Has anyone every told you that you needed to “think outside the box”? How many times have you come up with creative solutions to problems you found difficult? Do you know anyone who always seems to have their head in the clouds? It’s not hard to guess that all of these fit into most people’s realities! Creativity is more prominent in our lives than we often think, and some have more creative ability than others. In fact, research suggests that heightened creative ability may be due to increased cooperation between brain regions linked to both cognitive control and spontaneous processes! (https://www.psypost.org/2019/11/new-study-confirms-some-of-the-neurophysiological-predictors-of-creativity-54952) In other words, these two regions are likely what give you that “eureka” moment when attempting to solve problems. They work together in order for you to solve problems in ways you may not have considered before!

Imagine that you’re making dinner for a friend, and you find out halfway through that you’re missing an ingredient! After a few minutes of thinking about the best way to handle the situation, you suddenly remember you can use another item as a substitute for the missing ingredient! This “creative problem solving” helped you figure out just what to do in a situation which called for you to act in a spontaneous situation. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/199203/the-art-creativity)

     These moments of realization are not the only experience that can be attributed to creativity, because it can also align with abilities one already has in situations that call for them! No doubt you have experienced moments where your skills are perfect for whatever task is at hand, and it feels almost effortless because of it. Psychologists call this moment “flow”. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/199203/the-art-creativity) Flow can occur in many situations, and inspires the feeling of everything falling into place. For example, imagine that you are a soccer player. You’re running down the field with the ball, and someone runs at you from your right in an attempt to steal the ball before you can score a goal! You confidently move the ball just out of their reach and take the ball up the field, scoring the last point your team needed to win. This is an example of flow, where your soccer playing abilities perfectly matched the demand of the situation, enabling you to confidently outperform your opponent. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/199203/the-art-creativity) Creativity allowed you to use the skills you have already to quickly solve the problem you were facing. Your attention was entirely focused on the tasks you were performing in that moment, and it allowed you to achieve success. Solving problems, complex or simple, can be infinitely easier due to this aspect of creativity. Of course, this comes in handy for more than just sports! This “flow” is perfect example of how helpful creativity is and how quickly it can be used.

Creativity seems pretty great- but some extremely creative minds may not always feel like they can keep their thoughts in check. Daydreaming. We’ve all had times where we felt like we just couldn’t focus, or times where we couldn’t stop thinking about things unrelated to tasks we were performing. This can be frustrating and even inconvenient, but don’t worry! Daydreaming isn’t as negative as it may seem. A study from the Georgia Institute of Technology reveals that the more the mind wanders, the more creative that individual may be! The study was performed by having more than 100 people lay in an MRI machine and stare at a fixated point for five minutes in order to see which parts of the brain worked together in regards to mind wandering. They measured the mind at rest, as well as when it wasn’t. The participants also filled out a questionnaire about how much they daydream during their normal, everyday lives. (https://www.psypost.org/2017/10/brain-study-finds-mind-wandering-linked-fluid-intelligence-creativity-49997) The study found that the participants who expressed their mind wandered frequently, actually scored higher in creative ability! Not only this, but they were even found to have more efficient brain systems. Daydreaming can be a sign of a more efficient brain, so the next time you find you’re unable to focus on the task at hand, don’t be too hard on yourself!

Each of my sources did a thorough job of describing aspects of creativity and how they effect people’s lives. They were enjoyable to read because of the insight they gave into something we often take for granted. Our creative abilities are often pushed to the side and seen as less helpful than logical abilities, but they come in handy in just as many, if not more, ways! Each of the authors went into detail about how the brain works in relation to creativity, which I felt was necessary because the parts of the brain that inspire our creative feats also aid in some of our most important functions. I recommend all of my sources because they reflect the importance and necessity of nurturing creative minds.

So, are you creative? Are you a daydreamer? What creative activities do you engage in that have helped you in other aspects of your life?

