dmunger | March 19, 2009Suppose you're running a small organization with five motor vehicles used by your staff and you want to replace them with more fuel-efficient versions, both to save money and reduce your organization's carbon footprint. Each vehicle travels 10,000 miles a year. Based on your budget and the requirements for each vehicle, you can do the following, but you can only afford to replace one car every six months:
Replace a 16-MPG car with a 20-MPG car
Replace a 22-MPG car with a 24-MPG car
Replace a 18-MPG car with a 28-MPG car
Replace a 34-MPG car with a 50-MPG car
Replace a 42-MPG car with a 48-…
dmunger | March 18, 2009Take a look at these two pictures of the Mona Lisa:
They're derived from a series of images of the famous painting that had been obscured by random noise filters (like when your old analog TV wasn't getting a signal), like this:
Each picture appears to have a slightly different facial expression -- some happier, some sadder, depending on the random alteration of the image due to the visual noise. The two color pictures above are composites, made by picking the saddest (for picture B) and happiest (picture C) from over a hundred random images -- rated by 12 volunteers -- and combining them…
dmunger | March 16, 2009Attentional blink is a fascinating phenomenon that occurs when we see images, words, or numbers presented in a rapid sequence. As images flash by at about one every tenth of a second, you're asked to look for two in particular. If you were looking for numbers in a sequence of letters, the sequence might be SDLX3DJ9WVNBDR. The number 3 would be easy to spot, but 9, which follows 3/10 of a second later, is spotted much less frequently.
The effect works for images as well. You might be asked to look for flowers in a sequence of furniture pictures. Again, flowers that follow between 2/10 and 4/10…
dmunger | March 13, 2009In honor of Pi Day, Greta is baking one of our favorite Chicago-style pizzas. This is our reconstruction of the pizza we ate as undergraduates at the University of Chicago. We spent a lot of time hanging out at a pizza place that would later become famous as one of Barack Obama's favorite haunts: Medici on 57th. They had their own style of pizza -- not stuffed, but definitely deep.
After we moved to New York for graduate school, we missed that great Medici deep-dish taste, and we tried repeatedly to reconstruct the recipe. After about five years, we thought we'd gotten pretty close, and the…
dmunger | March 13, 2009Last week Greta was telling her class about a study that related to a well-known story. She started off the discussion with a reference to the story, indicating that "of course you all have heard the story of _______" (I can't tell you the name of the story now because it's the subject of our study).
As you may have guessed by now, she was greeted by a roomful of blank stares. She was surprised, because she grew up hearing this story and assumed that her students would have heard it as well. So the question is, why? Do the common stories we all know go in and out of fashion over the course of…
dmunger | March 11, 2009There's been a ton of research on the impact of working memory: its importance in learning, its effect on math skills, and its relationship to other mental abilities. Yesterday's entry on The Wild Side discusses working memory's relationship with IQ. It's been shown that adults can improve working memory with training, and training has even been shown to work for kids as young as seven.
There are clearly tremendous benefits to working memory (and at least one down side). A related mental function, inhibitory control, is also a key to many cognitive abilities. But if working memory training…
dmunger | March 6, 2009Last week we asked readers to rate two hypothetical job candidates for a communications assistant position in a large neuroscience lab. The task seemed to pit education against experience. Everyone saw some version of these two resumes:
(click for a larger image)
Emily was Magna Cum Laude at Harvard, while Suzanne was an average student at a regional state college. But Emily appeared to have never held a paying job, padding her resume with activities like "Botanical Garden Society President" and "Varsity Tennis." Meanwhile, Suzanne had held an impressive internship and had three years of…
dmunger | March 6, 2009After taking a first look at last week's survey responses, I realize there's one more question I should have asked. So if you have a couple minutes, whether or not you participated last week, could you respond quickly to this short survey? You'll just be asked to look at two resumes and answer two quick questions about each.
Click here to take survey
Thanks!
Update: Okay, got what I need. You can still take the survey if you're curious, but I'm not going to tabulate any additional data.
dmunger | March 5, 2009A few years ago we discussed a fascinating study which appeared to show that the main reason we stop eating at the end of a meal isn't because we "feel" full. Instead, we simply see that we've finished eating the food in front of us, so we stop. We don't eat more an hour later because we remember we just ate.
In that study, led by Paul Rozin, experimenters provided two amnesic patients with two meals separated by just 15 minutes. They both did not recall eating the previous meal due to their medical condition, and each of them ate both meals as if they hadn't had anything to eat.
But maybe…
dmunger | March 4, 2009 What's your first reaction on seeing this picture of Nora? Are you excited because she appears to be excited? Or do you react to her intent? Perhaps you think she's cute, or maybe even sarcastic. Ultimately you might have all of those reactions.
There's no doubt we're exceptionally fast at responding to faces, and to the emotions they convey. But reacting appropriately, especially when a face signals danger, could be the difference between life and death.
