Transcripts
Transcript for Figure 10.5, Why Practicing Can Help with Emotional Regulation
In previous videos, we’ve talked about the importance of practicing various types of plans with our kids or clients, such as what they can do when they get upset, and how they can be successful with various activities and social interactions. Practicing
helps reduce the amount of processing needed in the moment, because they’ve already gone through the situation.
Let’s talk a little bit more about what’s happening on a cognitive skill level during escalation, and how practicing helps everyone. Let’s take the case of a general “what can you do when you get upset?” kind of plan, which we call a Reactive Plan. Without a plan that’s been practiced, we’re demanding that the person use several cognitive skills in the moment of their escalation, which is a problem because whenever any one of us gets escalated, our cognitive skills drop. That’s right: being mad makes us dumb, and our brains may revert to more primitive responses to handle the stress. This means that without practicing the plan, our kid or client will need to understand what’s going on, stay calm enough to figure out an appropriate course of action, think through the consequences of each possible course of action, and then follow through, all while resisting impulses coming from the more primitive parts of their brain.
What we have to remember is that people with developmental disabilities, mental health issues, trauma, or still-developing brains struggle with many of the skills that are needed to achieve emotional regulation. There isn’t a structure or piece of the brain that emotionally regulates us, but rather emotional regulation is the result of multiple executive functioning skills working together to calm us down, oftentimes in an instant.
When you don’t have these skills, even on a good day, you’re missing critical tools, which may mean that you’re more likely to get upset over small stressors or that when you do get upset, you engage in behaviors beyond just being mad, like physical aggression, property destruction, or other challenging behaviors.
By practicing the plan, we can help the person shortcut to emotional regulation more easily, because we’re helping them process information, and make the “right choice” ahead of time. After we identify some coping strategies, we can have our kid or client
practice them. We may practice randomly or set a structured time. Then, when escalation happens, we can prompt the person to follow the plan, which now they don’t have to come up with on their own in that moment. It would be best if our prompt was nonverbal, such as pointing to an object that we designated means “it’s time to follow the plan.” Of course, when we were practicing the plan, we point to the object to get that practice going.
They may resist at first, which is why it’s important that we avoid talking. When we talk, we demand that their brain use various cognitive skills, which is the last thing they need right now. Our hope is that, even if they struggle at first, as they have more time to think about the plan they’ll begin the calming process. Once they get to the point of following through on the plan and engaging in a coping skill, hopefully they’ll calm down quickly
with fewer challenging behaviors. As the person’s brain continues to develop or
as they continue to practice emotionally regulating through these plans that you make with them, our goal is that they will naturally begin to use their coping skills independently in their everyday lives, because they will have more practice in using them successfully and seeing their benefit.
If the plan you make and practice doesn’t work, wait until the person is completely calm and open to having a discussion. This may need to happen on a different day than the day of the escalation. With both of you calm and not invested in the moment, you can talk about why the plan didn’t work, and make a plan to help it be more successful the next time. Of course, make sure that you practice any changes that you make. Perhaps you just need to try the original plan again without making any changes, but do a few extra practice sessions.
In our next video, we’ll talk about common, unhelpful responses that we as parents or professionals may have when someone escalates and how we can avoid those responses. As you know, our videos are free to everyone, and so I’m completely reliant on those who watch them and believe in me to keep them going. Please consider giving to us monthly on patreon.com/oregonbehavior [Website] or support us by contacting your local disability and mental health organizations and ask them to have me come to your area and conduct a training or workshop. Of course, you can support us by subscribing to our videos here on YouTube, liking our page on Facebook, and Now we’re on twitter, @oregonbehavior. Thanks for watching.
Attribution
Transcript for “Why Practicing Can Help with Emotional Regulation” by Cognitive Supports is included under fair use.
Transcript for Figure 10.9, TEDxMidAtlantic 2011 – Eldar Shafir – Living Under Scarcity
[Eldar Shafir, Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs, Princeton University]: Thank you. I want to talk to you about the psychology of scarcity, the psychology that comes with not having enough. Poverty is the most obvious example, and throughout the decades the social sciences have been impressed by the fact that the poor make very bad decisions. And the question is, why is that? And probably the most relevant
example I can give you today – there are many – but one is payday lending.
