unplugged scaffolding

Because the birthday of one of the children is comming up, I've searched and found a few books and games that you might like. Usually I give something for their birthday that is a developmental challenge for the child at that time.
The books are in Dutch but the games might be interesting. I'm going to give a link to a dutch site and try to find an English counterpart. Thinkfun, Dutch site that delivers pretty good games and a site that describes abstract games are among my favorite. Wooden puzzle challenges can be difficult even for very bright children. That's good!

I love difficult.

why some schools have underachievement

Underachievement. I tried to find an article that had the title: "why some schools have underachievement." (in dutch) but couldn't, because I live too far from real libraries, except for internet. Some articles are cited in other articles and are difficult to get.
Maybe I should have tried harder. I had other things to do. Because now it seems that this school has it.
When turning to the web, I come up with this (incomplete) list:
immigration difficulties
material deprivation and labelling
being a boy
communication skills

hmmm... I'm wondering whether underachieving is influenced by culture. In the Netherlands, the culture of "don't raise your head above the mowing field" is said to be one of the causes of underachievement.

about Proust

I read a book about Proustian love, from I. van Krogten. This was not recently, but it was when I was a student. Amazingly, in the library of Psychology in Amsterdam, there was not even a handful of books about love. This may reflect a cultural trait or the struggle of the department to distance itself from Freud. Interestingly enough in the same period, in Italy there seemed to be an abundant amount of literature about love.
I picture the image of a dutch painting. A dutch woman looks tired and hungry when she plants seeds in the soil. In the Netherlands, the climate did not allow for two harvests and life was harsh for peasants.

list of learning

I came across a list of different types of learning. From algorithms to decision trees, to-down, Q-learning and bayesian learning. I'm also putting the link in my linksroll.
Neural networks defines top-down learning as a set of cascades of rules. An article that takes time to understand. Did he say that it will take many years before we can program a robot to 'decide' how to answer to spoken language (top-down)?

U = E x V / I x D

A few weeks ago I gave you this difficult puzzle: what does the equation U = E x V / I x D signify? hint: (probably Social) Psychology.


I gave a hint: E is for Expectation of success
Another hint is that V is the value of completion of a task

Who finds out what is the answer gets on top of my blogroll.

Are altruistic people better observers?

Do people that are altruistic look more at other people and metathink more about them? Or do people that look and think more about other people behave more altruisticaly? The interesting outcome of an experiment gives rise to more questions, as is often the case in Psychology due to it's pioneer status. (precisely the reason why I like Psychology)
The absence of activity in the area that is responsible for getting a reward is even more puzzling. This does support my own thought that humans that can do metathinking prefer that over lower reaction patterns and it is in my opinion support for the hierarchy of Kohlberg (stages of moral reasoning ).
In an article of E.J. Mundell at the Washington Post a description of a research published by Huettel and Tankersley online in an issue of Nature Neuroscience.

Puzzle: U = E x V / I x D ?

Puzzle: what does the equation U = E x V / I x D signify? hint: (probably Social) Psychology.

Shakespear and grammar

Biological psychology and cognitive psychology are separated by several levels of explanation. This means that there are many steps between what happens when there is a change in chemicals in the brain and when a person thinks. This does not mean that there is no direct effect from the one on the other. This blog on britannica suggests there is an effect from reading Shakespeare on the brainwave patterns. The same effect that happens when reading a change in grammar.

wednesday, schools out.

This is my first post. Hello, I'm a mother and the weather is very good here in the North of the Netherlands. The hottest november in 300 years. We just had voting day last week and I wasn't happy about the polarisation that took place.
I'm also a writer about a psychological subject: thinking. I just finished writing the manuscript and I already have a problem. Someone wants my advice on my subject: conceptual thinking. It's about her child that has problems at school. The story sounds like one on underachieving. But there is also another angle to it.
Why isn't my book published yet? I have people who want to buy it... I have a publisher reading the manuscript in Belgium, and one form filled in at a New York agency. My sister was an au-pair for a year at New York. But as I understand it, it is important to have a platform, this is a word that I find an example of a fuzzy concept.
What's a platform? I searched for the answer to this question and found the answer at http://misssnark.blogspot.com/2006/11/platform-2.html
My speciality is how to help the development of children. Learning problems related to high intelligence.
Feel free to ask questions. The subject of my book is typically also interesting for adults. E.g my brother in law was interested and he works in hightech design.
But in the mean time I'll be a rolemodel for Europeans who prefer to publish non-fiction in American English.

Odile