dmunger | October 13, 2009In case you missed them, here are my picks this week for psychology/neuroscience posts from ResearchBlogging.org.
Viewers of videos synchronize their blinking. It's true. When people watch videos in a group, they tend to blink at the same time. Steve Genco explains why.
The goal really does seem bigger when you're kicking well. Mo explains the research, which involves an extremely cute miniature adjustable field goal.
People work harder when they believe their work is "meaningful." A cool experiment involving Legos explains why adult video store clerks are the surliest people in the world (…
dmunger | October 9, 2009For the first-ever Casual Fridays study nearly four years ago, we asked readers who said "hi" to them while they were out for a walk or run:
Today's entry is a survey designed to test a hypothesis I've been developing during my daily run. I think I've noticed a pattern in the responses of people I see while I'm running, and I want to find out whether it's a local quirk in the way people react to me, or if it's a universal phenomemon. The question centers around who says "hi" to you while you engage in your regular outdoor fitness activity. If you've never thought about this before, you might…
dmunger | October 8, 2009Classical Indian dancing is a tradition that extends back 2,000 years. Unlike much Western dance, it is intended to express specific emotions and tell detailed stories. The Natyasastra, a text from the first or second century A.D., offers instructions for how to depict nine primary emotions, and these rules continue to be followed in Indian Classical dance today. This movie demonstrates one form of Indian Classical dance:
As you can see, each gesture has a highly-specific meaning, which, to my eyes, at least, isn't obvious. Yet much research has shown that many emotions share "universal"…
dmunger | October 7, 2009In case you missed them, here are my picks of the week from psychology and Neuroscience from ResearchBlogging.org:
Ever wondered how brain cells manage to form synapses only with other cells, and not with themselves? Neuroskeptic describes a fascinating study demonstrating how neurons avoid getting tangled up in themselves.
Benefits of attending weight-loss camp go beyond losing those pounds. Travis Saunders explains how the psychosocial benefits of weight loss camp are probably more important than losing weight.
Resting state brain networks are stable. BPS Research Digest shows how one of…
dmunger | October 6, 2009I think I've mentioned here before that I'm a big fan of chocolate. I get upset when coffee shops in my area only bring out the chocolates in the afternoon. Who says you can't have a chocolate chip cookie for breakfast?
Chocolate, combined with a cup of coffee, helps me work all the way through to the end of the day, when I'd otherwise be tempted to call it quits in the late afternoon. So naturally I was excited when Greta found a research report on the effect of chocolate on mood. Could there be scientific confirmation that chocolate helps you get through the day?
There has been plenty of…
dmunger | October 2, 2009Whenever I create a demo for this site, there's always a balance: Do I make the demo dramatic, so it's most surprising when it works? Or do I make it less dramatic, so it works for more people? (There are other things to balance as well, such as my time and technical proficiency)
The Troxler effect is a particularly dramatic and simple demonstration of how much our visual system adapts to the environment. Just stare at the center dot in this figure for about 15 seconds, and the outer ring should fade completely from view!
But the illusion, like nearly all illusions, doesn't work for everyone…
dmunger | October 1, 2009The other day, our car wouldn't start and Jim had to ask a neighbor over to help him jump-start it. There was much rushing in and out of the house looking for flashlights and other tools to help get the job done. After the neighbor left, Jim wanted to drive somewhere and couldn't find the keys. Clearly he had just had them because he was working on the car. Where could they be? We searched up and down throughout the house, but we couldn't find them and eventually had to use a spare set.
The next morning as I was getting ready to leave for our school carpool in our other car, I found them…
dmunger | September 30, 2009Here are my picks this week for the best psychology/neuroscience posts on ResearchBlogging.org.
Who feels pain after surgery...LONG after surgery? As many as 50 percent of patients report pain long after surgery. Healthskills examines a paper exploring some of the reasons why.
Speaking of pain, how do you study whether overweight people feel "less full" than average-weight people? Have them swallow a condom and inflate it in their stomachs. Eew! Scicurious examines the science.
Kids know Batman doesn't play with Spongebob, but do they keep the imaginary worlds they make up for games separate…
dmunger | September 29, 2009Imagine you learned your romantic partner was unfaithful to you. Would you be more upset if he or she had sex with someone else, or if they had fallen in love with someone else? Several studies have found that the answer to that question depends on the your gender. Women say they would be more upset if their partner was in love with someone else, but men say they would be more upset if their partner was having sex with someone else.
Why the difference? There are a couple explanations. One relies on natural selection: It's important to men to know their genes are being passed on, so sexual…
dmunger | September 25, 2009A couple weeks ago I discussed the Troxler Effect in my column on SEEDMAGAZINE.COM. Some people said they couldn't see the illusion, so I thought it might be interesting to play around with the effect and see if people can see it under different circumstances.
For this week's Casual Fridays study you'll see a variety of different illusions, some of which will be easier to see than others. Give it your best shot at experiencing the illusion -- we'll see if we notice any patterns next week!
