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 performance, and the mixed costs and benefits associated with cognitive offloading, can be started with this review and its citations: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44159-025-00432-2

Andrew Hogan wrote a nice post for parents concerned about their children's learning and brain health here, centering on helping people understand the limitations of study methodology: https://www.parent.tech/p/should-your-kids-use-chatgpt-for-homework-c028

Robert and Elizabeth Bjork and colleagues have published many relevant papers on the generation effect and other aspects of learning and metacognition about learning. Here are a few references Cat recommends:

• https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143823
• https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03196872
• https://escholarship.org/content/qt56w8q3z9/qt56w8q3z9.pdf

Because Ashley loves giving people an opportunity to play with the data for themselves, here’s an online interactive textbook with an introduction to EEG: https://neuraldatascience.io/7-eeg/introduction.html

Research on the seductive power of putting a brain on it:

• https://direct.mit.edu/jocn/article/20/3/470/4473/The-Seductive-Allure-of-Neuroscience-Explanations
• https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjep.12162

Paper which nicely explains the dDTF technique step-by-step and applies it to understand motor imagery: https://braininformatics.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40708-022-00154-8

Learn more about Ashley:

• https://ashleyjuavinett.com/
• https://mastodon.social/@analog_ashley
• analog-ashley.bsky.social

Learn more about Cat:

• https://www.drcathicks.com/
• https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina
• grimalkina.bsky.social