Archive for the ‘neuroscience’ Category
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
By Michael McCauley
Researchers recently set out to answer a question that dogs educators and parents:
Why are some kids better readers than others?
They used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to study the brain activity of both high and low performing readers. Brain activity turned out to be significantly different in the two groups.
This raised another question: Could the brains of the low performing readers be somehow “trained” to mimic the same brain activity as the high performers? The researchers set about developing a software program, called “Fast ForWord,” to specifically address this question. It turns out that language acquisition has to do with how the brain “hears” and interprets sounds. The software was designed to deliver acoustically modified speech that helped students learn. Over time, new synapses were formed in the brains of the learners, allowing improved language processing. The results were staggering. Initial students that used the software in one-hour daily labs showed significant improvement; there was an average reading level gain of eight months in 29 days.
This research has implications for early learning, but it also has implications for businesses. It demonstrates in a very tangible and measurable way that the brain is trainable. The tired adage that “old dogs can’t learn new tricks” doesn’t apply any more. Given the right stimulus, we can now “train” the brains of lower performers to mimic the activity of top performers, even at an early age. A similar approach can be used to help lower performers in business think and act like the highest performers.
Posted in US education, neuroscience, training | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
By William Seidman
We have observed that there is a noticeable change in the speed and quality of learning when people are feeling good about themselves. Kim Cameron in his book Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance supports this.
Now there is more specific research that shows that a good mood makes learning more effective . A University of Toronto study by Drs. Taylor W. Schmitz, . Eve de Rosa, and Adam K. Anderson, “Opposing Influences of Affective State Valence on Visual Cortical Encoding,” strongly suggests that “seeing the world through rose-colored glasses is more biological reality than metaphor.”
The study team used functional magnetic resonance imaging to look at how the visual cortex processes information when the subject is in a good, bad, or neutral mood. Good moods enhance the size of the window through which we see the world. A bad mood shrinks creativity and productivity. This information is critical in terms of creating an organizational culture worth having.
For the good of your organization, learn to think positively!
Tags: Adam K. Anderson, creativity, Eve de Rosa, functional magnetic resonance imaging, Kim Cameron, organizational culture, positive leadership, positive thinking, productivity, rose-colored glasses, Taylor Schmitz
Posted in affirmations, business, management consulting, neuroleadership, neuroscience, organizational change, personal change, positive leadership | No Comments »
Monday, June 8th, 2009
By Michael McCauley
As we work with companies to maximize their performance we often encounter a rather odd phenomenon: once the people in an organization have changed their behavior and internalized the new way of doing things, they deny ever having done things the old way. Even when we show them data that clearly illustrates the way they used to do things, they still deny that they ever engaged in the old, now outdated, behaviors. They claim that they have always done things the “right” way - i.e., the way they do them now. How can that be?
I’ve been reading an interesting book, Why We Make Mistakes by Joseph Hallinan . Hallinan finds that this tendency to see and remember our actions in self-serving ways is so ingrained, and so subtle, that we often have no idea we’re doing it. He cites a study of recent high school graduates now attending a local college. They were asked to recall their high school grades; researchers compared their remembered grades against the actual transcripts.
They found that no less than 29% of the recalled grades were wrong and far more grades were shifted up than down. This combined with other studies shows a significant predisposition for people to reconstruct their memories in positive, self-flattering ways.
These findings are confirmed by Princeton Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman . He has found that that most people, after they change their mind or behavior, reconstruct their own past opinions in such a way as to truly believe that they always thought or acted in a certain way.
So, it seems that the responses we encounter are perfectly natural - people really don’t remember ever doing things the “old” way. It seems that we all wear “rose colored glasses” -they’re probably hard-wired, and we don’t even know it.
Tags: Daniel Kahneman, Joseph Hallinan, organizational changes, personal change, Princeton, rose-colored glasses, Why We Make Mistakes
Posted in neuroscience, organizational change, personal change | No Comments »
Sunday, June 7th, 2009
By Michael McCauley
Is failure actually good for you? Recent studies by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck indicate that it is. For forty years she has studied how people handle failure, and her research has led her to identify two distinct mindsets that dramatically influence how we react to failure. She’s recently published a new book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, which explains her findings.