Payday lending is a remarkable story. If you want to pay their loan you go to a place that gives you small amount, $2-$300 for two weeks, until your paycheck arrives. You have to have a paycheck, you have to have a bank, and you pay a lot of interest for that loan. You basically borrow $300 for which you pay somewhere between 20-25%. If you compute the APR, the yearly interest, it comes to somewhere between 400 and 1,000% that you pay for this loan.
We know that these loans hurt you, so basically what happens is, think about it, you need some money urgently. You borrow $250, two weeks from now you owe me $300. You’re not any richer than you were last time, that 300 becomes even more of an offense, you have to borrow again. The data is that people who resort to Payday Loans borrow on the average of between 8 to 12 times a year. Recent evidence suggests that up to 75% of a loan taken goes to pay the previous one. You’re just becoming a money pump and you’re in debt trap and it hurts you. There’s data that shows that when you, when pay loans are available, people are less likely to be able to pay their bills, less likely to resort to medical treatment, etc.
And is this a successful venture? Unbelievably so. I have you some data here. There are more payday loan and check cashing stores in America today then there are McDonald’s, Burger Kings, Sears, JC Penney, and Target stores combined. So this is a massively expensive loan that the poor resort to, it hurts them, it’s super popular – why?
There have been many attempts to understand this. They range from lack of education, lack of understanding, a lack of self-control, myopia, a wrong culture, etc. We are trying a different tack on this. We want to claim that the psychology that comes from scarcity
– there’s actually psychology that comes from not having enough – and that, that psychology when it emerges, when you don’t have enough, yields these very characteristic behaviors that are, that can be very hurtful.
To give you a sense of how that feels, I’m going to use a metaphor. It’s the packing metaphor, it’s a suitcase packing metaphor and think about your budget as a suitcase. Two friends – one has a large suitcase with slack in it, the other one has a very small suitcase, it’s very tightly packed. That feels very different. The one with a large suitcase tosses in all the things that she needs. She might throw a few other things that are of lower utility, less important to her but might still be serving a purpose. But you leave some slack for unintended, unexpected events and travels. The one with a very tight suitcase that’s very tightly packed can’t even put all the things that are really necessary. It just doesn’t fit, let alone the things that matter less. She needs to start struggling, doing trade-offs. “What should I put in?” “What shouldn’t I?” “Should I put the sneakers or the rain coat, what should I do?” She’s dealing with a much more complicated problem, technically, computationally. She has a very hard time leaving any slack in the suitcase for unexpected moments and she has to make trade offs that require a lot of attention. I don’t really care about the size of the coat cuz I have room in my suitcase. You with a very tight suitcase really need to know, is the coat bigger or smaller than my shoes? I am traveling with slack – if I walk the streets of New York and I see a pair of shoes I like, I ask, is the price right? and if it is I buy them and I toss them in my suitcase. You with a tight suitcase find the shoes ask, is the price right? and now you ask yourself, well, what do I take out of my suitcase to make room for these shoes? A much more complicated task. So the argument is when you live under scarcity with this very tight suitcase, you’re constantly in trade-off thinking mode and you’re concerned with the actual size of items and what that might mean for you.
Simple data, if you will. If you ask people of lower and less low income, do you think about what you might not be able to, to buy instead when you buy a TV or a toaster? Sure enough, the low-income report thinking much more often about trade-offs, what they might not be able to buy.
What about knowledge of prices? You know I, I walk the streets of America every day and I buy books and I buy lunches and I take cabs. I don’t think about what I’m not going to buy instead and I don’t even really care or remember if the book was $17 or $16 if the cab cost $8 or $9 – it’s all the same to me. If you have a very tight suitcase, if you are a low-income American, you need to think about the trade-offs every time you buy anything above a muffin. And so if you live in Roxbury and you receive food stamps, you live in a place where food is actually more expensive than if you traveled elsewhere. Now you have to ask a complicated question, do I buy my food here or do I take a taxi since I don’t have a car and buy it somewhere else? For that you need to know how much is a taxi. I don’t really care how much a taxi is exactly. You need to know. So we go to South Station in Boston, stop people, ask them, by the way, when you walk into a cab what does the meter start from, when you start, when you take the cab, what’s the reading? And we divide them by reported income into high and low, we took cabs, we chose cabs carefully because nobody’s going to say that the poor ride cabs more than the rich, yet they’re three times more likely to know the price of the cab than the rich are. They’re just more attentive, more careful, and have to solve this problem on a constant basis.
