dmunger | April 4, 2007I told you so.
Now it's been confirmed: Daylight saving time doesn't save energy.
In other news:
Here's an intervention that really works.
Referees affected by crowd noise. But we already knew that, too.
Nice discussion of Gapminder. Try it out for yourself. It's addictive!
Computers beginning to match performance of visual system.
How the amazing motion after-effect works. Make sure you at least try out the illusion!
Thorough description of new book: "The Psychology of Baseball."
dmunger | April 3, 2007If you're like me, when you read a book, you form a picture of what's happening in your mind. I try to imagine not only what the characters look like, but also their surroundings. Eventually, I've created a picture of an entire world in my head. Then, when the book gets made into a film, I'm often disappointed when things don't look the way I imagined them. Could it be that the visual environment I've created in my head is just as appealing as the one created by the filmmaker?
It makes some sense: if we've gone to the trouble of creating a visual environment, why not use the part of our mind…
dmunger | April 3, 2007Just wanted to point out an excellent interview with Philip Zimbardo, the principal researcher of the controversial Stanford Prison Experiment, on the New York Times web site.
If, like me, you couldn't stomach watching the entire video (now removed from YouTube), you should at least watch this 8-minute interview, which also offers a nice summary of the experiment and its relation to Abu Ghraib.
Zimbardo's thesis is that we all have the capacity for good and evil; it's the situations we are put in that cause us to behave in good or evil ways.
dmunger | April 3, 2007Amardeep Singh suggests that bloggers might benefit from some form of peer review:
The idea came to me as I've begun preparing a tenure file at my current university, acutely aware that my blog writing cannot be considered "peer-reviewed" publication by any current standard. Even the rewards of occasional Boing-Boing-ish popularity (my post on "Early Bengali Science Fiction" from awhile ago, for instance) do not help, since that is really popularity rather than review. But why not institute a review of some sort?
But how to go about it? Getting scholars to review academic work is often like…
dmunger | April 2, 2007Just a quick announcement: I've changed my email address, so if you need to get in touch with me, please update your address books. The new address is dsmunger--at--gmail--dot--com.
dmunger | March 30, 2007This week's Casual Friday study attempted to get to the bottom of the age-old thermostat battle. In every office, classroom, and home, it seems, no one can agree on the proper temperature to set the thermostat. While one person is shivering like a wet poodle, their office-mate is sweating like fountain. I've talked with a few of my (now over-40) friends about the issue, and several of us agree that we seem to be getting more sensitive to temperature as we age.
A much more common stereotype, however, is that men tend to run hot while women run cold. When my family watches TV together, Jim and…
dmunger | March 29, 2007Earlier today I posted a poll challenging Cognitive Daily readers to show me that they understand error bars -- those little I-shaped indicators of statistical power you sometimes see on graphs. I was quite confident that they wouldn't succeed. Why was I so sure? Because in 2005, a team led by Sarah Belia conducted a study of hundreds of researchers who had published articles in top psychology, neuroscience, and medical journals. Only a small portion of them could demonstrate accurate knowledge of how error bars relate to significance. If published researchers can't do it, should we expect…
dmunger | March 29, 2007Cognitive Daily gets a lot of complaints about graphs, mostly from readers who say the graphs are useless without error bars. My response is that error bars are confusing to most readers. But perhaps I'm wrong about that. Now I'm going to put my money where my mouth is.
Take a look at this graph. It represents a fictional experiment where two different groups of 50 people took a memory test. The mean scores of each group are shown, along with error bars showing standard error:
Based on this graph, can you tell if there is a significant difference (p<.05) between the scores of the two…
dmunger | March 29, 2007Computers have become such an integral part of life that it's often tempting to believe that they work just like the human brain (or that the brain works just like a computer). However, those of us who've spent time programming computers know that we don't "think" like computers: if we did, a single misplaced semicolon could turn Hamlet into meaningless babble.
Chris Chatham has developed an excellent list of 10 differences between brains and computers. I think the difference that best illustrates the programmer's dilemma is Number 2:
Difference # 2: The brain uses content-addressable memory…
dmunger | March 28, 2007John Tierney wonders whether doctors should be prosecuted for prescribing too much pain medication. Tierney makes some good points. One "warning sign" that a patient may be abusing drugs is that they come back for a refill early because their medicine has run out. Couldn't this also be a sign that the patient is in pain and needs more medication? There's tons of individual variation in sensitivity to pain. If the doctor believes the patient to be earnest, why is the doctor the one being prosecuted?
Another good New York Times article. This one is about the limits of multitasking ability. The…
dmunger | March 27, 2007When 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 in the right position means you'll have faster, more…
dmunger | March 27, 2007This week's edition of Encephalon and an email from the Neurophilosopher has reminded me that I've been rather negligent of my blogroll lately.
