Research
dmunger | March 13, 2008Psychologists often complain that neuroscientists get a disproportionate share of the glory when the mainstream media reports on their studies. It seems to some that an important new psychology study is often neglected or ignored entirely, while neuroscience studies of similar importance are hailed as "groundbreaking." What is it about pictures of brains that are so appealing?
A while back, were excited to hear of a study which promised to show that people are more impressed by neuroscience explanations of research results than nonneural psychology explanations. Paul Bloom's article about the…
dmunger | March 11, 2008It shouldn't take you long to notice what's wrong with this picture:
Obviously Nora is defying gravity in this shot -- you can't help but notice it. But in your first glance at the photo, how quickly do you notice what's wrong? Do you spot the oddity faster than you'd notice Nora in the original, unaltered picture?
A 1978 study by Geoffrey Loftus and Norman Mackworth found that people respond quicker to unusual or inappropriate objects in line drawings, such as an octopus instead of a tractor in a farm scene. They moved their eyes an average of 7 degrees to fixate on the unusual objects…
dmunger | March 10, 2008What makes children so cute? Is it their adorably soft skin? Their innocently mischievous smiles? Their oversized eyes and tiny little mouths? Why is it that some kids are singled out for TV commercials and child beauty pageants, while others don't seem to be noteworthy in any way?
Attractiveness in children isn't trivial -- teachers believe more attractive students are more intelligent, and are less likely to punish them for misbehavior. There are also gender differences: Teachers give better grades to attractive girls, but worse grades to attractive boys.
Most studies about cuteness have…
dmunger | March 6, 2008When I write an article for Cognitive Daily, I follow a similar pattern nearly every time. First I carefully read the journal article I'll be discussing. Next I take a break and work on something else. Then I get myself a caffeinated beverage and some kind of sweet treat (usually it's chocolate-covered raisins but today I'm in a coffee shop having just finished a toffee almond bar). Often it won't be until ten or fifteen minutes after I've eaten that I really get into a groove with the writing. Then I write the entire post, usually for an hour or two straight, pausing only to produce the…
dmunger | March 5, 2008Any serious wine drinker will tell you she can distinguish between inexpensive, low-quality wine and the fancy premium-priced stuff. She may also claim the ability to discern the difference between wine made from different grapes, or produced in different regions of the world. Yet some studies have found that even so-called experts are unable to figure that "red wine" was actually a white wine dyed red, and nearly everyone seems to be swayed by the label on a wine bottle. Wouldn't we all just be better off if we simply kept an old empty bottle of fine vintage wine and refilled it as necessary…
dmunger | March 3, 2008You might expect someone's cultural background to influence their speech, their appearance, their musical tastes, and the foods they like. You'd probably also expect culture to have an impact on values and beliefs, on stories and traditions. But what about their bodies -- not just physical features like skin color or hair texture, but attitude towards the self? If culture touches on so many aspects of an individual, perhaps it can also impact the subtle ways people think about of their own bodies.
Consider this fairly well-established difference between Euro-Americans and Asian Americans:…
dmunger | February 26, 2008It's hard to resist flirting with babies. Even if a baby has been screaming her head off for hours on end in the seat behind you on a transatlantic flight, if she giggles and smiles when you're deplaning, you'll probably smile back. What is it about babies that makes our hearts melt almost instantaneously when we see them? Is it their cuteness, their happiness, or just their babyness?
A team led by Morten Kringelbach showed photos of babies and adults to twelve volunteers while their brains were being scanned with a MEG (magnetoencephalography) scanner. The key to the study was the control of…
dmunger | February 25, 2008When adults are asked if they remember pictures of faces, they're more accurate when the faces are the same race as they are. It makes some sense -- people are likely to spend more time with and have more same-race friends, so they may become better attuned to the differences in individuals in their own racial group. This finding can be especially important in eyewitness testimony: If a crime victim identifies his assailant as someone of a different race, then the research suggests that this identification is more likely to be problematic than an identification of a same-race suspect.
But…
terrasig | February 20, 2008Following the second terrorist action against UCLA's Dr Edie London and her other research colleagues, and the outcries of support that ensued, the institution is taking bold and well-justified action. This just in from Americans for Medical Progress:
UCLA is suing to protect researchers from animal extremists
Legal action follows attempted firebombings and harassment
Phil Hampton, e-mail
(310) 206-1460
UCLA is suing extremists to stop a campaign of terrorism, vandalism and menacing threats directed at faculty and administrators who conduct or support research involving laboratory animals…
dmunger | February 20, 2008One of the most common "icebreaker" conversation topics is music preferences. We ask friends what they're listening to on their iPods, bloggers post playlists on their sidebars, and one of the most popular websites on the planet (MySpace) is built around sharing music. The assumption is that musical preferences can tell us something beyond what someone likes to listen to -- we believe we can judge a person's personality, fashion preferences, and more based just on the style of music they prefer.
