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

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

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More reading & sources:

• Fantastic article which echos many of our arguments here: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/04/18/wildlife-extinction-dire-wolf-endangered-species/
• Science article which summarizes dire wolves news & science: https://www.science.org/content/article/what-s-deal-dire-wolves-iconic-predators-may-have-been-neanderthals-wolf-world
• Article which leaked an internal memo from US interior secretary which said, “Pick your favorite species and call up Colossal.”: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/10/trump-endangered-species-protections-dire-wolves/
• ... which is also discussed in this very good Vox reporting: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/407781/dire-wolves-deextinction-colossal-biosciences
• Updates on recent cuts to NSF: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01263-0

Notes:

• Ashley said bioRxiv is federally-funded, she meant to say the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) archive, where Colossal posted the dire wolf genome, is federally funded
• Here’s what Embark does tell you about “Wolfiness”: https://help.embarkvet.com/hc/en-us/articles/360053867714-What-is-Wolfiness

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SHOW NOTES:

Cat wants you to know she read a *lot* of research for this episode. Major highlights we specifically drew from, and quote sources, were aross three reviews:

Cat found this one especially helpful and refers to it the most, and this review also proposes the Interpretation Account of math anxiety:

Ramirez, G., Shaw, S. T., & Maloney, E. A. (2018). Math anxiety: Past research, promising interventions, and a new interpretation framework. Educational psychologist, 53(3), 145-164.

Amland, T., Grande, G., Scherer, R., Lervåg, A., & Melby-Lervåg, M. (2024). Cognitive factors underlying mathematical skills: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin.

Chang, H., & Beilock, S. L. (2016). The math anxiety-math performance link and its relation to individual and environmental factors: A review of current behavioral and psychophysiological research. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 10, 33–38.

We briefly mentioned tDCS. An introduction to this technique (used both for therapeutic applications and in scientific studies) can be found here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5702643/

The specific study Cat & Ashley talk about, with math anxious adults, is this one: Sarkar, A., Dowker, A., & Cohen, K. R. (2014). Cognitive enhancement or cognitive cost: Trait-specific outcomes of brain stimulation in the case of mathematics anxiety. The Journal of Neuroscience, 34, 16605–16610. doi:10.1523/jneurosci.3129-14.2014

Cat also mentions the connection between teachers’ gender stereotype endorsements and teachers’ math anxiety, and students’ math achievement. This study is here: Beilock, S. L., Gunderson, E. A., Ramirez, G., & Levine, S. C. (2010). Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(5), 1860-1863.

Further helpful reading & evidence about both parental and teachers’ impact on math attitudes and gender from the same authors:

Gunderson, E. A., Ramirez, G., Levine, S. C., & Beilock, S. L. (2012). The role of parents and teachers in the development of gender-related math attitudes. Sex roles, 66, 153-166.

Learn more about Ashley:

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