Full PreFrontal Sucheta Kamath

It’s human to crave connections. If there’s a silver bullet that comes closest to protecting kids, it’s the art of making meaningful connections with adults in their lives. This provides children with a sense of closeness and belonging ,which in return, contributes positively to their physical, social, psychological, and emotional health. Effective communication is the key ingredient to forming deep connections and parents, teachers and mentors need insights and tools to know ways to communicate that helps create a safe space for children to express themselves.
On this episode, neuropsychologist and coauthor of the books “What Do You Say? Talking with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home” and “the Self-Driven Child”, William Stixrud, Ph.D. returns to discuss the parenting language of a consultant and ways in which kids benefit when their parents serve as a non-anxious presence in their lives. Family dynamics and effective modeling by parents can lead to cultivating strong Executive Function enabling questioning the validity of one’s decisions, rethinking positions or points of view, and changing one’s own mind with ease, persistence, and courage.

About William R. Stixrud, Ph.D.
William R. Stixrud, Ph.D., is a clinical neuropsychologist and founder of The Stixrud Group, as well as a faculty member at Children’s National Medical Center and an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine.  He is also the co-author, with Ned Johnson, of the national best-selling book, The Self-Driven Child, which is published in 18 countries and 17 languages and has sold more than a half-million copies in China alone.  He and Mr. Johnson have also co-authored a critically-acclaimed second book, What Do You Say? Talking with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home.

Dr. Stixrud’s work has been featured in media outlets such as NPR, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times of London, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, Time Magazine, Scientific American, Business Week, Barron's, New York Magazine, and Vogue.  He is a long-time practitioner of Transcendental Meditation, and he plays in the rock band Close Enough. 

Books:
The Self-Driven Child What Do You Say? Talking with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
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Reading comprehension is unequivocally the foundation of all other learning, not just during the formal years of education, but in creating socially engaged communities and an inclusive world. The ‘Active View of Reading’ framework suggests that complex executive function skills such as goal setting, planning, organizing, and sequencing information critically supports goal completion, mental flexibility, and learning how to learn underneath the reading and writing processes. New findings suggest that despite having age-appropriate word reading, poor reading comprehension might be explained by executive function challenges in children, which is disrupting their learning success.

On this episode,  author, director of READLab,  and Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Teacher Preparation at Christopher Newport University, Dr. Kelly Cartwright, Ph.D., discusses how executive function infuses and supports human reading processes and how educators must consider remediating Executive Function as a means to promote literacy outcomes in K-12 education. Fortunately for us all, executive function skills can be explicitly taught and doing so will accentuate academic success for all learners.

About Kelly B. Cartwright, Ph.D.
Kelly B. Cartwright, PhD is Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Teacher Preparation at Christopher Newport University, where she directs the Reading, Executive function, And Development Lab (READLab), and is a Research Scholar for the Center for Education Research and Policy. She is the recipient of numerous educational awards, including the 2023 State Council of Higher Education in Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award. Her research, supported by grants from the US Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, explores neurocognitive and affective factors that underlie reading processes and difficulties across the lifespan. Her groundbreaking book, Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension: A Guide for Educators, now in second edition, is the first comprehensive text at this intersection. Kelly has served on the Board of Directors of the Literacy Research Association and as Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. She regularly works with K-12 teachers throughout the US to understand and improve reading for struggling students, and these experiences inform her research. Kelly can be followed on Twitter at @KellyBCartwrig1

Books:
Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension: A Guide for Educators (2nd Edition)Word Callers: Small-Group and One-to-One Interventions for Children who "Read" but Don't Comprehend
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Support the show

Modern living means living with uncertainty. We are surrounded by progress, yet the things we are unsure of keeps growing, needing us to skillfully cope; hence, making hard decisions without all the answers requires skill and courage. On the other hand, the world measures certainty as the mark of expertise and celebrates those who exude the attitude of invincibility through a firm disposition of ”be fast, be right, and be without a doubt.” So, how do we widen our personal cognitive horizons and become more open and curious in spite of internal and external unpredictability?

On this episode, award-winning author, journalist and thought leader with a global reach, Maggie Jackson, returns to the Full PreFrontal Podcast with Sucheta Kamath to discuss her latest book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. Together, they explore the definition of uncertainty, the ties between executive function and the wisdom of uncertainty and finally, ways in which people can build a healthy relationship with the state of ‘not-knowing’. In times of flux, it’s strong Executive Function skills that enable everyone to question the validity of their decision, rethink their position or point of view, and change their own mind with ease, persistence, and courage.

About Maggie Jackson
Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author, journalist and thought leader with a global reach. Her new book, Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure, explores why we should seek not-knowing in times of flux. Nominated for a National Book Award, Uncertain has been named a Best Book of 2023 by Library Journal and The Next Big Idea Club. Library Journal calls the book "remarkable and persuasive." Maggie’s acclaimed book Distracted sparked a global conversation on the steep costs of fragmenting our attention. A former columnist for the Boston Globe, Maggie has written for The New York Times and many other publications worldwide. Her writings have been translated into multiple languages and widely covered by the global press. She lives in New York and Rhode Island.

