dmunger | June 30, 2008In our discussions of violence associated with video game play, we've frequently noted that there appear to be different effects depending on the type of video game. Some games are more violent than others, and some games reward violence while others discourage it. All this has an impact in terms of real-world behavior and attitudes. Some games have positive effects.
One type of game -- one of the most popular types, in fact -- hasn't been studied nearly as much as the traditional arcade-style game: massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs. One of the studies of this type…
dmunger | June 27, 2008This is just a brief note to let our loyal Casual Friday readers know that we'll be going on a break for the summer. We should be able to maintain a semi-reasonable pace with the regular Cognitive Daily posts, but with all of our travel, it generally becomes a logistical nightmare to keep up with Casual Fridays over the summer. See you in August!
In the meantime, you might want to use the comments section of this post to suggest Casual Friday topics you'd like to see in the Fall.
dmunger | June 26, 2008My high school experience, like that of nearly everyone who attended my school, was a perplexing one. It seemed there were only a few "popular" people -- those that everyone knew and liked -- and wanted to be like. Everyone else was much like me: they struggled to become more popular, with little success. Everyone had a few friends, but somehow these friends were never as good as the popular people would be, or so it seemed.
One of the things that I believed was preventing me from becoming popular was my reputation. Those who knew me saw me in a certain way -- a non-popular way. Maybe if I…
dmunger | June 25, 2008We're still working hard on getting the next version of ResearchBlogging.org ready to go. I know this is taking a long time, but since we have a (semi) working system right now, we really want to get this right. It shouldn't be too much longer. A few weeks ago we settled on a new list of major topics for the site. Here they are:
Anthropology
Astronomy
Biology
Chemistry
Clinical Research
Computer Science
Engineering
Geosciences
Health
Mathematics
Neuroscience
Philosophy
Physics
Psychology
Social Science
Research / Scholarship
Other
Now we'd like to generate the subtopics associated with each…
dmunger | June 23, 2008Do you multitask? I'm not talking about literally doing two things at once, like emailing while talking on the phone, or playing the trombone while washing the dishes. I'm talking about the more common phenomenon of starting one project before you're finished with another. For example, after I read the journal article I'll be discussing in this post, I caught up on some email correspondence, ordered a new phone for my office, and ate lunch. Now I'm finally getting around to actually writing the post itself. Why didn't I just read the article and then write my post while it was fresh in my…
dmunger | June 21, 2008One of the things that motivated Nora and me to conduct the Casual Friday nuts study was our intense ambivalence toward the Brazil nut. It's so much bigger than the other nuts that it tends to dominate any mixture, even when present in small quantities. And, to our palate, it just doesn't taste good. It seems to be there only to waste space. As Jonah Lehrer put it in his comment on our original survey, "I've long believed that nobody actually likes Brazil nuts."
Indeed, it was the lowest-rated nut of any nut in our survey, as you can see in this graph of the ratings:
With an average rating…
dmunger | June 20, 2008Last week we asked our readers what their favorite types of mixed nuts were. Does the mixture that comes in the can actually approximate real-world preferences, or are the nut-packagers just giving us the cheapest nuts, with no allowances for our actual likes and dislikes?
We received over 600 responses. Readers rated seven types of nuts typically found in jars of mixed nuts on a scale 0 (don't like at all) to 5 (like very much). This morning I bought two cans of nuts from the grocery store and Nora carefully sorted, counted, and measured the contents of each can. Here are the contents of the…
dmunger | June 19, 2008One of the first steps to learning a language is figuring out where one word ends and the next one begins. Since fluent speakers don't generally pause between words, it can be a daunting task. We've discussed one of the ways people do it in this post -- they focus in on consonant sounds. Other researchers have found that we also focus on the statistical properties of language.
Certain syllables are likely to follow each other within individual words, but unlikely to follow each other between words. Take the phrase "between words." In English, within a single word we're much more likely to…
dmunger | June 17, 2008What makes something look glossy? At first, it doesn't seem like a difficult question -- it's something smooth and reflective. But if you were to attempt to draw something that looked glossy, how would you to it? Now, the problem suddenly gets a lot more difficult. Taking a look at a photo of a glossy object might give you some clues. Here's an example:
I took this picture of my watch using the webcam on my computer. Notice that you can see the reflection of the computer screen in the bottom half of my watch face. You can't see it on my face though -- my face isn't glossy. So one component…
dmunger | June 16, 2008Listen to this short audio clip:
The clip plays two notes that are two full octaves apart. That's a greater range than many people can produce vocally. It should be easy for anyone to tell the difference between these two notes, even when heard in isolation, right?
Not necessarily.
A team led by Ulrich Weger has found a scenario where people make systematic errors judging these two very different notes. While most people get the notes right most of the time, by introducing a wrinkle into the testing, Weger's team could reliably induce errors and slower response times.