For me, it's difficult not to form a mental picture of a person when I hear what music they listen…
dmunger | February 19, 2008Take a look at this amazing illusion created by Arthur Shapiro (you'll need the latest version of Flash Player to see it):
You're looking at two donut-shaped figures whose "holes" are gradually changing color from black to white and back again. It appears that the holes are changing in an opposite pattern -- when one is light, the other is dark, and so on. But if you click to remove the surrounding donuts, you'll see that the two holes are actually changing together.
If you're still not convinced, get a friend to help. One of you looks at the light donut and the other looks at the dark…
dmunger | February 14, 2008I don't need words to think about the shape of a car, or how to throw a football, or the taste of a chocolate chip cookie. In fact, things like that are probably easier to think about without using language. That's why the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis -- that language is necessary for conscious thought -- doesn't hold up. But even if language isn't required for some domains, it's still possible that it is required for certain types of mental processes. It may even be required for some thoughts that aren't obviously related to language.
Some research suggests that understanding…
dmunger | February 13, 2008Which of these two pictures is more memorable?
The shot on the left is interesting primarily because Nora's in it -- if it was just a picture of a muddy trail, it wouldn't be notable at all to most people. The shot on the right is a dramatic mountain scene that you might remember even though (or perhaps because) there's not a human in sight.
But a seasoned hiker might be more interested in the photo of the muddy trail, which gives more information about the difficulty of the hike than a panoramic shot. Just as expert chess players are good at remembering the position of chess pieces on the…
terrasig | February 12, 2008Last week, we discussed the cowardly terrorist act toward UCLA's Dr Edythe London which was then expanded upon quite forcefully by Mark Hoofnagle at his denialism blog.
While we spend a fair bit of time around these parts questioning the leadership of the US national health agency, this statement of response from NIH is quite good:
On Tuesday, February 5, an incendiary device ignited at the front door of the home of Dr. Edythe London, an NIH-supported senior scientist and professor in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. This domestic terrorist act against a scientist who has…
dmunger | February 11, 2008Take a look at this short video clip (QuickTime required). It's called an RSVP (rapid serial visual presentation), meaning that it's a quick sequence of still images. In this case, it's a random sequence of letters. Your job is to look for a number among the letters. At some point during the clip, you should also see a dot flash in one corner of the video. You also need to take note of the corner in which the dot appears. A rectangle will flash shortly before the dot, possibly giving a clue to where the dot will appear:
It's actually not a very difficult task (especially when I tell you that…
dmunger | February 7, 2008You're trapped inside a rectangular room with four doors, one in each corner. You try the first door. It's locked. You try the second and the third door -- locked again. Finally the fourth door opens. You make a point of remembering which corner of the room it's in, which turns out to be useful, because before you know it you're trapped in another identical room. Now, how did you remember what door opened last time? You can't rely on your physical orientation because you might be facing a different direction.
Suppose one wall in both the rooms was a different color from the rest. Then it…
dmunger | February 5, 2008A particular source of dread for politicians is how to respond to negative campaigning or other information impugning their character. By responding, they might only bring attention to an issue that voters hadn't even recognized: "Contrary to my opponent's claims, I have stopped beating my wife, and I haven't consumed more than a fifth of hard liquor in a single sitting."
Worse, many studies have found that even unequivocal denials fail to register in memory. In one study, participants read a report about the possible cause of a fire: a room full of oil paint and pressurized gas cylinders.…
terrasig | February 2, 2008Readers and colleagues often ask why scientists care to blog, especially given increasing time demands and decreasing research funding. For me, the blog is an opportunity to have discussions with colleagues from diverse research areas all around the world. Quite often, I learn something quite new that I would not normally encounter in my chosen field of cancer pharmacology.
A case in point stems from a reader comment by Dr Italo MR Guedes, a Brazilian soil scientist who writes the blog, Geófagos (Google Translate works well enough unless, of course, you are already fluent in Portuguese).…
dmunger | January 31, 2008When 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 camera angles in a movie on our…
dmunger | January 29, 2008Two facts are true about young children: they sleep a lot more than adults, and they learn language at an astonishing rate. How can they learn so much when they're sleeping so much of the time? Perhaps sleep itself enhances learning. In fact, a number of studies suggest that naps actually enhance learning in adults. What about kids?
A team led by Rebecca Gómez developed a clever test to see if 15-month-olds learn language faster when they've had a nap. At 15 months, most infants understand a lot of language, but don't produce much. But of course, each baby learns at a slightly different rate…