dmunger | December 5, 2006Steven Pinker points out in The Language Instinct that the potential ambiguities in any sentence makes programming computers to understand language quite difficult: humans can quickly determine the appropriate interpretation through context; computers are unable to understand context, and therefore they flounder, and so have difficulty translating texts. The sentence "Time flies like an arrow," for example, can be interpreted in five different ways. Here are just a couple of ways:
When timing houseflies, time them in the same manner in which you time arrowsA type of fly, a "time fly," enjoys…
dmunger | December 4, 2006Over at The Quarterly Conversation, I've written a review of George Lakoff's book Whose Freedom?
In case my personal politics haven't come through in my CogDaily posts (and I do make an effort to assume a neutral perspective here), you'll get a good sense of my views in this review, where I point out that though Lakoff's invocation of cognitive science in support of his claims is problematic, Steven Pinker, Lakoff's most vocal critic, is guilty of similar overgeneralizations:
If Lakoff's cog sci-based explanation of how the Republicans spun their way into power is this unconvincing, then one…
dmunger | December 2, 2006Starting today, each week's CogDaily Research articles will be available in podcast form! We're working on making them available directly from iTunes, but for now, you can download them from the CogDaily blog.
Click here to download the December 2 Cognitive Daily podcast (AAC format)
Click here to download the December 2 Cognitive Daily podcast (MP3 format)
We're committed to podcasting the reports on peer reviewed research we've covered each week (they'll appear here each Saturday), so if you don't have time to read them online, you can listen while you exercise or commute to work.
In the…
dmunger | December 1, 2006A recent New York Times article suggests that signing off an email message with "Best" is an indication that a relationship is cooling down. Businessman Chad Troutwine claims that using "Best" to sign off is more like a brush-off:
Mr. Troutwine is not alone in thinking that an e-mail sender who writes "Best," then a name, is offering something close to a brush-off. He said he chooses his own business sign-offs in a descending order of cordiality, from "Warmest regards" to "All the best" to a curt "Sincerely."
There's naturally been a lot of casual conversation about this article online, so we…
dmunger | December 1, 2006Apropos of yesterday's post about irresponsible journalism. Here's what happens when you misuse the term "inherit." In the World Science entry:
A study has led reÂsearchÂers to specÂuÂlate that career sucÂcess may be partÂly geÂneÂtic.
The supÂpoÂsiÂtion rests in partÂiÂcuÂlar on two new findÂings, the inÂvesÂtiÂgaÂtors said: that willÂingÂness both to take risks and to trust felÂlow huÂmans seem inÂherÂitÂed. Since asÂtute judgÂment in both areÂnas are cruÂcial to sucÂcess in busiÂness and a range of othÂer fields, that itÂself might be heÂredÂiÂtary, they reaÂsoned.
Now, here's what the…
dmunger | November 30, 2006The recent controversial shooting of an unarmed black man in New York has generated terrible grief and perhaps justifiable anger. But if officers honestly believed the man was armed and intended to harm them, weren't they justified in shooting?
Perhaps, but an important additional question is this: were they predisposed to believe he was armed simply because he was black? Consider this quick movie:
It will flash two pictures. One man is armed, the other unarmed. Who do you shoot? I've primed you to think about race, so it's not really a fair test. If you were a police officer who believed…
dmunger | November 30, 2006An article in ScienceDaily proclaims Success A Family Affair? Willingness To Take Risks And Trust Others Are Inherited, Study Suggests.
Actually, the study suggests the opposite: C only that children have similar risk profiles to their parents. This indicates that risk-taking behavior isn't inherited, but learned. I This study can't show whether the trait was inherited, learned, or acquired through a combination of both. For example, if it was inherited, then it might be the case that sometimes kids would be riskier than their parents, and sometimes less risky -- just like brunette parents…
dmunger | November 29, 2006One of the unanswered questions in Krista Hyde and Isabelle Peretz's research on amusia ("tone-deafness") is why amusics frequently say they are unable to clap to the rhythm of a song, or to dance well. In Hyde and Peretz's study, amusics could detect rhythm changes as well as normal individuals, even while being unable to detect changes in musical pitch.
Hyde and Peretz speculated that amusics might not be able to detect rhythm changes when the pitch of the notes change -- that their problems with rhythm might be directly related to the fact that amusics can't detect many changes in pitch.…
dmunger | November 29, 2006Is it really possible for child in a destitute situation to rise above it and become not only a productive member of society, but to excel? Jonah Lehrer discusses an important New York Times article that I had skipped over the first time I saw the headline on the site. Jonah was most interested in the research that shows the difference in childrearing in affluent versus impoverished homes:
By age 3, the average child of a professional heard about 500,000 encouragements and 80,000 discouragements. For the welfare children, the situation was reversed: they heard, on average, about 75,000…
dmunger | November 28, 2006Uber-geek David Pogue has completed a Casual-Friday-worthy study of the human perceptual system. He wanted to test the "megapixel myth" -- the idea that buying a higher megapixel camera doesn't necessarily mean that you will take better pictures. He made poster-size prints of the same photo at different pixel resolutions: 5, 8, and 13 megapixels, then asked passersby to judge which was which. Ninety-five percent didn't even try, and only one of those who attempted was able to correctly identify the photos.