The interesting thing about this model of scarcity is it doesn’t have to be about money. So many people in this room are time poor, just the way our subjects are money poor. You have a tight suitcase on your time. Some people have more time, say, you work 9 to 5 on a regular job. If I come and ask you, do you want to go to the movies tonight? Just like the shoes, you say, do I want to see this movie? Yes, no and sure I’ll go. If I go to some of you who are working much harder and said, do you want to go the movies tonight? You have to say, do I want to see the movie and what do I not do tonight that have to do tomorrow. I’ll have to borrow money from tomorrow, sorry, time from tomorrow, potentially at high rate because it’s going to be hard to find that time tomorrow in order to go to this movie. So you’re packing time.
Temptations. When you’re poor, when your suitcase is very tight, things that ought to be regular – taking cabs, buying pizzas – become a temptation you might need to resist. You’re constantly resisting temptations, a lot more than the rich are, and there’s a lot of
evidence that resisting temptation is simply depleting. It fatigues you. It’s hard to resist temptation and the poor – those who have experienced scarcity – do that a lot.
Well, the, the – sorry I’m jumping here – the, the rich have very similar time temptations that they have to think about. Just like there is a regular pizza for the person in America who might not be able to afford it if they’re poor, think about spending two hours with your kids playing Monopoly.That ought to be a completely standard activity. If you’re time poor, all of a sudden that becomes something you think about, you trade off, you worry about, you might not be able to afford. It becomes a luxury.
Finally, one more. Indulgences. A lot of literature on the poor critiques the poor for being in debt that they cannot pay. Nonetheless, buying small luxuries – sneakers, iPods, etc. – and that somehow looks wrong, but if you understand the psychology of indulgences, it’s a different story. I mean, I cannot pay the debt, that’s true, but now I can do something that’s nice to me.
Think about you guys – how many people in this room are sitting on deadlines that you’ll not be able to respect, yet what are you doing here schmoozing with me? Go back and do a few more minutes, but that’s just not the psychology and how it works, and so that’s part of this issue of scarcity and how you deal with it.
Okay, let me give you some quick studies that we’ve done. It’s hard to make our students money poor but it’s very easy to make them time poor. We have subjects come to a lab where they’re going to play Family Feud. As most of you know how the game works, you have to guess the answers. They get into it, they collect points which then get translated into money, which they actually get paid, so they want to do well. We randomly assign them into rich and poor. Some have more time, 50 seconds a round, they have more time to think and play. Others have very little, only 15 seconds a round.
In addition, between these two groups, some have the ability to borrow at a high rate, so every time you use an extra second now, if you’re into the game, you think you know the answer, you want two more seconds. You can borrow but then you pay with two extra seconds for every second you borrowed, so you pay back at interest. Or you’re in a group that cannot borrow. So we have the rich and the poor able to borrow, not able to
borrow. You play the game, what do you find? You find that the rich – students who have enough time – don’t borrow very much. This is not an attractive rate, it’s predatory lending – but occasionally they do, and it doesn’t hurt them. The poor – those who are poor for time, living under time scarcity – borrow more frequently, pay the high interest rate, manage to finish fewer rounds and get substantially fewer points.
So what we’re seeing here is people borrowing under scarcity at predatory lending rates and hurting themselves, except that these are not the poor of America who you can criticize for being uneducated, myopic, wrong culture, these are Princeton students. They’re not myopic, they got into Princeton, they don’t have self-control problems. They’re functioning under scarcity and replicating the effects that you see among those who experience money scarcity. This has big influence on our lives because if you’re poor and you’re constantly in a packing, problem solving mode, it’s very distracting and it’s very fatiguing.
