Dr. Althea Need Kaminske

Yes.

Plato is one of the most famous ancient philosophers of all time. He also thought there were more than 2 genders & homosexuality was normal — that's why Texas A&M wants to censor him.

"How can a serious research university, an R1 university, censor Plato in a philosophy class?"

— Martin Peterson

“The humanities simply don’t fit a corporate model because they are just not monetizable in the same way the sciences or even the social sciences are. And the deeper reason they’re coming under attack is that free thought and rigorous, free inquiry is dangerous to executive power.”

The best NYE party I ever went to timed the beat drop with midnight. It was the last time I felt like I was able to dance myself clean.

I wrote about ADHD in adults this week for The Learning Scientists! I've been thinking about this a lot lately as the standard advice we give to medical students is often counterproductive for ADHD.

AI and Adolescent Well-Being: New APA Health Advisory — The Learning Scientists With Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications expanding rapidly into daily life, The American Psychological Association (APA) has issued a health advisory on the impacts of AI on adolescent well-bei...

NEW POST: "AI and Adolescent Well-Being: New APA Health Advisory" by @drkaminske.bsky.social

www.learningscientists.org/blog/2025/6/26

Humans learn generalizable representations through efficient coding - Nature Communications Reinforcement learning models of human behavior are limited in explaining the capacity for generalization. Here, the authors propose an efficient coding principle for reinforcement learning, whereby a...

Greebles are back!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What is the point of all that money if they're still looking for validation on social media?? If you don't want to build libraries or fund public good, fine! At least have the decency to retreat to a private castle like Enya.

I'm excited to read this! I've seen a lot of evidence that cardio exercise protects against cognitive decline, and suspected that endurance does too, but that seems trickier to study.

Notetaking Formats — The Learning Scientists One of the most common metaphors to describe what the first few years of medical school is like is that it is like drinking water from a fire hose. There is an overwhelming amount of information that ...

REPOST: Notetaking Formats by @drkaminske.bsky.social

www.learningscientists.org/blog/2025/3/28

My 2nd post on AI in education. I explain ways that generative AI can be disruptive to learning while also recognizing that other AI tools exist and, under limited circumstances, might be useful. I just don't think those are the tools that are actually being used when we talk about AI in education.

The book overall is a really interesting account of the various fields that make up cognitive science! I've looked, but I can't find any other history of cognitive science, let alone one newer than 1985.

Text underlined reads "an atmosphere seeded with these seminal ideas". Handwritten note next to text reads "gross"

The same chapter also included this turn of phrase which is... A choice. That had to be on purpose, right? Howard Gardner had to know how that sounded, right??

"Step 1: produce intelligent computer Step 2: ? Step 3: Profit" handwritten next to a paragraph summarizing the goals of the field of artificial intelligence.

Looking through my copy of The Mind's New Science to get a refresher on the history of AI and found this note I wrote to myself as a joke a few years back. It is less funny now.

Step 1: Produce intelligent computer.
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit!

Relationship Between Bullshit, Cognitive Skills, and Belief Systems: A Meta‐Analytic Review Bullshit—verbal statements with little or no concern for the truth—has sparked a growing interest in individual traits, with an increase in the number of studies aimed at understanding why people are...

About to pack up for the day when I saw an email alert for a new article, "Relationship Between Bullshit, Cognitive Skills, and Belief Systems: A Meta-Analytic Review".

Sometimes it's fun being a cognitive psychologist.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

When I see headlines like this I question what the goal of the headline is. If the goal is to be inflammatory then it's a fine headline. If the goal is to inform or create a different narrative then "South Bend grew under Buttigieg leadership, data show, despite Trump claims." would work.

By repeating the claim, even though the headline is clarifying that it was false (or at the very least questioning the veracity of the claim), it implies that there was reason to doubt it in the first place. This lends credibility to the very claim the journalist is trying to discredit.

Screen shot of headline that reads: Trump claims Buttigieg 'was a disaster' as South Bend major. Data show the city grew. Published in the Indianapolis star Jan 30, 2025

I used to teach a class on critical thinking that covered how language influences thinking. One of the tools of framing that I see most often (mis)used is negation. This headline from last week is an excellent example.

Her original manuscript is scanned and you can see the hand-written corrections on top of the typewritten document, which shows what a labor of love these early manuscripts were.
dn790007.ca.archive.org/0/items/onan...

"It is only by careful investigation under all conceivable conditions that we may obtain any adequate idea of the use and relative value of these factors which appear in the mental habits of normal people."

YES! Tell me more about the need for the science of learning!

"For, if experimental results in the field of memory have demonstrated anything it is that the average person is not sure to use in memorizing the best and most economical methods to help himself."

The field of memory is like 2 decades old in 1909. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose I guess

"[...]The fact that this tendency is to be observed, however, does not justify us in believing without further evidence that recall is a desirable and helpful factor in the learning process."

Yes, go off on why we can't rely on anecdotal evidence!

She opens: "No one who has had experience in memorizing or in watching others memorize an have failed to observe the tendency of the average person when he is reading, to momentarily turn away from the material before him ad repeat it to himself without external aid."

She did this in her master's thesis, "On the Analysis of the Factor of Recall in the Learning Process" which I will try not to think about too closely as the failed results of my master's thesis gathers dust on my bookshelf.

Taking a break from doom-scrolling to get some writing done. Delighted to realize the E.E. Abbott, as in Abbott (1909) the first to conduct experiments on what we now call retrieval practice, was Edwina Eunice Abbott. So many pioneers of memory research were women!

NIH In Your State - United For Medical Research Select a state on the map to see the impact of NIH funding across America.

www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/nih-in-your-...

This site has info on the economic impact of NIH in your state, if you want to write your senators about this.

Air pollution and brain damage: what the science says Epidemiological studies have linked dirty air to dementia and other brain disorders. Now researchers are trying to determine how pollutants do their damage, and how much harm they cause.

Increasingly, when I mention that I study memory, people will ask how to protect against dementia. My response is to 1. talk with your doctor about your risk factors and 2. Advocate for policies that reduce air pollution in your city.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

There are different ways to frame social impacts: how this impacts an individual in society, how this plays out at scale in a society, or how society shapes memory. You might search for: false memory, eyewitness testimony, or even some memory disorders (e.g., aphasia)

From a memory standpoint it sounds like you might be asking about cue diagnosticity, associative networks, and/or schemas. That might translate to long term potentiation, plasticity, or memory network as neuro search terms.

No, I haven't - thanks for the recommendation! This looks really interesting!