Click here to participate
As usual, the study is brief, with about 10 questions. However, because each…
dmunger | September 24, 2009As an undergraduate, at my school it was practically a requirement to steal silverware from the campus cafeteria. There were students who'd commandeered full sets of china. The desk clerk at my dorm used to say that the only thing we were learning from our college education was "how to steal."
Somehow it didn't seem wrong to us to steal from the cafeteria (though I drew the line at a single setting of silverware). Plus, we'd heard that at other schools, students used the cafeteria trays as sleds after the first winter snow. At least we weren't doing that (though arguably this was only because…
dmunger | September 23, 2009My column on SEEDMAGAZINE.COM today addresses the definition of "addiction." Does it make sense to lump all dependence on substances and even all habits under the umbrella of "dependence?" Here's a selection:
We often think of true addicts as street junkies who prostitute themselves or steal from others to support their habits, but in reality there's a wide variety of behaviors associated with abusing mind-altering substances. They can range from the casual drinker who sometimes has a few too many martinis, to the pothead who still lives in his mother's basement, to a talk-show host zoned out…
dmunger | September 22, 2009Imagine your neighbor has a dog that regularly escapes her yard. One day you see the dog escape and return it to her. She thanks you by giving you a piece of delicious home-made apple pie. This happens several days in a row. Then one day when you return the dog, there's no pie, no thanks, and no explanation. Would you return the dog the next time it escapes?
You might be disinclined. But what if there had never been any reward? Wouldn't returning her dog be the right thing to do?
Children as young as 14 months old will spontaneously help others for no reward. But a 1973 study of 3- to 5-year-…
dmunger | September 18, 2009Last week's Casual Fridays study was inspired by my annoyance at a website form which required me to constantly switch between typing in information and selecting it from a menu. I wondered if there was really any significant benefit to requiring the use of menus, when typing (for me, anyways) seemed so much faster.
So we developed two versions of the same simple 8-question quiz, one of which required users to alternate between menu-responses and typed responses, and the other which allowed respondents to type in each response. We asked respondents to answer the questions as quickly as…
dmunger | September 17, 2009Teens who routinely exercise (especially in organized activities like team sports) are less likely to smoke or abuse drugs or alcohol. This fact alone might make it seem like a no-brainer to include physical activities in substance-abuse prevention and treatment programs, but in fact little research has been done to figure out whether exercising actually causes people to be less interested in drugs and alcohol. It's also possible that potential substance-abusers are just uninterested in exercise, or that drug abuse causes a lack of interest in exercise. But because so little research has been…
dmunger | September 16, 2009My column for SEEDMAGAZINE.COM today covers the fascinating research on perceptual illusions. While these illusions are often amazing in their own right, what's more important is what they tell us about the visual system, and how common they really are:
Are you sitting in a swivel office chair as you read this article? Would you like to see a remarkable visual illusion? Just push yourself back from your desk and spin around four or five times from right to left with your eyes open. Then look back at this screen. You'll probably notice that now the onscreen text appears to be moving from left…
dmunger | September 15, 2009We've talked a lot on Cognitive Daily about change blindness: the inability to spot visual differences between images and even real people and objects right before our eyes. The most dramatic demonstration might be Daniel Simons' "experiment" that took place before participants even knew they were being studied:
More recently researchers have uncovered a similar phenomenon for sounds: Change deafness. Listeners are asked to listen to two one-second clips separated by 350 milliseconds of white noise. The clips are composite sounds, combinations of four different familiar sounds:
If one of…
dmunger | September 11, 2009We've all had the experience of a completely infuriating electronic form. My "favorite" example is a calendar application I once had that wouldn't let me delete numbers in certain places: there had to be something in the box, and you couldn't even delete a number temporarily to replace it with a new one. The only way to change a number was to carefully select the whole number with the mouse, then type the new number in. This is a very annoying step when you're trying to schedule an appointment with someone over the phone.
But I'm wondering if some of us are better than others at filling in…
dmunger | September 9, 2009In case you missed them, here are the posts I chose as "Editor's Selections" yesterday for ResearchBlogging.org.
The amazing malleability of our body image. Volunteers felt real pain watching someone hurt a fake hand.
Can we use EEG to predict whether an antidepressant will be effective? Maybe, but only if researchers are allowed to test the proprietary "magic numbers"
What's your brain doing during a lucid dream? William Lu discusses a recent study, and links to a page describing how to induce your own lucid dreams.
Finally, I think I wrote a pretty good post last week too. Decide for…
dmunger | September 8, 2009Imagine a critical witness being grilled in preparation for a high-profile murder case. The prosecuting attorney wants to make sure she has every angle covered, so she questions the witness over and over to double- and triple-check that he has his story right. When he finally takes the stand, he remembers every detail she asked him about. But when the defense attorney cross-examines him, she takes an unexpected new tactic, asking about details the prosecutor hadn't prepared him for. He stumbles over some of the answers, contradicting other witnesses, and now all his testimony seems suspect.…