How your brain's executive function works -- and how to improve it

This book is part of what inspired me to look at the role of values in executive function and self-control development. Pinker reminds us of what people were like in the not-too-distant past and that our common notions of civilized, controlled behavior are relatively recent byproducts of economic and cultural change. He also conveys very vividly (with statistics and detailed descriptions of human life at different points in history) how the value we place on exercising control has served us so well in modernity.

Some viewers may be wondering what to make of research involving the marshmallow test, given recent media reports of a study suggesting the results (specifically the finding that it predicts later life outcomes) failed to replicate in a larger, more diverse sample. This post I wrote clarifies the situation in plain language, arguing that the finding that delaying predicts later academic achievement holds up just fine, and the recent research calling this into question was misinterpreted.

This article is a clear and useful summary of a recent scientific review of cognitive training studies and calls for skepticism and more methodologically sound tests of cognitive training claims.

This journal article describes experiments showing people are more likely to believe explanations if they refer to the brain, which I think is part of why people put their faith in brain training — because it’s not just practicing a skill, it’s changing your neural pathways and tapping into brain plasticity! Somehow that makes it easier to believe that doing very specific, decontextualized exercises on an app or computer could improve cognition much more broadly. This paper came out in 2009, but this “seductive allure” is pretty resilient and you still hear people everywhere dropping “brain” and “synapses” into explanations in order to make them feel more informative.

My research is only valuable — to other scientists and to the public — to the extent that it can be replicated and reproduced. The reliability and credibility of science depends on a scientific culture in which all aspects of the research process are open and transparent — and where plans, analyses, code and materials are shared and available for other researchers to check and use in their own work. Many people are now well aware of the "replication crisis" in the field of psychology (and many other fields), but are perhaps less aware of the dramatic changes that are happening in its wake, including all of the initiatives underway to improve transparency and increase the reliability and credibility of psychological findings. Find out more by visiting the Center for Open Science website.