Previous research suggests that higher intelligence is related to better self-control, but the reasons for this link are unknown. Psychologists Noah A. Shamosh and Jeremy R. Gray, from Yale University, and their colleagues, were interested in testing the idea that certain brain regions supporting short-term memory play a critical role in this relationship.

[…]

The results show that participants with the greatest activation in the brain region known as the anterior prefrontal cortex also scored the highest on intelligence tests and exhibited the best self-control during the financial reward test. This was the only brain region to show this relation. The results appear in the September issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. [via PhysOrg]

A very wise educator taught me that impulsivity or the lack of ability to delay gratification reflects immaturity. He holds that children are more emotion-driven than intellect-driven, but that balance swings the other way with age. Once a person is an adult, the ability to defer gratification for a later, greater reward indicates maturity of development. This exactly correlates with the above findings,

“It has been known for some time that intelligence and self-control are related, but we didn’t know why. Our study implicates the function of a specific brain structure, the anterior prefrontal cortex, which is one of the last brain structures to fully mature,” said Dr. Shamosh [italics mine].

Here are the questions that we absolutely must ask:

1. Is the ability to delay gratification solely a natural result of the chronological development of the anterior prefrontal cortex (the ability to wait develops naturally)? Or does it flow the other way, with exercise of self-control helping to mature the brain (practice makes perfect)?
2. Do “external” conditions that negatively impact working memory (hormonal disruptions, physical illness, depression) also have a negative effect on self-control capacity?
3. Is intelligence coincidentally correlated with the ability to delay gratification (for example, are intelligence and self-control controlled by the same brain structures?), or is there a functional relationship between the two (for example, does greater intelligence lead to greater self-control, or vice-versa?)? Alternatively, is the correlation an artifact of how we test intelligence?

And the “threatening questions” (I ought to copyright the term…):

1. Does the electronic virtual environment in which so much time is spent actually inhibit or discourage the development of self-control skills?
2. Could spending too much time as a child in virtual environments which usually provide instant gratification affect adult levels of intelligence?
3. As a professional working to improve User Experience, is it possible that “making life easier” for people is actually doing them less of a favor than it is helping them? Am I destroying individual worlds while trying to “save the world”? (OK, I’m being a bit dramatic here, but I do feel strongly about design responsibility.)

What happens when your content or feature set starts to exceed the capabilities of the environment in which it exists?

Some environments (operating systems, application environments, communications protocols…) are remarkably resilient, and can hold up under all kinds of unanticipated pressures and demands (think Ethernet — how many years has it been?).

Some environments are flexible (think Java, Bluetooth and Flash), but show signs of strain if hacked too far. At some point, your demands that they perform jobs for which they were never built overwhelms, and they crash and fall apart. Imagine that happening to the above file folder. Nasty, huh? Even worse when it’s your application running in the real world.

Some environments (I won’t name names) are rigidly insistent on your obedience, and demand that you follow their rules or else.

This comes up occasionally, when we try to demonstrate 3D capabilities on devices whose manufacturers never dreamed of 3D. (This also comes up when a remarkably gifted child is being taught by a narrow-minded teacher!)

The best environments, of course, are those whose builders created something open and non-controlling (as Ethernet is), rather than attempting to impose a standard. Those are the infrastructures that last and last.

It’s a great little series of photos, but this one takes the cake: the emergency “off” switch that can’t be activated. Well, looking at the photo closely suggests that if you used a Phillips-head screwdriver you could remove the acryllic casing… but not in time to prevent the explosion.

If you like button and switches and every other “simple” interface, you’ll definitely want to take a look at the History of the Button blog. Bill spoke at the Adaptive Path UX Week in August, but I missed his presentation. Now I’m hooked on his blog.

On the meaning of small messages, oft repeated:

Apple’s Mail, Blackberry OS and surely most other enterprise applications always put the “work” number preferentially at the top of the stack if you have multiple phone numbers for a contact. “Home” gets pushed down towards the bottom. The (reasonable) assumption is that if you have a work number for somebody, you probably do business with them, and are most likely seek the work number.

The subliminal message? Work matters more than home.

Goebbels (and Hitler) are both quoted as saying that you can get people to believe anything if you repeat it often enough. What is the impact of the constant reinforcement of the Work Over Home message? How does it affect our relationships at work and at home?

Just like my cell phone camera lets me catch snapshots of the visual images I see around me — not as clear as a good digital camera, but it’s there with me — the BB lets me capture snapshots of thoughts I have when I’m not sitting at the computer. I’m not talking about quick email fire-offs, but blog thoughts like this one: in the taxi, in a waiting room, while nursing the baby. There’s a stress-reduction in not worrying that I’m going to “lose the thought” before getting it down. That’s my primary use of the Blackberry, as it turns out.

The secondary use is to ensure that I don’t miss important emails while on the road.

So, I’m hanging around a motorcycle dealership looking for a place to sit while I wait for a meeting. I thought I’d have a cup of coffee and charge up my laptop, but this neighborhood appears to go in for pubs more than coffee shops. Not that a motorcycle dealership is the most elegant backdrop for a nice haredi mother, but it beats a pub.

There’s a lineup of motorcycles in front; I can see their appeal, and that surprises me. Some look almost like cars, and I find that less appealing. I like the cheerfulness of the bright green Kawasakis, but cannot figure out how one reaches the handlegrips! I’ll have to go search for a picture of one in use. I’m short (5′ even), so I’m probably not the right build for the intended drivers, but nonetheless… Pregnant women obviously need not apply. Where does one park a beer-belly on this thing? Surely that must be allowed for in the motorcycle target demographic?!

Best I liked the ones that had an insectoid (entomologically-inspired) lightness to the frame. Not the motorcycles with the cushy seats, but the ones that look as if they could fly, or at least drive straight up a wall.

Blackberry has this nice feature where you type a word without bothering with capitalization or punctuation, for example, typing “im” for “I’m”, and it changes it on the fly. (Funny, because there’s no actual spell-check…) It’s a feature that’s convenient, although I tend to under-use it.

Anyway, little glitch, I tried to send someone my Israeli email address the other day. It ends with @netvision.net.il. Except that my alert Blackberry insisted it was @netvision.net.I’ll. I went back to erase/change/fix maybe 6 times, unsuccessfully. Not a helpful feature, in this case! Why should I be in a power struggle with my cell phone?

As with many of my blog musings, this one is written on my Blackberry. It’s one of the main uses I have for it: jotting down thoughts and notes to myself for collection and processing on my laptop later on. I’ll have to move now before I get beaned by a hard date; several have clunked down hard from the date palm under which I am sitting in the warm breeze of a luscious Israeli autumn afternoon. Golden light. Sweet smell of the dates. Some lazy, dusty trees in what was, I guess, an orchard some years ago, but now is the parking lot adjacent to a major corporation. Aaaaaaah.

Update (December 16, 2007):

Found another one: can’t type the word “id” (as in Freudian), or the initials for identification or industrial design (ID). I just keep getting “I’d”.

When is the tradeoff of 95% accuracy offset by the 5% error rate (uncorrectable errors)? Another long tail question? Kind of.