They asked 20…
dmunger | June 13, 2008Last weekend Nora and I went on a hike in the Smoky Mountains. Whenever we go hiking, we make trail mix -- usually just cashews and raisins. This time, however, we had some mixed nuts left over from a party so we decided to use those instead.
But there's a problem with mixed nuts: invariably there are too many of the nuts you don't like, and not enough of the ones you do like. Since we had plenty of time to think as we hiked along, Nora and I wondered if it was even possible to create a mixture of nuts that would satisfy everyone. Do the nut manufacturers attempt to do this? Or do they just…
dmunger | June 12, 2008Boundary extension -- misremembering the boundaries of a scene as wider than they really are -- has been observed in adults as old as 84 and children as young as 6. But for kids much younger than 6, the phenomenon becomes quite difficult to study. How do you ask a 6-month-old whether the picture they're looking at has the same borders as one they saw a few minutes ago? You can't ask them to draw the picture for you -- they can barely sit up, let alone hold a pencil.
Yet the development of boundary extension is an important aspect of the study of vision. Do babies experience the phenomenon…
dmunger | June 11, 2008Take a look at these three pictures. Can you tell which is a human, which is a cat, and which is a pigeon?
How about these three pictures? A little easier?
It would be even easier, of course, if the pictures were in motion, like in this movie (QuickTime required). (Update: Nikolaus Troje has provided a link to a full set of demos here -- check them out, they're awesome!) The difference between the first three pictures and the second three is that the points that make up each animal's body parts have been scrambled in the first set of pictures. Why? Because the researchers Dorita Chang…
dmunger | June 10, 2008A reader recently emailed to ask us if there's been any research about whether poor working conditions such as a noisy or overheated office affect motivation and efficiency. Wouldn't it be great if you could document to your employer that the guy in the next cubicle's constant gabbing on the phone is negatively affecting the company's bottom line?
Greta did a search of the literature (and made some queries to colleagues who specialize in industrial / organizational psychology) and confirmed my suspicion that there has been a great deal of research into how working conditions affect…
dmunger | June 5, 2008This article was originally posted on March 27, 2007
When we see a familiar face, or even a photo of a favorite car or pet, we're often flooded with memories from our past. Sometimes just seeing a person or object that's similar to the ones in our memory will trigger recollections we never knew we had. Maybe you've had a memory triggered by a scent or the texture of an object. Sometimes emotions such as happiness or anger will spur vivid memories, too.
A new study adds an unexpected method to the list of ways to spur memories about our past: body position. That's right: just holding your body…
dmunger | June 4, 2008Not long ago we discussed work led by Deena Skolnick Weisberg showing that most people are more impressed by neuroscience explanations of psychological phenomena than plain-old psychology explanations. Talking about brains, it seems, is more convincing than simply talking about behavior, even when the neuroscience explanation doesn't actually add any substantive details.
Now David McCabe and Alan Castel have taken this work on the acceptance of neuroscience to a new level: now they've got pictures! They asked 156 students at Colorado State University to read three different newspaper articles…
dmunger | June 3, 2008Take a look at the short movie I've linked below (Click on the picture to play. QuickTime required). The movie shows a virtual gripping device (two red balls) lifting rectangular objects and placing them on a conveyor belt. Do you notice anything unusual happening as the objects are being moved?
This is a recording of the image seen by a volunteer using a virtual-reality headset and two force-feedback devices to simulate moving objects by picking them up with a thumb and index finger. The force-feedback devices offer resistance so that the volunteer feels as if he is lifting real objects…
dmunger | June 2, 2008The link below will take you to a short movie (QuickTime Required). You'll see a series of seven easy addition problems, which will flash by at the rate of one every two seconds. Your job is to solve the problems as quickly as possible (ideally, you should say the answers out loud).
Click to watch movie
Apart from the possibility that you might have a better memory for some math facts than others, were any of the problems easier for you?
If you're like most people, you probably responded faster when a problem was repeated, as was the case with 3 + 5. And since the order of operations doesn't…
dmunger | May 30, 2008A few weeks ago, Greta got a new iPod. I was, naturally, interested to see how it worked since it was supposed to be the latest technology, but Greta would hardly let me touch it: "It's mine, and I want to learn how to use it before you do," she told me.
This was surprising to me, since I generally let people try out my new toys right away -- I'd even say it's part of my own enjoyment of them. It got me to thinking whether there was some pattern to who lets others use their gadgets and who doesn't.
So of course, we did something about it. Two weeks ago, we posted a quick survey that we hoped…
dmunger | May 29, 2008Inspired by this post, we've decided to devote a week to the analysis of studies from the history of psychology.
Gestalt theory hit the psychology world by storm in the 1920s, and the Gestalt school's unquestioned leader (though probably not the originator of the concept) was Max Wertheimer. While many people have an intuitive understanding of the concept of "gestalt" as the essence or overall meaning of something, they may not be as aware of the Gestalt school's principles, which were laid down by Wertheimer and others in very specific and concrete ways.
What Wertheimer was reacting to was…