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Showing posts with the label psychology

What is the Rorschach test?

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Hermann Rorschach (1884–1922) invented the 'ink blot' personality test. It uses 10 standard black or coloured inkblot designs to assess personality traits and emotional tendencies. This diagnostic tool was initially intended to  provide insight into the mental processes involved with what was broadly termed schizophrenia. Rorschach, who died soon after completing his research paper Psychodiagnostik (1921) had cautioned that ‘that the test is primarily an aid to clinical diagnosis’. From the 1940s, the Rorschach was adapted for use in occupational assessment and other areas of social science.  In contemporary English, the term  Rorschach Test is often used metaphorically to describe what psychologists call projective assessment. Put simply, how you see something depends on your 'priors' or pre-existing assumptions. Who was  Hermann Rorschach?

What is 'concept creep'?

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What is cognitive dissonance?

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Cognitive dissonance describes the tension caused by having two apparently contradictory thought processes simultaneously - wanting to smoke while knowing smoking is bad for you, for example.  Is it a new term? The phrase was first introduced by Leon Festinger in his 1956 book When Prophecy Fails . He studied the way believers in UFOs dealt with empirical evidence contradicting their deeply held beliefs.  Cognitive dissonance is also associated with the cognitive development theory developed by Jean Piaget - dealing with cognitive dissonance is a key factor in child development. In general English the term is often used when describing how politicians deal with 'inconvenient' data. Examples can be found at all points on the political spectrum. English FAQ Teaching Pack  only £1.99

What is Miller's Magical Number Seven? How has it influenced the way we teach languages?

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The psychologist George A Miller  had an incalculable influence on the new academic discipline of cognitive science and the still disputed notion of psycho-linguistics. His research focussed on working memory - the way the mind processes information.  He observed that the brain encountering the unfamiliar, could absorb roughly seven new things at a time.When asked to repeat a random list of letters, words or numbers, he wrote, people got stuck “somewhere in the neighborhood of seven.” Some people could recall nine items on the list, some fewer than seven. But regardless of the things being recalled — colors and tastes, numbers with decimals, numbers without decimals, consonants, vowels — seven was the statistical average for short-term storage. (Long-term memory, which followed another cognitive formula, was virtually unlimited.) From NYT obituary 02/08/2012 Why is Miller's work important for language teachers? In practical terms this means that the mind best processes new