dmunger | March 20, 2007Eric Schwitzgebel offers an interesting paradox:
When I was a graduate student, a girlfriend asked me what, of all things, I most enjoyed doing. Eschewing the obvious and half-clever reply, I answered skiing -- thinking of those moments of breathing the cold, clean air, taking in the mountain view, then expertly carving a steep, lonely slope. But how long had it been since I'd gone skiing -- maybe three years? My girlfriend suggested that if has been three years since I've done what I most enjoyed doing, then maybe I wasn't living wisely.
Schwitzgebel argues that the negatives of these…
dmunger | March 19, 2007It seems that students (and their parents) are more stressed than ever about whether they'll get into the right college. Admission to places like Harvard, Stanford, and Duke is getting more competitive each year, with less than ten percent of applicants actually admitted. Because attending the best high schools increases chances of admission, the stress doesn't start in senior year -- the competition to get into high school can be almost as stressful. And, of course, getting into the right high school requires the proper elementary education, so many kids are subjected to intense competitive…
dmunger | March 16, 2007The general consensus about last week's world accent test is that it was very difficult, but also quite fun. Everyone also wanted to know the answers to the quiz. I'm not going to make it that easy for you, but at the end of the post I will offer a way for you to figure out which is which.
The test required participants to listen to ten people from different parts of the world reading the same English text sample (via the fantastic Speech Accent Archive). Then they had to choose which accent was which from a list of 15 countries (actually 15 countries and 2 U.S. states). Which accent was…
dmunger | March 16, 2007I've found a few articles that I've got couple sentences' worth of thoughts about, but not a couple paragraphs, so I'm going to write them all up here. This is sort of halfway between a news and an in other news post.
1. Neuroscience and science writing. Jonah Lehrer argues that it's okay for science writers to use generalizations like "the amygdala is the center of fear and anxiety" when actually all we can say for certain is that region is activated more when people claim they are afraid or anxious, compared to a "resting state." I agree; writers need to take shortcuts sometimes, but an…
dmunger | March 15, 2007These two pictures represent the eye motions of two viewers as they scan a work of art with the goal of remembering it later. One of them is a trained artist, and the other is a trained psychologist. Can you tell which is which?
How about for this picture?
Art teachers have noted that when beginning students attempt to draw accurate portraits, they tend to exaggerate the size of key features: eyes and mouths are too big relative to the size of the head. Trained artists learn to ignore these temptations and draw the world as it really appears. Even world-famous artists such as Leonardo…
dmunger | March 15, 2007When a suspect confesses to a crime, it's often seen as a clear victory for the prosecution. But what if the confession was coerced? Under the emotional strain of an interrogation, it happens more often than you'd think. In response to the problem of coercion, many police departments now videotape interrogations. This should eliminate all potential for abuse, right? Wrong. Teams led by Daniel Lassiter have found that when the camera is focused on the suspect instead of both the suspect and the interrogator, people are more likely to view the confession as voluntary rather than coerced (the…
dmunger | March 14, 2007
An interesting strategy for picking colors for charts, graphs, and so on. Be sure to check out ColorBrewer.
Another reason to study music.
A sad result that's likely to be controversial: 18 percent of women experience sexual victimization.
If robots dreamed, what would they dream about?
Inquiring minds want to know: Is it a good idea to go to grad school in Canada if you want to work in the US?
What makes a good peer reviewer?
Oxytocin: the wonder neurotransmitter.
Need more links? Visit Encephalon 18.
dmunger | March 14, 2007Yesterday's "Buzz in the blogosphere" on the ScienceBlogs main page was all about medically unfit troops being sent in to battle. You should definitely check out some of those articles, including a discussion of whether the reports are accurate.
However, those reports don't cover another troubling phenomenon of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: the military's poor record handling mental illness. On Monday's Fresh Air, Terry Gross interviewed two reporters who had uncovered serious issues with the U.S. military's handling of life-threatening battlefield mental illness. They reported on the…
dmunger | March 13, 2007Take a look at the image below. Your job is to find the T among the sea of Ls. If you're like most people it will take just a second or two.
Figure 1:
If you repeat this task several dozen times, each time with a new set of Ls and T in different colors, positions, and orientations, you'll get quicker at the task. Try this one -- again, look for the T.
Figure 2:
But what if a pattern was repeated later on? Would you remember it? Would you be quicker? Take a look at this figure; again, look for the T:
Figure 3:
Here, the pattern of colors is the same as in Figure 1, and the T is in the same…
dmunger | March 13, 2007Is it better to meet your special someone by picking them up at a rock concert, or by serving on the same church committee? Actually, the rock concert might be the better bet, assuming you're both enjoying the music. Chris at Mixing Memory has a fascinating discussion of why musical tastes may be a more important gauge of personality than any other measure (we've discussed some of the same research here).
Confident that people really do use musical preferences as indicators of personal qualities, Rentfrow and Gosling next sought to map out the dimensions of those preferences. They started…
dmunger | March 12, 2007
Mind Hacks interviews Gretchen Rubin, who's working on a book about happiness, and blogging about it.
