In conversation with Dr. Larry Swanson, Appleman Professor of Biological Sciences, USC, Jonah Lehrer, the author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist and creator of the Frontal Cortex blog draws on cutting-edge research and the real-world experience of a wide range of "deciders" to arm us with the tools we need to think harder (and smarter) about how we think.
http://kcet.org/local/podcasts/aloud/2009/03/how-we-decide.html
Karl Fast’s talk from IA Summit 2009. Awesome, thought-provoking stuff.
Tagged with ias09 cognition thought interaction design epistemic value usability
In this heady conversation, noted cognitive scientist Steven Pinker answers a number of questions about phrases, languages, and other topics pertaining to The Stuff of Thought.
Subjects Discussed: The Starbucks coffee cup size hierarchy, L.A. Story, “divorce project” and unusual noun phrase connotations, perceptive illusions in language, connotation and denotation, polysemy, campus slang and being hip, euphemisms, the unpredictable nature of words and terminology, the origins of “spam,” the absence of specific terms, locative elements of verbs, meanings and brute memorization, “giggle” vs. “Google,” profanity, offensive language, the difficulties of the surname “Koch,” groups adopting pejorative terms, Lenny Bruce’s infamous routines, dysphemisms, whether the Internet truly reflects language, Overheard in New York, William Safire’s columns, linguists being forever behind the language curve, the origins of “not” (from Wayne’s World) and “my bad,” Jerry Fodor’s extreme nativism vs. reductionism, cultural colloquies vs. cultural status, George Lakoff and language as metaphor, the inevitability of metaphor within certain occupations, language and politics, the brain as a computer, the Declaration of Independence, syntactical memes just under the radar, spatial elements and morphemes, memorization, rigid designators and Saul Kripke, given names that are already in the human continuum, and causation within language.
What’s in a memory? An original in the field of memory research, Endel Tulving shares his insights. Mental time-travel through what he terms "episodic memory" may have been one of "the drivers of the evolution of culture". A free-wheeling conversation with Marilyn Powell about memory and the mind.
Tagged with cognition science memory endel tulving thought brain humanity episodic memory