Thinking About THINKING: Harnessing the Brain's POWER.

For those who have wondered how ideas survive the mysterious trip from the eyes or ears of audiences into the depths of their brains, answers are beginning to surface from the brave new science of cognition, or the study of how people (and sometimes animals or computers) learn and comprehend information. This new discipline has mapped out the parameters of working memory, learned the significance of appearance and novelty, and "watched" minds at work, firing and forming connections.

For example, scientists are rethinking "short-term memory," which was considered as a sort of staging area for incoming data to be prepared for dumping into the brain's "hard disk" or long-term memory. Now "working memory" is the place where incoming data go to "a kind of blackboard where the mind performs its computations, and where it posts its partial results for later use."

An amazing number of functions occur in this threshold of the mind: messages and words are processed, a quick initial interpretation is made, and anything deemed irrelevant is pared away. "Working memory" is thus a very apt description for this dynamic arena.

The activity seems to be necessary because, even in the brainiest of people, working memory capacity is limited. For instance, researchers asked people to remember a string of five numbers or the last word of each sentence while reading average text. The best performers, called the "high-span" readers, could hold a total of five words in memory, or could read quickly while remembering about five numbers. Note that more can be remembered when letters are "chunked" into meaningful words, just as when numbers are grouped into sets.

Low-span readers, on the other hand, had difficulty reading even when they didn't have any numbers or words to remember. They were working at maximum capacity.

Easing the Workload

Some specific tools can improve comprehension of complex texts. Scientists are just now beginning to understand some of these methods, which involve building cognitive structures for storing information and moving it quickly from long-term memory to working memory. For instance Mario Ricci, a sixteenth century thinker, "built" a memory palace in which to store his thoughts. Today, strategic thinkers such as Stephan Haeckel of IBM advise knowledge-oriented companies to "snap together what they do... like toys made from Lego blocks." Communicators can help readers by structuring complex messages carefully so they can be easily digested, stored and retrieved.

A hierarchy is another proven way to boost comprehension. For best comprehension, a hierarchy must contain no more than five points at any level, because working memory apparently deals with each level at a time.

Memory also can be expanded by attaching meaning to the data. Mnemonic devices used by magicians and performers work splendidly. Everyone uses this technique on some scale: we remember what means something to us and forget the rest.

Much of the work in cognitive science is reinforcing the validity of the art of communication. For instance, in preparing an outline, three to five main points are considered the ideal. Clear organization of the text helps the mind prepare to be receptive in developing an internal memory structure to accommodate and conform to the author's intended message.

Judging a Book by its Cover

Another important consideration is the "packaging" of messages, which influences how, or if, they are received. As the barrage of information grows, people must make decisions regarding whether they will invest their time and interest in incoming data. For instance, magazine readers generally decide in less than one-tenth of one second whether they will look at a page or turn it. Studies indicate that headlines receive five times the readership of body copy; text is usually read by only 10 percent; and captions are read twice as often as body copy. The appearance, or packaging, is primarily what prospective readers base their "accept" or "reject" decisions on when the "product" is intangible.

Eye movement studies show that people are overwhelmingly attracted to color and graphic images. When scanning text, readers' eyes tend to move to significant words in a jerky fashion, focusing on what might be key words. Readers are no doubt influenced by the reticular formation, an area of the brain that responds selectively to the new and exotic and is possibly a vestige of an ancient survival instinct. Exercising the reticular formation stimulates growth of dendrites, which may strengthen and reinforce comprehension and retention of messages. Someone should do a study of new product development managers to see if hyperactive reticular formations cause them to extend product lines endlessly.

Gender differences in cognition were dramatically demonstrated by monitoring men and women as they read the same material. Men tend to concentrate their information gathering in one section of the mind, whereas women's brain cells fire in a wide range, crossing hemispheres far more often than men. That explains why one of my male colleagues likes to see writing with paragraphs lined up logically containing two parallel points each, like animals entering the Ark. But my female style prefers a torrent of ideas, falling more or less haphazardly on fertile and fallow ground alike.

Pleasing a mixed audience can be difficult. A logical framework embellished with sidebars and supportive examples that men can skim often works well. The Wall Street Journal succeeds with its distinctive style, which contains a summarizing paragraph, aptly called the "nut," near the beginning of each story.

End by making everybody happy: mention where to look for more information. I enjoy visiting the sites of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University (http://www.cmu.edu), or "Critical Thinking" at http://www.indiana.edu. Donn Richardon, ABC, APR, recommends the work of Denver author Jacquelyn Wonder, including "Whole Brain Thinking."

Lee Recca, ABC, is publications director, Bechtel, Englewood, Colo.