Cognitive Psychology Anyone?

As a learning professional, it’s important to stay fresh and current. You need to feel motivated and even fascinated with your work. One way to do this is to delve into how people learn and how the brain works. This can give you the deep insights required to understand learners and to create worthwhile learning experiences.

With this in mind, here are a few sites that feature cognitive psychology podcasts, research, articles and news. I’m even sneaking in a few brain science sites for the true believers.

And just in case you’re new to this field, cognitive psychology is the discipline that examines our mental processes, such as attention, perception, memory and learning. Cognitive psychology uses an information-processing model to explain mental operations in computational terms. Your resources are below. Enjoy.

Dr. Ginger Campbell produces these podcasts, featuring interviews with authors and scientists on popular brain topics. They share recent discoveries in neuroscience and focus on giving listeners insights into what makes us human.

Although the Cognitive Daily stopped publishing new articles in January 2010, it has 5 years worth of archives that are worth browsing. Nearly every day for five years, Dave and Greta Munger reported on interesting developments in cognition. You can also check out their Cognitive Monthly page, where they sell a few mini e-books.

You’ll never guess the focus of this blog.  M.G. Salvidar, a doctoral student in the above science, does a good job of culling informative and relevant articles at his site. He provides a short summary and a link to the original. A headline like this is sure to catch your attention, “Researchers find the remediation rewires learners’ brains.” I’d call this site simple to use and effective.

You may be familiar with MITs Online Courseware as it’s been mentioned in the press for years. Although some of their courses only include the syllabus and lecture notes, many of the Brain and Cognitive Science lectures are recorded as audio files. Listen to these at the gym for a cerebral workout.

Michael Brit, Ph.D., has over 100 podcasts and videos on psychology related topics. You can download his podcasts on this site or through iTunes. He covers topics like Critical Thinking, Instructional Tools, Learning/Memory and Emotion. An excellent feature is the mindmap of his podcast topics. I’d listen just for this reason alone!

Science Daily is an aggregate site with the latest science research news, articles, videos and book recommendations. It has an entire section on Mind and Brain with loads of articles. In particular, check out the Neuroscience category and Educational Psychology topic (within the Psychology category).

Do you have any cognitive or brain science resources you can share? If so, tell us in the Comments below.

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