Kathryn Friedlander takes a look at an alternative way of studying expertise, the Grounded Expertise Components Approach, suggesting that this might address some pitfalls of previous research.
We’ve all seen the long-running arguments over ‘expertise’ … Are the world’s greatest performers endowed at birth with a lucky genetic advantage? Or are they trained to excel through 10,000 hours of gruelling practice? Or perhaps a blend of both?
Kathryn Friedlander explores the ‘kick’ we get from cracking a really good cryptic crossword clue.
A number of stories in the press earlier this year reported work carried out in Vienna and London on solving puzzles in a brain scanner. The study suggested that solving a clue to a puzzle can trigger a highly rewarding ‘Aha!’ (or ‘Eureka!’) insight moment, which releases dopamine into the brain. This is the reward chemical associated with daily activities such as eating, winning money … and having sex. This led to headlines promising that cryptic crosswords were ‘better than sex’… but what’s the reality behind the hype?
Gill Hill explains why investigating creative problem solving is sometimes – quite literally – child’s play.
People might be surprised to hear that the games they played as children can help scientists to explain how people think. For example, researchers have recently used rock, paper scissors as a model for decision making. Furthermore, chess is seen as a pursuit for ‘thinkers’ around the world, and we have consequently seen lots of research exploring psychological processes whilst people play.
Kathryn Friedlander invites creativity researchers world-wide to contribute to an exciting Frontiers in Psychology Research Topic, which went live last week.
Shouldn’t research into ‘creativity’ be pretty creative itself?
Philip Fine and I certainly think so, which is why we’ve been working with Frontiers in Psychology over the past few months to launch a new Research Topic looking at ‘Novel Approaches for Studying Creativity in Problem-Solving and Artistic Performance‘. The topic went live last week, and together with our other co-editors Roger Kneebone, Ian Hocking, Amory Danek and Bill Thompson we are busy advertising this opportunity as widely as possible, to connect with potential contributors. Do you fit the bill?
Kathryn Friedlander reviews ‘The Joy of Quiz‘ and explores its relevance to the study of expert performance, puzzle solving and niche hobbies.
‘Here’s a question: ‘Why do we spend our childhood in fear of exams, then quite willingly put ourselves through pretty much the same tests as adults?’ … The short answer is: fun. The joy of quiz is in making a gratifying game out of all that knowledge sploshing around in our heads – fascinating information, but information for which our jobs and our personal lives stubbornly refuse to find any use’.
So begins this engaging romp through the world of quizzing: an engrossing compendium of trivia and analysis drawn from social history, psychology and real-life ‘behind-the-scenes’ knowledge, based on Alan Connor‘s own experiences as a quiz editor for the BBC2 quiz Only Connect.
Philip Fine discusses research revealing the factors behind how well we understand song lyrics
Have you ever wondered why you can’t always understand the words someone is singing? Or why operatic sopranos are so hard to understand? And why the words are usually clearer in folk than in heavy rock?
Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear?
Sometimes we mishear the lyrics, and this is such a common phenomenon that there’s even a word for it: Mondegreen, coined in 1954, which comes from a mishearing of the ballad line ‘laid him on the green’ as ‘Lady Mondegreen’. Other well-known examples include the hymn line ‘Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear’ (think teddy with a squint) and ‘O Four Tuna’ (‘O Fortuna’ from the start of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana).
Study reveals what it takes to become a cryptic crossword expert – and it’s more than just practice
You may have heard of the “10,000-hour rule”, the belief that it takes thousands of hours of intense practice to become an expert in something. Training and practice are clearly vitally important in many highly competitive areas such as sports, music and chess. But is that really all it takes to achieve greatness?
Recent research suggests that other factors such as genetics influence the likelihood that you will try, enjoy and excel at a performance activity. We decided to test that theory in the highly challenging arena of cryptic crossword solving. Continue reading
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