Sources:

1) https://www.psypost.org/2017/10/brain-study-finds-mind-wandering-linked-fluid-intelligence-creativity-49997

2) https://www.psypost.org/2019/11/new-study-confirms-some-of-the-neurophysiological-predictors-of-creativity-54952

3) https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/199203/the-art-creativity

4) Einstein Quote: https://www.google.com/search?q=creativity+is+intelligence+having+fun&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjbq8bds4LpAhWJAp0JHTRtC3cQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=creativity+is+intelligence+having+fun&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQA1DHiAFYjKsBYNStAWgAcAB4AIABAIgBAJIBAJgBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1n&sclient=img&ei=dI-jXtuhF4mF9PwPtNqtuAc#imgrc=lisgLKXtk9KBOM&imgdii=zopM0Zxgu9qk4M

5) Brain: https://www.google.com/search?q=creativity&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiqmOWitILpAhX6BJ0JHfPwB4AQ2-cCegQIABAA#imgrc=eXoVovph1XRCzM

6) Daydreaming: https://www.google.com/search?q=daydreaming+meme&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwj-kZ35tILpAhUIYM0KHfySAGoQ2-cCegQIABAA#imgrc=O4XC4E6DDXi7nM

I pledge I have neither given nor received unauthorized assistance on this assignment.

– Shelby Russell

The other day I stumbled across this really fascinating video titled “Pediatricians Debunk 16 Baby Myths” by Insider. As someone who loves babies and is interested in development, I watched it and was fascinated to learn some of the myths that people believe and why they were incorrect.

Pediatricians Debunk 16 Baby Myths
[KGVID width=”640″ height=”360″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzFY1KDoaeU[/KGVID]

One of the ones that stuck out to me, however, was the myth “Playing classical music can make your baby smarter”. The experts said that sensory stimulation like music is very beneficial to the development of the baby, but it is certainly not as powerful in influencing intelligence as back and forth interaction between a baby and its caregivers.

Since we were talking about intelligence in class, I decided to do some research into where this idea came from and how it has seen a loss in relevancy. I found an article that described the timeline of the “Mozart effect”. It credits the origins of this myth to a study conducted on college students. They were given different listening states for a while, then given spatial IQ tests, and those who listened to the classical music showed higher scores in spatial IQ than those who didn’t. However, “The effect lasted for 15 minutes” (Quartz).

For some reason, people took it and ran with it and turned it into something beyond that original article ever claimed. I found a shortened version of the findings in a 1993 editorial of the Scientific Correspondence. In the discussion section, their goals with this information did not really go beyond hoping to “optimize this effect” (College) and to try applying it to general intelligence.

Since then, there has been research looking into the craze that took over parents to play Mozart for their kids. Most of them disprove the idea that it is a guarantee to ensure a high IQ for children. One study in particular showed that actually 10 and 11 year olds were better able to do a paper folding activity better after listening to pop music than kids who were listening to classical.

Later on, in 1999, someone at Harvard wrote a meta-analysis looking at 16 studies about music and cognitive ability. They found that the main cause for increased displays of intelligence after listening to music were due to “enjoyment arousal” (Meta-analysis). This means that someone listening to Mozart who doesn’t really like or understand music might not get much out of it. However, someone who already studies it or interacts with it can be stimulated enough to perform better on certain IQ tests.

This could possibly mean that someone who really loves dance could perform better on an IQ test after watching dancing. Or the same could go for an art student after walking around a museum. The real change comes from the “enjoyment arousal” and there should be more focus on that idea than specifically Mozart’s music. Imagine if, instead of believing in the “Mozart effect”, we held and had proven the idea that allowing children to be stimulated by things they enjoy would raise their IQ scores. That might completely restructure the way we educate and measure the IQ of our children.