Websites:
www.maggie-jackson.comBooks:
Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure (Nov. 7, 2023)Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention (2nd Ed, 2018)
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Support the show

The start of the New Year always rings in new possibilities. However, setting and achieving goals for yourself and by yourself is harder than it seems. There are a multitude of obstacles including questions like knowing which tasks and ambitions to prioritize, where exactly to start, and how best to carry on when facing roadblocks and distractions. One truth remains though, we are likely to follow through with goals and pursuits that we are highly motivated about.
On this episode, behavioral scientist, Chicago Booth professor, and leading expert on motivation, Dr. Ayelet Fishbach, Ph.D., discusses ways to think about and apply motivation to our lives and what people need to know about leveraging social support to stay motivated in our goal pursuit. Motivation is defined as a psychological force that enables action and a key to mastering Executive Function is to close the gap between one’s intentions and one’s actions.

About Ayelet Fishbach
Ayelet Fishbach, PhD, is the Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business and the author of GET IT DONE: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. She is the past president of the Society for the Science of Motivation and the International Social Cognition Network. She is an expert on motivation and decision making. Dr. Fishbach’s groundbreaking research on human motivation has won the Society of Experimental Social Psychology's Best Dissertation Award and Career Trajectory Award, and the Fulbright Educational Foundation Award.

Websites:
https://www.ayeletfishbach.com/https://tinyurl.com/MotSciBooks:
Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Support the show

How would you feel if during your trip to Agra, India, someone offers to sell you the Taj Mahal (one of the greatest wonders of the world)? In its absurd glory you might question the offer as you read this, but not everyone did. One of the greatest con artists from India, Natwarlal aka Mithilesh Kumar Srivastava, not only sold the Taj Mahal to unsuspecting foreign tourists, but also made out selling a few other historical monuments ~ and not just once, but multiple times. No one likes to be conned, fooled or taken advantage of. However, everyone has fallen prey to someone else’s deceit at least once because we are wired for trust-bias and scammers use our own cognitive beliefs, habits, and assumptions against us.
On this episode, research neuroscientists, co-authors and collaborators Dr. Christopher Chabris and Dr. Daniel Simons discuss their most recent book, “Nobody’s Fool: Why we get taken and what we can do about it” and explain what classic and current research in cognitive psychology and the social sciences says about our vulnerabilities to fall prey to deception and fraud. Focus, critical thinking, discernment and questioning ourselves with criticality are some of the effective ways of managing our truth bias and activating our executive function to protect our future-selves.

About Dr. Christopher Chabris
Christopher Chabris is a Professor at Geisinger, a Pennsylvania healthcare system, where he co-directs the Behavioral Insights Team. He previously taught at Union College and Harvard University, and is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. Chris received his Ph.D. in psychology and A.B. in computer science from Harvard. His research focuses on decision-making, attention, intelligence, and behavior genetics. His work has been published in leading journals including Science, Nature, PNAS, and Perception. Chris is also a chess master and co-author of the bestseller The Invisible Gorilla (published in 21 languages) and the forthcoming book on deception and fraud, Nobody’s Fool.

About Dr. Daniel Simons
Dr. Daniel Simons is a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois where he heads the Visual Cognition Laboratory and has courtesy appointments in the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising and the Gies College of Business. Dan received his B.A. from Carleton College and his Ph.D. from Cornell University. His research explores the limits of awareness and memory, the reasons why we often are unaware of those limits, and the implications of such limits for our personal and professional lives. For more information, visit dansimons.com.

Websites:
http://www.chabris.com/dansimons.comBooks:
The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive UsNobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken In and What We Can Do About ItAbout Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Support the show

200 episodes! The Full PreFrontal Podcast has reached a significant milestone, and what does that mean to us? We’re “in it for the long haul!” We find inspiration from Japanese artist, On Kawara, known for his work that illustrates the beauty, structure, and discipline in doing something over a long period of time with persistence and care. A milestone often not only marks the start of a new chapter, but also serves as a reward for past accomplishments, both big and small. 
Achievements are precious and timeless, and what better way to commemorate them than with precious guests. On today’s podcast, Sucheta celebrates this 200th episode with her two sons who flip the script by taking a look back at the podcast’s journey through time. 


Kunal Kamath is a graduate of Columbia University and an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company who lives and breathes executive function principles. In his spare time, Kunal loves the performing arts, crossword puzzles, and cultivating an indoor jungle of houseplants in his Brooklyn apartment. Rahil Kamath is also a graduate of Columbia University and is working toward his doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University—he is a firm believer of the deep connection between executive function and psychological well-being. Rahil loves reading novels, is an avid soccer fan, and, much like his mom, enjoys nerding out on all things psychology.


Sucheta would like to invite all listeners and followers of the podcast to join in on the celebrations as she continues to explore the mysteries of Executive Function while translating the art and science of self-regulated transformation for personal growth.


About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Support the show