Tests don't just evaluate learning - they cause it!

As a student, I had a fairly common wish. "Why can't we just LEARN the material, rather than having to waste so many class periods on stressful and pointless testing?" After all, if we eliminated testing, would that give every teacher back hours and hours of teaching time? It makes sense, and it is a welcome fantasy for an exam-weary student.

But new research indicates that test-taking actually makes us learn and allows us to retain knowledge more easily in the future. It even surpasses "mind mapping" and other learning techniques beloved of teachers for their ability to connect different ideas together.

In the experiments, the students were asked to predict how much they would remember a week after using one of the methods to learn the material. Those who took the test after reading the passage predicted they would remember less than the other students predicted — but the results were just the opposite...

The students who took the recall tests may “recognize some gaps in their knowledge,” said Marcia Linn, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, “and they might revisit the ideas in the back of their mind or the front of their mind.”

When they are later asked what they have learned, she went on, they can more easily “retrieve it and organize the knowledge that they have in a way that makes sense to them.”

This definitely reflects my experience coaching a Bible Quiz Team. Those students who study the most often do more poorly than those who study a little, but are sure to attend each and every practice. Actually quizzing engages the material and forces you to recognize what you do and do not know.

Can you be angry at a hypothetical?

As a Christian, I have often been questioned by unbelievers who have one simple question, "How can you believe in a God who allowed _________?" You can fill in the blank with some wrenching personal experience, whether it be 9/11, a divorce, a death, a miscarriage, or something even worse. While many atheists claim their beliefs are purely logic-based (and perhaps some are), a new study shows that for many unbelief comes as much from anger as anything else.

People unaffiliated with organized religion, atheists and agnostics also report anger toward God either in the past, or anger focused on a hypothetical image - that is, what they imagined God might be like - said lead study author Julie Exline, Case Western Reserve University psychologist.

In studies on college students, atheists and agnostics reported more anger at God during their lifetimes than believers. A separate study also found this pattern among bereaved individuals...

And younger people tend to be angrier at God than older people, Exline said. She says some of the reasons she's seen people the angriest at God include rejection from preferred colleges and sports injuries preventing high schoolers from competing.

There is a very old saying among Christians, that people are born with a God-sized hole in their heart. Humans seem to have an instinctive intuition that there is a higher being, and even those who deny His existence still have strong feelings toward Him.

Fly Decals lead to cost savings

My mother was a sociology major in college, and sometimes enjoys telling us stories about the foibles of human interaction. So I am thinking she will greatly enjoy this particular story. Essentially, bathroom managers across the world have found that attaching decals of flies to urinals inspire men to aim more carefully, and thus reduce maintenance costs due to "spillage".

The presence of a fly in a urinal literally changes human behavior, he thinks — or at least the behavior of human males.

"Apparently," Berenbaum says, in males, "there is a deep-seated instinct to aim at targets..." When flies were introduced at Schiphol Airport, spillage rates dropped 80 percent, says manager Aad Keiboom. A change like that, of course, translates into major savings in maintenance costs.

I am thinking mothers across America are reading this story and pulling out their sharpies to tame their male children's bathroom habits.

UnderArmour CEO cuts salary to $26K

Yeah, it is a cheap publicity stunt, but such things can sometimes be important for inspiring us. The CEO of UnderArmour clothing has cut his salary from $500K to $26K when his company failed to meet sales goals. The salary is the same amount he earned in his first year as CEO.

Such symbolic gestures are sometimes important to motivate the rank-and-file that make a company run. Moves like this bring about hope and a sense of teamwork. The alternative is the sense of fear that comes with layoffs, or the sense of injustice that comes from seeing failed executives walk away will millions in bonuses.

Introverts vindicated! It is okay NOT to express your emotions

After many of the major horrors of the last decade (Columbine, 9/11, Virginia Tech), the talking heads all over television were of one mind. "It is important to express your emotions over these events," they said in one voice. "If you are not speaking to someone about how you are feeling, you are hurting yourself and those around you." Well, it may be that this conventional wisdom is incomplete. Sometimes keeping it to yourself can be the best policy.

Using a large national sample, Seery and co-researchers tested people's responses to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, beginning immediately after the event and continuing for the following two years. In an online survey, respondents were given the chance to express their thoughts and feelings on the day of 9/11 and a few days afterward.

The researchers then compared people who chose to express their thoughts and feelings versus those who chose not to express.

If the assumption about the necessity of expression is correct -- that failing to express one's feelings indicates some harmful repression or other pathology -- then people who chose not to express should have been more likely to experience negative mental and physical health symptoms over time, the researchers point out.

"However, we found exactly the opposite: people who chose not to express were better off than people who did choose to express," Seery says.

Moreover, when the researchers looked only at people who chose to express their thoughts and feelings, and tested the length of their responses, they found a similar pattern. People who expressed more were worse off than people who expressed less.

It should be noted that this does not mean that everyone should be closing themselves down. The study authors themselves note that this really only shows that different people deal with trauma in different ways. An introvert should not be angry at an extrovert for needing to vent, and an extrovert should not be angry at an introvert for working thru their issues internally. Turns out, people really are built differently. Who knew?