______________

(Quartz article) https://qz.com/628331/the-idea-that-mozart-makes-babies-smarter-is-one-of-parentings-most-bizarre-myths/

(College student Music study) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8413624

(Meta-Analysis) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12823070_Prelude_or_requiem_for_the_’Mozart_effect’

(10 and 11 music and cognitive ability) https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10002294/1/SchellenbergHallam2006Music202.pdf

The article titled, THE GREAT ESCAPE Prison helps inmates boost their problem-solving skills with brand new ‘escape room’, talks about how a prison in, Cumbria have implemented a new technique and activity for the inmates to help their problem-solving skills. They talk about how adding an “escape room” in the prison has helped the prisoners with problem-solving, mental, and physical skills. Many people thought that this was a crazy activity to implement in a prison of all places. It raises the questions of “Why are we teaching inmates how to escape a room?”, “Will this help these prisoners conjure up ways to escape the prison?” In chapter 14, we talked about problem-solving as well as the different methods associated with it. The first problem-solving method is called, the Hill-Climbing strategy. This particular method is used to get closer to the goal. In this case the prisoners would be using clues in order to get closer to the goal of “escaping”. The second problem-solving method is the means-end analysis, this method uses the technique of envisioning the end goal and how to get there. This is another way the inmates can solve the escape room, but this method often times leads to subproblems. Just like how using an “escape room” to help boost inmates problem-solving can lead to subproblems. Many people and critics said in the article that this could potentially lead to potential prison escapes, or attempted escape. The bosses of the prison said the prison is “very secure by a four mile fence around the whole prison”. The third problem-solving method we have talked about is mental imagery, this method uses visualization to help solve problems. I believe that this type of activity for inmates could cause multiple problems, problems such as, boosting knowledge on how to escape the prison, and this could cause other disobedient behaviors. Does this escape room truly help their problem-solving skills? I guess that it would help enhance your problem-solving skills as well as communication skills because it makes you think critically and abstractly, but it also makes you communicate with the members of the team that is in the room. With that being said, I don’t think that I would be offering this to prisoners as a problem solving skills enhancer.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11257340/prison-installs-new-escape-room/#comments

Once when I was waiting in the doctors office for an appointment, I picked up a kids book out of   boredom and started reading it. It had a bunch of sentences in it like ” I b_t yo_ ca_ re_d t_is”. When looking at the whole thing it didn’t make sense but when I tried to read it word for word that is when I could figure out what it ment. I would later find out this is know as phoneme restoration. This effect is also applicable for sounds you might have not heard in a sentence but your brain filled it in anyway. The first report of this was (Warren 1970) where the letter s in the word legislatures was replaced with a cough and the listeners in the experiment where given a paper transcript of the word and asked to circle where the disterbance was and to the listeners there was no disturbance in the word so nothing was circled. This shows how powerful   our brain is, that even in the absence of syllables that make up a word the brain can interpret what the word is with out them

The effectiveness for the identification of these tones is determined by how well the brain can interpret the tones or coughs and fill in the missing letter. From (Warren and Obusek 1971) it was found that regardless of how long the tone or what it is its better than having a silent gap in the word. This was surprising to me because you would think that a long beep or sound would be more of a distraction than a help.

Something else that is interesting is speech segmentation, where words don’t have clear boundaries but the brain can interpret them automaticly. This is another example of the brain and its automaticity of words and sentence structure that shows that your mind can easily interpret language regardless of minor modifications to it or just interpreting it in a way that can be understood

The University of Conneticut Storrs did an expiriment where phonemic restoration was tested on different  groups of people across a broad spectrum of background and intelligence. There was also a group included that had dyslexia. From this experiment, it was found that those who had high scores on phonological processing had lower counts of phonemic restoration. It was also found that those with lower scores or had dyslexia. This show that those where good readers had less Phonemic Restoration compared to those with dyslexia or where not as good at reading. I think this could be due to the better readers who are better at recognizing and interpreting words would be able to pick out any disturbances in them and identify what those disturbances are. The inverse could also be said for those with higher phonemic restoration scores in that, their minds aren’t as good at identifying issues in words and would have a harder  time interpreting them

I think phonemic restoration is a very interesting effect, in that the mind can overcome a deficit in a word and fix it itself.