I believe a blogroll should represent the sites a blogger visits frequently; it's an invitation into that blogger's community. Surely you'd get a sense of that by reading a couple months' worth of posts, but who has time for that? The blogroll is a shortcut.
Unfortunately, I'm busy too -- reading (and writing about) these blogs. It becomes easy to neglect a blogroll, because it's not something I use every day -- I use an RSS reader to follow my…
dmunger | March 26, 2007A rat's brain has millions of neurons, each with up to 10,000 connections to other neurons. This "simple" animal's neural network is mind-bogglingly complex. Yet a Swiss laboratory has achieved remarkable success duplicating a vast region of a rat's brain using a supercomputer. They still have a ways to go, however. The computer currently has 10,000 microprocessors, each representing a single neuron in the rat's brain. To duplicate the entire brain they'll need a computer 2,000 times bigger. Their ultimate goal is even more ambitious: to create a model of the human brain, with its hundred…
dmunger | March 23, 2007Last weekend Greta and I had a joint party celebrating our fortieth birthdays (my birthday was in January, Greta's is in May, so we split the difference). Naturally, the conversation turned to the changes that occur as we get older. I said that I thought I felt cold more often than when I was younger, and one friend, just a couple years older than me, said the same thing happened to him.
I can recall a time just seven or eight years ago when I was always the warmest person in the office -- I was the guy who constantly wanted to turn the thermostat down, while everyone else wanted it much…
dmunger | March 23, 2007Greta has a jar of candy in her office, and she eats exactly one piece of candy per day (as well as offering it to her students whenever they visit). By contrast, if I have candy within 50 yards of my office, it will disappear within a day or two at the most (which is why I don't keep candy in my office!). Why can Greta resist temptation while I cannot? A new study suggests that part of the reason may have to do with heart rate.
The Science Daily headline, "Why We Give In To Temptation," is a little misleading. The research doesn't show why I give into temptation while Greta does not; it…
dmunger | March 22, 2007The Kuleshov Effect, discovered nearly a century ago by Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, posits that the context in which we see an image of an actor's face will determine the emotion the face portrays. For example, take a look at this short little clip I made (QuickTime required). First you'll see a gray screen, then a photo, then a second gray screen, and another photo of a face, taken just after that person looked at the first photo:
What emotion would you say characterizes the second face? Is it neutral, subtly happy, or subtly sad?
Kuleshov's work suggests that most viewers will see that…
dmunger | March 22, 2007The New York Times has a great article on the Japanese gaming company responsible for the Sudoku craze. The article is interesting, but be sure to check out the sidebar, where you can try three up-and-coming rivals to Sudoku.
Personally I find Sudoku a little boring: After I figured out a "system" that allowed me to work out almost any puzzle, it just doesn't offer much challenge. So what's next? I really like Kakuro, which has actually been around for a while (I can even remember its U.S. version from the 1970s: "Cross-Sums"). You can try the sample puzzle on the New York Times page, but the…
dmunger | March 21, 2007
PsyBlog has completed its list of the top 10 psychology studies. You can now vote for your favorite.
What are the odds of a three-way tie in Jeopardy!?
What's special about beef, cream, and orange?
Chris disses the simulation theory of aesthetics, or why watching Rambo doesn't feel like getting shot.
What's the key to happiness?
Why do doctors make mistakes in diagnosis? See also his interview with Terry Gross
Cool video showing the retina does a great deal of visual processing.
Some insight into how we learn complex behaviors.
15 minutes of soccer a day can lower obesity by 50 percent.
Yet…
dmunger | March 21, 2007Several news outlets are reporting on a study, in some cases claiming that racing video games "cause" accidents or reckless driving. But causality is difficult to demonstrate in psychology research. Do the games really cause accidents?
Many of the irate commenters on the news articles claim that the study doesn't really show causality, or that it's not well-designed. I took a quick look at the actual study, and came away impressed: the study does show some causal links between racing games and poor driving behavior in simulations, but it also has some limitations.
One thing I like about the…
dmunger | March 20, 2007On the opening episode of the Colbert Report, faux conservative Stephen Colbert expressed his preference for "guts" over facts:
That's where truth comes from -- the gut. Facts come from the brain -- and some people think that makes facts better. But did you know you have more nerve endings in your stomach than in your brain? You can look it up....
Anyone can tell the news to you. I'm going to feel the news at you.
In Colbert's signature parodic style, he appeals to the "common-sense" notion that "guts" matter more than "brains." Even his dubious claim about nerve endings has some merit --…