cognitive psychology

A weathered notebook open to handwritten statistics formulas beside a mug and a scattered set of problem sheets, shot on a wooden table in soft daylight.

Transfer: Why What You Learned Doesn’t Always Apply

From Thorndike to Barnett, a century of research on why a skill learned in one context rarely travels to another, and the…

• 5 min read
A cluttered student desk with an open book, scattered index cards and a half-drunk mug of coffee, photographed from above in dim evening light.

What Working Memory Research Actually Predicts for Students

The Baddeley model, the failure of brain-training transfer, and what working memory research really implies for how a student should arrange their…

• 6 min read
An open biochemistry notebook on a wooden desk with a pen resting across handwritten pathway diagrams, warm afternoon light coming through a nearby window.

Judgments of Learning: Why You Are a Poor Judge of What You Know

Rereading feels like mastery because fluency fools the brain, and students who trust that feeling consistently underestimate what they have not learned

• 5 min read