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How to Take Good Notes: Go Low-Tech
More and more students are opting to take notes on laptops to save trees and – they assume – take better notes. But is this assumption correct? According to the findings UCLA’s Dr. Danny Oppenheimer recently published in Psychological Science , these students are wrong: in a study of note-taking comparing handwritten to typed notes, Meuller…
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Tips for Graduate School Admission Interviews: through the years
It’s that time of year again… The wait is almost over, invitations for graduate school interviews are going out. Perhaps your experience is/would be like mine: cries of joy and then… “OMG OMG OMG what do I do when I get there?” Congratulations for being in the minority of applicants who need to conduct this…
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The Defiant Optimism of Understanding
‘Human life is beyond comprehension.’ There are literally hundreds of these seemingly benign, brain-teasing quotes I could have picked. Hundreds of pithy-sounding wisdoms taking stabs at poorly unpacked concepts that are given transcendent reverence because they claim to reveal ethereal nature. Quotes on how the sublime, consciousness, justice, mystery of life are actually beyond our…
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New research: From Screen to Green: What happens to kids social skills when they go cold turkey on all media?
The fact is we all stare at screens more than we would like and many of us rely on these tools to communicate with others, even during times when we should be spending quality time with our families and friends. So does all this time staring at screens, which may take time away from looking…
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Memory in the Mountains: How Cognitive Psychology Can Improve Rock Climbing
“You can never climb the same mountain twice, not even in memory. Memory rebuilds the mountain, changes the weather, retells the jokes, remakes all the moves.” – Lito Tejada-Flores, Extreme Skiier, Climber and Author As Lito Tejada-Flores alludes, rock climbing and mountaineering depend as much on human memory as the physical environment in which…
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Awe: Why It’s Important, and How to Feel It
Jason Silva – Shots of Awe Have you ever gazed up at the starry sky and felt amazed by its vastness? Or have you looked over the abyss of the Grand Canyon and found your breath catch in your throat? If so, you probably felt awe, a “feeling of wonder and astonishment experienced in the presence of…
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Outreach Event: Brain Awareness Week!
Psychology in Action’s Outreach Program got brainy Friday, March 7th… that is, participated in an early Brain Awareness Week event! Thanks to a connection by member Irene Tung, outreach coordinators Nicco Reggente and Jenna Cummings arranged for graduate students to teach kids at Project Literacy about the brain: what it weighs, how it works, how…
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Communicating the Value of Research: A Two-Way Street
Seven months ago I found myself seated across the table from a dear friend at a small restaurant in Eugene, Oregon, mere weeks from the start of my graduate career. Over dinner and a few drinks, we got to talking about the enormity of this undertaking, exploring all of the parts associated with finally going…