Intentionality
July 31, 2007
Category: Intentionality • Movement and exercise • Perception • Research • Social
Take a look at this movie (QuickTime Required):
The moving object is exactly the same in each picture, but the background is different. If you're like most people, you'll see one object as an ice skater, and the other as a spinning top.
This puts the objects in two different classes -- animate (something that can move by itself: a human, animal, robot, and so on) and inanimate (something that requires an external force to move). Do we perceive the two objects differently?
Arguably, it's important that we do: if an object can move by itself, it's much more likely to be a threat to us than if it requires some external force, just like it's important to be able to tell the difference between a sleeping dog and a dog-shaped rock.
Perhaps this could be a job for mirror neurons: the mirror system, after all, is involved in both perceiving the motions of others and producing similar motions ourselves. But other areas of the brain are also involved in these types of actions. The social network, for example, is a set of widely distributed brain regions that are activated during social activities ranging from perceiving biological motion to judging the intentions of others.
Some studies have attempted to differentiate between these two systems by providing non-biological examples during fMRI imaging sessions. However, the research until now hasn't eliminated alternative explanations. A team led by Thalia Wheatley has devised a clever set of experiments using displays such as the one depicted above, in order to narrow down whether the mirror system or the social network is responsible for the decision about whether an object is animate or inanimate.
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Posted by Dave Munger at 11:44 AM • Comments (6)
July 19, 2007
Category: Intentionality • Reasoning • Research
[originally posted January 26, 2006]
Kids in America grow up in a society that overwhelmingly believes in life after death. At the same time, these same kids grow up learning more and more about the nature of living organisms, and what makes something living or dead. At some point, these two belief systems inevitably collide: pure religious faith suggests that the soul lives on after death, but pure science suggests that consciousness can only exist in a living brain.
Assuming these kids don't read Pharyngula (in which case all hope of an eternal soul would likely be quickly and rudely snuffed), which of these knowledge systems will win out?
Jesse Bering and David Bjorklund designed an innovative experiment to try to answer that question. They showed a puppet show to three different age groups: kindergartners (age 3-6), elementary-schoolers (age 10-12), and adults (college students age 18-20). The puppet show depicts an alligator eating a mouse, and afterward, each participant was asked a set of questions about the now-dead mouse.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 9:53 AM • Comments (48)
May 8, 2007
Category: Development / Aging • Emotion • Face perception • Intentionality • Research
Take a look at these two pictures. Who is more dangerous?
It's not hard to decide, although I wouldn't hurt a fly, and Nora, even at age three, could be brutal with her sarcasm. Now, what's the most dangerous situation?
Again, an easy decision. While Carhenge is certainly an awe-inspiring monument (and perhaps Jim could scratch himself on one of those cars), Nora's descent of this rock spire gives me shivers.
You might think that there aren't many differences in how adults judge threats in examples such as this, but there is some reason to believe that older adults may have a different response to danger than young adults. The volume of the amygdala, the so-called center of fear in the brain, decreases with age. The frontal cortex, believed to be the area responsible for understanding the thoughts and intentions of others, also diminishes in size more rapidly with age compared to other parts of the brain.
Ted Ruffman, Susan Sullivan, and Nigel Edge showed pictures like the ones above to both college students (younger adults) and older adults averaging age 69. Each picture was rated on a scale of -3 (not dangerous) to +3 (dangerous). Some of the pictures were faces, and some depicted situations like extreme sports, wild animals, or weather events, with no visible human faces. All these pictures had previously been categorized by both younger and older adults into low danger, medium danger, and high danger categories. Here are their results:
For the situation pictures, the difference between young and old adults was not significant, but for faces, older adults consistently rated the threat from the high danger pictures significantly lower than younger adults. The same pattern occurred whether the pictures had been previously categorized by younger or older adults.
This difference can't be explained by the strategy used to rate the pictures: both young and old adults tended to rate pictures of women and smiling faces as less dangerous.
The researchers make a compelling, though not conclusive case that what may be going on here is that older adults are simply worse at determining threats from faces than younger adults. After all, the results held true whether the categories had been determined by old or young people. Yet it's still possible that young adults are the ones who are consistently wrong.
If the differences in young adults and older adults really are due to some sort of decline in ability, then Ruffman's team suggests that future research might focus on imaging the brain while participants rate this set of images: if differences in ratings correspond to differing brain activity, that would also suggest that older adults' system for assessing threats has been compromised.
Ruffman, T., Sullivan, S., & Edge, N. (2006). Differences in the way older and younger adults rate threat in faces but not situations. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 61B(4), 187-194.
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:25 PM • Comments (17)
December 14, 2006
Category: Intentionality • Research • Social
I'm not bitter about this, honest I'm not, but it does often seem that people who know you very well end up buying really lousy gifts. What I really want to find out is this: why do they do that? It turns out, market researchers want to know, too. How can they have a prayer of selling people things they don't want when people can't even convince their loved ones to buy them things they do want?
Davy Lerouge and Luk Warlop have designed a clever study to examine this very issue. They wanted to know whether couples who've been together for at least six months were any better at predicting each other's preferences than they were predicting preferences for strangers. They decided to study furniture preferences, because it's something couples generally have to agree on together. Also, since people don't buy furniture very often, most couples probably wouldn't have a specific purchase to use as a reference, and instead would be relying on general knowledge of each others' preferences.
