Research
dmunger | February 22, 2007When 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 will flash for just a half-second. It…
dmunger | February 15, 2007The setting was an integrated suburban middle school: nearly evenly divided between black and white students. As is the case in many schools, white students outperformed black students both in grades and test scores. But how much of this difference is attributable to real differences in ability? After all, black kids grow up "knowing" that white kids do better in school. Perhaps this was just an example of kids living down to expectations.
A simple experiment would help find out. A team led by Geoffrey Cohen found a group teachers who taught the same 7th-grade course and were willing to…
omnibrain | February 15, 2007In the ongoing battle between the DEA, farmers, patients, and scientists there has been nothing but contradictory information. It looks like with a couple new pieces of news that the pro-marijuana (the medical kind) people might be coming out ahead.
For researchers studying marijuana, it's been a very good week. In one of the most careful studies to date, marijuana was found to relieve pain. And a judge ruled in favor of an agronomist who has has been trying for six years to overcome one of the problems of marijuana research: the lack of an adequate supply of the drug for experiments.
The…
dmunger | February 13, 2007Take a look at this animation. One face will flash; then it will be followed by another face. Are the two faces the same or different? The change between faces could be a small one.
Did you notice a change? (You can repeat the movie once if you're not sure.) Let's make this one a poll:
Now try another animation:
Again, were the faces the same or different?
Most people are much better at identifying different human faces than identifying animal faces, which makes sense, since most people have more experience with other people than with animals.
Most adults are also better at distinguishing…
omnibrain | February 11, 2007As an academic your currency is your reputation, and how often your papers get cited (well assuming they aren't citing you for making up data). The inevitable result of this are battles of ideas being fought out at conferences, in special issues of journals and in review articles. If you discover something interesting and the mechanisms are not clearly visible (as they usually are not - especially in something like psychology!) other scientists begin to attack you - especially if your new idea challenges theirs!
In the science of the brain there are a few debates that immediately come to…
terrasig | February 10, 2007...has been the number one Google search term leading people to the blog this week - and that worries me.
As I wrote about a week ago, dichloroacetate, or DCA, is the molecule tested recently by a team at University of Alberta for its ability to slow the growth of human lung cancer in immunocompromised rats. Among DCA's action is the ability to prevent cancer cells from producing lactic acid via aerobic glycolysis, a process used by more than half (but not all) tumors. Scientists continue to debate whether this process is a cause of cancer, or just a byproduct of malignant cell…
dmunger | February 8, 2007Recently I attended a concert featuring the premier of an up-and-coming composer's work. She gave a brief talk before her piece was played, during which she explained the complex symbology of her work. The musical notes weren't just noises; they were intended to convey a meaning above and beyond a mere sequence of sounds. But if her music really did convey such deep meaning, why did she have to explain it to the audience beforehand? Can music ever express semantic meaning directly, without requiring a composer or someone else to "translate" for us?
Certainly not all music is as difficult to…
dmunger | February 6, 2007At a recent social psychology conference, one of the attendees kept an informal tally of how often presenters made negative statements about their own presentations. Out of 18 presenters, 11 made negative statements like
I've prepared a gosh-awful overhead
This is a gross oversimplification, or
We thought this study was pretty lame.
The statements weren't qualified in any way, just offered on their own as a preface to a portion of their presentation. Why would esteemed researchers find it worthwhile to make self-critical statements in front of their own colleagues? We're not talking here…
dmunger | January 29, 2007Nearly 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 make it difficult for gamers to…
dmunger | January 24, 2007Many many studies have repeatedly shown the dangers of driving while using a cell phone. Yesterday, while discussing a new law in Britain imposing heavy penalties not only for driving using a handheld phone, but also while using phones with hands-free kits, commenter Jan claimed that talking to a passenger was less dangerous than talking on a phone. I replied that I hadn't seen a study demonstrating that talking with passengers was any different from talking on a phone, and Jan provided a link to one such study.
Greta and I have both read over the study, and while we can't say from these…
dmunger | January 22, 2007Most language processing takes places in the left hemisphere of the brain. When we read, carry on a conversation, or listen to speech, most of the action -- for right-handers -- takes place on the left side of the brain. (For left-handers, the situation is more complex; it's not simply a mirror image of a right-handed brain. For this reason, most studies involving any sort of brain scan routinely exclude left-handers.)
