involved in verbal memory and learning. Resistance training, balance and muscle toning exercises did not have the same results.

Many studies have suggested that the parts of the brain that control thinking and memory (the prefrontal cortex and medial temporal cortex) have greater volume in people who exercise versus people who don’t. “Even more exciting is the finding that engaging in a program of regular exercise of moderate intensity over six months or a year is associated with an increase in the volume of selected brain regions,” says Dr. Scott McGinnis, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School.

How much exercise is required? The study participants walked briskly for one hour, twice a week. That’s 120 minutes of moderate intensity exercise a week. Standard recommendations advise half an hour of moderate physical activity most days of the week, or 150 minutes a week. If that seems daunting, start with a few minutes a day, and increase the amount you exercise by five or 10 minutes every week until you reach your goal.

If you don’t want to walk, consider other moderate-intensity exercises, such as swimming, stair climbing, tennis, squash, or dancing. Don’t forget that household activities can count as well, such as intense floor mopping, raking leaves, or anything that gets your heart pumping so much that you break out in a light sweat.

Brain & Mind Roundup 3

June 30, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Here are some recent stories about what goes on in the brain when we’re writing, making music, and appreciating art.

Click on the titles to read the complete articles.

Our Brains Are Made for Enjoying Art

Ann Lukits (The Wall Street Journal)

Analysis suggests art appreciation is a natural biological process.

“Viewing paintings engages a number of different regions of the brain, suggesting art appreciation is a natural biological process, according to the report in the June issue of the journal Brain and Cognition. The study found that paintings activated areas of the brain involved in vision, pleasure, memory, recognition and emotions, in addition to systems that underlie the conscious processing of new information to give it meaning.”

This is Your Brain on Writing

Carl Zimmer (The New York Times)

Becoming skilled at writing may activate the same areas of the brain that are activated in people who are skilled at other things, such as sports or music. This study showed that the areas of the brain activated in novice writers were not the same as those activated in the skilled, “professionally trained,” writers.

“During brainstorming, the novice writers activated their visual centers. By contrast, the brains of expert writers showed more activity in regions involved in speech.”

It would appear that training is training is training—no matter what the training is for.

Musical Training Increases Executive Brain Function in Adults and Children

Jeremy Dean (PsyBlog)

“Both the brains and behaviour of adult and child musicians were compared with non-musicians in the study by researchers at the Boston Children’s Hospital. They found that adult musicians compared to non-musicians showed enhanced performance on measures of cognitive flexibility, working memory, and verbal fluency. And musically trained children showed enhanced performance on measures of verbal fluency and processing speed.”

Music Changes the Way You Think

Daniel A. Yudkin and Yaacov Trope (Scientific American)

Different music encourages different frames of mind.

“Tiny, almost immeasurable features in a piece of music have the power to elicit deeply personal and specific patterns of thought and emotion in human listeners….Ponderous, resonant, unfamiliar tonalities—the proverbial “auditory forest”—cause people to construe things abstractly. By contrast, the rapid, consonant, familiar chords of the perfect fifth—the “auditory trees”—bring out the concrete mindset….That music can move us is no surprise; it’s the point of the art form, after all. What’s new here is the manner in which the researchers have quantified in fine-grained detail the cognitive ramifications of unpacked melodic compounds.”

Think You’re Thinking?

May 26, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

Much of what passes for thinking consists of unconscious, not conscious, mental processes. When it comes to taking in information and deciding what to believe and what not to believe, for example, we are appallingly predictable. We are most likely to believe:

What Is Familiar

Information that feels familiar is easier to absorb and believe than information that is unfamiliar. The information could be familiar because it’s associated with other beliefs we have or it could come from a trusted source. On the other hand, it could simply be something we’ve come across before—especially if we’ve come across it multiple times. Frequent repetition can be enough to convince people to believe things that are not true because familiarity generates a sense of cognitive ease. Called the mere-exposure effect, advertisers make use of it, but they aren’t the only ones.

Even if we’re aware of the mere-exposure effect, we probably think we’re immune to it because we’re more sophisticated than that. Believing we’re immune to it, however, might make us even more susceptible to it than we would be if we simply recognized it.

What Is Easy

Information that is easy to understand gives us a sense of cognitive ease. Information that is difficult to understand requires greater cognitive effort to process. Our brain prefers to chill out, so it just says “no” to exerting additional cognitive effort.

Say you’re faced with choosing between two concepts, ideas, or explanations. Idea A is easy to understand, while Idea B is more difficult. Statistically speaking, you’re much more likely to accept Idea A instead of Idea B simply because Idea A is easier for you to swallow. This is especially likely to be the case if you are already experiencing some degree of cognitive strain or if your conscious (System 2) attention is depleted. You’ve undoubtedly had the experience of feeling “brain dead” following a mentally fatiguing effort. That’s when you’re most susceptible to believing what is easy.

