dmunger | February 20, 2006Here's a picture of our daughter Nora at about 3 months of age. She looks like she's fairly aware of the events going on around her (arguably more aware than she sometimes appears now, at age 12). However, as our knowledge of how infants begin to perceive the world around them has increased, we've learned that the world of a three-month-old literally looks different to them than the world we perceive as adults. That's because vision, which seems so obvious and instinctive, is actually an active process. When we perceive the world visually, we're not just passively "seeing" what's there, we're…
dmunger | February 17, 2006This week's Casual Fridays survey studies the cues you use to decide if a new acquaintance is friendly or confident. Greta and I have a couple of ideas about how the responses might break down in America, but we're especially interested in how customs differ in different parts of the world.
Click here to participate in the survey.
As always, you'll have until 11:59 p.m. U.S. Eastern time on Wednesday, February 22 to complete the survey, which should only take a minute of your time. But don't wait too long, because the survey will close when we receive 250 responses.
dmunger | February 17, 2006Last week's Casual Friday study was all about illusion. For example, you may have thought our goal was to see how well you could recognize an illusion. However, we really just wanted to know what kind of computers our readers use:
Amazingly, Cognitive Daily readers use Macs at a rate (22.8 percent) about seven times higher than the U.S. market share of Apple Computers (roughly 3 percent).
We did also want to know something about how you see illusions, so we designed a simple experiment based on a brilliant illusion by Akiyoshi Kitaoka. If you haven't visited his web site full of…
dmunger | February 16, 2006Can you tell the difference between the images below?
At first, they just look like fuzzy diagonal lines -- there doesn't appear to be a significant difference between them. But if you look at them closely, you begin to notice that the images at the top of the picture (category A) tend to have single dark bands, while the images towards the bottom have dark bands that come in pairs. The "phase angle" refers to the technique used to generate the images, and based on this angle, the images can be divided into two categories.
With a lot of work, people can be trained to quickly distinguish…
dmunger | February 15, 2006An old college friend and accomplished writer, John Scalzi, recently posted a list of writing tips for nonprofessionals, which I'd highly recommend for professionals and nonprofessionals alike. One of his most unusual suggestions is to "speak what you write" -- literally, to read your writing out loud before publishing, whether in a blog post or just an e-mail to friends. This, he argues, will not only help catch spelling and other errors (each of which Scalzi says decreases the writer's apparent IQ by 5 to 10 points), but also help you see whether you're conveying the meaning you intend.
So…
dmunger | February 13, 2006The TV movie Flight 93, which re-enacted the hijacking of a United Airlines flight on September 11, 2001, was criticized because it "humanized" the hijackers (despite this apparent humanity of their captors, the movie did portray the passengers and crew on that flight fighting back and eventually causing the plane to crash in a sparse Pennsylvania woodland instead of a crowded city). The critics' argument was simple: why portray the hijackers, clearly bent on destroying as much life as possible, as anything but vile murderers?
The obvious reply: can't we, as thinking human beings, overcome…
dmunger | February 10, 2006This week's Casual Friday study is the most complicated design we've done yet. However, in the spirit of Casual Fridays, it should still take only a minute or two of your time. It involves an incredibly clever visual illusion, and should be quite fun as well.
As usual, you have until 11:59 Eastern time on Wednesday, February 15, to reply. However, the study will close after 250 responses, so make sure you get your response in as soon as possible!
Click here to participate in the study!
dmunger | February 10, 2006Last week's survey asked readers how their drinking habits changed when they were at work-related social events compared to with friends. Due to my own very casual Friday, I posted the survey rather late, after 10:00 p.m., so we received fewer responses than usual: just 137. Nonetheless, even with a relatively small sample, we were able to achieve significant results.
First off, what kind of jobs do Cognitive Daily readers have? Our nonscientific sample of readers who happened to check the site late Friday night or sometime over the weekend revealed the following:
The first thing I'd like…
dmunger | February 9, 2006Take a look at this video (click on the image to play). It's pretty clear what's going on -- the green dot bumps into the red dot, causing it to move:
But what about this one?
With this movie, it's harder to say: some people would say the green dot passes through the red dot, turning red and then moving on. Others would say the green dot launches the red dot, as before. It's an ambiguous figure.
But now look at this new movie, with two sets of dots. What's happening with the top pair of dots: launching, or passing through?
Most people would now say that the green dot on the top…
dmunger | February 8, 2006One of the first questions our son Jim asks when a new movie comes out is "what's it rated?" The more "adult" the rating, the more appealing the movie is to him: PG is the lowest rating he'll even consider, PG-13 is better, and R is best. Since he's only 14, we don't take him to many R-rated movies, which is possibly what adds to their appeal.
