Research
dmunger | September 26, 2005Gender and racial differences in standardized test scores have received a lot of coverage in the popular press. An article in yesterday's New York Times discussed how simply combining populations with different economic status can result in increased test scores—apparently just being around kids with different educational expectations can have an impact on performance.
We've talked here about research which indicates that simply reminding test-takers of stereotypes about their gender or racial group can impact their performance. But these tests are typically conducted on adults. Do children…
dmunger | September 22, 2005There is considerable evidence that using a cell phone impairs driving ability. The research has even reached the popular consciousness: hosts of radio call-in shows ask cell-phone callers to pull over before making their comments; drivers give wide berths to people who are obviously talking while they drive.
All this knowledge begs the question: If drivers are aware of the dangers of cell phone use, can they compensate for their weaknesses and effectively negate any problems from driving with a phone? Mary Lesch and Peter Hancock had been part of a 2003 team that had found drivers reacted…
dmunger | September 21, 2005We know that "average" faces are judged to be more attractive than the faces of the individuals making up the average. But this doesn't tell us what the mechanism for judging attractiveness is. Do we judge faces to be attractive because they are potential mates, or is there some other reason for perceiving attractiveness?
Jamin Halberstadt and Gillian Rhodes came up with a novel way to try to answer that question: instead of faces, they asked participants to rate other things. If we rate average birds as more attractive than actual examples of birds, then this could suggest that we have a…
dmunger | September 15, 2005Music can be used to convey a range of emotion, from sadness to happiness, from anger to fear. We use music to help fall asleep at night, and to wake up in the morning. Its effect on our mood may be enough to improve our performance on a range of intellectual tasks. But where do these effects come from? Are we born with an association between music and emotion, or does it develop as we grow older?
Studies have found some evidence for an appreciation of music even in infants. Babies as young as 9 months old prefer musical scales to monotonic scales—the notes in the western musical scale do not…
dmunger | September 13, 2005Click on the image below to be taken to a quicktime movie showing 9 different faces. When the movie is finished playing, drag the slider back and forth to pick the face you think is the most attractive.
The faces are composite images—"average" faces made by morphing together 48 different photos. Previous research has shown that people typically perceive average faces as more beautiful than unusual faces (and here we've written about how easy it is to change our conception of "average"). But what about people from different racial groups? Would a Caucasian perceive an "average" South Asian…
dmunger | September 12, 2005My favorite bike shop has a photo of bicyclists lighting up cigarettes for each other as they rode along during a 1920s stage of the Tour de France. After getting over our astonishment that they can actually manage to light cigarettes without even getting off their bikes, we look at the photo today and think "how could those riders not know what those cigarettes were doing to their lungs?"
Surely today's athletes know that using drugs ranging from nicotine to alcohol to cocaine can seriously impair their ability to perform in competition, don't they? Supporters of scholastic athletics point…
dmunger | September 9, 2005Taste is a notoriously difficult sense to study. My son Jim can't stand baked potatoes, but I can't get enough of them. I don't like watermelon, but the rest of my family gobbles it up. Even more perplexingly, I do like watermelon candy. With all the individual differences in taste, how can scientists learn anything specific about how the sense works?
The difficulties in taste study are compounded by the fact that taste is intimately associated with the sense of smell. Every kid knows to plug his nose when trying a food he or she doesn't like. Researchers must be constantly aware that…
dmunger | September 7, 2005How do we reconcile the variety of results that have been found with respect to the Mozart effect—the idea that the music of Mozart can lead to improved performance on spatial ability tests? With some researchers appearing to have found no effect at all, and others claiming dramatic effects, who are we to believe? In just the research we've reviewed here at Cognitive Daily, we've got Ivanov and Geake reporting a pronounced effect for both Mozart and Bach, Jackson and Tlauka arguing that there's no Mozart effect for route learning, and McKelvie and Low declaring "final curtains for the Mozart…
dmunger | September 2, 2005One of my best friends in college played music incessantly—whether he was studying, writing papers, completing organic chemistry problem sets, or swilling down cheap beer, whatever he did was accompanied by a nonstop 1980s synth-pop beat. This apparently did him no harm, because after graduating at the top of his class, he went on to get a PhD and a law degree, with full scholarships paying for both.
I could never study with him because the music always broke my concentration. I preferred to study to the gentle background noise of the campus coffee shop. There was one exception to this rule:…
dmunger | August 31, 2005
This is an image from the video game Asheron's Call 2 (source: mmorpg.com). Does playing such a game, involving regular practicing (albeit in a virtual environment) of repetitive, violent acts, increase our general level of aggression? A recent article in New York Times says no, citing a study by "a researcher at the University of Illinois," which found, according to the article, that "violent video games have no 'long-term,' or permanent, effects on aggressive behavior." Interesting, considering the article I discussed in yesterday's post apparently found exactly the opposite.