What Validates Our Preexisting Beliefs

Information that confirms what we already believe to be true makes us feel right and certain, so we’re likely to accept it uncritically. On the other hand, we’re more likely to reject information that is inconsistent with what we already believe. At the very least, we hold inconsistent information up to greater scrutiny. So we have different standards for evaluating information based on the level of cognitive ease it generates. And evidence has precious little impact on us if it conflicts with what we believe simply because the cognitive strain of processing it is too great.

The easy acceptance of information that validates what we already believe is a result of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias causes us to selectively notice and pay attention to what confirms our beliefs and to ignore what doesn’t. For example, people who favor gun control pay more attention to stories about injuries and deaths resulting from gun use; people who are against gun control pay more attention to stories about people using guns to defend themselves. Confirmation bias underlies the discomfort we feel around people who disagree with us and the ease we feel around people who share our beliefs [see What is Familiar and What is Easy, above].

It’s easy to believe what’s familiar, what’s easy to grasp, and what validates our pre-existing beliefs. No critical thinking or cognitive effort are required. On the other hand, actual thinking, as Dan Ariely says, is difficult and sometimes unpleasant.

What Is Cognitive Ease—and Why Should You Be Wary of It?

April 18, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 6 Comments

Everyone wants to be right and to feel certain about things. These are built-in biological drives, not character flaws. When we think we’re right and when we feel certain, we experience a sense of cognitive ease. The world makes sense to us. And that puts us in a good mood.

Cognitive ease feels good, but it gives us a false sense of security because it makes us think we understand far more than we actually do.

Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance. —Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

Comfortably Numb

When it comes to taking in information and deciding what to believe and what not to believe, we are appallingly predictable. We are most likely to believe:

What Is Familiar

Information that feels familiar is easier to absorb and believe than information that is unfamiliar. It could be familiar because it’s associated with other beliefs we have or it could come from a trusted source. On the other hand, it could simply be something we’ve come across before—especially if we’ve come across it multiple times. Frequent repetition can be enough to convince people to believe things that are not true because familiarity generates a sense of cognitive ease. Called the mere-exposure effect, advertisers make use of it, but they aren’t the only ones.

What Is Easy

Information that is easy to understand also gives us a sense of cognitive ease. Information that is difficult to understand requires more cognitive effort to process, and our brain’s preference is to take it easy. Say you’re faced with choosing between two concepts, ideas, or explanations. Idea A is easy to understand, while Idea B is more difficult. Statistically speaking, you’re much more likely to accept Idea A instead of Idea B simply because Idea A is easier for you to swallow. Does that give you a sense of cognitive dis-ease?

What Validates Our Preexisting Beliefs

Information that confirms what we already believe to be true makes us feel right and certain, so we’re likely to accept it uncritically. On the other hand, we’re more likely to reject information that is inconsistent with what we already believe or at least we hold inconsistent information up to greater scrutiny. We have different standards for evaluating information depending on the level of cognitive ease it generates.

And evidence has precious little impact on us if it conflicts with what we believe simply because the cognitive strain of processing it is too great. For example, it is easier to believe that What You See Is All There Is (WYSIATI), even after being confronted with evidence that you have missed something that was right in front of your face, than it is to believe that you are aware of only a tiny fraction of what is going on around you.

Cognitive Biases

We use cognitive biases as shortcuts to help us understand the world. We don’t have to use any critical thinking skills. No cognitive effort is required. We aren’t forced to reevaluate our existing beliefs. Because of our cognitive biases, we make snap judgments, form quick impressions or opinions, and operate on autopilot.

The bad news is that, since cognitive biases are by their nature distortions or errors in thinking, they actually decrease our understanding all the while giving us that feel-good sense of cognitive ease.

That’s just fine with the conscious part of our brain, which is slow and kind of lazy and doesn’t want to work if it doesn’t have to. It’s happy to let the unconscious handle as much of the load as possible. Because cognitive biases operate at the unconscious level, unless we make an effort to recognize them, we aren’t aware of them. We will even deny we have them.

To have a human brain is to be subject to cognitive biases. Some of the most common are:

Confirmation Bias

The easy acceptance of information that validates what we already believe (as described in What Validates Our Preexisting Beliefs, above) is a result of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias causes us to selectively notice and pay attention to what confirms our beliefs and to ignore what doesn’t. Confirmation bias underlies the discomfort we feel around people who disagree with us and the ease we feel around people who share our beliefs. Example: People who favor gun control pay more attention to stories about injuries and deaths resulting from gun use; people who are against gun control pay more attention to stories about people using guns to defend themselves.

The Halo Effect

The tendency to view other people as all good (or all bad) is the result of a cognitive bias called the halo effect. When we consider someone to be a good person, we find it easier to excuse or ignore behavior that is inconsistent with being a good person. Good people can do no wrong. On the other hand, if we consider someone to be a bad person, we find it hard to accept that he or she has any positive qualities. Bad people can do no good. In either case, we ignore evidence that contradicts our general impression of the person. The halo effect requires black and white thinking. Example: People tend to have a completely positive view of the political party they support and a completely negative view of the political party they don’t support.

