[Originally posted in January 2008] When we watch a movie, we're usually not conscious of the cuts made by the editor. The camera angle may change dozens of times during a scene, and we follow along as if the flashing from one viewpoint to another wasn't at all unusual. You might think this is just because we've been accustomed to watching TV and movies, but researchers have found that even people who've never seen a motion picture have no difficulty following along with the cuts and different camera angles in a video. But little research has actually been done on the impact of changing…
When school budgets are cut, programs in music and the arts are often the first to get axed. While this makes a certain amount of sense because music isn't always considered "essential" to education, recently in the U.S. we're starting to see another justification for cutting music out of schools. The No Child Left Behind Act demands that students meet a certain basic level of academic success, or a school's budget can be cut. "Extras" like music classes and recess only distract from the primary goals of learning English, math, science, and history, some say. But does music participation…
The hollow-face illusion is one of the most dramatic and robust illusions I've ever come across. It's been known for well over 200 years, but it never ceases to amaze me, as this video demonstrates: A three-dimensional hollow face mask held a few feet away will appear to be convex (turned "out" towards the viewer) no matter which side you look at (this image is from the Max-Planck-Institut für biologische Kybernetik in Tübingen). While the movie depicts a computer-generated model, the effect works just as well with a real physical mask. Scientists have attempted to explain the illusion for…
[Originally posted in December, 2007] Do smells have an impact on how we judge people? Certainly if someone smells bad, we may have a negative impression of the person. But what if the smell is so subtle we don't consciously notice it? Research results have been mixed, with some studies actually reporting that we like people more when in the presence of undetectable amounts of bad-smelling stuff. How could that be? A team led by Wen Li believes that the judges might have actually been able to detect the odor, and then accounted for it in their response -- giving a face the benefit of the…
My computer has over 5,000 songs on it -- 16.2 days' worth, according to my music-playing software. So how do I pick what song to listen to? More often than not, I just shuffle the whole list and play whatever album shows up on top. But if I'm in the car listening to the radio, I switch between the 10 or so local stations I've programmed in until I hear a song I like. I seem to be more likely to rely on my own judgment when I have fewer choices. Some researchers have found similar effects with buying decisions: shoppers with just a few flavors of jam to choose from are more likely to buy than…
Take a look at this movie (you'll need a video player like QuickTime or Windows Media Player installed in your browser to see it). You'll see four different outdoor scenes flash by, one at a time. The scene itself will only be displayed for a fraction of a second, followed immediately by a distraction pattern designed to mask any image left over in your visual system. Your job is to spot any desert or mountain scene. Watch carefully! Did you spot them? What cued you in to the idea of a "desert" or a "mountain" scene? Was it a specific object in the picture (a mesa or a snowfield)? Was it a…
Take a group of 18- and 19-year-old women, college freshmen and sophomores. Then test them to find out who has the most social anxiety: who's most nervous about dealing with other people, particularly in public situations. What would be the most difficult thing you could ask these high-social-anxiety women to do? How about this: I would like you to prepare and deliver a four-minute talk. This talk will be videotaped and viewed later by several professors and graduate students.... It is extremely important that you do the best job that you can with this talk.... Your talk should be about the…
Due to exciting new career developments, I've decided to shelve Cognitive Monthly. I still think this sort of thing is a good idea, and CogMonthly was selling about as well as I expected. But I'm in the process of making a major career change (which should not affect Cognitive Daily), and something needed to be done to free up the time to do it. Expect another announcement here soon!
New parents can come up with a seemingly endless array of vexing questions about their infants, from the best brand of stroller to the ideal song to sing them to sleep. The questions begin well before the child is born: what type of clothing should you purchase? What kind of crib? One question Greta and I dwelled on quite extensively when Jim was an infant was color. We were renting an apartment and couldn't paint the nursery, so we wondered about the color of the toys we bought and the blankets and other bedding for the crib. Would a purple outfit be appreciated? What about a multi-colored…
Jemsite, a website, forum and blog about guitars, has posted a fairly extensive interview with me about the psychology of music, Cognitive Daily, and other projects I'm working on. Plus, you can find out the name of Jim's Southern rock band, so head on over and check it out!
