Change, Technically

Ashley, Cat, and Danilo reflect on the major themes after one year of Change, Technically.

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SHOW NOTES:

On women’s loss of status in gender incongruent professions: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797610384744 

On links between self-compassion and prosocial behavior: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4026714/ 

On psychological essentialism: https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/abstract/S1364-6613(04)00183-4 

On Shigeru Miyamoto's development of Donkey Kong (Note the line in this article, "Yamauchi [Nintendo's President] assured him [Miyamoto] his lack of technical skills...

SHOW NOTES

Dominic Packer’s Normative Conflict Model of Dissent is described in this paper as well as his other work: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1088868307309606 

Cat also mentions Mina Cikara’s work on coalitional cognition. This is a good representation of that: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0065260121000137 

Cat also mentions The Power of Us, which is by Dominic Packer and Jay Van Bavel, and a book she enjoyed! https://www.powerofus.online/ 

From the same authors, this piece talks about intergroup bias: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/cha...

SHOW NOTES:

For an example of a consideration of learning with information searching, a paper by Saskia Giebl and co-authors explored students learning basic programming concepts aided with a search engine and how active problem-solving before the search helps encourage stronger learning. This paper draws from a lot of the classic learning science/memory effects that Cat references:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1475725720961593 

“Cognitive offloading” is a concept with a lot of interesting work behind it, and cognitive offloading can be as broad as just making a grocery list. Exploring task perfo...

More reading & sources:

Fantastic article which echos many of our arguments here: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/04/18/wildlife-extinction-dire-wolf-endangered-species/Science article which summarizes dire wolves news & science: https://www.science.org/content/article/what-s-deal-dire-wolves-iconic-predators-may-have-been-neanderthals-wolf-worldArticle which leaked an internal memo from US interior secretary which said, “Pick your favorite species and call up Colossal.”: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/10/trump-endangered-species-protections-dire-wolves/... which is also discussed in this very good Vox reporting: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/407781/dire-wolves-deextinction-colossal-biosciencesUpdates on recent cuts to NSF: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01263-0

Notes:

Ashley said bioRxiv is fede...

SHOW NOTES: 

Cat wants you to know she read a *lot* of research for this episode. Major highlights we specifically drew from, and quote sources, were aross three reviews: 

Cat found this one especially helpful and refers to it the most, and this review also proposes the Interpretation Account of math anxiety: 

Ramirez, G., Shaw, S. T., & Maloney, E. A. (2018). Math anxiety: Past research, promising interventions, and a new interpretation framework. Educational psychologist, 53(3), 145-164. 

Amland, T., Grande, G., Scherer, R., Lervåg, A., & Melby-Lervåg, M. (2024). Cognitive factors underlying mathematical skills: A syst...

How do human beings work together and learn to be, well, human? Stepping out of our comfortable and cozy silos and learning to communicate our value in new contexts might just be the key to unlocking shared innovation.

In this episode, we explore this question with Cristine Legare, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin interested in the interplay of the universal human mind and the variations of culture, who studies cognitive and cultural evolution and the design of social and behavioral change interventions.

The Center for Applied Cognitive Science, which Cristine...

In a special edition of Change, Technically, Ashley and Cat get into the facts of the NIH: what it does, how it works, and the consequences of disrupting its essential work. The NIH creates enormous economic impact, 400,000 jobs across the US, and sets science in motion that touches all of us.

How to contact your representatives:

Dial (202) 224-3121Tell autoresponder your representative name or zip code when promptedSpeak directly to staffer or leave voicemail: “My name is ___, I’m a constituent in [town]. (If clinician/scientist, say so) The...