SCLin's Neuroscience Blog asks: How do you keep up with the literature? I cheat. I let Greta do it for me!
NY Times discusses the difference between "psychological" and physical torture. Short answer: there is none.
I've suspected this for a while: Coffee doesn't help you wake up. Or, rather, it only helps if you don't drink it all the time.
Why kids accept no substitutes for their security blankets.
What is more calming than watching beautiful scenes from nature? Watching them on a bigger…
dmunger | March 12, 2007When I was a paper boy back in the 1980s, I always hated daylight-saving time. Just when the mornings were finally starting to lighten after a long, dark winter, daylight-saving time came along and ruined everything: when clocks "spring" forward, the sunrise arrives one hour later. It would be several weeks before I'd be able to deliver my papers in the light. This weekend, daylight-saving time arrived even earlier than usual, thanks to a new law supposedly designed to save energy.
Since many people are still asleep while it's light outside in the morning, the reasoning goes, all that light…
dmunger | March 9, 2007Do you speak with an accent? How well do you understand the accents of others? Do you think you can identify where someone came from just based on his or her accent? Now's your chance to put that knowledge to the test.
We had so much fun with the little accent quiz we did earlier this week that we thought we'd expand it into a full-blown Casual Fridays study. You'll listen to ten different people reading the same excerpt, and you'll guess where they came from. Then come back next Friday to see how you did!
Click here to participate.
The study is brief, with just 13 quick questions, but it's a…
dmunger | March 9, 2007On Thursday, March 15, HBO will premier an ambitious series of documentaries entitled Addiction. Although HBO is a premium cable service usually costing an extra $10 or more per month, they are offering their service for free to regular cable and satellite subscribers during the four-day weekend beginning March 15, and all the shows will play at some point during that time. According to the press kit they sent me, you'll also be able to stream the shows from their website. (It's not clear whether all 14 programs will be available in this form. Right now all that's up is a short teaser video…
dmunger | March 8, 2007Two days ago, we discussed research suggesting that the emotional qualities of images affect short-term memory for those images. When you watch a movie depicting a rapid sequence of images, you're more likely to remember images that have strong emotional content -- especially images that are arousing, whether they depict positive or negative things. Most fascinating of all: when we see images for a very short time, we're more likely to remember positive images, but when we view them for a longer period, we're more likely to remember negative ones.
But our discussion didn't address some of the…
dmunger | March 8, 2007There's been a lot of news about robots lately, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to synthesize what's going on in this field and offer a bit of speculation about where robotics is headed.
First: From Neurodudes comes news of an artificial robotic limb that not only responds to nerve impulses but also has the potential to give feedback to its human host -- as if she was sensing her environment with her own hands. Is this the first cyborg? What's next -- direct mind control of machines?
Actually, a company is working on just such an interface -- a video game controller that works by…
dmunger | March 6, 2007What types of images are you more likely to remember over the short-term? Pleasant? Bright? Arousing? Disturbing? One method of testing short-term visual memory is to flash a rapid series of pictures, then ask viewers which ones they saw. The pictures are shown so quickly that it's impossible to remember them all. Click on the image below to view a movie (Quicktime required). Wait for the entire movie to load, then watch it. You'll see 12 photos rapidly flash by. Play it twice, but no more.
Other than the first and the last one, did you remember any? I'll put a quick test below (fair warning…
dmunger | March 6, 2007The NPR had a wonderful report this weekend about the Speech Accent archive, including an extended interview with the archive's creator, Steven Weinberger.
It's simply fascinating to listen to the hundreds of different voices in the archive, all reading the same passage, and noting the geographical differences. Can you guess this one (Quicktime required)?
How about this one?
Visit the archive yourself to find out more. Here's the purpose statement from the archives:
Everyone who speaks a language, speaks it with an accent. A particular accent essentially reflects a person's linguistic…
dmunger | March 5, 2007
The Neurophilosopher has a great list of neuroscience blogs. The ones I've added to my RSS feed are listed below.
Neuroevolution.
Madame Fathom.
Channel N.
Also via Neurophilosopher: This firsthand account of having electrodes implanted in the brain to combat Parkinsons' disease.
How some brains "rewire" themselves.
When assessing research conclusions, consider who funded the work.
Homework studies: Different countries offer different results.
Today's college students: more narcissistic than ever?
Online research: it's not just for Casual Fridays anymore. One lab at Harvard hopes to conduct…
dmunger | March 5, 2007I've written a review of William Vollmann's Poor People for the spring issue of The Quarterly Conversation. Here's an excerpt:
In the U.S., the "poverty line" for 2006 was set at $9,800 per year of income for a single person, or $20,000 for a family of four. But it is misleading to judge poverty in this way: surely some people can live comfortably below those income levels, and some--those with significant medical problems, for example--couldn't pay for the necessities of life even if they earned substantially more. And doesn't $20,000 go a lot farther in, say, North Dakota, than it does in…