But even PG-rated movies and TV shows still display an abundance of violence, and plenty of parents are happy to let their kids watch violent programming, especially if there isn't any sex involved. We've reported on a lot of media violence studies on…
dmunger | February 6, 2006In 1973, a massive study of almost 400,000 Dutch men appeared to confirm what anecdotal evidence and even some scientific research had led scholars to suspect: The first-born child in a family tends to be the most intelligent. The researchers, Lillian Belmont and Francis Marolla, found that within a given family size, earlier-born children tended to have slightly higher IQs than later-born children, even after controlling for social class. Their study pool was the entire population of 19-year-old men in the Netherlands.
Since then, researchers have developed all sorts of models to try to…
dmunger | February 3, 2006Sorry I'm posting this so late this week -- I was having problems connecting to the Internet earlier today, and hey, it's Friday, so I had plans for the evening. But it is still Friday, so you can't complain too much.
This week's study is on a topic of particular interest on Fridays: drinking. Specifically, what you drink, and where. Do people have different drinking habits when they're at job-related events compared to social events, and are these patterns generalizable?
Greta thinks she's noticed a pattern in the way people drink at work-related functions compared to other times, and this…
dmunger | February 3, 2006Last week's Casual Friday survey asked readers to describe how they expect other drivers to behave when merging onto the freeway. Now that the survey has been completed, I can let you in on a bit more of the observations that motivated the survey. I live in North Carolina, and I like to visit the big cities on the East coast, especially Washington and New York. This means I've done a lot of driving through Virginia, and I thought I'd noticed a peculiarity about Virginia drivers. In Virginia, it seemed to me, like no place else, the other drivers always expect you to get out of the way when…
dmunger | February 2, 2006Twelve years ago, Greta and I were awakened by a rattling on the door of our Bronx apartment. It was about three A.M.; our children were asleep in the next room. "What should I do?" Greta whispered to me. She had woken first and was holding the deadbolt on the door locked so the intruder couldn't get in.
"Call the police," I whispered, and took hold of the lock. I ventured a peek through our peephole. I could see only the grizzled razor stubble of a man who was clearly shorter than I was. He continued to struggle with the door. He was making progress picking our lock -- I had to forcefully…
dmunger | February 1, 2006My son Jim's favorite game, World of Warcraft, only works on my computer, which usually resides in the kitchen. Inevitably, Jim's often playing his game while Greta and I are making dinner, and I have to say, the most annoying thing about the game isn't the violence or the sound effects -- it's the background music. We're constantly asking him to turn the volume down so we don't have to listen to that dull, repetitive music.
So don't gamers find music annoying, too? I know when I'm indulging in my one guilty pleasure -- computer golf -- the room must be absolutely silent. Music is the worst,…
dmunger | January 31, 2006Clicking on the image below will take you to a short Quicktime movie. Make sure you have your sound turned up, because I've recorded a few sentences that play along with the movie. Your job is to determine, as quickly as possible, if each sentence is grammatically correct -- while you focus your vision on the animated display.
This demonstration replicates part of an experiment conducted by a group of researchers led by Michael P. Kaschak. The researchers showed similar animations to a group of volunteers and asked them to make similar judgments about spoken language. The question: does…
dmunger | January 27, 2006This week's Casual Friday survey was inspired by what I observe as I drive in different parts of the country. It seems that nearly everywhere I go, there's a slightly different expectation for how drivers will respond to others.
Given that Cognitive Daily has an amazingly diverse global audience, I thought it would be fun to see if driving behaviors vary systematically worldwide.
As always, today's survey is very short -- it should take less than a minute of your time. Why not give it a try? As always, you'll have until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time next Wednesday to respond -- or until we get 250…
dmunger | January 27, 2006Last Friday, we asked readers to identify changes in a painting by Eugène Delacroix, Christopher Columbus and His Son at La Rábida. For the test, the picture flashed maddeningly between its original state and a doctored version Greta made in Photoshop. Here's the original:
We admit it -- we were being a little sneaky. We asked you to "identify the change" in the picture, subtly hinting that only one part of the picture would change. You can click on the picture to see the movie again and convince yourself that two things are changing in the picture: the arch in the center transforms to a…
dmunger | January 26, 2006Kids in America grow up in a society that overwhelmingly believes in life after death. At the same time, these same kids grow up learning more and more about the nature of living organisms, and what makes something living or dead. At some point, these two belief systems inevitably collide: pure religious faith suggests that the soul lives on after death, but pure science suggests that consciousness can only exist in a living brain.
Assuming these kids don't read Pharyngula (in which case all hope of an eternal soul would likely be quickly and rudely snuffed), which of these knowledge systems…
dmunger | January 25, 2006 Disney's purchase of Pixar makes it clear that computer-generated (CGI) animation appears to be the wave of the future in movies. But one difficulty with CGI animation is conveying realistic emotions. While film animators (whether they use computers or not) can use artistic license to achieve the desired effects, when "emotions" are generated exclusively by computer, it can be difficult to identify the key factors in conveying that emotion.
We've discussed avatars, for example, as one way that computers can automate human interaction. Artificial intelligence -- lifelike simulators of human…