dmunger | July 11, 2006For many Americans, the healing process after the attacks of September 11, 2001, began with the publication of a special issue of the satirical newspaper The Onion. Headlines like those in the illustration below meant we could finally start to laugh about the tragedy:
But some have suggested that positive emotions such as happiness and optimism are inappropriate at times of crisis, especially when so many innocent lives have been destroyed. Sure, they might provide temporary relief, but does appealing to the lighter side actually help us deal with the crisis at hand?
A team led by Barbara…
dmunger | July 11, 2006We've written before about the positive impact of video games, on how playing video games can improve visual ability for certain tasks such as field of view and attentional blink. Now the researchers who conducted the initial study have completed some follow-up research. Chris Chatham has the details:
The authors note that their results do not show a connection between subitizing and multiple-object tracking abilities, which had been hypothesized in the literature previously. Instead, multiple object tracking appears to increase with serial enumeration ability. According to my interpretation…
dmunger | July 10, 2006Nearly all prejudicial attitudes are now taboo in America. Sixty years ago, it might have been acceptable to deny someone a job or service in a business because of skin color or gender, but now such overt discrimination is almost universally condemned. Even people with disabilities are accommodated. Yet although obesity is on the rise in America, overweight people continue to face difficulty. They are rated lower on job performance evaluations even when the work they do is qualitatively the same as normal weight individuals.
Why does such discrimination continue even as overt discrimination…
dmunger | July 6, 2006We've reported here before on the research of Dennis Proffitt on the perception of distance -- how wearing a backpack can cause you to perceive distances as longer. Now the team has a new study, which is featured today in seedmagazine.com. In this study, they examine the perception of the steepness of a hill:
To test his hypothesis, Proffitt asked participants to estimate the slant of a hill on the UVA campus, while outfitting some of the subjects with a heavy backpack. They found that subjects donning backpacks estimated the slant to be much steeper than did those who had nothing on their…
dmunger | July 6, 2006Deric Bownds has an excellent post about a proposed neurological mechanism for mellowing as we age. This study to me represents an example of good work that can be done using brain imaging. (Although we pointed to an article critical of fMRI last week, this was by no means meant to suggest that fMRI research can't be valuable. Smooth Pebbles has a good list of other valuable fMRI studies.)
Here's how Bownds describes the study:
They used fMRI (function Magnetic Resonance Imaging) or ERP (Event related potentials recorded on the surface of the scalp) to examine the activity of the medial…
dmunger | July 5, 2006"Keep your eye on the ball" is a mantra I've heard applied to several sports: baseball, for hitting, football, for receiving, and golf, for teeing it up. It wasn't surprising to me when I read recently that cricketers also use this platitude to teach batsmen how to hit effectively.
The sum total of my experience with cricket is watching multi-ethic games in Van Cortland Park through our Bronx apartment window while Greta and I were finishing graduate school about 12 years ago. I didn't pick up on many of the rules, but I was stunned to see that cricketers, unlike baseball players, actually…
dmunger | July 5, 2006If you had to guess where in the world kids are the most enthusiastic about science and technology, you might figure that places like Norway and Japan would seriously outdistance, say, Uganda and Botswana. If you did, you'd have it exactly backwards. An article in the new online journal Science in School reports on a study of teenagers in 35 countries.
Across a variety of measures, kids in poorer countries -- those whose economies depend much less on science and technology -- had a much more optimistic attitude about science than kids in wealthier nations.
Take a look at this figure showing…
dmunger | July 3, 2006Our Donors Choose Challenge, as you can see from the icon to the left, is now fully funded. Thanks so much to all the generous donors! We raised $2,169.13 to help kids learn about science and the arts.
Here's the ScienceBlogs total amount raised as of about 14 hours ago:
Total donations: $22,554.38
Amount matched by SEED: $10,000
Completion bonus from DonorsChoose: $1447.30
Total raised: $34,001.68
As promised, Greta and I have donated $217 to our challenge, matching 10 percent of the total amount donated. Because our challenge goal was attained, these projects will also get an additional 10…
dmunger | June 30, 2006The next Encephalon neuroscience carnival will be published on Monday, July 3, at The Neurophilosopher.
If you have a blog post or article to contribute, send your submissions to encephalon.host@gmail.com.
dmunger | June 30, 2006In just one day, we've funded nearly one third of the amount required for "The Shocking Simplicity of Electric Circuits" project. We can give these kids the passion for science with just a few more donations -- and today is the last day of our challenge. So if you just haven't gotten around to donating, now is the time to do it.
