The Extended Mind – The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

Last week I finished reading ?????? ???????????????? ???????? – ?????? ?????????? ???? ???????????????? ?????????????? ?????? ?????????? by Annie Murphy Paul.

This is one #excellent #book on how we think – challenging conventions and offering a framework for us to think & perform better.

Hugely recommended. ????

The central premise of the book is that we don’t think just with our #brains – we actually extend it to the world. Paul, digs into loads of fascinating research to back her arguments, suggests thinking outside the brain happens in three key domains -??????? ????????, ?????? ????????????????????????, ?????? ?????? ??????????????????????????. Each sections further has 3 chapters in the book.

Here are some key points from each of the 9 chapters:

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????????????????????: Our bodies know what’s going on and actually lead the way in making judgements. #Interoception – the awareness of the inner state of the body can be deliberately cultivated (mindfulness meditation is one way) to make use of non-conscious knowledge. And apparently our bodies can be #more #rational than our brain, as they are not subject to cognitive biases. The interoceptive champions among us may be the clinical psychologists, who are professionally trained to read their own bodies’ signals for clues to what their patients are feeling – even when their clients are not yet able to verbalize their emotions. Instead of "?? ??????????, ?????????????????? ?? ????”, “?? ????????, ?????????????????? ?? ????” seems more appropriate.

????????????????: How we move our bodies affects how we think. Paul says “thinking while moving brings the full range of our faculties into play”. Scientists draw what they call an “inverted U-shaped curve” to describe the relationship between exercise intensity and cognitive function, with the greatest benefit for thinking detected in the moderate intensity middle part of the hump. Some implications - children should have more physical activities in schools, should have standing desks, even fidgeting is useful, adults may take active breaks for short walks during the day etc.

??????????????: Linguists theorize that gesture was humankind’s earliest language, flourishing long before the first word was spoken. Gesture conveys things we don’t say: they even convey things we ??????’?? say – because we don’t have the words. While language is discrete and linear, gesture is impressionist and holistic, conveying an immediate sense of how things look & feel and more. Far from tagging along as speech’s clumsy companion, gesture represents the leading edge of out thought. Scientists speculate that gestures help give shape to an incipient notion still forming in our minds.

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Thinking with our surroundings (Situated Cognition):

Natural spaces: All of us think differently depending on where we are, unlike a laptop which functions same everywhere. 'Natural scenery' employs the mind without fatigue and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body, gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system. Rumination (visiting negative thoughts over and over again) is common is those who are depressed, and research shows that a walk in nature lifts the mood of such people. Apparently our brains are optimized to process the #fractal (a pattern in which the same motif is repeated at differing scales) characteristics of natural scenes; hundreds of thousands of years of evolution have “tuned” our perceptual faculties to the way visual information is structured in natural environments. With natural surrounding patients recover faster, children focus better, and we become more curious and open minded.

Build spaces: Walls protect us from the #cognitive #load of having to keep track of the activities of strangers. They also provide us with privacy which helps #creativity and #experimentation. The open-plan offices discourage exactly the kind of behaviour they intend to promote. Also when we operate in a space that feels like it’s ours (personal photos, achievement certificates, flowers, mugs etc.) – a host of psychological and even physiological changes ensue – a phenomenon known as ‘home advantage’. Hot desking is not a cool thing then. Research suggests that in the presence of cues of identity and cues of affiliation, people perform better.

Space of ideas: Our memories are tagged with a sense of the physical place where the experience occurred. The mental tags are often charged with #emotion – positive or negative making information about place even more memorable. ‘Method loci’, ‘memory palace’ are well known strategies to help improve memory. As Stanford University psychology professor Barbara Tversky?says “We are far better and more experienced at spatial thinking than at abstract thinking. Abstract thought can be difficult in and of itself, but fortunately it can often be mapped onto spatial thought in one way or another. That way, spatial thinking can substitute for and scaffold abstract thought.” White boards, large displays, taking notes, all help us perform better.

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Thinking with our relationships: (Distributed Cognition)

Experts: Research shows that intentionally #imitating someone’s accent allows us to comprehend more easily the words the person is speaking. Greek and Roman thinkers revered imitation as an art in its own right. We should naturally wish to copy what we approve in others. Still imitation is kind of looked down upon in today’s world, and #innovation has become the cult. Paradoxically, imitating well demands a considerable degree of creativity. Imitation is also key because experts are able to articulate only about 30 % of what they know.

Peers: The development of intelligent thinking is fundamentally a social process. The brain stores social information differently than it stores information that is non-social providing the “social encoding advantage”. Encouraging social engagement around a body of knowledge in classrooms helps students learn better. Humans learn best from other (live) humans. Perhaps more surprising, people learn from teaching other people. Letting students teach others is an important way to get them to learn better.

Groups: Research shows that behavioural synchrony – coordinating our actions, including our physical movements, so that they are like the actions of others – primes us for what we might call cognitive synchrony: multiple people thinking together efficiently and effectively. Moving in sync makes us better collaborators. Another research suggests that coworkers who eat together tend to perform at a higher level than their peers, yet cafeterias are often undervalued by companies.

#theextendedmind

#12/2024 #books2024 #books #lovebooks