Here we go to a mall in New Jersey. We ask people to participate in a study, they agree, they sit in front of a computer. You get hypothetical financial problems: your car breaks down, it’s going to take some money to fix. While you’re thinking about how you’re going to fix this problem, we’ll give you a couple of classic cognitive tests that have been used in literature, in experimental studies quite a bit. The cognitive control task is sort of a divided attention, executive control – think about it as divided as driving, it’s how well you can manage, you have to answer same side if it’s a heart, opposite side it’s a flower, it’s very confusing. We know for a fact after many studies if you’re tired or distracted you do less well, you’re slower, and you make more errors, so that’s a driving test. The other one, the Raven Progressive matrices, is basically an IQ test. It’s used, these actual questions are used in SAT and GRE tests. It captures working memory in intelligence.
So these subjects now got these problems – either a hard problem where the car is going to cost a lot, or, or an easy problem or it’s going to cost not too much to fix. They answer, they, they play these games and independently we get a, a reading of their self-reported annual household income. We divide them by median split into rich and poor and let’s see how they do in these tests, on these games. If you look at the rich, whether they get the easy or the hard financial problem, they do equally well. If you look at the poor in the Jersey mall, when the problem is easy, when a car is not hard to fix, they do just as well as the rich. When the problem is challenging, they are driving less well. And the argument is when you’re poor and driving in America there are a lot of challenging problems in the back of your mind all the time.
The other question. The rich – when you look at the IQ test, whether it’s an easy or hard problem – they do equally well. The poor do comparably well when the problem is easy. They are less intelligent when there’s a difficult problem that concerns them in the back of their minds. So when you’re going around with difficulties packing, this actually impacts your performance in ways that are detectable and consequential.
You could say the rich and the poor, it’s a problem, it’s different. One is more strength than the other one, is more educated than the other. We’ve controlled for all that; nonetheless, the dream would be, can we show this in a single subject, not different.
We found a solution. These are sugar cane farmers in India. They have their sugar cane harvest is once a year. Because these people are living under great scarcity, they fail to smooth, they end up being poor before the harvest and rich after, after they sell harvest. So we go to the same people now, four months apart, just before harvest, just after harvest, and give them these questions and they do less well. They look poor before the harvest and they do better – the same individual, smarter – after the harvest.
Suggesting again that to some extent your ability, your intelligence, your ability to drive, all depends on this psychology that emerges under scarcity that makes life just a lot more difficult to to deal with.
So the irony of scarcity: the poor have much harder, more difficult problems to solve. Their problem, their packing challenges, are extreme and persistent. They face many more temptations by sheer fact that they cannot afford things that otherwise will
be considered standard. And they’re constantly under scarcity, which is depleting. At the same time, they are in situations that make the solution much more hard, much more difficult to come by. Society stereotypes are less helpful. They are stressed and depleted from the, from the need to solve their problems and as a result they fail much more often. And why is this important, it’s important because I think to some extent we policy makers have failed to appreciate the impact and relevance of scarcity on people’s lives, and a design of policy that alleviates scarcity, makes it more possible to deal with, and provides aids, might actually elicit behaviors that are more capable and more competent than we’ve seen so far. So that’s the, that’s the program. Thank you.
Attribution
Transcript for “TEDxMidAtlantic 2011 – Eldar Shafir – Living Under Scarcity” by TEDx Talks is included under fair use.
Transcript for Figure 12.3, What It’s Like To Be Intersex
[Pidgeon Pagonis]: Raise your hands if you have testes.
[Emily raises hand, smiles.]
[Pidgeon]: I’m Pidgeon.
[Alice Alvarez]: I’m Alice.
[Emily Quinn]: I’m Emily.
[Sean Saifa Wall]: I’m Saifa.
[All]: And we are intersexy.
[Text on screen: What does intersex mean?]
[Emily]: Intersex describes a person who doesn’t fit the typical definition of male or female.
[Text on screen: They may have variations in their gonads, chromosomes, OR genitalia.]
[Alice]: I have XY chromosomes but typical female genitalia.
[Emily]: I’m a girl who has testes and XY chromosomes.
[Pidgeon]: I identify as a queer gender, non-conforming intersex person.
[Saifa]: I identify as a black intersex man.
[Text on screen: 1 in 2,000 people are born intersex.]
[Pidgeon]: Intersex is not new. It’s been around since the beginning of human existence. I mean, there’s probably even intersex dinosaurs, if you think about it.
