dmunger | September 7, 2005How do we reconcile the variety of results that have been found with respect to the Mozart effect—the idea that the music of Mozart can lead to improved performance on spatial ability tests? With some researchers appearing to have found no effect at all, and others claiming dramatic effects, who are we to believe? In just the research we've reviewed here at Cognitive Daily, we've got Ivanov and Geake reporting a pronounced effect for both Mozart and Bach, Jackson and Tlauka arguing that there's no Mozart effect for route learning, and McKelvie and Low declaring "final curtains for the Mozart…
dmunger | September 2, 2005One of my best friends in college played music incessantly—whether he was studying, writing papers, completing organic chemistry problem sets, or swilling down cheap beer, whatever he did was accompanied by a nonstop 1980s synth-pop beat. This apparently did him no harm, because after graduating at the top of his class, he went on to get a PhD and a law degree, with full scholarships paying for both.
I could never study with him because the music always broke my concentration. I preferred to study to the gentle background noise of the campus coffee shop. There was one exception to this rule:…
dmunger | August 31, 2005
This is an image from the video game Asheron's Call 2 (source: mmorpg.com). Does playing such a game, involving regular practicing (albeit in a virtual environment) of repetitive, violent acts, increase our general level of aggression? A recent article in New York Times says no, citing a study by "a researcher at the University of Illinois," which found, according to the article, that "violent video games have no 'long-term,' or permanent, effects on aggressive behavior." Interesting, considering the article I discussed in yesterday's post apparently found exactly the opposite.
With some…
dmunger | August 30, 2005Steven Johnson is a writer who I very much admire. I'm particularly impressed by his defense of video games and other technologies in his book Everything Bad is Good For You. However, in defending the good aspects of video games, he has also felt compelled to downplay their negative effects. For example, a recent blog post argues vehemently that video game violence does not lead to aggression. He makes his argument by examining a recent study which found a link between violent game exposure and aggression. I'd like to do something a bit unusual for Cognitive Daily. First, I'll examine the…
dmunger | August 29, 2005The "Mozart Effect" hit the mainstream media by storm in the mid 1990s, in the form of a bestselling book by the same name. A Google search for the topic still reveals a slew of products designed to exploit the effect—to increase IQ, or overall well-being, or even physical health.
The psychological basis for the effect is a 1993 study by a team led by Frances Rauscher, which found a much more limited effect: scores on a spatial IQ test were 8 to 9 points higher after listening to a Mozart sonata, compared to testing following exposure to relaxation stimuli. The result was astounding: simply…
dmunger | August 25, 2005The human brain is incredibly specialized. There are individual neurons for recognizing faces, edges of objects, and specific sounds. One fruitful area of research recently has been to determine precisely how specialized the brain really is. Here's one example. The image below links to an animated movie. Click on it and see how quickly you can determine which direction the rectangles are moving:
If you're like most adults, you're able to determine the correct direction very quickly.
Now, take a look at this animation and try it again:
This one should have taken somewhat longer, even…
dmunger | August 24, 2005Welcome to Tangled Bank—we're thrilled to finally have the opportunity to host. For CogDaily readers who may not be aware of Tangled Bank, it's a fortnightly "carnival" of the best science blog postings from the previous two weeks. There's always an incredible variety of posts from all areas of the scientific world, and this week is no exception. Even if you're normally only interested in psychology, we encourage you to take this opportunity to see what else is going on in the world of science. We think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
We've done something a bit unusual with Tangled Bank this…
dmunger | August 23, 2005Perceiving motion creates a fascinating problem for psychologists. Physicists for centuries have devised a whole set of rules describing how objects actually move. These rules are so precise and accurate that it's tempting to say that the human perceptual system simply integrates them into motion we see, so that our mental representation of what we see is identical to what's actually going on in the world.
Some research, such as this article we reported on last month, supports that notion. Since we expect objects to keep on moving (the physical principle of momentum), then our representation…
dmunger | August 22, 2005This Wednesday, we'll be hosting Tangled Bank, a nifty collection of the best science blog postings for the last two weeks. If you've got a science blog—or any kind of a blog, actually, consider yourself invited to submit! Just pick your best science-related post from the past two weeks (and we're defining science very loosely), give a couple-sentence description and a link, and e-mail it to host (at) tangledbank (dot) net or dave (at) wordmunger (dot) com, and we'll consider it for inclusion!
dmunger | August 15, 2005One of Jean Piaget's most famous observations is the phenomenon of "object permanence"—the idea that babies younger than eight months old have no conception of an object once it's hidden from view. It's easy to see how he came to this conclusion. Click on the picture of my daughter Nora at six months of age to see a video of her spectacularly failing the object permanence test. Once the object is hidden under a napkin, she seems to lose all interest in it.