Lerouge and Warlop recruited 35 couples to participate in the study. Each partner was placed in a separate cubicle for the duration of the study, and had no contact with his or her mate. They then were shown pictures of 30 different sets of bedroom furniture and asked to indicate their impression of it (positive or negative). The next part was the key to the study:
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Posted by Dave Munger at 3:51 PM • Comments (14)
October 31, 2006
Category: Development / Aging • Intentionality • Reasoning • Research
Any grown-up would be surprised to see SpongeBob Squarepants show up in a Batman movie. Clearly, these characters inhabit two different fantasy worlds: one lives in a fabulous mansion near bustling Gotham City, while the other inhabits an underwater pineapple. Grown-ups divide fantasy worlds into non-intersecting sets: If Batman has even heard of SpongeBob, he would believe him to be a fictional character.
But what about children? Do they have the same understanding of the distinction between separate fictional worlds? Kids do understand the difference between reality and make-believe from a very young age, but this doesn't discount the possibility that for children, there are only two worlds: fantasy and reality. Deena Skolnick and Paul Bloom have created a simple pair of studies to find out if kids view fantasy worlds the same way grown-ups do.
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Posted by Dave Munger at 10:16 AM • Comments (13)
September 29, 2006
Category: Attention • Intentionality • Perception • Research
Occasionally you read a journal article so well-titled, you have to steal it for your blog post title. "Smells Like Clean Spirit" is a report by Rob Holland, Merel Hendricks, and Henk Aarts, in which they use smells to unconsciously modify their victims' participants' behavior.
In some ways, this research is nothing new. As the researchers point out, if we smell chocolate chip cookies, we may decide to eat; if we smell a garbage truck, we may walk faster down the street. We might associate pine scent with Christmas, or pheromones with sex. But most of these associations involve people being conscious of the odor and its impact. Holland's team wanted to demonstrate that scent could impact behavior even if people aren't conscious of it.
They created a "cleaning-related" odor in the office where they conducted their study by putting a citrus-scented cleaning liquid in a large bucket of warm water hidden behind a cubicle wall. Next, they asked volunteers to do a simple word-identification task where real words and nonsense words were flashed on a computer screen. Participants pressed a button when they saw the real words, and reaction time was measured. Half the time, the room was citrus-scented, and half the time, there was no scent. Here are the results:
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Posted by Dave Munger at 8:40 AM • Comments (5)
June 26, 2006
Category: Intentionality • Perception • Research
Developmental psychologists since Piaget have been interested in how well children are able to take the perspective of another. Piaget's laboratory had a large table with elaborate models on top; children who were able to take the perspective of a doll on the table and explain what the table looked like from her perspective instead of their own perspective were said to be at a later developmental stage.
But understanding whether a doll can "see" something doesn't always literally require taking her perspective. Take a look at this simple arrangement of objects on a table:
You don't have to imagine yourself sitting at the doll's place in order to decide whether she can see the key. All you have to do is trace an imaginary line from the doll's eyes to the object in question. But line tracing won't tell you if the key is on the doll's right or left. For that, you have to imagine sitting in the place of the doll. Children typically are able to do the "can the doll see X?" task at a younger age than the "is the key to the doll's left or right?" task.
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Posted by Dave Munger at 5:01 PM • Comments (1)
May 3, 2006
Category: Intentionality • Learning and testing • Research
Americans, as any ScienceBlogger will tell you, have a woefully poor understanding of math and science. For the most part, even the most ignorant among us are able to stumble through life, but what happens when we're confronted with a genuine scientific question with a real impact on our lives?
Consider the typical doctor's office scenario: the doctor asks a breast cancer patient to decide on a treatment. "There's a 30 percent chance of recurrence in five years," she tells the patient, "but with chemotherapy, the chance is reduced to 10 percent." If the patient doesn't have a basic understanding of probability, she can't make an informed decision about whether to undergo treatment.
Doctors are likely to be better educated than the vast majority of their patients, so how does this discrepancy impact the way they share information about medical risk with their patients? Andrea Gurmankin Levy and Jonathan Baron devised a study to try to understand the difference between doctors' and patients' concept of medical risk.
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Posted by Dave Munger at 3:00 PM • Comments (9)
January 26, 2006
Category: Intentionality • Research
Kids in America grow up in a society that overwhelmingly believes in life after death. At the same time, these same kids grow up learning more and more about the nature of living organisms, and what makes something living or dead. At some point, these two belief systems inevitably collide: pure religious faith suggests that the soul lives on after death, but pure science suggests that consciousness can only exist in a living brain.
Assuming these kids don't read Pharyngula (in which case all hope of an eternal soul would likely be quickly and rudely snuffed), which of these knowledge systems will win out?
Jesse Bering and David Bjorklund designed an innovative experiment to try to answer that question. They showed a puppet show to three different age groups: kindergartners (age 3-6), elementary-schoolers (age 10-12), and adults (college students age 18-20). The puppet show depicts an alligator eating a mouse, and afterward, each participant was asked a set of questions about the now-dead mouse.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:49 PM • Comments (21)
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