Good words

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
– Douglas Adams

Kid in a candy store

Just found a fantastic site for all of us who are fascinated by science: ScienceBlogs.com. I'm having a great time gobbling down the blogs on behavioral and neurological research, such as Cognitive Daily and The Frontal Cortex. But the site also links to blogs on physical science, environment, medicine and health, and more.

Gotta go -- I'm only halfway through that article on the collective mind and the neurology of human interaction...

Learning watch: new research

Here's an article by Howard Wolinsky about gender differences in processing language. Doug Burman, a researcher at Northwestern University's Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, says that language areas in girls' brains are more active than in boys' -- and girls process language differently than boys do.

Scientists aren't sure if these differences persist into adulthood, but the research suggests that males rely more on sensory vision and hearing centers in working with language, while females use more abstract brain regions for the same tasks.

The result is that how information is given -- through the ear or through the eye -- is more important to males than to females.

In your workshops, have you noticed any differences between men and women in processing language? Are visual aids stickier for one gender than for the other? What's the best way to get your message across?

Good words

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is; it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. - Richard Feynman

Good words

One thing we do know about humans is that the left brain, which is the conscious language part of the brain, always makes up a story to explain what's going on. - Temple Grandin