Psychology
clock | January 8, 2008Thanks to John Wilkins, I want to point you to an excellent review on the current state of research (both scientific and philosophical) in Animal Cognition.
omnibrain | January 4, 2008The mind is a complicated and a still very much unknown entity. The earliest conceptions of the mind didn't even have it placed in the brain, instead it was very much separate from the body. This is of course all very silly, the only possibility is that the mind wholly and completely resides in the neural system and that system is responsible for every aspect of the mind, from perception, to language, and even for experiencing the presence of a higher power.
With all of these misperceptions of the mind it isn't surprising that people could think that this soul of ours could interact with…
aardvarchaeology | December 31, 2007Over at Respectful Insolence, a lot of people have been discussing the relationship between skepticism and scientific consensus, a topic I brought up recently. And commenter Alvaro has pointed out a kind of counterexample, to whit, that the consensus among US psychiatrists had defined homosexuality as a psychiatric condition up through 1974. This is classic Michel Foucault territory, and I think Alvaro's point is interesting and apt. Being gay isn't always easy in an at best semi-tolerant society, but it sure isn't something that calls for treatment.
Reading up a little, I found something…
clock | December 26, 2007This is the third post in the series. I mentioned before that my Mom taped her story for the Shoah project. You can access the tapes through the RENCI site.
Also, regulars here know that my Mom reads this blog and sometimes comments. I assume that she would not object to answering a couple of polite questions from readers.
Do the hidden Children Differ from the Others?
Saturday, November 10th
I liked the lecture of Robert Krell he gave this morning. He told us his "story". He comes from Holland, was hidden from 1942-1945 and after the war he reunited with his parents, who were…
grrlscientist | December 25, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, psychology, gift wrapping, wrapping paper, behavior, holidays, holidaze
Besides bright lights, my favorite thing about the holidays is wrapping gifts. I love covering a boxed gift with colored papers (or even with plain brown paper bags), I get tremendous satisfaction from folding the paper so it makes precise corners and then I especially enjoy decorating the wrapped gift with bows, ribbons and toy flowers and birds, christmas ornaments or other decorations. I also enjoy figuring out how to wrap unusually shaped objects. However, my most favorite thing to do…
sb admin | December 24, 2007 "Why do those holiday tunes get stuck in your head so much?" I was invited to pose this question to Dr. Robert Zatorre, Co-Director of the BRAMS: Brain Music and Sound lab at the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University. Dr. Zatorre is a leading expert in neuroscience research on the biological basis of music; if anyone is able to explain why Jingle Bell Rock is haunting me, it's him.
Commonly known as earworms, some songs repeat in our mind. They are "typically annoying," said Dr. Zatorre. We often can't control it, the sounds won't go away, and they loop, repeating a refrain or…
omnibrain | December 23, 2007I've entitled this illusion 'The Purple Nurple' Exciting eh? I haven't actually seen this particular one before today so I thought I'd throw it up.... so here it is:
I've finally figured out where the heck this illusion has come from! It is actually called "Sea Sickness" and is by Walt Anthony.
sb admin | December 17, 2007 There are many brain fitness software products available these days so when I was offered a copy of Core Learning's program Mind Builder, I agreed to check it out. It offers a series of test questions similar to America's SAT, while Mind Builder Pro is a fuller package that also incorporates IQ, career and aptitude tests intended to be "fun mental exercises." Unlike some similarly-marketed software there were no unproven claims of preventing age-related cognitive decline or improving processing speed. There were vague promises like "get smart, stay smart" and "build brain power" - whatever…
omnibrain | December 16, 2007I always joke around that I would make the worst therapist since my 'therapy' would consist of something like this:
Surprisingly (well maybe not that surprisingly since the internet appeared) this method seems to be practiced somewhere seriously. The Kadir-Buxton Method involves:
making a fist of both hands, and striking both ears of the patient at exactly the same time and pressure with the soft part of the inner hand which is where the thumb joins the hand.
So let me get this straight... I hit someone hard in the head and it cures things like: Manic depression, eating disorders,…
neurophilosophy | December 11, 2007
Here's an article about a sophisticated type of advertising which uses hypersonic sound:
New Yorker Alison Wilson was walking down Prince Street in SoHo last week when she heard a woman's voice right in her ear asking, "Who's there? Who's there?" She looked around to find no one in her immediate surroundings. Then the voice said, "It's not your imagination."
Indeed it isn't. It's an ad for "Paranormal State," a ghost-themed series premiering on A&E this week. The billboard uses technology manufactured by Holosonic that transmits an "audio spotlight" from a rooftop speaker so that the…
grrlscientist | December 11, 2007tags: holidays, social relationships, gift-giving, psychology, behavioral evolution, evolution
Since the holidays are upon us once more, I thought you would be interested to read about the psychology of gift-giving. In short, even though giving someone a gift is simple enough, the psychology behind this act is much more complex than most people realize.
