Texting as a form of communication? Your brain doesn’t like it either. Our brains are hard-wired for communication. We humans have a need to share our thoughts and feelings with other members of our species, and we have a rich set of tools with which to do this. We can communicate even when we don’t Continue Reading
ThinkPrint
Emotional Waves
Emotions tend to rise up and wash over us like a wave in the ocean, taking us temporarily out of control. They can hit suddenly and without warning, sweeping our thoughts and feelings in an entirely different direction than they had been heading a moment before. But, as with ocean swimming, we can learn to Continue Reading
Mood States and Emotion
The Affective system works at two levels – the active processing of our experience – the emotional charge, in the moment, and the background of emotional tone through which we experience things – the mood state. The Affective system puts a positive or negative charge on incoming information and outgoing responses. This charge motivates attention Continue Reading
Moving Beyond Anger
It is a very radical and ancient idea. We can learn to live free from anger. Well, without believing in it and getting caught by it. We will feel it from time to time, but we can loosen its grip and minimize its damage, to ourselves and to those we love. Anger is a hot Continue Reading
Explaining & Understanding
I learned something very important yesterday. It was a paradigm shift of tectonic proportions. I am still marveling… I was explaining something to a friend. I probably spend more time than most people explaining things, and I tend to think of myself as pretty good at it. But I failed completely. I was explaining a Continue Reading
Neurodiversity & Learning
When I came up with the word “ThinkPrint,” I was speaking to a group of teachers about how to understand the test results from a child’s neuropsychological or psychoeducational evaluation. I was showing them the graphs of scores of children with different learning and other issues. The different patterns of strength and weakness across the Continue Reading
Sensory & Motor Issues
Sensory issues, sometimes referred to as Sensory Integration or Sensory Processing Disorder, tend to occur along with other issues. Problems with the Sensory system most often involve either being too sensitive (hypersensitive) or not sensitive enough (hyposensitivity) to specific sensory experience, in any of the senses (see Brain Basics). Children who are hypersensitive may be Continue Reading
Learning & ThinkPrint
There are as many kinds of learning problems as there are learners. Each of us is wired differently in terms of learning. Some of us learn better verbally – by listening, reading, and talking, others learn best visually – by seeing and drawing things, and others by direct sensory experience and movement, like natural dancers, Continue Reading
ThinkPrint & Positive Psychology
ThinkPrint is a word I made up to describe what I do: help people understand what kind of mind they have. Your ThinkPrint, like your fingerprint, is unique to you, the result of how your brain is wired up. Understanding your mind – your strengths, preferences, tendencies and vulnerabilities – enables you to use it Continue Reading
How Attention Works (and Why it Often Doesn’t)
Attention is a more complex process than we think. Wait, sorry, I wasn’t paying attention… What were you saying? In this complex modern world of ours, we are very rarely doing only one thing at a time. We read the paper while we eat, we talk on the phone while we drive, and, while we Continue Reading