[Text on screen: Is intersex the same as transgender?]
[Emily]: Transgender has to deal with your gender identity, whereas intersex has to deal with your biological characteristics.
[Saifa]: Often, intersex people get surgeries that they don’t want, and transgender people have to fight for surgeries that they do want.
[Text on screen: Doctors often perform “normalizing” surgery on intersex people without medical reasons.]
[Saifa]: They gave my mom the excuse that the internal testes were cancerous, that I would develop cancer.
[Pidgeon]: They didn’t even come up with an excuse, basically, in terms of a health-related reason. They, instead, just said it was about the appearance.
[Emily]: A lot of doctors are very uncomfortable with the idea that I have testes, and they’re still trying to get them removed. But I’m perfectly healthy, and there’s nothing wrong with them.
[Text on screen: Medical records are often kept secret from intersex people.]
[Alice]: They did a surgery to remove my testes, and told my parents to take me home and just raise me as a girl. I didn’t find out about it myself until I was 12.
[Saifa]: There aren’t a lot of options or medical providers don’t explore other options.
[Text on screen: Doctors removed Saifa’s testes at age 13 because they “may cause cancer”… even though he always identified as a boy.]
[Saifa]: My mom would put me in dresses, and she would be like, “Oh, aren’t you so cute, you’re so pretty.” And I would be like, “No, this is horrible!”
I was put on hormonal treatment which consisted of estrogen and progesterone.
I just wanted to belong, I wanted to fit in. I didn’t want to be different. So, even though I knew something felt amiss, I conformed.
[Text on screen: Saifa recently met with the doctor who removed his testes. The doctor had no regrets about the operation.]
He was very condescending. He was like, “You intersex activists don’t know what you’re talking about.”
[Text on screen: These unnecessary surgeries still occur today.]
[Emily]: It’s difficult for intersex people to find each other because from an early age, we’re told not to talk about our bodies.
[Saifa]: I did feel like I was the only one.
[Emily]: My doctors always told me there was nobody else like me. And so, it just perpetuates a vicious cycle of shame and stigma that we can’t break out of.
[Text on screen: What message would you give an intersex person?]
[Emily]: I would tell another intersex person that you are worthy. You are loveable.
[Saifa]: Your body is beautiful, you’re beautiful.
[Alice]: Intersex people don’t need to be fixed. There’s nothing wrong with them.
[Pidgeon]: I know you feel like you might not be able to get through this. I know you might have really dark thoughts. But I want you to know that meeting other intersex people and finding a community or a support group can be one of the most important aspects in your healing process.
And we’re out there, we’re out here. We’re here. And I just hope you can find us.
Attribution
Transcript for “What It’s Like To Be Intersex” by As/Is is included under fair use.
Transcript for Figure 13.1, Piaget – Stage 4 – Formal – Deductive Reasoning
[Teacher]: It says if you hit a glass with a hammer, the glass will break.
[Child 1, a younger student]: I knew that.
[Teacher]: And then this one says, “Don hit a glass with a hammer.”
[Child 1]: I knew that too.
[Teacher]: So what happened to the glass?
[Child 1]: It broke.
[Teacher]: It broke? Why did it break?
[Child 1]: Because the hammer’s hard.
[Teacher]: If you hit a glass with a feather, the glass will break.
[Child 1]: No!
[Teacher]: And this is the second rule. Don hit a glass with a feather. What happened to the glass?
[Child 1]: Nothing. Nothing happened.
[Teacher]: Why didn’t anything happen?
[Child 1]: Because the feather is soft.
[Teacher]: The first one says, “If you hit a glass with a feather the glass will break.”
[Child 2, an older student]: Okay.
[Teacher]: And the second one: “Don hit a glass with a feather. What happened to the glass?”
[Child 2]: It broke.
[Teacher]: And why did it break?
[Child 2]: Because the rule says if you hit a glass with a feather, it’ll break. So if you hit a glass with a feather, it broke.
Attribution
Transcript for “Piaget – Stage 4 – Formal – Deductive Reasoning” by Fi3021 is included under fair use.