But there are a few occasions when the right hemisphere gets involved: when we create a narrative, for example, or when we make inferences. Some types of figurative language,…
dmunger | January 17, 2007Here in North Carolina, for many sports fans, it's considered common knowledge that basketball referees don't call fouls against Duke. The reasons for the supposed bias vary from racism, to payoffs from wealthy alums, to the intimidating atmosphere at Duke's legendary Cameron Indoor Stadium, but nearly everyone in the state who's not a Duke fan seems to believe that the rich northerners at Duke University get all sorts of unfair advantages.
That said, accusations of bias in sports officials aren't limited to the Atlantic Coast Conference. Studies on home field advantage in Major League…
dmunger | January 10, 2007We've written a lot about video games and aggression here on CogDaily, and typically there has been heated discussion about the results. Why, commenters ask, aren't you talking about aggression in football players, or road rage, or in any of a thousand other situations? The most important reason is simply that we have a teenage son who loves video games, so we want to know if there's a negative impact of playing these games all the time.
But our commenters do have a point: a larger understanding of aggressive behavior and violence clearly goes beyond simply playing video games. There was…
dmunger | January 9, 2007In movie fight scenes, punches often miss by a foot or more, but when sound effects are added, and the punchee adds an effective-looking recoil, we're convinced that the punch is "real." We've posted on this phenomenon before: when a "click" sound is played as two animated balls pass by each other, it's perceived as a "bounce."
This type of sound effect, where the sound occurs at a critical moment in an animation or movie, has been explored quite extensively. But is it possible that other types of sound might affect how we see motion? Adam Ecker and Laurie Heller realized that they could…
dmunger | January 4, 2007This year's collegiate national football championship will be held in Phoenix, Arizona, at the usual home of the Arizona Cardinals. Neither competitor, Florida or Ohio State, is playing on its home field, so in principle the game should be an even match. Indeed, neither team has lost a home game this year, with Florida's lone loss coming at an away game in Auburn.
How big is the home field advantage? In the English Premier Football League (the other football), the home team wins 66 percent of the time. The home field advantage has been attributed to everything from understanding the local…
dmunger | January 3, 2007Watch the quick video below. First you'll fixate on a small dot in the middle of the screen. Then you'll get a visual cue which serves to direct your attention to a particular location. Simultaneously, four letter Os, each colored red or green, will appear. Your task is to say, as quickly as possible, the COLOR of the letter in the direction indicated by the cue.
Now try this one, same task, but with a different cue.
Much research on visual attention during the past 30 years has focused on the difference between these two types of cues -- central arrows versus peripheral indicators such as…
gmunger | December 28, 2006This is a guest post by Dominic Ippolito, one of my top student writers from Fall of 2006
Everyone knows a "perfectionist." We think of him or her as someone who strives for, and often attains, a high level of performance. But what are the psychological effects of this behavior? Psychologists categorize perfectionists according to two commonly accepted forms. Adaptive ('healthy') perfectionists set high standards for themselves, and use these goals to elicit their best effort. This form of perfectionism, measured by a subscale of the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (APS-R), called the High…
gmunger | December 26, 2006This is a guest post by Anna Coon, one of my top student writers from fall 2006
If a baby is placed in a new, strange situation, a common reaction is to look to its mother. For example, whenever I met a new baby I was to babysit, she would always look to her mother at first, as if to get her mother's opinion on the potentially frightening situation. But why, exactly, is the baby looking to its mother? It might be for comfort in a novel situation, but it might also be to receive information. A team led by Trisha Striano has developed a study to test whether babies look to their mothers for…
dmunger | December 21, 2006Take a look at these two images. Do they belong in the same category or different categories?
You say the same? Wrong -- they're different! The one on the right is a little blurrier.
What about these two?
These are in the same category. Sure, the one on the right is still blurrier, but now it's rotated a bit, so that puts the two objects back in the same category. My rule for categorizing is complex, involving both blurriness and rotation (I'll explain how it works later on).
How do you think you would do if you were tested on these categories? Do you think you'd do better or worse if…
dmunger | December 19, 2006As parents of a 15-year-old, Greta and I are very interested in what causes people to behave aggressively. We know a lot about specific causes of aggression -- violent media, testosterone, guns, and personal insults can all lead to aggressive behavior in certain circumstances. But kids and others exposed to one or more of these things don't necessarily become violent. Sometimes it seems that just the presence of his sister in the room can cause Jim to act more aggressively than he would otherwise.
That's one reason we were intrigued by a recent study by Jennifer Klinesmith, Tim Kasser, and…