Sources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24926230

https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_2013/ling520/Samuel1981.pdf

Picture Sources:

https://www.wodenworks.com/whats-in-a-word-telling-your-story-with-the-right-voice/

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Short-Vowels-a-e-i-o-u-Fill-in-the-Blanks-Kindergarten-Vowels-Sight-Words-1133204

https://www.weareteachers.com/things-about-dyslexia-every-teacher-needs/

Without realizing it, we use cognitive psychology more in our daily lives than we think, such as decision making. We use decision making for practically everything we do throughout our daily lives. We choose based on the thing that is most useful and we also weigh the different benefits and costs. Many of our decisions use the principle of utility maximization, also known as choosing the option with the greatest expected value. There are various ways that people make their decisions, it generally is not a one-way thing. The different ways people think through and make decisions are; Reason-based choice, framing effects, prospect theory, recognition heuristic, and emotional vs rational decision processes. With these varying thought processes in which people use to make a decision, they either use their emotional or rational values as a baseline, in which two different parts of the brain affect- the prefrontal lobe and the anterior insula. We do all these things within a single second of a day, whether it is picking the type of cereal you’re going to eat, picking out the shirt you’re going to wear, or even which route you chose to drive to work or school. Based on the many uncertainties going on right now, due to the coronavirus (COVID-19), many decisions are hindered due to there not being many things/places to choose from. One big decision we can make though, is how we view this virus, as either a threat to be feared or a challenge to be met?

As we face this pandemic, we have the choice to see it as an “insurmountable threat that pits you against everyone else?” or as a “collective challenge that will require shared sacrifices to achieve a difficult but not impossible goal?” (2020, Teachman). With the mindset of the first decision, you would be thinking about this virus as a threat against only yourself and those you care about. Those who choose this mindset tend to not see the precautions as they should be, because oftentimes they think that if ‘only I’ am doing these things, such as going out and stockpiling toilet paper and food, then it won’t have much impact on others. Whereas, those who choose the mindset that this pandemic is a challenge to be met oftentimes take the precautions more seriously because they see the end-goal is more important than the part-time isolation and restrictions.

Many people chose to see COVID-19 as a threat to be feared because it is simply something new and is changing their lifestyle. According to Teachman’s article, whenever you perceive the situation as a life-or-death threat, it inhibits how you process information. This mindset tends to inhibit processing by narrowing your attention towards only negative and dangerous things relating to the virus. It also inhibits your processes in such a way that your interpretations become biased, so once you see one snippet of bad news, you relate that to all situations. For example, many social media are providing the public with negative information about this pandemic, such as the number of deaths and the number of cases increasing, and how many restaurants and stores are completely closed. With these negative aspects being so widely portrayed, it is easy for those who are trying to figure out which mindset they wish to feel about this virus, to lean towards fear. Although those negative aspects that are being portrayed on social media are true and need to be well known in such a way to stay safe, there should be an equal amount of positive news out there as well.

Although the entire world is facing this pandemic of the coronavirus, we can choose to focus our mindsets in such a way that instead of seeing it as something to be purely feared, we can look at it as a challenge that we can face together. Although it is difficult to see this time in a more positive way, it is possible, and it is much better for your mental health if you do. Whenever you change your mindset to this, you tend to shift your actions as well, such as instead of withdrawing from the problem, you instead rather focus on problem-solving. For example, instead of panicking and stockpiling on toilet paper and food, you could assist the elderly and those who are immunocompromised in your community who may need to get supplies but are unable to due to their health. By shifting the outlook from fear to facing a challenge, you could successfully treat anxiety disorders about this pandemic, according to Teachman. Another positive that can come out from choosing to have this mindset, is that you’re more open to differing evidence for and against ideas, such as seeing the death rates but also being able to see the numbers of those who have successfully recovered from this virus.

This pandemic is new and scary, and we don’t know much about it, but even though we cannot control a lot at this point, we can choose to focus our mindsets in the way we need to. So, if we work together as one, we can all find a way to choose to see this virus as not just a threat to be feared, but more-so as a challenge to be met, so we can overcome it.

Referenced from: https://theconversation.com/feeling-overwhelmed-approach-coronavirus-as-a-challenge-to-be-met-not-a-threat-to-be-feared-134211

As the semester comes to a close, most of us are losing motivation.

Losing motivation to do school work. Losing motivation to get up. Losing motivation to wash our hair more than once a week… But that’s not the point.

