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This is the third podcast for Memory & Mind, a companion program to the Memory Key Newsletter, a monthly newsletter put out by Memory Key dot com, a website devoted to providing information about memory and learning to help you achieve permanent memory improvement.

In this podcast, I will be talking more about concept maps, in the context of the information glut, and the organization processes we need to deal with it. I will also briefly discuss some reports of studies that bear on the broader question of selection. Specifically, of how we don’t always control the process.

^{There is a tsunami of data that is crashing onto the beaches of the civilized world. This is a tidal wave of unrelated, growing data formed in bits and bytes, coming in an unorganised, uncontrolled, incoherent cacophony of foam.}

Isn’t that a lovely quote? It’s from Richard Wurman’s book “Information architects”.

Here’s some numbers to go with it.

One weekday edition of the New York Times is said to contain more information than the average person in 17^th century England was likely to come across in an entire lifetime.

In 1971 the average American was targeted by at least 560 daily advertising messages. Twenty years later, that had risen to 3000 messages a day. (Doubtless it’s even more now).

The typical business manager is said to read 1 million words a week.

In America, people can expect to change jobs an average of 7 or 8 times in their lifetime.

The pace of technological change is such that it’s been said that people have to learn new technologies every three or four months.

In 1994, ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) was nominated by Wired magazine as “the official brain syndrome of the information age”. And here’s a stat that bears on that:

In the past thirty years, the average TV news “soundbite” (again, we’re talking about American TV here) has decreased from around 42 seconds to some 8 seconds.

The stats were taken from David Shenk’s 1997 book “Data smog: Surviving the information glut”. It’s a great title, but we must be careful to distinguish between information and data.

Information is useful. Information is packaged. Information is meaningful. Data is information in its raw, unprocessed state — its natural state, if you will.

Data is indigestible in its natural state. It must be processed to be any good to us.

But even information — processed data — is not necessarily processed enough. In fact, mostly it isn’t.

What does it mean, for information to be processed?

Well, it all comes back to my mantra, my three key words: Organization. Selection. Connection. We organize by selecting and connecting.

We do it all the time — automatically, unconsciously. But we can also take conscious control of the process, and when studying or teaching, we are certainly advised to do so!

I talked about concept maps in the newsletter. Concept maps are great because, in constructing them, we are forced to make explicit connections. But of course, it all begins — everything always begins — with selection.

We start with an idea — it might be a topic, it might be a question. We think of associations — no trouble there, our mind thinks in associations. We write them all down; we draw lines between all the items that are connected in some way. The paper is a mess.

No problem, we expected that. Constructing a concept map, like constructing a lesson plan or a book, is a constant process of revision and refinement.

Are you trying to deal with too many questions at the same time? Are there too many concepts on your map?

Do the concepts fall into various groups that might be best dealt with in separate maps? Do the questions fall into different areas of discussion that need separate lessons/separate chapters /separate books?

Whenever we start a project, be it a concept map or a book or a lesson plan or a term paper, we usually start by trying to cover too much. But that’s okay. Start big — that gives you your overview, your big picture. Now break it up. And again, and again. When it comes down to it, we can’t deal with too much information at one time. Remember working memory capacity — severely limited.

Concept maps provide a concrete demonstration of a process that should be going on during any studying or preparation for teaching (a term I’m using broadly to encompass anyone constructing learning materials, including books). Start big; keep breaking it down into smaller and smaller bits, until you are down to small, approximately 4-item chunks.

Once you’ve got to that point, you can start building them up again.

The point about getting down to that point is that now you have integrated, well-understood chunks that are your building blocks. As you use them to build, you can make the connections.

If you’re instructing others, remember your students too need to see these building blocks. Don’t bury them in the building. Introduce them as themselves, and build the connections as you go.

But while you’re breaking down and building up, there’s something else that’s important to do, and that’s keeping a hold on your main idea.

Way back, when I was writing my Master’s thesis, I kept getting lost in the research. This is a very common researcher’s weakness — you follow this trail; it leads to that — isn’t that interesting? — and that leads to something else, and it’s all interesting, and you follow the trail … And without discipline, or someone to pull you up, you might be lost there forever!

Nowadays, most everyone is familiar with the experience — it’s what happens on the web. You get lost in the maze, until you can’t remember where you started, or even what you were doing.

And it happens when you start writing something, whether it’s a book or an essay or a lecture. You digress, you wander from the point, you have so much to say.

During my Master’s thesis, I learned the trick that has stood me in good stead ever since. I wrote down a pithy sentence that summed up what my thesis was about. I posted it on the wall by my desk. And every now and then (you have to allow some wandering time!), I would refer to it, and realize how far I’d wandered from the path and drag myself back.