With some…
dmunger | August 30, 2005Steven Johnson is a writer who I very much admire. I'm particularly impressed by his defense of video games and other technologies in his book Everything Bad is Good For You. However, in defending the good aspects of video games, he has also felt compelled to downplay their negative effects. For example, a recent blog post argues vehemently that video game violence does not lead to aggression. He makes his argument by examining a recent study which found a link between violent game exposure and aggression. I'd like to do something a bit unusual for Cognitive Daily. First, I'll examine the…
dmunger | August 29, 2005The "Mozart Effect" hit the mainstream media by storm in the mid 1990s, in the form of a bestselling book by the same name. A Google search for the topic still reveals a slew of products designed to exploit the effect—to increase IQ, or overall well-being, or even physical health.
The psychological basis for the effect is a 1993 study by a team led by Frances Rauscher, which found a much more limited effect: scores on a spatial IQ test were 8 to 9 points higher after listening to a Mozart sonata, compared to testing following exposure to relaxation stimuli. The result was astounding: simply…
dmunger | August 25, 2005The human brain is incredibly specialized. There are individual neurons for recognizing faces, edges of objects, and specific sounds. One fruitful area of research recently has been to determine precisely how specialized the brain really is. Here's one example. The image below links to an animated movie. Click on it and see how quickly you can determine which direction the rectangles are moving:
If you're like most adults, you're able to determine the correct direction very quickly.
Now, take a look at this animation and try it again:
This one should have taken somewhat longer, even…
dmunger | August 23, 2005Perceiving motion creates a fascinating problem for psychologists. Physicists for centuries have devised a whole set of rules describing how objects actually move. These rules are so precise and accurate that it's tempting to say that the human perceptual system simply integrates them into motion we see, so that our mental representation of what we see is identical to what's actually going on in the world.
Some research, such as this article we reported on last month, supports that notion. Since we expect objects to keep on moving (the physical principle of momentum), then our representation…
dmunger | August 15, 2005One of Jean Piaget's most famous observations is the phenomenon of "object permanence"—the idea that babies younger than eight months old have no conception of an object once it's hidden from view. It's easy to see how he came to this conclusion. Click on the picture of my daughter Nora at six months of age to see a video of her spectacularly failing the object permanence test. Once the object is hidden under a napkin, she seems to lose all interest in it.
But does she really not understand that the object is still there, or is she simply interested in other things? A team of researchers…
dmunger | August 11, 2005It happens to everyone. You open a present and find a gift of so little personal interest that you wonder if you got the wrong package. The classic may be clothes presented to a preschooler; who can expect a 3 year-old to smile and say, "Thank you!" upon receiving a sweater? Somehow, we learn the rules about how to accept a gift, regardless of personal interest. Is it just a question of age? Older children are much better at politely thanking the giver than younger children. But gender seems to play a role, too. Girls are also more likely than boys to appropriately thank Aunt Margaret…
dmunger | August 8, 2005"Boys are better at math" is a stereotype decades in the making, and it has in some cases been borne out by testing measures such as the SAT. The stereotype has been around so long that many wonder whether the stereotype is the effect or the cause of any actual differences in math ability.
Many researchers have observed a "stereotype threat," which occurs when test-takers are made aware that they are being tested in an area in which the stereotype suggests they'll do poorly. For example, when boys and girls are given a math test and told that its purpose is to determine whether boys or girls…
dmunger | August 4, 2005Rummaging through your bag in search of keys, it's clear that you can recognize objects using just your fingers. But is it easier to recognize the keys if you feel them as if you were going to open to door, or if you encounter the key's teeth in some odd orientation--like pointed straight up? Consider the following pictures. Which object looks more familiar?
Indeed, it is easier to recognize objects visually when you see them in familiar orientations. Could this orientation effect extend to objects we touch? Fiona Newell and her colleagues used little LEGO towers to ask this question,…
dmunger | August 1, 2005In every courtroom drama, the most dramatic scene is always when the star witness points her finger at the villain and proclaims that "he did it!" The confidence with which an eyewitness describes the perpetrator of a crime is often the most convincing evidence in a court battle. But how accurate is eyewitness testimony? Do we really remember everything as accurately as we think we do? How important are other influences on eyewitness testimony? And what if the witness is a child?
Carl Martin Allwood has been working on these issues for years. In his most recent article, co-authored with Anna-…
dmunger | July 28, 2005Imagine sitting in a coffee shop, having a nice conversation with your friend Dave. If Dave looks at something, your eyes will reflexively move to look at the same item. This is actually quite convenient, because it may help you figure out what Dave is talking about, or what he might comment on next. How much of this joint attention reflex depends on Dave's face? You'll do this even if he only moves his eyes, without turning his head, so it might be that what you're reacting to isn't so much his face, but the movement of his pupils.
What we know about certain brain mechanisms makes this…