I found an article by Dr. Beata Souders titled The Vital Importance and Benefits of Motivation. Immediately this article got right into what I had been looking for.

Dr. Souders talks about extrinsic motivation. “Self-Determination Theory (SDT) explains how external events like rewards or praise sometimes produce positive effects on motivation, but at other times can be quite detrimental.” From here she goes on to talk about how sometimes rewards can be used to affirm someones levels of competence. When talking about activities that may be uninteresting, extrinsic motivation is usually what will work best. I know that when I was in high school, I found most of the work to be incredibly boring. Teachers would often let us leave early if we were able to complete assignments that were marked as ‘busy work’. For me, this was useful because it gave me motivation to complete them that I would not have had otherwise.

When it comes to intrinsic activities, “performing them is a reward in itself”. The article goes on to talk about how an “autotelic self” would actively seek out activities like this. They then discuss  the complex self and how there are 5 characteristics:

1. Clarity of goals
2. Self as the center of control
3. Choice and knowing that life is not happening to you
4. Commitment and care for what you are doing
5. Challenge

The article then goes on to discuss creating order out of chaos. I think that as individuals we have a desire to overcome and make the most out of a situation. This then led into self motivation. Dr. Souders notes that “when we identify with the regulation AND coordinate with other core values and believes, we are said to have the most autonomous form of extrinsic motivation – integrated regulation”.

Overall this article really spoke to me, especially because of our current situation. Without being surrounded by people that would generally provide extrinsic motivation, it can be hard to find it within yourself to be motivated enough to do certain things. I think it is important to try and stay engaged in activities that you enjoy, try to appreciate the little things and try to stay positive over all.

What are some things that you all have done to try and stay motivated? How has extrinsic motivation been beneficial or detrimental to you?

Drop your favorite motivational quote in the comments!

https://positivepsychology.com/benefits-motivation/

We’ve all been under the spotlight of social shame due to a bias we possess. For we all have biases, and they often lead us astray. Some of us can pinpoint our biases and work on them if we please. However, most of the time biases go unnoticed- to the person who has them. These are called unconscious biases and they can result in hazardous social situations. Thankfully in cognitive psychology we have learned contributing factors which cause biases and because of this we can learn how to curb them.

Heuristics can be thought of as ways of thinking which help us make sense of the world. As a refresher, “A heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make judgments quickly and efficiently” (Cherry, 2020). Sounds good right? If you say yes, you are certainly not wrong. Humans use heuristics for a reason, nine out of ten times they work. In fact, the efficiency and ease of heuristics is it’s downfall and often what leads to biases. This is because if something works well, the one time it fails  tends to slip under the radar.

You may be asking, what sort of biases could faulty heuristics lead to? The answer is cognitive biases. Another quick refresher on our essential cognitive psychology vocabulary, cognitive biases are: “a systematic error in thinking that affects the decisions and judgments that people make” (Cherry, 2020). If someone grows up hearing negative and derogatory things about a particular race, they may fall prey to availability heuristics. Availability heuristics: “placing greater value on information that comes to your mind quickly. You give greater credence to this information and tend to overestimate the probability and likelihood of similar things happening in the future.” (Cherry, 2020). As one grows up and encounters members of the race which was often disparaged in front of them, they may use what’s available to them and feel bias. This can trigger a domino effect of cognitive biases, and before you know it you’re susceptible to confirmation bias. Confirmation bias: “favoring information that conforms to your existing beliefs and discounting evidence that does not conform” (Cherry, 2020). In the real world it is easy to fall back into the way of thinking with which you were raised. To compound this, if you find people who agree with you it furthers confirms your preexisting notions.

This may sound cynical, but like many clouds there is a silver-lining. If you are aware of your biases and have a motivation to improve them you can! Ways to lessen the instinct for bias include reading things you wouldn’t ordinarily read, speak to people with vastly different perspectives than you, put yourself in another’s shoes and consider their mindset.

The main takeaway regarding heuristics is that like most things in life, it is a double-edged sword. On the one side heuristics help us a navigate a complex world, yet they also can lead to inaccurate and potentially damaging conclusions.

