Mind Games for Learning & for FUN!
Learn More About How People Think To Be Safer, More Productive & Better Communicators.
Are you organizing a school, business meeting, fundraiser, convention or social event? If so, Dr. Ron Shapiro wants to help you educate and entertain your guests at the same time. He’ll show them more about how they think so they can be safer, more productive and better communicators. His Education By Entertainment TV game show style programs will be great for your guests of all ages, from professionals to grade 3. There will be activities for everyone to participate in, and there will be activities in which some of your more adventuresome guests will compete for prizes while the remaining guests have FUN observing and cheering them on. Everyone will, most likely, be smiling throughout the programs. Enjoy viewing smiles from one of Dr. Shapiro’s programs followed by a description of a selection of the activities you might see at some of his programs. You might want to try some with your colleagues, friends and family members.
Don’t Multitask!
As you may have noticed lots of job descriptions say “must be able to multitask” as if multitasking actually were beneficial. Yet, it may be unsafe. For example, use of mobile phones while driving decreases safety. Last week an article appeared in the newspaper about lead surgeons performing multiple surgeries at once while assistants filled in for them while they were absent from the operating room without notifying the patients. There was a multimillion-dollar settlement to the patients’ claims. In other instances, multitasking may decrease productivity because multitasking requires constant shifting of attention between each task. The following activities demonstrate what happens when people multitask. Standing & Reciting. Stand on one foot with your eyes closed. Recite the alphabet backwards. You will notice worse performance when you do both tasks at once rather than doing each one individually.
Simultaneous Drawing. Sit comfortable in a straight back chair. Lift your right foot off the ground and draw clockwise circles with your foot. While you continue drawing these circles lift your right hand into the air and draw a huge “6” with your hand. What happens to the foot (the way nearly everyone performs this task)?
Emphasize The Details If you want people to see the details you really need to emphasize them. If you want to be honest, you don’t want to overemphasize them either.
Draw the Figure. Hand someone a blank sheet of paper along with a pen or pencil. Show them the following picture for just a few seconds. Have them draw what they saw. Chances are they will draw something that looks like an E, but will not have an accurate representation of what was there. The drawing will, most likely, show some imperfections but may not match the imperfections in my drawing. The drawing may not even contain the same number of X’s as mine.
Allow Sufficient Time We are always trying to do things faster, but sometime faster sacrifices safety. For example, if we drive too fast, we may not have enough breaking distance between our car and the car in front of us.
Catch the Falling Dollar. Have a family member, colleague or friend hold their hand parallel to the ground with fingers spread as shown in the photograph below. Hold a single-, five-, ten- or twenty-dollar bill between their index and middle fingers. Tell your colleague to close their fingers when you let go of the dollar. If they catch it three times in a row, it is theirs. Chances are they will not be able to catch the falling dollar more than once, if at all.
SPOT, ROAST and SILK. Ask someone to spell SPOT as fast as they can five times. Then ask them to do it again going even faster. Immediately after they finish ask them “What do you do at a green light?” Chances are they will say STOP, but you and I know they answer should be GO. Repeat this exercise with ROAST and ask “What do you put into a toaster?” They may say TOAST, but we know the answer should be BREAD, BAGELS, ENGLISH MUFFINS, etc. but not TOAST. Repeat with SILK. Ask “What do cows drink?” They may say MILK, but the answer is either water or nothing (cows get much of the liquid from foods they eat).
Name the Colors. Show someone the following picture. Have them name the colors in each box. You may notice that they go faster in the second box than in the first. They will probably go much slower and/or get everything wrong in the third box by reading the word rather than naming the colors.
Teaching & Learning People can learn almost anything, including how to see “upside down.” That also means that whether we intend it or not people are always forming associations, thus we want to be careful about how we present ourselves and our products. Perceptually Inverted Navigation (PIN). Lorraine is wearing glasses which make everything appear to be upside down (though it is really right side up on the retina). She has just finished directing Jacqueline to place a sticker on a chart right side up. As it turns out the sticker was placed upside down, but if Lorraine were to wear these prisms for a few weeks she would actually be able to do everyday tasks quite proficiently. It would then take a week or so for her vision to return to normal after removing them. You may purchase these prisms from Matthew at Wingin it Products or we can bring some to our programs. Of course, you must carefully supervise anyone wearing them if you chose to buy a pair.)
UP. Tell someone to raise their hand whenever you say UP. Do this about 5 to 10 times. After the 10th time tap a table stamp your foot or whatever just before saying the up. Do this for about 10 more trials. Then simply tap the table (or whatever you were doing) and you will notice the person either raising their hand or struggling not to. We Would Like to Lead a Program For You If you enjoyed the activities presented above you may wish to have Ron present a program for your next event. He would be delighted to offer programs for:
Academics (from colleges and universities to grade 3)
Businesses (including back to the office events, conferences and conventions)
Celebrations (including fundraisers, reunions and birthdays)
His programs include extra surprises for adventuresome birthday honorees. The surprises begin when the honoree is securely blindfolded with a special Happy Birthday bandana. Sorry, but Dr. Shapiro is not presenting the details on this one because it would spoil the surprises and fun!
At the conclusion of Dr. Shapiro’s programs, he asks participants to summarize the programs in one word. The graphic shows his results from 2016 to 2020 (including a comment from the birthday honoree shown in the above photo).
Contact Dr. Shapiro for more information or to schedule your program: DrRonShapiro1981@SigmaXi.Net or 401.272.4664.
© 2022 Ronald G. Shapiro, All Rights reserved.