Negativity Bias

Our brains are wired to notice negative events more than positive events, so we give them more attention. This leads us to believe that more negative events are taking place than positive events. It also leads us to give more credence to negative claims about people with whom we disagree. Negativity bias is responsible for the fears we have about some things that are disproportionate to the actual likelihood of their occurring. Bad stuff seems to have more of an impact on us than good stuff, and we are quicker to react to it. This bias can make us susceptible to fear-mongering. Examples: (1) The news. (2) People tend to pay more attention—and give more weight—to critical comments than to praise.

Impact Bias

We think we can predict how we will react to potential events, both good and bad, and reliably estimate the impact they will have on us. But in making such predictions, we routinely overestimate how good we will feel (and for how long) after a positive event and how bad we will feel (and for how long) after a negative event. Although we are extremely poor fortune tellers, that doesn’t stop us from being certain about how we will feel in the future. In reality, our excitement over something good will likely dim faster than we predict, and we are likely to rebound from a loss sooner than we predict. Example: People tend to believe a positive change, such marriage, a new job, a bigger house, winning the lottery, etc. will make them feel better—and for a longer time—than it actually will.

Hindsight Bias

In retrospect everything seems inevitable. The hindsight bias (“I knew it all along”) makes us think the world is more predictable than it actually is. After the fact, we selectively reconstruct events to make it appear the outcome was inevitable. In doing so, we also exaggerate how likely we considered the outcome to be before it occurred. If the outcome is a negative one, we think someone should have foreseen it and prevented it. Example: After 9/11, many people thought the attacks by al-Qaeda could have been prevented based on the available information. However, the information was not, at that time, as clear as it appeared to be in hindsight.

Outcome Bias

The outcome bias leads us to evaluate a decision based on the eventual results or outcome of the decision rather than on the soundness or quality of the decision at the time it was made. If something works out, we think it was a great decision (genius, even), although the reasoning that led to it may have been flawed. Conversely, if something doesn’t work out, we think it was a bad decision, although the reasoning that led to it may have been entirely sound. When outcomes are good, we think the decisions were good; when outcomes are bad, we think the decisions were bad. Example: People tend to think that if something goes wrong during a low-risk surgical procedure, the decision to do the procedure was a bad one.

Hidden (or Implicit) Bias

Hidden Biases are attitudes or stereotypes we have, both favorable and unfavorable, particularly about other people in regard to race, gender, age, etc. We don’t all have the same hidden biases, but everyone has them. However, because they are hidden—primarily from ourselves—we are unaware of them, even though they affect our feelings, our behavior, and our reactions. Hidden biases may be at odds with our conscious attitudes and feelings. But some of our hidden biases may be apparent to others.

We can’t find out about hidden biases through introspection. We may be able to learn something about them through observing ourselves. Also Harvard University has developed an implicit association test that is available online (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/) so you can test yourself for your own hidden biases.

Hidden biases contribute to a sense of cognitive ease by tending to confirm that whatever groups we belong to (ethnic, racial, age, income, etc.) are the best groups because they have more positive characteristics than those other groups have.

Cognitive Distortions

Cognitive distortions are habitual ways of thinking that alter our perception. Many, although not all, cognitive distortions are negative. But even negative cognitive distortions contribute to a sense of cognitive ease just because they are habitual. If you are used to thinking about yourself in a negative way or seeing the world in a negative way, that will feel more comfortable than trying to see things in a different (more positive) way.

Cognitive distortions are not uncommon, and there are a lot of different ones. However, not everyone is subject to them—or at least not to the same degree. A few common cognitive distortions are:

Mindreading: believing you know what other people are thinking or what their motives are

Overgeneralizing: drawing too broad a conclusion from a single event or piece of information or from limited information

Catastrophizing: imagining worst case scenarios; exaggerating the likelihood of negative or disastrous outcomes

All or Nothing Thinking (also called Black and White Thinking): thinking in extremes without allowing for complexity (shades of gray); believing that if something isn’t perfect or the best, it’s worthless

The Cognitive Ease Continuum

According to Daniel Kahneman, cognitive ease is both a cause and a consequence of a pleasant feeling. Cognitive ease makes us feel more favorable toward things that are familiar, easy to understand, and easy to see or read. We feel less favorable toward what is unfamiliar, difficult to understand, or difficult to see or read. We don’t even have to be consciously aware that something is familiar to us in order to feel good about it. The feel-good response comes from the unconscious part of our brain. It’s part of our hardwiring for survival. A good mood tells our brain everything is OK and we can let our guard down.

Being in a good mood is associated with intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on the unconscious part of the brain. At the other end of the continuum are sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort.

We can’t worry when we’re happy. But because we’re less vigilant when in a good mood, we’re more prone to making logical errors. We’re more susceptible to cognitive biases. We think we understand more than we do. We even think we’re thinking.