SPUG: QASIG - John Medina - Brain Rules - Meeting Report
methylgrace at yahoo.com
Mon Feb 4 11:49:10 PST 2008
(Sorry for the delay, but I was busy having a baby .... ;) )
I attended the QASIG (http://www.qasig.org/past_meetings.html) at
Quardev in January, where we invited John Medina to speak about his
upcoming book 'Brain Rules' (http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Rules-
ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202148137&sr=8-1). Dr. Medina is a dynamic and
entertaining speaker. My only gripe with the presentation was how he
delivered his slides, opening a variety of files as he made his
points; it could have been smoother. I highly recommend that you
visit his website and review his engaging short videos (http://
www.brainrulesbook.com). By the way, this is the first time that
I've ever seen a prose (non-software) book released with a website.
Dr. Medina spoke about two of his Brain Rules, Sleep, and Memory. He
is interested mainly about how people learn, and what it says for
business practices or education. As a QA person, I also tried to
apply his talk specifically to software testing.
In the part of the speech regarding Memory, he discussed Intentional
Blindness. [Aside: Watch the video from the Visual Cognition Lab
carefully. How many times do you see the basketballs bounce? (http://
viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html) ]. He reports that your
brain edits out what is not supposed to be there. Many points
derived from patients with brain injuries were discussed, including
the patient who had motion blindness (her brain edited out motion)
braindamage.htm#motion). When you apply this to Problem Solving
(which is what software developers and testers are particularly good
at), be aware of your biases. Remember, "What is obvious to you, is
obvious to you." ... Read that again!!
He discussed several phases of memory, Immediate Memory; that which
must be repeated within 30 seconds or is forgotten, Working Memory,
in which you repeat the information within 60-90 minutes, and of
course, Long Term Memory. What is interesting is that information is
subject to corruption (just like software data!) unless you relearn
it. The process of getting the informaiton into long-term memory
takes about 11 years! Dr. Medina proposed changing the school day
from half-a-dozen disparate single topics to 2-3 topics that are
repeated throughout the day. Perhaps you can teach a topic once
auditorily, once kinesthetically, and once visually, each day to
reinforce the concepts, getting them into Working Memory.
Segue into Sleep, which Dr. Medina proposes is really how you get
information into your long term memory. Dr. Medina used the model of
the laboratory rat whose brain wave patterns were measured during the
maze learning, and while the rat slept that night. The pattern
during sleep was repeated thousands of times during the night. If
the rat was interrupted during sleep, then the rat 'forgot' how to
solve the maze and had to relearn it the next day. Note to parents
of teenagers: Get them to bed, and keep them from listening to the
radio or TV while sleeping! Dr. Medina also discussed some
interesting sleep disorders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Dr. Medina also described experiments where math problems were
presented to study participants. 60% of those who were allowed to
'sleep on it' came up with alternative creative solutions, compared
to 20% of those who had to complete the task without a sleep
interval. He reported that effective problem solving decreased by
110% if you go into sleep debt.
Finally, he made the point that events can be tagged by emotions and
thus remembered better. These 'post-it-notes' help reinforce ones'
memories. Therefore, memory and problem solving skills (i.e.
software testing) are deeply influenced by ones' experiences and biases.
Enjoy, and y'all come to the next QASIG, too!
methylgrace at yahoo.com
> From: "Michael R. Wolf" <MichaelRWolf at att.net>
> To: spug-list at pm.org, "SASAG Members" <members at lists.sasag.org>
> Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 18:09:23 -0800
> Subject: SPUG: OT - Interesting QA meeting on problem solving
> Plain Text Attachment [ Scan and Save to Computer ]
> The WSA QA SIG (sponored by Quardev) is having a
> meeting this Wednesday on
> problem solving. It looks interesting. (See
> At our January meeting we welcome John Medina
> PhD, Director, Brain Center
> for Applied Learning, Seattle Pacific
> University. Dr. Medina's talk,
> titled The Strange World of Problem Solving,
> discusses what scientists
> have learned about the brain and some of the
> things to try to bring
> learning environments into 21st century.
> The speaker sounds interesting (see video clips),
> and he's got a book coming
> out soon, that integrates a CD, the web, and the
> book. His (multi-)media is
> his message, or at least his multi-media
> publishing model is supported by
> his research as he conveys his message.
> I wish I could attend. Please report back if you
> Michael R. Wolf
> All mammals learn by playing!
> MichaelRWolf at att.net
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