A large number of scientists, ranging from psychologists to economists, have studied the purpose and ramifications of gift giving in humans and have learned a surprising number of things about it. Even though many people claim they are…
omnibrain | December 11, 2007Check this out:
A Photographic Exhibition from
Pioneering Psychologist
Paul Ekman
The Search for Universals in Human Emotion
Ekman is One of the Most Influential Psychologists of the 20th Century
At the Exploratorium January 22-April 27, 2008
The Exploratorium presents a photographic exhibition, The Search for Universals in Human Emotion, from the internationally acclaimed psychologist Paul Ekman, celebrating the fortieth anniversary of his influential work with the isolated South Fore people of New Guinea. Ekman was named by the American Psychological Association as one of the most…
neurophilosophy | December 10, 2007
Yesterday's Sunday Feature on BBC Radio 3 was program about the evolution of music, by Ivan Hewitt. It isn't available online yet, but should be uploaded onto the Sunday Feature page soon, and will remain there for a week.
The progam features linguist Steven Pinker of Harvard University, who argues that music is a kind of evolutionary by-product, and anthropologist and cognitive archaeologist Steven Mithen from the University of Reading in the UK, who believes it was fundamental to human evolution.
And on NPR, there's an interview with husband-and-wife primatologists Dorothy Cheney and…
omnibrain | December 10, 2007
Yeah you heard me right... there is no good reason why Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, or any of the other tabloid celebs are so paid attention to. They contribute nothing to society - and they aren't even that attractive. Dr Torkel Klingberg and Fiona McNab have come up with a potential explanation as to why these celebrity vampires have come to take over the press - inability to filter out irrelevant stimuli. Basically... the U.S. is undergoing a pervasive bout of ADHD.
Here's some of the study details from BBC news (which of course overblows the significance of this research just like I…
neurophilosophy | December 9, 2007Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, discusses race and IQ, arguing that the differences in the IQ scores of blacks and whites are due largely to environmental factors.
Nisbett begins his article by mentioning James Watson, who recently retired from his post as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory following racist comments he made. Now it turns out that one of Watson's great grandparents was African.
Related:
On the peculiarities of the Negro brain
clock | December 8, 2007My son is working on a paper for school and he picked the topic of video games and how they affect behavior. He primed himself by playing Assassin's Creed for a couple of days, so he could aggressively look for sources and he found these:
Most Middle-school Boys And Many Girls Play Violent Video Games
Children's Personality Features Unchanged By Short-Term Video Play
Study Examines Video Game Play Among Adolescents
Surgeons With Video Game Skill Appear To Perform Better In Simulated Surgery Skills Course
Online Multiplayer Video Games Create Greater Negative Consequences, Elicit Greater…
clock | December 6, 2007Hmm, I did not know this - apparently the left hemisphere of the human brain falls asleep first, and the right one a little bit later in most people.
I wonder if that has any connection with the reason we tend to focus on the right side of the face when someone is talking to us - checking the vigilance/sleepiness state of the person?
grrlscientist | December 6, 2007tags: emotional health, mood, happiness, National Lottery
"Money can't buy happiness" as the old addage goes, and every once in awhile, that's actually true, too. Yesterday, for example, I read an article based on scientific research that suggested that it's the simple things in life that make people truly happy. Having lived a very simple, and yet very stressful, life these past three years, I do -- and do not -- agree with this sentiment.
According to the article, which was based on a study commissioned by the National Lottery, Richard Tunney of the University's School of Psychology found…
razib | December 5, 2007Watching Beyond Belief 2 I was interested in Jonathan Haidt's contention that liberals and conservatives exhibit alternative valences on five different "Moral Foundations." In short, liberals tend to emphasize "Harm" and "Fairness," and manifest little interest in the values of "Loyalty," "Authority" and "Purity." In contrast, conservatives tended to have a more balanced weighting of values across all five dimensions, as well as deemphasizing the first two components in relation to liberals. My own immediate thought was, "Where do I fit in?" I assumed I would be closer to liberals here…
neurophilosophy | December 3, 2007
Researchers from Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute report that a young chimp can out-perform university students on a working memory task. (Cognitive psychologists use the term working memory to refer to the temporary storage and manipulation of information.)
The researchers developed a memory test called the limited-hold memory task in order to compare the working memory of their chimps with that of humans. In the task, numbers are displayed on a screen for fractions of a second, before being covered by white squares. The subject is then required to touch the squares in correct…