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-cognitive-bias-2794963

Can you imagine entering high school at a 2nd grade reading level, just because your teachers didn’t know how to teach you? Sadly this is a reality for many deaf children. According to Kelly & Barac-Cikoja (2007), only 5% of deaf kids graduate high school at a reading level of 12th grade or above. These statistics however aren’t reflective of deaf individuals’ intellectual ability, but instead come down to core issues on how teaching reading is approached. The most commonly used method for teaching students how to read is the phonics approach, where a sound and the appropriate letter is presented, this however doesn’t work very well when the student doesn’t hear or use the sounds presented.

I have two cousins who are deaf, that each have more degrees than I think I ever will, and after seeing these statistics it led me to question that if high level reading abilities are so uncommon then how did they do it?

Reading is typically learned after kids can proficiently communicate in their spoken language, which taught us word recognition and syntactic structure of phrases in our spoken language. Basic knowledge of phonemes, morphemes, syntax, and semantics is commonly used as the building block for teaching the written language. For many deaf Americans their first language is American Sign Langue (ASL), and this language is very different from English. They are not only different in the fact that one is a verbal/written language and one is visual, but they also have completely different vocabulary and grammar structure. In ASL there isn’t always a specific sign for some words we have in English.

These differences of ASL and English make it very difficult for deaf students to learn written English. Kailyn and Brian were given an adapted approach to teaching reading. One example of this is in primary school they began ‘reading’ video books, where there was a person signing the book in ASL and then the English words were written below. This helped them learn word recognition, for example they were able to recognize that the sign for the color red was the same as “RED” written out.

From what we learned in Cognitive Psychology, it seems that Kailyn and Brian used an adapted whole word learning approach to learn how to read. They were presented words in their spoken language, ASL, and that was paired with the written English word. Kailyn said that the hardest part of learning how to read was understanding sentence structure and grammar. In high school they were encouraged to take Latin because it wasn’t a spoken language, they found that taking Latin actually helped them better understand English sentence structure, Kailyn said, “learning Latin grammar and writing helped me pass my (English) writing SOL”.

Phonics is often the best approach for students who can hear normally, but schools should have measures put in place to adapt to a new kind of learning for students who are deaf. Common ideas we have for how reading comprehension largely has to do with phonological knowledge doesn’t work for everyone. The current standards of teaching and learning reading clearly doesn’t account for deaf students, but we can all agree that there are plenty of ways to adjust the typical approaches so it can work for everyone. I think as a whole we need to reconsider this idea in education that one way works the best for everyone, because clearly that is not the case. I think we have come a far way in having appropriate accommodations available for disabilities, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. 

References:

Kelly L, Barac-Cikoja D. The comprehension of skilled deaf readers: The roles of word recognition and other potentially critical aspects of competence. In: Cain K, Oakhill J, editors. Children’s comprehension problems in oral and written language: A cognitive perspective. Guilford Press; 2007. pp. 244–279.

https://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/r/red.htm

https://www.babysignlanguage.com/dictionary/r/red/?v=7516fd43adaa

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/100345897924304025/

Tongue twisters were always something fun to do when growing up. Who can say it the fastest? Who can say it the most times? Who is the best? It was something fun to do with friends and would always take up some time when you started getting into it.

To figure out if it was the brain mixing up the syllables or if it was coming from the mouth, in 1982 researchers Ralph and Lyn Haber conducted a study asking participants to read two types of sentences, one containing a tongue twister, and one that was complex but did not contain a twister. They found that participants slowed down in sentences with tongue twisters even if their tongue wasn’t in use, this would be sounds like “p” and “b”. This says that the brain is confusing the sounds before they even get to your mouth.

To further this research, in 2013 a team from the University of California put electrodes in the skull of epilepsy patients to record electrical activity in the brain. They found that the neural patterns that lit up when they pronounced consonants were different from when they pronounced vowels, even though they are using the same tract. They also found that the brain split phonemes into 3 groups- front of tongue, back of tongue, and vowels. Sounds formed in the same area are easier to switch up, which is why twisters like “sally sells seashells” are harder to say.