Transcript for Figure 13.4, Information processing model: Sensory, working, and long term memory
[Carole Yue, Narrator]: Take a second to think about everything you’ve done today. You’ve taken in way more information than you could possibly remember in detail– things you’ve seen, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted. But somehow, some information gets stored in a way that lets you access it later. So what makes this process work?
Our brains are really complicated, so scientists have come up with models to represent how our brain takes in and makes sense of information in our environment.
Information processing model
One of the most influential models is the information-processing model, which proposes that our brains are similar to computers – we get input from the environment, process it, and output decisions. It’s important to note that this model doesn’t really
describe where things happen in the brain. It’s more conceptual.
Sensory memory
The first stage, then, is getting the input, which occurs in sensory memory. This is sometimes also called the sensory register, so if you hear that term, just know it’s the same thing as sensory memory. And this is where you first interact with the information in your environment. It’s a temporary register of all the information your senses are taking in. Even though you have five senses, the two most studied in terms of memory are sight and sound. So within sensory memory, you have iconic memory, which is memory for what you see, and echoic memory, which is memory for what you hear.
One of the really interesting things about sensory memory is that it lasts a different amount of time depending on the modality of the information coming in. So visual information is incredibly vivid, but it only lasts for less than half a second. Auditory information, on the other hand, lasts a little bit longer. It lasts for about three or four seconds. So if you’ve ever tuned out of a conversation and your friend gets mad that you’re not listening to them, you can thank echoic memory for helping you remember the last thing they actually said.
Working memory
So we have a ton of information coming into our sensory memory, but we can’t possibly process all of it. We decide what to pay attention to, and that gets passed along into working memory to be processed. Working memory is just whatever you’re thinking about right at this moment. And it’s also called short-term memory, but we’re going to stick with working memory because that’s what psychologists call it.
Working memory capacity works a little bit differently. It’s not defined by time so much as quantity. Just remember the magic number seven. Your working memory can hold about seven plus or minus two pieces of information at a time, so about five to nine. This does vary a little bit based on how complicated those pieces of information are, how old you are, that kind of thing. But generally, it’s right around seven. And an interesting fact is that this is actually why phone numbers started out as seven digits long. It was determined that that’s as many pieces of information as a person could hold in mind without getting numbers confused or mixing them up. And just like sensory memory has different components for different types of input, working memory has different components to process those distinct types of input.
Working memory components
Visual and spatial information, like pictures and maps, are processed in the aptly-named visuo-spatial sketchpad, while verbal information, meaning words and numbers, are processed in the phonological loop. Again, think of repeating a phone number to yourself just long enough to type it in. That’s using your phonological loop. Be careful here, though. “Verbal information” means any words and numbers, so words and numbers you heard that came from the echoic memory, and words and numbers you saw that came from iconic memory. So we’ve got a little bit of mix-and-match here.
Now, you might be thinking that sometimes you need to process input place that has verbal and visual information together, such as a map with street names and landmarks. In that case, you need someone to coordinate the efforts of the visuo-spatial sketchpad
and the phonological loop. So something called the central executive fills that role. You can think of him kind of like a traffic cop who directs the other components of working memory. Once the central executive tells the visuo-spatial sketchpad and the phonological loop to coordinate, then they create an integrated representation that gets stored in the episodic buffer, which acts as a connector to long-term memory.
Long-term memory components
Long-term memory is the final stage in the information processing model. When stuff gets in here, it’s like hitting the Save button on your computer. Unfortunately, our memories aren’t quite as foolproof as that. It doesn’t work perfectly. But we can store a lot of information in long-term memory.
Once again, there are different components that specialize in different types of memories. We have two main categories — explicit, also called declarative, and implicit, also called non-declarative. As you can see, psychologists like to give these things multiple names, but fortunately, they can generally be broken down into something that makes sense, so don’t get intimidated. Explicit memories, for example, are facts or events that you can clearly or explicitly describe. So any time you take a vocabulary test or remember the state capitals, you’re using a specific type of explicit memory called semantic memory. And “semantic” just means “having to do with words,” so you can think about it as being able to remember simple facts like the meaning of words.