Is Happiness a lack of options?

Time Magazine has up an interesting article on a recent study about happiness. The cusp of the story is that people are HORRIBLE at predicting what will make them happy, and that happier people are those who do not dwell upon the "what-ifs" of what could have been.

Envisioning what life would have been like with an alternate spouse becomes difficult and increasingly irrelevant as you settle into the life you've selected. "Once you make a choice in life, the unchosen alternatives evaporate," he says. According to Gilbert's earlier research, which he featured in his 2006 book, Stumbling on Happiness, when faced with an irrevocable decision, people are happier with the outcome than when they have the opportunity to change their minds. "It's a very powerful phenomenon," he says. "This is really the difference between dating and marriage."

I have a number of friends who are against the concept of "dating" because they feel it encourages lack of commitment. They prefer "courting" where you only "date" one person at a time, and only begin if you believe the process will end in marriage. This study may be an argument in their favor.

Left Brain vs Right Brain

This graphic came from this site, and is a fascinating example of Left Brain (logical) vs Right Brain (creative) thinking. If you see the figure turning clockwise, you are primarily right brained. If it is going counter-clockwise, you are primaily left-brained. I find in my case I see it turning clockwise (right-brained) until I start reading something and then it switches.

Introversion as a way of life

Here at Mod-Blog, we have more than our fair share of introverts. Sean and I hold the prize for "most introverted", I think, but most of us trend toward that end of the spectrum. This is often a cause for consternation among my friends and coworkers, who don't get why I'd rather not go with them after work for drinks or attend the annual company picnic. (Of course, some of that is also a teetotaller not wanting to remember his friends as soddenly drunk.) This article from the Atlantic is a great window into my world.

Are introverts misunderstood? Wildly. That, it appears, is our lot in life. "It is very difficult for an extrovert to understand an introvert," write the education experts Jill D. Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig. (They are also the source of the quotation in the previous paragraph.) Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion.

This matches my experience exactly. I can almost always predict the behavior and responses of extroverted coworkers, but most of them view me as a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

Is "Adolescence" Artificial?

Psychology Today has up an interesting article by a psychologist who claims that adolescence is an artificial construct created by Western societies, and that we'd all be better off if we treated children as adults as soon as they are reproductively capable.

Imagine what it would feel like—or think back to what it felt like—when your body and mind are telling you you're an adult while the adults around you keep insisting you're a child. This infantilization makes many young people angry or depressed, with their distress carrying over into their families and contributing to our high divorce rate. It's hard to keep a marriage together when there is constant conflict with teens.

We have completely isolated young people from adults and created a peer culture. We stick them in school and keep them from working in any meaningful way, and if they do something wrong we put them in a pen with other "children." In most nonindustrialized societies, young people are integrated into adult society as soon as they are capable, and there is no sign of teen turmoil. Many cultures do not even have a term for adolescence. But we not only created this stage of life: We declared it inevitable. In 1904, American psychologist G. Stanley Hall said it was programmed by evolution. He was wrong.

I find his arguments new and different, but I have to say that in my experience the ability to reason of the average 14 year old is generally far below that of even unintelligent adults.

Do you need "Alone Time"?

I have always been a bit of a loner. I need some time to myself every day (and I don't mean the time in the bathroom). This has been seen by some of my friends and relatives as "weird" and even unhealthy. But modern research is showing that loners are a healthy part of the population who bring much of the detail-oriented skills and creativity to the world. Something perhaps less expected is that loners are not socially insensitive, but actually are oversensitized.

Previous MRI studies have shown that during social situations, specific areas in the brains of loners experience especially lively blood flow, indicating a sort of overstimulation, which explains why they find parties so wearying. But Guyer's results suggest that introverts may be more attuned to all sorts of positive experiences as well. This added sensitivity, she speculates, could mean that people who are reserved have an ability to respond quickly to situations—such as coming to your aid in a moment of need—or show unusual empathy to a friend, due to their strong emotional antennae.

This may explain why I prefer a few close friends to a large pool of friends I barely know. This is to be contrasted with other friends of mine who love to have a wide pool of friends whether or not they have emotional intimacy with any of them. Neither is wrong or unhealthy. Both are useful for society.

What makes for a "Moderate"?

Apparently, I missed it when the first batch of articles about a recent study came out. But Psychology Today's summary of the study and the reactions to it is worth reading. The part of the article which gets the most attention is this snippet

As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics.

And of course, that quote, as phrased, is at least moderately insulting to Conservatives. It implies that Liberals are intelligent and popular, while Conservatives are the nerdy prudes in the back of the room.

But the more interesting section of the article is on the effect of 9/11 on politics, and what our awareness of our mortality does to the voting behavior of a democratic republic. They argue that 9/11 really did change my Liberals into Conservatives, by making them aware of death, and that even small reminders of death - like the Bin Laden letter released shortly before the 2004 election - can have far-ranging effects on voter behavior.

Personally, I am offended that they gave no clue what childhood behavior lead to Moderates. I assume it will be something like a passion for both chocolate and skim milk in the school cafeteria