Another group of researchers from MIT had participants say a combination of words in two categories- one of them was simple words like, “Top Cop” and the other one was a sentence of words like, “The Top Cop Saw a Cop Top.” After some trials, here was one set of words that they found most participants had a struggle with, and when asked to say it multiple times they gave up, this list was, “Pad Kid Poured Curd Pulled Cod” and it might be the hardest tongue twister to say.

So why are tongue twisters so hard so say, and what makes this one especially difficult? They said that tongue twisters have qualities that the brain tends to reject, a string of quick but distinct phonemes. They analyzed the participants saying the twisters and found that the most common mistakes came from double onsets, like ‘Top Cop’ becoming ‘tkop’ or ‘toy boat’ becoming ‘tuh boyt’. This suggests that there is an overlap in brain processes used in speech. The research at MIT hasnt been finished, but they hope to to find more connections in the use of double onsets and the types of speech.

https://theweek.com/articles/454789/twistiest-tongue-twister-ever-says-science

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-12/aiop-ttt120213.php

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201312/tongue-twisters-reveal-quirky-brain-functions

Competitiveness drives a lot of what we do, and how we perform in education is no exception. Students compete with each other to earn the best grades, gain admission to the best colleges, and accept the best internships or jobs. This drive pushes people to want to quantify how smart they are. Intelligence tests, in theory, do just that. The idea that someone can take a test and earn a number that defines their intelligence can be intriguing. However, what most people fail to realize is the major flaws in intelligence testing. In “The IG test wars: Why screening for intelligence is so controversial”, Daphne Martschenko explains the flaws in intelligence testing.These flaws pertain to differences in testing methods, and disparities in genetics, socio-economic status, academic achievement, and race. After reading this article, I found a lot of similarities in the issues Marschenko points out and our class discussion on intelligence testing. 

Marschenko first talks about how intelligence testing and the popularity grew during the early 1900s. These tests were developed and marketed as “unbiased ways to measure a person’s cognitive ability,” (Marschenko, 2018). The first intelligence test was developed by Alfred Benet, after the French government asked him to identify students who face the most difficulties in school. The United States used intelligence tests for screening military and police personnel, and during the First World War, screening was used to determine whether or not soldiers were fit to enter the war. In schools, intelligence tests were used to decide which students would be placed in the gifted programs as well as students who would qualify for special education services. 

As they became more and more popular, the use of intelligence testing took a dark turn as they became a “powerful way to exclude and control marginalized communities using empirical and scientific language” (Marschenko, 2018). It even got to the point that the Supreme Court ruled the sterilization of individuals with developmental disabilities. This ruling was known as Buck v Bell. 

The history of intelligence tests and the groups that they did a major disservice to should be enough to consider alternative ways to quantify someone’s intelligence. In class, we talked about the ways in which intelligence tests fail to represent certain groups of people. The controversial issues with intelligence testing include improved scores with instruction, highlighting only one type of intelligence, and having a major cultural bias. In looking at trends among white versus African American individuals, there are similarities in genetics, however other factors create a gap that the intelligence tests do not acknowledge. These can be differences in socio-ecnonomc status and the stereotype threat, which is how test scores are reported to be lower depending on how instructions are presented. Marschemnko also explains this in her article, as intelligence tests are typically biased towards the people who developed them, which were mainly white. This difference in representation means that different cultural values are not represented in the testing. This puts culturally diverse communities at a disadvantage in terms of the testing. 

While intelligence tests are not being completely thrown out, they are being accompanied by other measures to make up for some of the flaws. For example, they are still used to identify gifted students and students that qualify for special education services, however, schools rely on teacher observation and family referrals to make these decisions as well. Overall, intelligence tests have been argued to be completely ineffective as well as beneficial when used with other methods. Any organization that utilizes these tests should be held accountable for understanding the implications. 

Article: The IQ test wars: Why screening for intelligence is still so controversial

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/the-iq-test-wars-why-screening-for-intelligence-is-still-so-controversial-a8179176.html