A “fixed mindset” is grounded in the belief that talent is genetic - you’re a born artist, baseball pitcher, or math wiz. People with a fixed mindset believe that they are entitled to success without much effort and regard failure as a personal affront. Conversely, a “growth mindset” assumes that no talent is entirely innate and that effort and learning make everything possible. Since the ego isn’t on the line as much, the growth mindset sees failure as opportunity rather than insult.
In her studies, Dr. Dweck tracked and compared brain waves of subjects with both growth and fixed mindsets. She found that when those with a growth mindset fail at something, they actually enter a more focused mental state as they try to figure out their mistake and how to learn from it. On the other hand, those with a fixed mindset never enter this focused state of learning and show little, if any, advancement from failure. In essence, fixed mindset people don’t learn from their mistakes.
Antoine Bechara, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at University of Southern California, has gone further and actually isolated the spots in the brain that are responsible for our fear of failure and our fear of success. These are the points in the brain where we debate risk and reward. By studying brainwaves emanating from these two locations, Dr. Bechara has found that in a normally functioning brain, failure is welcomed as an opportunity for learning, and for strengthening us.
What we learn from these studies is that failure is normal, healthy and necessary to learning. Great coaches and teachers know this, and they give us the opportunities we need to fail in a controlled environment so that we can learn and grow.
Tags: brain, brainwaves, Dr. Antoine Bechara, Dr. Carol Dweck, failure, fixed mindset, growth mindset, Mindset, risk and reward, Stanford University, success, talent, USC
Posted in neuroscience, personal change | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
By William Seidman
Last week, the New York Times ran an interesting article on attention, specifically on Winfred Gallagher’s book Rapt: Attention on the Focused Life. Some conversations I subsequently had got me thinking about attention. One discussion I had was about a teaching technique that spends a lot of time focusing on what people are doing wrong. A reasonable challenge to that theory of learning is, “If you’re focussing on what you’re doing wrong, how will you learn to do it right?” A more complex and complete response has to do with the neuroscience of attention - which magicians/performance artists Penn and Teller know quite a bit about.
Are any of you golfers? Have you ever gone to the tee and said to yourself, “Don’t slice, don’t slice!” What do you immediately do? You slice. It is the same idea for a well-known expression: “Playing the game not to lose.” In sports, and, it turns out, in inherited wealth (check out Lee Brower’s work), when you play a game defensively, you usually lose.
Why is this? When you spend most of your mental resources on what’s wrong, you are getting better at the wrong thing. Instead, we need to focus on the positive - or, how to do the job right.
Tags: attention, attentiveness, defensive play, golf, inherited wealth, Lee Brower, neuroscience of attention, Penn and Teller, Winfred Gallagher
Posted in best practices, business, neuroscience, personal change, positive leadership | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
By Michael McCauley
I read a fascinating article recently by Michael Grunwald in Time magazine. It details how the Obama administration is using the science of change and behavioral economics to move the country in the desired direction. They base their approach on the latest behavioral research, including the findings behind recent best sellers Influence by psychologist Robert Cialdini, Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, and Nudge by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. The approach can be summarized in 4 steps:
Step 1: Make it Clear. Recent studies suggest that better information - in this case information about energy use, diet, our mortgages and credit card rates - helps people make better choices. For example, what if every public company was required to provide a standardized one-page summary of financial information, rather than the voluminous annual reports they provide now? Average people would then be able to compare one company against another and make informed investment choices.
Step 2: Make it Easy. Life is complicated and, given the opportunity, most people tend to take the easy path. For example, in one study, only 36% of women joined a 401(k) plan when they had to sign up for it, but when they were automatically enrolled and had to specifically opt out in order to decline, 86% participated.
Step 3: Make it Popular. Behavioral studies show that nothing drives personal choice quite like the power of conformity. Research shows that homeowners are most likely to save energy and recycle when they think everyone else is doing it, too. The Obama campaign’s ”Get Out The Vote” drive last summer was able to mobilize millions of people with a simple message - “a record turnout is expected.”
Step 4: Make it Mandatory. If all else fails, pass laws that mandate the desired behavior. Laws requiring efficient appliances, health insurance or limits on carbon emissions are examples. Notice that this is seen as a last resort, not the first line of defense. Numerous studies show that mandatory “command and control systems” that require certain behaviors are often vigorously resisted. It is useful only when the all other options (i.e., steps 1-3) fail to result in the desired transformation.
This behavioral approach to change is significantly different from the approaches taken by previous administrations. It will be interesting to watch the results.