Writing it down is really important — you can’t assume that you’ll remember it, because the very act of wandering, of acquiring new information, alters your thinking, changes your mind.

Of course, that may be what’s needed. Your first question or idea usually needs to be refined as you find out more. That pithy summary of my thesis topic didn’t stay the same all the time I was writing it. From time to time, it would be revised and replaced. Changing it isn’t a sign of failure! But it’s important to explicitly change it rather than just let things develop.

Constructing a concept map is a very good means of making this whole process of selection and connection clear. And it’s a great way of revealing if your central thought is confused. If you’re having trouble with your concept map, it’s often the case that the organizing theme — the central idea — is wrong, or at least, poorly phrased. The breaking down and building up process should help with that.

This process helps you make the right connections, but it’s much more difficult to provide guidelines for helping you select the right information in the first place. This is where expertise comes in. The more you know about a subject, the more skilled you will get at selecting the relevant information. That doesn’t help the novice of course! But it does reassure you, I hope, that selection is something that will grow with experience and knowledge, and constructing concept maps is a good way of helping you realize that you don’t have all the information you need, or that some of it isn’t relevant.

Okay, in keeping with the general theme, I want to briefly mention some reports that haven’t made it into my blog, that bear on this question of selection. Selection is a fine example of how we don’t always control the information process.

Who or what decides what we select for information processing?

There’s a few recent studies that demonstrate the extent to which this is not under our conscious control.

In one series of experiments at Cornell University, researchers found evidence that people see things the way they want to see them. In the experiments, the 412 volunteers were shown ambiguous pictures that could be seen in two ways. They were told they would
be assigned to a taste test of either fresh-squeezed orange juice or a rather unappealing veggie smoothie, depending on whether they saw a farm animal or sea creature. More often than not the participants chose the figure that would lead them to the juice. This is not simply a case of people lying about what they saw — their eye motions indicated that they were never aware of the alternate option being available.

And then there’s the way we pick and choose what we hear to make sure our existing prejudices and opinions aren’t undermined.

An imaging study of 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats being shown images of President Bush and 2004 Democratic challenger John F. Kerry, found that when Republicans saw Kerry (or Democrats saw Bush), there was increased activation in brain areas involved in regulating
emotions, and in two other brain areas involved in negative emotion. In other words, people seem to be turning up their negative emotional response when they see a photo of the opposing candidate, to ensure their antagonism stays strong and healthy.
Another study has shown the other side — that people turn down feelings of aversion and
unpleasantness, when they see something they don’t like about their own candidate.

In the same way, in a recent study, pro-Israeli and pro-Arab partisans shown the same TV clips both came to the conclusion that the news accounts were heavily biased in favor of the other side.

We can choose what connections to make, too.

Still on the subject of prejudice, a new study had 24 Princeton University undergraduates look at photos of different social groups (including Olympic athletes, business professionals, elderly people, and drug addicts), and objects that elicited the emotions of pride, envy, pity, or disgust (such as the Space Shuttle, a sports car, a cemetery, and an overflowing toilet). Scans of their brains as they viewed these pictures found that the medial prefrontal cortex — which is only activated when a person thinks about him- or her-self or another human — was not activated when members of social out-groups that elicited disgust, were shown. Such photos did however activate other brain regions that were activated when viewing objects.
Well, we’ve all heard about people not recognizing particular types of people as human, but seeing it at this concrete level is truly scary. And bear in mind that this is not something the person themselves is necessarily aware of — we’re not talking about overt prejudice here. The point is, whatever we may consciously decide to think, our brain is not necessarily in agreement, and it can be censoring the world before it gets anywhere near your consciousness.

And then there’s the way anxiety or lack of confidence can shape the world you see.

A new study has found that highly anxious people, ones who are insecure about their relationships, are more vigilant in monitoring the facial cues of others, but because they try and judge facial expressions too fast, they make more mistakes in interpreting the emotional states. The researchers suggested that this may be one reason why highly anxious people experience greater conflict in their relationships. Ironically, however, if forced to take more time, they were actually better than less-anxious adults in judging expressions.

In similar vein, over 150 married couples were asked to keep a daily record of their professional successes and failures while also reporting on the degree to which they felt accepted and loved by their partner. The study demonstrated how low self-esteem could affect their perception of how loved and accepted they were. Men and women with low self-esteem felt that their partner's love was contingent on their daily professional successes — they felt more loved on good days, and less loved when they’d had failures at work or school. Those with high self-esteem, however, perceived their partner's love as unconditional.

Well, that’s all from me this month. I hope you have enjoyed this podcast. References and a transcript can be found on my website.