But doesn't the human eye have a full 576 megapixels of resolution? Something must be…
dmunger | November 27, 2006New research shows that Asian Americans have a very different understanding of consequences than European Americans: While European Americans say that a single pool shot has a bigger influence on the next shot, when asked about its influence several shots down the line, Asian Americans rate the first shot as more important compared to European Americans. Other, similar approaches across a wide variety of scenarios have found similar results.
But Chris of Mixing Memory is frustrated with this type of research:
It's pretty easy to see how these results could be a consequence of holistic vs.…
dmunger | November 22, 2006Do you recognize the person depicted in this video?
How about this one?
The first video is actually a "chimera," formed by fusing half-images of two well-known faces together, then animated using 3D projection software. The second video shows us just the top half of another famous person's head, rendered in the same way. If you're like most people, you have a much easier time recognizing the face in the second movie than you do either of the faces in the first one. But why?
I can assure you, both of the faces in the first movie are just as famous as the face in the second movie, and you're…
dmunger | November 21, 2006Watch this video and describe what you see (it's a Windows Media file, so if you've got a Mac, you'll need Flip4Mac):
What happened to the ball? Just watch the movie once, then give your response in the poll:
This movie is one of the stimuli for an experiment by Gustav Kuhn and Michael Land, which tries to understand why we are fooled by magic tricks. Because the magician looks up, many viewers are led to believe that he threw the ball off screen. In fact, he palms the ball. In a second video, he looks at his hand instead of up in the air.
In both cases, some people who saw the video…
dmunger | November 20, 2006The flash-lag effect is difficult to explain, but amazingly cool to see. Over at Mixing Memory, Chris has a great post where he links to two examples of the phenomenon and discusses what might be causing it. Cool, isn't it?
I can't resist linking to one more example, created by none other than CogDaily's own Greta Munger. Here are her instructions for seeing the illusion: "Take a look at the movie below, and decide whether or not the blue flashed object is exactly aligned with the end of the gray rod. To start the movie, click on the rod." Greta discusses the illusion further in this post.…
dmunger | November 18, 2006Larry Moran thinks I have the wrong idea about teaching evaluations and "thin slicing":
Unfortunately, Dave Munger seems to draw the wrong conclusions from this study as he explains in an earlier posting [The six-second teacher evaluation]. In that article from last May he says ...
So we do appear to be quite effective at making judgements about teaching ability even after viewing only a total of 6 seconds of actual teaching, and without even hearing the teacher's voice.
This is dead wrong. Students are good at evaluating something after six seconds but it sure as heck ain't teaching ability…
dmunger | November 17, 2006There's been an abundance of PowerPoint advice in the science blogosphere lately. Based on my personal experience, I'd say Chad and Amy give some good advice -- and it's advice that probably serves them well in their own presentations.
But I was curious about something different. There are plenty of places where you can find tips about PowerPoint. The bigger question is, do these tips actually help poor speakers improve their presentations? In other words, can offering basic presentation advice without actually showing someone how to be a more engaging speaker help them give better…
dmunger | November 17, 2006In 1981, the economist Lester C. Thurow wrote an article for the New York Times entitled "Why women are paid less than men." If you have a subscription, you can still read it on the Times web site. My copy comes from an anthology I edited in 1992. Thurow's conclusion:
The decade between 25 and 35 is when men either succeed or fail. It is the decade when lawyers become partners in good firms, when business managers make it onto the "fast track," when academics get tenure at good universities, and when blue collar workers find the job opportunities that will lead to training opportunities and…
dmunger | November 16, 2006The APA has an important rule that all authors of APA-sponsored journal articles must agree to before publication:
After research results are published, psychologists do not withhold the data on which
their conclusions are based from other competent professionals who seek to verify the
substantive claims through reanalysis and who intend to use such data only for that
purpose, provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and
unless legal rights concerning proprietary data preclude their release.
The rule seems quite straightforward. But when data is requested, how…
dmunger | November 15, 2006There was some doubt as to whether the "tone-deafness" test I linked to Monday really tests for amusia. The defining trait of amusia is the inability to discern the difference between different musical pitches. So here's a test that might generate a more clear-cut result. The following track plays five sequences of five notes. In every case, four of the notes are the same. The only note that ever varies is the second-to-last note. Ideally, these sequences would be played in a random order, but for a quick-and-dirty test, I'm going to gradually increase the pitch of the fourth note in the…
dmunger | November 15, 2006I'm actually doing better than usual: I'm just a day behind on the latest entertainment news. Last night, CBS premiered a TV show called 3 Lbs., which focuses on the tensions in a world-class neurosurgery unit of a major hospital. Most promising aspect of the show: it stars Stanley Tucci. If you missed it, you can catch the entire first episode on the show's web site. I haven't watched it yet, but if I have a free 40 minutes later in the day, I'll post an update with my thoughts about the show.
If you're not ready to commit that sort of time to the show just yet, you might watch this CBS…