Keith Laws

Key takeaways

Keith Laws belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Keith Laws to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Keith Laws from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Keith R. Laws is a British academic who serves as professor of neuropsychology at the School of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. Laws' research centres on how cognitive functions and processes relate to brain structure and function; notably for research on cognitive functioning in people suffering from neurological and psychiatric disorders.

Career Laws completed a PhD at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge. He is the author of over 100 papers and a recent book entitled 'Category-Specificity: Evidence for Modularity of Mind'. He is a Chartered Psychologist, Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society (AFBPsS), Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and various academic organisations including the British Neuropsychological Society, British Neuropsychiatric Association, Experimental Psychology Society. and an editor at PLOS ONE. Laws, with his colleagues, created one of the first research groups to investigate impairment of everyday knowledge in patients with schizophrenia and to demonstrate worse cognitive outcomes in women suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Laws' work on the link between MDMA (also known as ecstasy) drug use and poor memory is the principal analysis of its kind to date, and has been broadly cited in both national and international media. In 2013 he published a study showing that women are better at multitasking than men.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Psychosis (CBTp) Laws has been a strong critic of the use of CBT for treating the psychotic symptoms associated with schizophrenia.

Music career Laws was a former exponent of experimental music, and was a founding member of the post-punk band The The. Laws is credited by fellow the The founder Matt Johnson as being the originator of the band name. Laws answered an advertisement placed by Johnson in NME in 1978, seeking musicians to form a band. The The as a duo, recorded the 7" 45rpm single for 4AD, "Controversial Subject"/"Black and White". Produced by Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis of Wire, Laws played synthesiser and sang, and Matt Johnson played guitar and also contributed vocals. The record sleeve mentions both Tom Johnston and Triash (Peter Ashworth) as having contributed, although the recordings featured only Laws and Johnson. Laws and Johnson played as the The at gigs with Wire, Cabaret Voltaire, DAF, This Heat, the Birthday Party and Scritti Politti. In early 1981, the The also contributed the composition "Untitled" for The Some Bizzare Album. In September of that year, the duo of Johnson and Laws signed a deal with Some Bizzare Records, and released the 7-inch single "Cold Spell Ahead". Following final demo recordings for Phonogram – "Three Orange Kisses for Kazan", "Waiting for the Upturn" – Laws left to pursue his studies, leaving Johnson as a solo artist using a group moniker.

Bibliography

Books Laws, Keith; Adlington, Rebecca L; Gale, Tim M; Moreno-Martínez, Francisco J (2010). Category-specificity: evidence for modularity of mind. New York: Nova Science Publishers. ISBN 9781608766437.

Journal articles Laws, Keith R; Hill, K; Mann, L; Stephenson, CME; Nimmo-Smith, Ian; McKenna, Peter J (October 2004). "Hypofrontality in schizophrenia: a meta-analysis of functional imaging studies". Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. 110 (4): 243–256. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0447.2004.00376.x. hdl:2299/873. PMID 15352925. S2CID 78405. Laws, Keith R; Lynch, D; McKenna, Peter J (January 2010). "Cognitive behavioural therapy for major psychiatric disorder: does it really work? A meta-analytical review of well-controlled trials". Psychological Medicine. 40 (1): 9–24. doi:10.1017/S003329170900590X. hdl:2299/5741. PMID 19476688. Laws, Keith R; Irvine, Karen; Kondel, Tejinder K; Gale, Tim M (August 2012). "Greater cognitive deterioration in women than men with Alzheimer's disease: a meta analysis". Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental. 34 (9): 989–998. doi:10.1080/13803395.2012.712676. PMID 22913619. S2CID 28300240. Laws, Keith R; Sweetnam, Hilary; Kondel, Tejinder K (November 2012). "Is Ginkgo biloba a cognitive enhancer in healthy individuals? A meta-analysis". Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental. 27 (6): 527–533. doi:10.1002/hup.2259. PMID 23001963. S2CID 6307491. Laws, Keith R; Irvine, Karen (December 2012). "Do women with Alzheimer's disease demonstrate greater cognitive deterioration?". Neurodegenerative Disease Management. 2 (6): 561–564. doi:10.2217/nmt.12.64. Laws, Keith R; Stoet, Gijsbert; O'Connor, Daryl B; Conner, Mark (October 2013). "Are women better than men at multi-tasking?". BMC Psychology. 1 (1): 18. doi:10.1186/2050-7283-1-18. Laws, Keith R; Jauhar, Sameer; McKenna, Peter J; Radua, Joaquim; Fung, E; Salvador, R (January 2014). "Cognitive-behavioural therapy for the symptoms of schizophrenia: systematic review and meta-analysis with examination of potential bias". The British Journal of Psychiatry. 204 (1): 20–29. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.112.116285. PMID 24385461.

References

External links Department of Psychology, University of Hertfordshire Staff Directory Keith Laws on Academia.edu

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Keith Laws

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Keith Laws claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Keith Laws before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Keith Laws ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Keith Laws

In research: Keith Laws appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Keith Laws in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Keith Laws is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1961 births, Academics of the University of Hertfordshire, Alumni of the University of Cambridge, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Keith Laws outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Keith Laws in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Keith Laws means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Keith Laws out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Keith Laws in simple terms?

Keith R. Laws is a British academic who serves as professor of neuropsychology at the School of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire.

Why does Keith Laws matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Keith Laws?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Keith Laws.