Author Archives: Joseph

About Joseph

Compassion, imagination, wonder and rational thought are among the greatest human attributes. It seems to me there's no better time than now to exhibit them!

Simple Action Improves Test Scores

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Can a bottle of water make you smarter?

Can a bottle of water make you smarter?

Researchers from the University of East London and the University of Westminster in the UK have discovered an interesting correlation between test grades and water bottles. To wit: students who brought a water bottle with them into the testing room consistently scored higher than those who did not bring a water bottle with them.

Further, those same students who did well with a bottle of water fared less favorably when they failed to bring a water bottle with them.

The researchers did not determine whether or not the students actually drank the water, but presumably they did, so the correlation may be with the consumption of water during a test.

Still, the fact that a simple bottle of water can improve test scores might stir me to bring one along just in case.

Source:
Catharine Paddock PhD. (2012, April 20). “Bringing Water Into Exams May Improve Grades.” Medical News Today. Retrieved from
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/244299.php.

Problems with Expectation

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Remembering past failures can set you up for present failure.

Remembering past failures can set you up for present failure.

So, you’re looking forward to that final exam. Trouble is, you didn’t do so well on the mid-term – and now you’re worried sick you’ll fail the final. To avoid a repeat performance, you ready yourself by studying all night, losing precious sleep time in the process. Then, the final exam, and true to your expectation, you fail and have to take the term all over again!

If researchers are correct, your perception of this term’s math tests will be overly negative because you expect to retake the course (and the tests).

According to a study on perception, researchers discovered what seems intuitive to me – that if you have a negative experience and expect to repeat it, you’ll perceive the past and future events even more negatively than had you been done with the experience the first time (in other words, not expecting it to repeat it in the future).

That negative perception can strengthen you against future negative experiences or set you up for far worse due to the power of expectation. In general, what you expect tends to come to pass. So, expecting a future event to be very negative tends to set it up to meet your expectations. Having endured a negative experience with the expectation of more of the same seems to me a perfect setup for an even more negative outcome.

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Men’s Minds Ruled Above the Waist?

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Finally somebody is saying my male brain is not ruled by a soft body part below my waist!

Finally somebody is saying my male brain is not ruled by a soft body part below my waist!

Who’d a’thunk it? Researchers from Griffith University in Australia reviewed data and conducted their own experiments and concluded:

“Upper body strength in adult males is a crucial variable that appears to have impacts on a wide range of mental mechanisms. These mechanisms were designed by natural selection at a time when personal physical aggression was far more common and individual differences in fighting ability were far more relevant for the resolution of conflicts. Despite the steady decline in physical aggression and violent deaths that have accompanied Western civilization, the human mind is still designed for ancestral environments.”

Why do I love this study? Because for once somebody is saying my male brain is not ruled by a soft body part below my waist! Leave it to the Aussies to look elsewhere. Cheers, mates!

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Make the Most of RET with Result Testing

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Want to succeed at finals? Get a really good night's sleep the night before.

Want to succeed at finals? Get a really good night's sleep the night before.

After a good night’s sleep, people remember information better when they know it will be useful in the future. The findings suggest that the brain evaluates memories during sleep and preferentially retains the information that is most likely to be needed again in the future.

Humans deal with huge amounts of information every day. Most is stored in memories, but the majority is quickly forgotten. How does the brain decide what to keep and what to forget? Apparently it has to do with a selection formula:

“Our results show that memory consolidation during sleep indeed involves a basic selection process that determines which of the many pieces of the day’s information is sent to long-term storage. Our findings also indicate that information relevant for future demands is selected foremost for storage.” (Jan Born, PhD, of the University of Lübeck in Germany)

The research team devised several very clever experiments to determine exactly how this selection works. Using fMRI and other electronic testing methods, they were also able to determine when such filtering occurred.

“The more slow [brain] wave activity the sleeping participants had, the better their memory was during the recall test 10 hours later,” Born said. The study authors suggest that the brain “tags” memories while awake and then consolidates them during sleep.

This would be akin to the day shift working on a report and telling the night shift to, “Put all the pages marked with red tags into the red filing cabinet, the green tagged pages in the green cabinet, and toss the untagged pages while you’re at it…”

My recommendation base on this study’s results:

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Biggest Loser Winner Reveals Weight Loss Secret in Magazine Article

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The June 8th, 2009 issue of Life & Style Magazine reveals that Matt Hoover (Season 2 Winner of NBC's The Biggest Loser) gained back most of the weight he lost on the show!

The June 8th, 2009 issue of Life & Style Magazine reveals that Matt Hoover (Season 2 Winner of NBC’s The Biggest Loser) gained back most of the weight he lost on the show!

Perhaps you, too, read the article revealing that Matt Hoover (Season 2 Winner of NBC’s The Biggest Loser) gained back most of the weight he lost on the show!

My guess is that without the isolation, the cooks, and the drill sergeant personal trainers, he couldn’t keep up the strict regimen.

“When I got home, I quickly realized I wasn’t equipped to deal with the temptations of the real world.”

In January 2009, Matt discovered a 4 CD Hypnosis Program created by Dr. Roberta Temes, who is on the Department of Psychiatry at the SUNY Health Science Center Medical School and the editor of the first hypnosis textbook used by thousands worldwide in medical schools.

A meta-analysis published in The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (1996) reveals that hypnosis with a credible practitioner, “can increase weight loss by an astonishing 146% over the long term.”

Matt’s story certainly confirms this:

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