Posts Tagged ‘self-efficacy’
In giving talks to community groups about brain fitness, I emphasize that a number of elements go in to brain fitness. And one of these key elements has nothing to do with high-tech computer training. For optimal brain fitness, a sense of purpose is crucial. You have to have a reason for getting out of bed in the morning.
Readers of this blog may already know that I’m very interested in self-efficacy as a factor in how well people perform on cognitive tasks. Study after study has shown that what you think about your cognitive functioning may actually make your cognitive function better.
How old you feel makes a difference in how you think your brain is working, especially for women. And once again, mood and self-efficacy make a difference for everyone in what they think is going on with their brains.
I recently had the opportunity to teach a brain fitness class for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute on the Coral Gables campus of the University of Miami. As part of the class, we focused a great deal on memory since that is one of the things people were most interested in.
I had anticipated strong interest in the class, but not as much as we actually had. I had thought perhaps 15-20 people would come to the class the first day, but 60 persons came the first day. As part of their participation, I asked students to complete several questionnaires about how they felt about their memory abilities as well as administered a short memory test. We did the same measures at the end of the class.
A striking finding in previous research is that memory self-efficacy is strongly related to actually memory abilities. This term refers to the extent to which you believe you have control over how your memory works and can cope with challenges. Sure enough, in our Osher class, we found that students’ memory self-efficacy was related to how well they performed on a memory class. That leaves two possibilities: people who have good memories have high levels of memory self-efficacy, or that people with high levels of self-efficacy have good memories.
Which is it? Other studies have shown that people with higher levels of self-efficacy respond better to memory training. I think the chances are that the answer to the question is one or the other, but both. Having memory problems may make you feel less well able to control your memory, but feeling as though you understand and control your memory may make you better able to cope with challenges to your memory.
How can you improve your memory self-efficacy? The short answer is to learn more about how your memory works and develop realistic expectations for yourself about how your memory should work. I like a book called The Memory Workbook by DJ Mason, ML Kohn, and KA Clark (New Harbinger, 2001). The participants in our memory class really liked it, and it includes a number of exercises that you can work through on your own.
Latest
- Meditation as Brain Training
- Brain Fitness and The Mind of a Monk
- Brain Fitness Tip: Training Without a Computer
Mindfulness meditation as practiced over a long period by experts makes clear changes in someone’s brain function. But what about those of us who don’t have a few years to sit in a monastery in the Himalayas? A new study shows that even brief meditation practice can improve attention.
I saw an interesting blog post yesterday evening on the site of the Huffington Post about the potential benefits of meditation – or at least about what one woman thinks might be the benefits. (more…)
Although many people are excited about the potential for using computers to train their brains, we shouldn’t forget that other techniques have been used to the train the brain for many centuries. I’m thinking about the large number of techniques for meditation. While free computer software still requires an investment in a computer, meditation only asks you to sit or lie quietly and focus your mind.
A recently-published study shows parts of the brain in long-term meditators are larger than the same parts of the brain in people who don’t meditate. The article by Eileen Luders and her colleagues appeared in a recent issue of the journal Neuroimage (Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 672-678, April 15, 2009). The study showed that portions of the orbitofrontal cortex and the hippocampus were larger in persons who had been regular meditators for 5 or more years. The study is interesting because the parts of the brain that were larger are often thought to be important in helping people keep themselves emotionally balanced.
A number of strategies are likely to be helpful for meditators. There has been a great deal of interest over the last several years in mindfulness meditation. Researchers have studied how it can be used in reducing anxiety and depression. Mindfulness is based on Buddhist meditation (for a brief article, click here) but you don’t have to be a Buddhist to practice meditation. In fact, one of the most important persons who has promoted mindfulness is Jon Kabat-Zinn, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts. You can see a video presentation by him on YouTube by clicking here.