Elizabeth L. Bjork

I'll tell you something that you just mentioned about, you know, you were originally a computer science major, right? And then you got into cognitive science.

So several of the people that we've had on this podcast, Bob and Elizabeth Bjork, they were mathematicians, and then they turned into psychologists.

And Thad Polk was also computer science.

He turned into neuroscience.

And this is exactly that in action.

In fact, Roddy also are the advisors.

Elizabeth Bjork and Dan Schachter, you know, it's a rich mayor.

It's a great group of people.

It was Howie Egas and Ed Smith especially and Irv Biederman and Amos and Jerry Riker was then there.

Elizabeth Ligon came.

Elizabeth Ligon Bjork was a classmate.

Jerry Riker was a classmate.

We had...

And all of these tasks require physical movement and the use of motor skills and a certain amount of patience that we just don't need when we're consuming digital media.

And that reminds me of what the psychologists Robert and Elizabeth Bjork called desirable difficulties, which is the counterintuitive idea that making something easier isn't always better.

And sometimes the difficulty itself is doing useful cognitive work, particularly when it comes to learning or understanding.

In his book, The World Beyond Your Head, the author Matthew Crawford explores human attention and he suggests that it isn't simply a thing that we possess, but something that's organised by our environment and the objects within it.