There's an interesting article in the Washington Post today exploring one line of reasoning suggesting that the Iranian election is fraudulent. Basically, it comes down to this: the results aren't random enough. In a fair election, you'd expect that each digit, from 0 to 9, would be the final digit the results in each region roughly ten percent of the time: you'd see a vote count like 12,437 just as often as 12,435. But in fact certain digits come up more often: The numbers look suspicious. We find too many 7s and not enough 5s in the last digit. We expect each digit (0, 1, 2, and so on) to…
Take a look at the following pictures of U.S. dimes. As you can see, they are slightly different from one another -- the date is in the incorrect spot on one of them. Can you tell which one is "wrong"? Let's make this a poll: Which dime has the date in the correct spot?(polls) Is there anything else wrong with the dimes?(polling) Don't look at your pocket change before you answer! In case you don't have a dime handy, I'll reveal the correct answer later in the post. Even though most Americans will say they know what U.S. coins look like, a similar study in 1979 found that people can't…
I've always been amazed by people who are truly bilingual. While I've studied languages in school, I've never been able to seamlessly switch between languages, and even my best non-English language, French, is choppy at best. Compare this to the people I see in restaurants or on the subway, who can have conversations in two languages at once, speaking each language with equal fluency. They might tell a story in English, but save the punch line for Spanish. If a monolingual person talks to them, they instantly respond in the proper language, with hardly a second thought. There are enough…
[Originally posted January, 2007] Nearly all video games that offer a first-person perspective -- where the view on-screen simulates what a real person would see as she navigates through the virtual environment -- also include a virtual map to help in navigation. Even my favorite golf game has one. Such maps can be indispensable, but they also invite a question -- should the map rotate to align with the player's viewing angle, or should they remain at a constant orientation? Aligning the map with the viewer's perspective makes it easier to find items, but constantly rotating the map might…
[Originally posted in April 2007] One "trick" dieters often use is to put their food on a smaller plate. The idea is to fool yourself into thinking you're eating more food than you really are. But doesn't our stomach tell us how full we are? Actually, it doesn't. Brian Wansink has devoted his career to studying how perception of food intake relates to actual eating behavior. Together with James Painter and Jill North, he's come up with a dramatic demonstration of how wrong our stomachs can be. Volunteers were recruited to participate in a soup-only lunch in a room adjoining the school…
[Originally posted in February, 2007] When you look out the window and then look away, how do you remember what you saw? Do you hold a picture of the window in your head, frame and all? What about a photo? Do you remember the physical photo, or do you imagine the real scene it represents? If you remember the scene, and not the photo, then how do you form the boundaries of the scene? Does your memory end precisely where the photo does? Here's a little test to see how accurate your short-term memory of a photo is. When you play the movie below, you'll have a second to get ready, then a photo…
There's lots of research suggesting that we may have something like a "number line" in our head: The SNARC effect says that if you normally read numbers from left to right, you're faster to react to small numbers with your left hand, and big numbers with your right hand. Similar research has also found a SNARC effect for letters (a SLARC effect?). So it might make sense that there would be a similar effect for musical notes. You might call it a SMARC effect, but if you only hear one note at a time it's not really "music." Undaunted, a team led by Pascale Lidji has conducted several…
When Nora was born, Jim was just 19 months old, and still unable to communicate other than with the most basic words (ba-ba, da-da, na-na). But we could tell right away that while he liked his new sister, he was a little jealous when our attention was focused on her needs, instead of his, as they had been his entire life. So we decided to get him a little baby doll, a boy, which he called "Seth." When we fed Nora, Jim fed Seth. When we changed her diapers, he changed Seth, and so on. This was an effective distraction for a few months, but eventually Jim decided it was too much work caring for…
Here at Encephalon's temporary North Carolina headquarters, we were miffed to learn that our long-scheduled Keynote address has been upstaged by some upstart computer company's manufactured "event" in California. Not to be outdone, we're giving Encephalon an upgrade of our own. Encephalon is now iCephalon. And boy, do we have an exciting lineup of products for you! First up, iPeople. Our Neurocritic division discusses the exciting discovery touted as the "people person brain area." Really? That almost sounds too good to be true! If you're skeptical, all we ask is that you follow the link.…
We'll be hosting Encephalon here at CogDaily on Monday -- it's a bimonthly festival of the best cognitive / neuroscience blog posts on the web. If you've got a post you'd like to see included, send an email to encephalon -- . -- host -- @ -- gmail -- . -- com (remove dashes). In other site news, this week we're moving to our summer schedule, which means, due to our travel schedule, Casual Fridays are on hiatus until the fall. Also, you might see a few more repeat posts than usual. We'll try to stay on top of things, but in general, you should expect to see posts a little less frequently. Don'…