Tags: behavioral approach to change, behavorial economics, Dan Ariely, Daniel Kahneman, Michael Grunwald, Obama administration, Robert Cialdini, science of change, Time Magazine
Posted in getting change to "stick", management consulting, neuroleadership, neuroscience, organizational change, personal change | No Comments »
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
By William Seidman
Dr. Michael Posner, Oregon neuroscientist, was recently interviewed by Alvaro Fernandez on the neuroscience of attention/attentiveness and emotional self-regulation. Dr. Posner theorizes that there is a specific portion of the human brain that is used to allocate attention. From this attention comes “effortful control“: the ability to focus attention in order to accomplish a task.
- You can improve your ability to pay attention, making that ability stronger and more effective.
- When you improve attention and attentiveness, performance improves.
We use this notion of attention to focus people on positive deviant content. This teaches people the content, and also teaches them how to attain improved attention. The combination of the two makes for much improved performance.
Tags: Alvaro Fernandez, attention, attentiveness, effortful control, human brain, improving performance, Michael Posner, neuroscience, positive deviant
Posted in neuroscience, optimization, organizational change, personal change, positive deviance, positive deviants | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
By William Seidman
Yesterday I led a webinar for the Ohio Heartland Chapter of the International Society for Performance Improvement. Julie Snyder and Tom Roach of “Leadership Beyond Limits” helped make it happen, and Suki McIntosh of OHISPI hosted.
Our use of the science of positive deviance, best practices research, and change initiatives inspired a key question: Does our scientific approach to change frighten people who are reluctant to change?
My answer: Of course it does! People who don’t want to change resist any method that promises to help them to change.
Our change process - any change process - works only when people want to do something differently and are willing to work to make it happen. Training, videos, digital coaching technology, webinars, binders … none of this drives change with organizations and people who want to stay the same and work in the same old ways. Cerebyte’s success comes from working with organizations, companies, and people who want to change - and want to know how to do it and make it “stick.”
Tags: best practices, digital coaching technology, Julie Snyder, Leadership Beyond Limits, neuroscience and change, OHISPI, organizational change, positive deviance, Suki McIntosh, Tom Rausch
Posted in best practices, getting change to "stick", management consulting, neuroscience, organizational change, personal change | No Comments »
Monday, December 15th, 2008
By Michael McCauley
Can the way we interact with technology alter our neural pathways? Some recent research by Dr. Gary Small, a clinical psychologist at UCLA and an expert on memory, aging, and the brain, indicates that the way we use technology today may be changing the way we read, learn and interact with one other. Dr. Small suggests that a balance between technology and personal interaction is ideal, providing our brains with the opportunity to build circuits focused on technology and social interactions. It seems that this is especially important when it comes to persuasive technologies. Because persuasive technologies both provide some significant advantages over personal persuasion methods, it is reasonable to assume that we will rely on these technologies more in the future.
At Cerebyte we want to integrate the best of persuasive technology with the best of personal interaction going forward. That is why we are so excited by the persuasive coaching model, where persuasive technology is used together with a live coach to facilitate personal transformation. By maintaining the essential person-to-person interaction that Dr. Small believes is necessary to balanced development, the user can “rewire” his or her brain on many levels. In addition, our experience indicates that synergy is created - and it enables much faster transformation than technology or coaching alone would provide.
Tags: aging and the brain, Cerebyte, Gary Small, memory, neural pathways, personal transformation, persuasive coaching, persuasive technology, rewiring brains, technology, UCLA
Posted in neuroscience, persuasive technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
By William Seidman
Research in neuroscience has been sucessfully utilized to improve management. David Rock and Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz’s article “Why Neuroscience Matters to Executives” details important aspects of neuroscience’s contribution to our understanding of how minds work.
The North American NeuroLeadership Summit at the end of October in New York drew change agents from 150 countries - people coming together to better understand the links from neuroscience to human performance and - most importantly - the application of these findings.
Cerebyte takes these findings seriously, and applies them to the businesses we coach. Some of what we do: help create the vision; focus attention, and create useful repetition and reinforcement for long-term change. A replicable and predictable experience for hundreds of people simultaneously reaps real rewards for companies and organizations.
Tags: Business coach, Cerebyte, David Rock, Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, management consulting, management training, neuroscience, North American NeuroLeadership Summit
Posted in business, management consulting, neuroleadership, neuroscience, optimization | No Comments »