A second type of explicit memory is called episodic memory, which is memory for events, like your last birthday party. Just like a TV episode is a sequence of events, your episodic memory stores event-related memories. While explicit memories are easy to define, implicit memories are a little bit fuzzier. They involve things you may not be able to articulate, such as how to ride a bicycle. You probably can’t say clearly how much pressure to put on the pedals or exactly how to turn the handlebars. But provided that you ever learned in the first place, if you get on a bike and just do it, you probably won’t fall over. Memories for procedures like riding a bike are conveniently called “procedural memories.”
The last type of implicit memory is called priming, which means that previous experience influences your current interpretation of an event. For example, if I say the word “hair,” what do you think of? If you paid attention at the beginning of this video, then you might have thought of “hair” as “H-A-R-E,” meaning “rabbit,” because you were primed with the bunny picture at the beginning. Your recent experience of seeing a bunny stayed in your memory and influenced your interpretation of the word that I said. If you weren’t paying attention, or if you’ve maybe had to push your hair out of your face in the last few minutes, then you might have thought of “hair” as “H-A-I-R,” because it’s generally a more common word.
With all these components of memory, you might be wondering how much it can actually hold. I think we’ve all had the feeling that we can’t possibly take in any more information, and while it might be true but you can’t process any more information at the moment, unlike like the computer in front of you, as far as we know, long-term memory capacity is unlimited. So your brain never actually gets too full for more information.
Attribution
Transcript for “Information processing model: Sensory, working, and long term memory | MCAT | Khan Academy” by khanacademymedicine is included under fair use.
Transcript for Figure 13.5, Shannon Odell: What’s the smartest age? | TED Talk
What is the smartest age? Perhaps a day of friendly competition will lead us to the answer.
Tomorrow’s the annual Brain Clash— ten teams of two competing in a decathlon of mental challenges, trivia competitions, and puzzles. I’ve been training all year. I’ll need to pick the smartest, most capable teammate. I’ve narrowed down the roster.
First we have Gabriela. She may only be 8, but don’t underestimate her! She’s fluent in two languages and is the ultimate outside-the-box thinker.
Then there’s Ama. She can recite 100 digits of pi, designs satellites for a living, and bakes a perfect soufflé.
Or I could go with Mr. Taylor. He’s the best chess player in the neighborhood, not to mention he’s competed in over 20 Brain Clashes and is a five-time champion! I’m not sure who to pick! Who’s the smartest?
Which of these teammates should Amir choose for tomorrow’s contest and why? Of course, it depends.
While intelligence is often associated with things like IQ tests, these assessments fail to capture the scope and depth of a person’s varied abilities. So instead, we’ll break down the idea of “smart” into categories like creativity, memory, and learning and explore when the brain’s best at each of them.
Let’s start at the very beginning. In the first few years of life, your brain undergoes incredible rapid growth, called synaptogenesis, where more than 1 million new neural connections are formed every second.
As the brain develops, it goes through a pruning process. Based on your experience and environment, used connections are strengthened and unused connections are removed. Frequently used neuronal pathways are myelinated, wrapped in a layer of insulation, allowing information to travel faster. This creates a more efficient, fine-tuned brain. But this brain remodeling happens within and between brain regions at different times, allowing different skills to flourish at different ages.
For example, in childhood, brain regions involved in language learning develop quickly, which is why many children can learn and master multiple languages. Yet the prefrontal cortex, a brain region responsible for cognitive control and inhibition, is slower to develop. As a result, some young children may struggle with strategic games, such as chess or checkers, which require constant concentration, planning, and abstract thought. At the same time, children tend to be more flexible, exploration-based learners. They often use more creative approaches when finding solutions to riddles and are, on average, less afraid to make mistakes.
But adults have their own unique set of abilities. Adults benefit from a well-developed prefrontal cortex, allowing them to better execute skills that require learning, focus, and memory, making them quick and efficient puzzle solvers or crossword masters.
Late in adulthood, these same skills may decline as the brain’s memory center, known as the hippocampus, shrinks. But there’s a reason for the phrase “older and wiser.” After a lifetime of learning, older adults have more knowledge to recall and utilize, making them excellent trivia partners.
Other factors that Amir should consider are his own strengths. As an adolescent, the prefrontal cortical regions of your brain are more developed than in childhood. This allows you to better navigate logic and math puzzles. Simultaneously, deep inside the brain, regions that are important in motivation and reward are developing even faster, driving teenagers like Amir to be curious and adventurous learners.
