Sunday e-mail 25 February
What to expect this week; what in the hell is cognitive psychology anyway?
Hello Crime & Psychology fans! Yes: it’s your favourite moment of the week again: the Sunday afternoon coffee is perked, the dog has been walked, the laptop is powered down at last, and finally you can allow yourself to experience a certain light tingling of the nerves – a subtle sensation just below the ribs – as you open this week’s e-mail to find out the answer to the question that has been thrilling and tormenting you all week – what thrills await in the next Crime & Psychology newsletter?
Well, you need wonder no more! The answer’s right here on the screen! This surely makes you both happy and, oddly, a little sad. Or perhaps not so oddly. After all, now a whole week has to pass before you get to experience this privileged, precious instant again. It’s like opening all your Christmas presents at once, isn’t it? Fun to do while it lasts, but doesn’t the rest of the day feel a little, well, flat, afterwards? A little unfulfilling? Doesn’t life seem a little less raucous, the view a little less pleasant, the food a little staler?
No, it doesn’t! Not at all! Don’t be so pessimistic! Look on the magical minute after reading this e-mail as yet another gift – the gift of anticipation. You have from this moment – right now – till Wednesday to get more and more excited for a super-special twofer, a magnificent matched pair, a twin-engined, double-barrelled, dynamic duo of newsletters with these tantalising, titillating titles: ‘What We Think About When We Think About Crime (I and II)’. Isn’t life good?
Yes, that’s right. Over the next two weeks I’ll be taking you by the hand and guiding you through the mysterious wonderland that is modern cognitive psychology – the very science of thought itself! – sharing the sheer wonder of its workmanship, and linking everything back to the infinitely-interesting intersection that is Crime & Psychology! A roller-coaster thrill ride of pleasures, academic and otherwise, is on its way to a screen near you. And only another 72 hours to wait… Bet you’re glad you subscribed.
While you’re waiting, enjoy this week’s brilliant bullet list. It features five fabulous ideas from Cognitive Psychology that you – yes, you! – naturally need to know:
· Limited capacity processing: much of cognitive psychology proceeds by likening the brain to a device like a laptop. Ask your laptop to handle too much information and it hangs up. Likewise, your brain has only limited reserves available (I mean, I’m sure your brain has loads - but still, it is not without limits). Constantly overtaxed, the poor brain must make the most of what penny-pinching power it possesses. About 50% of what you think you remember is probably untrue. And most of what you think you can see? It’s just your brain glueing up the gaps.
· …and on that note, the constructivist theory of perception tells us that, while we may think we’re responding to the world that is as it is, right now, right there, in front of our eyes, much of our visual experience is in fact crafted from our learning and expectations. Technically, we talk about an interaction between ‘bottom-up’ material that comes in through the eyes from the outside world, and ‘top-down’ processes that rely on material in the mind.
· Packets of knowledge derived from experience are called ‘schemas’ (or, if you went to a posh university, ‘schemata’). For decades, cognitive psychologists devoted themselves to the capture and catalogue of such schemata. The idea originates in classic research on memory by Sir Frederic Bartlett. Its heyday came with the work of the developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget, who built a model explaining how schemata are created during childhood.
· ‘The attentional spotlight’ is the colourful term cognitive psychologists use to describe how we focus our attention on a small feature of our environment – say, the elevating erudition in this exciting e-mail – to the exclusion of the rest. The feel of clothes on your skin, the taste of the coffee on your tongue, even the affectionate words your friends and family are saying to you right this moment – when you are devoted to Crime & Psychology, the spotlight excludes it all. Maybe someone’s knocking on your door right this moment: you’d never know.
· Want to recover after a solid hour or two intellectually immersed in these non-pareil newsletters? Go outside and look at the trees. Attention Restoration Theory, we call it. Evolution didn’t design your attentional system to focus the whole time on just one object. Like a muscle, it becomes tired from doing just one thing constantly. Trees, plants, flowers: all feature fractal forms which make the system sprawl out and chill. In other words, as your old mother used to tell you, you’ll feel better if you go for a walk.
But before you do that, one more thing! I know you love Crime & Psychology. I know you crave even more righteously ravening readers like yourself. And I know you know that they don’t know what they’re missing! The good news is – you can help these impoverished people. It won’t cost you a penny, a dime, or a farthing. Merely bip a bright blue button below. Merci!