But does she really not understand that the object is still there, or is she simply interested in other things? A team of researchers…
dmunger | August 11, 2005It happens to everyone. You open a present and find a gift of so little personal interest that you wonder if you got the wrong package. The classic may be clothes presented to a preschooler; who can expect a 3 year-old to smile and say, "Thank you!" upon receiving a sweater? Somehow, we learn the rules about how to accept a gift, regardless of personal interest. Is it just a question of age? Older children are much better at politely thanking the giver than younger children. But gender seems to play a role, too. Girls are also more likely than boys to appropriately thank Aunt Margaret…
dmunger | August 8, 2005"Boys are better at math" is a stereotype decades in the making, and it has in some cases been borne out by testing measures such as the SAT. The stereotype has been around so long that many wonder whether the stereotype is the effect or the cause of any actual differences in math ability.
Many researchers have observed a "stereotype threat," which occurs when test-takers are made aware that they are being tested in an area in which the stereotype suggests they'll do poorly. For example, when boys and girls are given a math test and told that its purpose is to determine whether boys or girls…
dmunger | August 4, 2005Rummaging through your bag in search of keys, it's clear that you can recognize objects using just your fingers. But is it easier to recognize the keys if you feel them as if you were going to open to door, or if you encounter the key's teeth in some odd orientation--like pointed straight up? Consider the following pictures. Which object looks more familiar?
Indeed, it is easier to recognize objects visually when you see them in familiar orientations. Could this orientation effect extend to objects we touch? Fiona Newell and her colleagues used little LEGO towers to ask this question,…
dmunger | August 1, 2005In every courtroom drama, the most dramatic scene is always when the star witness points her finger at the villain and proclaims that "he did it!" The confidence with which an eyewitness describes the perpetrator of a crime is often the most convincing evidence in a court battle. But how accurate is eyewitness testimony? Do we really remember everything as accurately as we think we do? How important are other influences on eyewitness testimony? And what if the witness is a child?
Carl Martin Allwood has been working on these issues for years. In his most recent article, co-authored with Anna-…
dmunger | July 28, 2005Imagine sitting in a coffee shop, having a nice conversation with your friend Dave. If Dave looks at something, your eyes will reflexively move to look at the same item. This is actually quite convenient, because it may help you figure out what Dave is talking about, or what he might comment on next. How much of this joint attention reflex depends on Dave's face? You'll do this even if he only moves his eyes, without turning his head, so it might be that what you're reacting to isn't so much his face, but the movement of his pupils.
What we know about certain brain mechanisms makes this…
dmunger | July 25, 2005With my high school reunion coming up, memories just seem to well up out of nowhere. One of the most powerful was that of my cross-country coach's booming voice yelling "stride, Munger, stride!" across the track. I wasn't the best runner on the team, but whenever I heard that voice, I'd always start running faster. Sometimes when I'm out for my morning run, I wish I still had my coach's voice to urge me on.
I've never had any doubt that verbal encouragement helped me perform better on the track, but I have wondered what exactly about the encouragement is helping. Does it just increase my "…
dmunger | July 22, 2005I've created a quick animation of distorted pictures of my son Jim, together with some normal ones. Take a minute or so to watch the animation, then decide if the last picture you're shown looks "normal" to you. Click on the normal (but pre-eyeglasses and braces) photo of Jim below to begin:
I'll let you know whether or not the final picture was distorted in the comments.
A large body of research has found that we perceive faces that are closer to the average as more beautiful than distinctive faces. We've written about one such study here, but even more surprisingly other experiments have…
dmunger | July 19, 2005We've posted on boundary extension before, here, here, and here, but we've never written about boundary extension and kids. Boundary extension is when we remember more of a picture than was actually shown to us, as if our mind is actively creating a portion of the image we didn't see, beyond its boundaries. A 2002 team led by John Seamon found that people of all ages experience boundary extension.
Some research has found evidence that boundary extension doesn't work for all images. We reported on a study by Andrew Mathews and Bundy Mackintosh suggesting that for emotional, arousing images,…
dmunger | July 18, 2005Baby rats, only 5 days old and still very much reliant on their mothers for food, can be artificially dehydrated by injecting them with a saline hypertonic solution. If a source of water is placed very close to the rat's snout, it will drink. But 21-day-old rats who have just been weaned from their mothers and who readily eat and drink on their own can be injected with the same saline hypertonic and won't drink any more than non-dehydrated rats the same age. The difference is that the older rats still have to decide to drink—the water is available in their cages, but they still must actively…
dmunger | July 14, 2005We've reported on flashbulb memory before, with the Talarico and Rubin study and the MacKay and Ahmetzanov study. First observed in 1977 by Brown and Kulik, flashbulb memories—memories about shocking events—were supposed to be more vivid and long-lasting than normal memories. Jennifer Talarico and David Rubin seemed to have put a damper on the whole concept of flashbulb memory with their finding that while flashbulb memories are more intense and people are more confident about them, they are no more accurate than normal memories. Donald MacKay and Marat Ahmetzanov, using an experimental test…