Let's end this challenge with a bang and get this project fully funded. And if you've already donated, please let me take this opportunity to thank you for what you've done. This kind of support not only inspires the kids, but the teachers as well, because they know…
dmunger | June 29, 2006One of the amazing things about the Stroop Effect is how much good research is being done based on this simple phenomenon, over 70 years later. One of the neatest recent experiments was created by Peter Wühr and Florian Waszak. I think I've created a simple animation that replicates their results. Click on the image below to bring up a short animated GIF. You'll see an image flash quickly, followed by a blank screen. As quickly as possible after the image flashes, say the color of the rectangle in front. Ignore any words printed on the rectangles; you just want to name the color of the…
dmunger | June 29, 2006A team of researchers in Japan has built a device that is capable of reproducing an impressively large array of smells, says a report in New Scientist.
The system will use 15 chemical-sensing microchips, or electronic noses, to pick up a broad range of aromas. These are then used to create a digital recipe from a set of 96 chemicals that can be chosen according to the purpose of each individual gadget. When you want to replay a smell, drops from the relevant vials are mixed, heated and vaporised. In tests so far, the system has successfully recorded and reproduced the smell of orange, lemon,…
dmunger | June 29, 2006There's been a decent amount of press lately about the struggles of boys in education. More women than men go to college, and more graduate. But Jay Matthews of the Washington Post is skeptical. He cites an Education Sector report (full PDF here)
which claims that much of the hype about boys suddenly falling behind is overblown.
Take a look at this chart, for example:
Girls have outperformed boys in reading for decades, and boys continue to outperform girls in math.
'The real story is not bad news about boys doing worse,' the report says, 'it's good news about girls doing better.'
But one…
dmunger | June 28, 2006We've got just three days left for our Donors Choose Challenge. Based on the poll we conducted last week, the primary reason (short of being broke) for not donating is not seeing a worthwhile project. I've now added one more that I think is particularly worthy: The Shocking Simplicity of Electric Circuits. This project would serve a classroom whose families are 76 percent low-income, and get them excited about science with a real hands-on activity about electric circuits.
To fully fund this project, we need to raise just $846. Some of that could come from SEED's $10,000 in matching funds, and…
dmunger | June 28, 2006When I play video games with my son Jim, I'm generally at a tremendous disadvantage. Most of the time, Jim has had more experience with the particular game we're playing, but even when we try a brand-new game, he just seems to get his bearings more quickly than I do. He doesn't have more experience with games or computers than me -- I played just as many games as he did when I was his age, and I've had an extra 25 years to hone my skills.
At age 39, I don't consider myself "old," and since I work with computers for 8 or more hours a day, I'm certainly not intimidated by the games or the…
dmunger | June 28, 2006Small Gray Matters is a new blog which claims to be "about brains and minds. What else do you need to know?"
For starters, I'd like to know who's writing it, but I'm prepared to be swayed by good content. The blog's first post doesn't disappoint in that regard: it's a spirited defense of neuroimaging. The author makes some excellent points in defense of fMRI and other types of brain scans.
FMRI is popular, but its popularity doesn't actually distract from other areas of psychology -- it just adds to the total amount of science coverage in the news
Many fMRI studies extend existing…
dmunger | June 27, 2006In case you're reading this on RSS, or have trained yourself to ignore the links immediately to the right, I wanted to point you to Paul Bloom's excellent article on Seedmagazine.com. Why does an fMRI brain scan suddenly make a humdrum task suddenly seem like "real science?" Bloom points to one experiment (NOT involving an MRI machine) which may give us the answer:
Deena Skolnick, a graduate student at Yale, asked her subjects to judge different explanations of a psychological phenomenon. Some of these explanations were crafted to be awful. And people were good at noticing that they were…
dmunger | June 27, 2006The BBC has an article about the latest computer "mind-reading" technology. It's not as sinister as it sounds: the computer is programmed to monitor human facial expressions and attempt to recognize the corresponding emotion.
Peter Robinson, professor of computer technology at the University of Cambridge, said: "The system can already cope with the variation in people's facial composition; for example, if you have a round or thin face, or if you wear glasses or have a beard.
So what are the applications of this technology? Just follow the money:
Robinson added: "Our research could enable…
dmunger | June 26, 2006Developmental psychologists since Piaget have been interested in how well children are able to take the perspective of another. Piaget's laboratory had a large table with elaborate models on top; children who were able to take the perspective of a doll on the table and explain what the table looked like from her perspective instead of their own perspective were said to be at a later developmental stage.
But understanding whether a doll can "see" something doesn't always literally require taking her perspective. Take a look at this simple arrangement of objects on a table:
You don't have to…
dmunger | June 26, 2006Brainethics has a summary of a recent Science Magazine article about cross-cultural sharing behavior. The study set up three different sharing scenarios, then examined how cultures with different values with respect to sharing behaved:
These results demonstrate that there is a positive relationship between the likelihood of accepting an offer (i.e. the level of willingness to punish small offers) and the willingness to share (i.e. altruism). In other words, in cultures where you are expected to share, you give more, even though others have no way to threaten or punish you.
The authors of the…