Learning something new is all about memory and how you use it. At first, your prefrontal cortex, which stores your working (or short-term) memory, is really busy figuring out how it’s done. That’s the ...

"When we look at living creatures from an outward point of view, one of the first things that strike us is that they are bundles of habits. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over ...

Recently, I've become preoccupied with the website If This, Then That (ifttt.com, supposedly pronounced "ifttt"), which is either a remarkably handy new tool or a portent of the end of humanity. The ...

In the Commentary “Timed Tests and the Development of Math Anxiety,” (edweek.org, July 3, 2012) Jo Boaler is right about the negative aspects of timed tests. Drill-and-kill tests have been around for ...

If you want to become world-class at what you do, you must get to the point where it becomes unconscious and automatic. Learning new things engages your prefrontal cortex, which operates via your ...

When we consider automatic behaviors, digestion, blood circulation, and breathing are often mentioned. But what about making a grilled cheese sandwich or shaving? Are they in any way automatic? Yes, ...

Instruction-based learning and automaticity represent key cognitive mechanisms through which explicit instructions are transformed into fluid, near-effortless behaviour. This process commences with ...