These two ways of reacting to a facial expression correspond to two possible intentions of an expression: to elicit an emotion in someone…
dmunger | March 2, 2009When I'm writing a post for Cognitive Daily (or doing almost any kind of writing, for that matter), I try to keep outside distractions to an absolute minimum. I even have an application on my computer that shuts off all access to the internet for a specified period of time. I find most music distracting, but sometimes I'll play a Mozart piano concerto, which seems to help focus my attention (see here for a possible explanation).
Some people, however, seem to be able to be incredibly productive despite a huge number of distractions -- Twitter status updates, email, crying babies, you name it.…
dmunger | February 27, 2009There's a lot of advice online about what makes a good resume, and in these tough economic times, getting a job is tougher than ever.
So this week, I thought we'd test some different resumes and see which factors are most important in picking a good candidate. You'll be asked to read two resumes very carefully, then answer a few questions evaluating each candidate. I've changed just a few items on each resume, so make sure you read them closely. Then next week we'll see which factors matter the most.
Click here to participate
As usual, the study has just a few questions, and should only take…
dmunger | February 26, 2009Last week, we presented research by Miranda Scolari's team about visual expertise and visual short-term memory. Their conclusion: "experts" don't have a larger visual memory capacity than non-experts, they just have the ability to process more details. Scolari's team was working under the assumption that all humans (or at least all the students in their experiment) are face-recognition experts.
It's true: we're amazingly good at recognizing faces we've seen before. Think how much easier it is to remember a face you've seen than it is to remember the name that goes with the face. But surely we…
dmunger | February 25, 2009What is so mesmerizing about pointillist paintings like Seurat's Sunday Afternoon at La Grande Jatte? At first, we're impressed by the technical virtuosity of the work. It's an immense painting that Greta and I visited many times when we were in college in Chicago (and now, whenever we return for a visit):
As you can see even in this reduced image, the painting is composed of tiny dots. But what you may not notice is that the dots in a given region of the painting aren't all the same color. Take a look at this detail:
The leaves in the trees range from red to yellow to green to blue, and…
dmunger | February 23, 2009One of my most vivid memories from middle school was in English class. The class wasn't paying attention to the teacher -- we were chattering during "work time" and she wanted us to stop and return to a full-class lesson. So she shouted "SEX!" We all shut up immediately and stared at her in disbelief. Then she said, in a calm, normal voice: "Now that I've got your attention ..." and proceeded with her lesson. It worked great -- except for one thing. I have no recollection of what she actually taught us that day.
This brings up an interesting point: Teachers are often tempted to bring up…
dmunger | February 20, 2009This week's Casual Fridays study was inspired by this comment on the Random Number thread:
When a freshman at Penn State too many years ago to count, the intro psychology prof did an amazing demonstration. I wonder if anyone knows the answer to this which I have long forgotten.
He said he had written the numbers 1 through 5 in random order on a piece of paper. He then asked the very large class to read his mind and write down his number order.
When the class compiled the answers, more than 50% of the class had his order, and so proved that telepathy was possible!!!
The class was ecstatic,…
dmunger | February 18, 2009Take a look at this quick video. You'll see a set of six small images, arranged in a circle, for 1 second. Then the screen will go blank for 1 second. Finally, one image will reappear in the place of one of the first six pictures. Your job: indicate whether the final image is the same or different as the image that originally appeared in that same spot.
Click here to view the movie (QuickTime required)
In principle, this should be an easy task, right? Your visual working memory can hold around six items at a time, so it shouldn't be hard at all to remember if the new picture is the same as…
dmunger | February 17, 2009I had a newspaper route up until I was in the ninth grade, and what I dreaded about the job was going door-to-door collecting subscription fees. The worst part was probably the odors in some of the houses. One house emanated a toxic mixture of Lysol, alcohol, pet dander, and cigarette smoke. These people inevitably were out of cash, so I had to return again and again until I finally was able to negotiate payment -- sometimes months overdue.
But maybe the smell was prejudicing my judgment. Lots of people couldn't pay me right away. Why should I only hate the ones with drinking/pet/smoking/air…
dmunger | February 16, 2009In honor of President's Day in the U.S., I bring you this work of "art," generated on the basis of a survey of 1,001 Americans' preferences about art:
The work was created to embody the survey responses. The respondents were asked questions like "what is your favorite color" and "would you prefer paintings of outdoor scenes or indoor scenes." The artists, Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, then tried to paint as many as possible of the survey responses into the scene.
Thus, blue dominates in this painting of an outdoor landscape. There are wild animals (as opposed to pets), and a family group (…
dmunger | February 13, 2009Just a random Casual Friday survey this week.
Click here to take survey.
As usual, the survey is brief, and should take only a minute or two to complete. You have until Thursday, February 19 to respond. There is no limit on the number of responses. Don't forget to come back next Friday for the results.