Research
dmunger | April 20, 2009How many of these faces can you recognize?
Even though these are extremely famous individuals, it's unlikely that you'll be able to identify all four of them, because the pictures were taken early in life, before they became famous. But give it your best shot and try to name them in the comments. I'll reveal the correct answers later today.
We know that there are some individuals who have great difficulty identifying even current photos of very famous people, and often can't identify the faces of close friends or family members. This condition, called prosopagnosia, was once thought to be…
dmunger | April 16, 2009Several studies have confirmed this bizarre proposition: If you're taking a test of rote memorization, like words from a list, move your eyes from side to side for about 30 seconds before you start. Really.
Researchers have found, with relative consistency, that if you saccade from left to right and back several times before a test of simple recall, you're likely to do better. Why? It may be that this quick activity helps facilitate interaction between the brain hemispheres. Since split-brain patients have more difficulty recalling words than people with normal brains, any activity that…
bioephemera | April 15, 2009
This chart shows where your federal tax dollars go, based on Feb 2008 budget numbers (note: this shows discretionary budget, or appropriations, only - go here for more details, or look at the inset in the lower right corner to see where the other two-thirds of the budget are).
Visit wallstats.com for a giant version.
jane | April 14, 2009I have a To-Do list that's longer than my arm.
I have multiple deadlines that are Looming Large this week.
My scholarly materials are due fairly soon, and there are a couple more things that need to be sent out into the Great Reviewing Stream ASAP.
I have about 20 research-related tasks that must be done Right Now.
I have been completely neglecting Mr. Jane. We are not even 2 ships passing in the night....we are 2 ships flying in completely different solar systems.
So what have I spent the last 4 hours doing? Writing a homework assignment. (And actually, much of that was tweaking the…
dmunger | April 13, 2009One of the most controversial topics here on Cognitive Daily is whether playing video games can lead to aggressive behavior or violence -- and one of the most dramatic demonstrations of the impact of violent video games was a 2000 study by Craig Anderson and Karen Dill. In that study, participants played violent or non-violent games, and then were asked to play another "game," this time against what they believed was a real person in a nearby room. In fact, there was no human opponent, and the game was rigged so that the player "won" half the time. The gamers were wearing headphones, and…
grrlscientist | April 8, 2009tags: lories, Loriinae, Loriidae, ornithology, molecular biology, natural history museums
A young pair of Meyer's Lories (Lorikeets), Trichoglossus flavoviridis meyeri.
Image: Iggino [larger view].
"Can you help us identify a mystery lory in our collection?"
I was pleasantly surprised to find this email request from Donna Dittmann, Collections Manager and Museum Preparator for the Section of Genetic Resources at Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
"Sure," I wrote back. "Send it to me and I'll see what I can do."
I, and some of my lories,…
dmunger | April 8, 2009The Mafa people, who live in the far north of Cameroon in the Mandara mountains, are one of the most culturally isolated groups in the world. Since many of their settlements lack electricity, there are some individuals who have never been exposed to western movies, art, or music.
But the Mafa do have their own musical tradition. Many of their ceremonies are accompanied by a unique chorus of flutes of varying sizes, which can produce different pitches by covering and uncovering a small hole at their tip. The music they produce is quite different from Western-style music. Here's a sample:…
dmunger | April 6, 2009[Originally posted in November, 2007]
Do people ever tell you to "just smile, you'll feel better"? If you're like our daughter Nora, you hear it a lot, and you get annoyed every time you hear it. Telling a teenager to smile is probably one of the best ways to ensure she won't smile for the next several hours. But the notion that "smiling will make you feel better" has actually been confirmed by research. There are several studies demonstrating that people are happier when they smile, at least in certain circumstances.
It's not as easy as you might think to study the effect. For one thing, it'…
dmunger | April 1, 2009Take a look at this astonishing (and adorable) video demonstrating how a baby acquires object permanence.
At 6 months old, the baby can see and reach for an object, but as soon as it is hidden, she doesn't seem to realize it's there. The baby is interested and excited by the objects, but when they're not visible, it's as if her memory has been wiped clean.
By 10 months, the phenomenon has vanished and the baby behaves like any older child would, clearly realizing that the book is hidden under the blanket and immediately uncovering it.
But 10-month-olds will make another error. If you have…
dmunger | March 31, 2009Take another look at this picture of the Rokeby Venus from last week's post on mirrors in art:
Now, imagine you're actually in the room with Venus, as depicted in this painting. You suspend your astonishment long enough to conduct a quick test of the principle of how a flat mirror works. Consider what would happen to Venus' face in the mirror as you approach it. As you walk towards the mirror, would the proportion of the reflection taken up by Venus's face increase or decrease? In the painting, the face takes about 2/3 the width of the mirror. Would that proportion get bigger or smaller as…
dmunger | March 26, 2009The Rokeby Venus by Diego Velázquez is a good example of a very common illusion in many paintings:
Most viewers would say this picture depicts a woman viewing her own reflection in a mirror. But based on the orientation of the mirror, it's actually physically impossible for her to see her own reflection. Since we can see her face, then if she could see face in the mirror, her head would have to be positioned between us and the the mirror. At best all she would be able to see is us (or rather, the painter painting her picture).
Art critics have suggested that there's another problem with…
jane | March 26, 2009I probably should have noticed the warning signs about my graduate program earlier---like, in the first week, when I went to meet my temporary assigned advisor and he said "Oh, uh, I don't want any more students right now. Go find yourself another advisor." (I guess he didn't really understand the whole idea behind "temporary advisor".) I probably should have trusted my instincts to run away to saner pastures, but I decided to stick around for a bit. What I didn't realize at the time was that things would soon get much, much worse.
Fast forward to the end of my first year. I had finished…
dmunger | March 23, 2009Last week I mentioned that Greta had been discussing a study with her class that was related to the fable of the Fox and the Grapes. When most of her students hadn't heard the story, it provided the opportunity for a lengthy aside: our Casual Fridays study about which stories people had and hadn't heard.
Greta didn't bring up the story in class to embarrass her students about their apparent lack of knowledge of children's stories; she mentioned it because it's probably the easiest way to understand an important psychological phenomenon called "behavior-induced attitude change."
The fable…
sb admin | March 23, 2009Just a friendly reminder that tomorrow, March 24, is Ada Lovelace Day, a day devoted to highlighting women in technology. Get your posts together! (Even if you didn't sign the pledge, please join in on the fun!) Details on how to post and tag are here.
I am so excited about my own post---the woman I am posting about totally rocks, and I can't wait to introduce you to her and her work.
Also, while we are on the subject of reminders: If you're not familiar with fellow scibling Isis the Scientist....well, why the hell aren't you reading her already? Anyway, you definitely want to click…
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…
sb admin | March 12, 2009Um, hi. Apparently I've been gone for a while. Yeah. Sorry about that. Life's been a bit crazy around here lately, and I feel like I'm barely keeping my head above water. I'm not sleeping. I'm not taking care of myself. I'm sick. I'm stressed to the gills. I have way too much to do. I feel like I work all the damn time. Hmmm, maybe that's because I *do* work all the damn time.
In addition to not having time to breathe blog, I haven't really been in the headspace to blog. I have a ton of stuff on my mind, but I'm not sure how to blog it. It's all about tenure, of course: the…
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 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…