In many ways, you can think of the teenager as a jack-of-all-trades, with brains wired to seek out new experiences and learn quickly. You’re at a dynamic stage, where the choices you make and the skills you focus on can actually guide the development of your brain.
So, what’s the smartest age? There’s no single answer. It’s 8, 16, 25, 65, and everything in between; our brains have adapted to prioritize different skills at various ages to meet that stage of life’s challenges and demands. So no matter who Amir picks, having an age-diverse team is a good strategy.
Attribution
Transcript for “What’s the smartest age?” by TedEd is included under fair use.
Transcript for Figure 14.3, Kohlberg’s Moral Development Theory
[Researcher]: What is your name?
[Alex, Subject 1]: Alex.
[Researcher]: And how old are you, Alex?
[Alex]: Twelve.
[Researcher]: And what grade are you in?
[Alex]: Sixth – seventh grade.
[Researcher]: Okay, I’m gonna ask you a question. I just want you to respond to me the best you can. A man’s wife is dying of a very severe illness and needs a medicine that costs a lot of money. He doesn’t have enough to pay for it so he decides to break into a store and steal it in order to save his wife’s life. Did the husband do the right thing?
[Alex]: No, because he should’ve, like, tried to find an organization that would help him raise money or raising his money himself to buy the medicine.
[Researcher]: That’s a good idea. And what do you think he should do now, since he already, like, went in and broken – and broke the law?
[Alex]: Find a way for his wife to get cured and that’s it.
…
[Adult male, Subject 2]: Okay, no he didn’t do the right thing. A couple of reasons. One is, we would live in a very chaotic society if every individual interpreted their own experience and acted on it irrespective of laws and rules. The second reason is, well, I would approach this individual and ask them what resources they have or feel that they don’t have and help them avail of those available resources. There’s medication assistance programs, there’s all kinds of social agencies and I would bet that that individual didn’t access all available opportunities.
[Researcher]: All right, thank you.
…
[Researcher]: Did the husband do the right thing?
[Child, Subject 3]: No, because you’re not supposed to break into stores.
[Researcher]: Okay, and what should he have done?
[Child]: Just earn the money.
[Researcher]: Just like by working or something?
[Child]: Yeah.
[Researcher]: What should he do now?
[Child]: Return the money.
[Researcher]: Return the money or the medicine? All right.
…
[Young adult female, Subject 4]: Okay, first it’s a very hard question. I really don’t know because I can see both ways. I can see where obviously he’s breaking laws and breaking in and stealing something and so that’s a wrong thing, but then at the same time the fact that his wife is going to die because he doesn’t have the money to buy the medicine is the wrong thing, it’s not a just thing. So I mean, I would, I guess I would say if he had exhausted every single possible resource trying to get her the medicine and still was not able to get it then, yeah.
…
[Adult female, Subject 5]: No. I can understand his reasoning for wanting to save her life but the consequences would be more detrimental and I think he probably should look into other resources, if other agencies are available, if anything take it to the ER and they will have to treat it.
[Researcher]: Good answer.
…
[Researcher]: What is your name?
[Shane, Subject 6]: Shane.
[Researcher]: And how old are you?
[Shane]: Seven.
[Researcher]: And what grade are you in?
[Shane]: Second.
[Researcher]: Okay, Shane, I’m gonna ask you a question. I want you to answer for me.
[Shane]: Okay.
[Researcher]: Okay. A man’s wife is dying of a very severe illness and needs a medicine that cost a lot of money. He doesn’t have enough money to pay for it, so he decides to break into the store and steal it in order to save his wife’s life. Did the husband do the right thing?
[Shane]: No, because he should just make a garage sale instead.
[Researcher]: He should make a garage sale?
[Shane]: Yeah.
[Researcher]: Yeah? What do you think he should do since he already broke in? Should he go to turn himself in or – ?
[Shane]: He should turn himself in and tell them if someone can take care.
[Researcher]: Take care of his wife? All right. Thank you.
Attribution
Transcript for “Kohlberg’s Moral Development Theory” by Float is included under fair use.
