I was wondering if an alzheimer´s patient has more difficulties in learning new things, such as motor skills like biking for example. Are these related in any way?

Animal Language

Here is a link to an article that talks about language and animals.
I found it very interesting as it show many different points of view about it and also it talks about it in a more philosofical way...

Check it out!

http://www.santafe.edu/~johnson/articles.chimp.html

conection between retrograde and anterograde amnesia

I would like to know if anyone has researched about the relationship between retrograde and antegrade amnesia and semantic memory disorders.

Cognews.com

I just found this really cool blog thats all about cognitive psychology...it has some really interesting things on it, particularly about toddlers, memories, and Alzheimers. Here is the link: http://cognews.com/

Multi-Tasking

I think that this article is interesting, especially for all of us who are trying to get last minute studying in for all of our finals...it turns out all of our cramming may not be worth it...http://www.apa.org/releases/multitasking.html

Jabberwocky

Just so you all know, here is a link to allow you to actually talk with the Jabberwocky computer program that won the Turing test: http://www.jabberwacky.com/

Another Book

The teacher of my high school course also recommended another book, but I have not read it yet. It is called Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch. If you're interested in theatre, this is definitely a good book for you. He told us that it was about improv and acting / music and how the brain is less or more creative in certain individuals.

Book Recommendation

The reason I enrolled in Cognitive Psychology this summer was because of a book I read for another high school course called: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. It is so interesting, and it really sheds some light on why we pardon those who hurt us and why we continue to hurt people. I really, really recommend it.

50 First Dates Reply

About Arantza's post on 50 First Dates...I think that Drew Barrymore's character definitely suffers more from anterograde amnesia. She still remembers her brother and father and past events, but she definitely cannot transfer STM to LTM.

Alzheimer's

I know that conduction aphasia is caused by damage to the arcuate fasciculus and Broca's aphasia is caused by damage to Broca's area etc..., but I was wondering if there was any known damged area of the brain with Alzheimer's disease.

Controlling Neurons

Yesterday in the New York Times there was a fascinating article about how some researchers have discovered a way to "turn on and off" different neurons in the brain to see their functions. You can find the article here. It has to do more with neuroscience than cognitive psychology, but it could certainly help locate more specific places for memory, language, and other cognitive processes in the brain. Also researchers believe that this technique could help fix psychological disorders in the future. And the coolest thing: Stanford has a main part in all of this research!
Well, I hope you guys find that interesting.

It was fun meeting all of you guys, and I'll miss our cog psych class!
Rachel

Awesome Book

I highly recommend that everyone reads Daniel Levitin's book titled This is Your Brain on Music. It is very interesting.. especially if you have any background in music theory. It talks about a wide range of topics, from the neural bases of music processing, to music and evolution, to the genetic bases of musicality, to "hearing" notes when the fundamental frequency is dropped. Very cool stuff.

Mouse Brains.

cool website.... www.brainatlas.org

Scientists have mapped out some of the areas of specific genes in mice brains and how they are related to function. Very cool. I am touring the lab when I get back home, which will be really interesting after having taken two Psychology classes!

50 First Dates

I am hoping that many of you have seen this movie (50 First Dates) with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler.
After learning about different kinds of memory disorders, i thought about the movie and I thought that she would be an example of a patient with Retrograde amnesia as she could not remember anything from the past before the accident happenned. but also, she would forget everything after every day. So does she suffer from both anterograde amnesia and retrograde amnesia?

Stroop effect

i knwo it's a little bit late to talk abou the stroop effect, but I found a video of how to get better at this task. i never thought this would be possible! It's a long video, but it's worth watching. Everything is very unexpected. I think is amazing how vision and audition are related. when you see something, you already know what it sounds like, so this video is very surprising:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sHUokEJBKAA

hope you enjoy it!

Perception

I have a question:

Do we perceive information even when we do not have the feeling of perceiving?

Jamais Vu

As we all know because of what we learned in class, jamais vu is the opposite of deja vu. and of course everyone has experienced both of these sensations. I have a friend who had an epileptic seizure, and then afterward she had jamais vu for a long period of time. I thought this was very strange, but it makes sense because of the sense of newness she felt when she "woke up". But what are the other things that cause jamais vu? oh, and why do people who travel more and are part of a higher socioeconomic status have deja vu more often?

Placebos

I did my research project on the placebo effect and the psychological effects that it has on medical patients. It has been found in much research that the placebo effect has great psychological effects for a few reasons. one might be that the patient expects a response to occur, so the patient either believes a reaction has occured, or one actually does occur. Another reason might be that the patient believes something has happened as a result of the placebo when it really hasn't. But in the end, placebos relieve patients of diseases and pain more than 50% of the time. Have any of you ever had experience with placebo medications or participated in an experiment involving placebos?

12 Angry Men

In the movie the 12 angry men, people different perceptions of the same event are shown. Perception depends on memory, and each of the people in the movie has a different idea of what the real memory is. Because people have selective attention when it comes to an event, each person remembers something different. Everyone chooses to attend to differernt details. The movie demonstrates Broadbent's filter model becasue not everything goes into everyone's memory. We should watch the movie to see this demonstration of selective memory.

Writing Backwards

I have two younger sisters who are 8 year old twins. One of them, Katie, sometimes writes things backwards. She once had to write a story for school and she wrote it as if someone were to read it from right to left instead of left to right. She and her twin, Lucy, go to a Jewish school where they are taught Hebrew which is written from right to left. I'm guessing that when Katie is writing backwards she is taking the technical rules of Hebrew and applying them to English. Is this unusual?

How Animals Think

I remember in one lecture, we got on the topic of how animals think. I find it really interesting, because they do not have language with words like humans do. They do have some form of communication though, because they are able to interact with other animals. So, that means they must think, right? I know it is really hard, if not impossible to understand how animals think (for example: in pictures, some form of their means of communication, etc.), but does anybody know if any experiments have been done testing this question?

Lee

As a last contribution to the blog, I would just like to point out that, according to our lecture slides, naturalistic intelligence includes a talent for cloud watching. Apparently everyone is intelligent from a certain perspective.

Good luck studying!

Aphasia

Hey guys,

I found this user on YouTube who posts videos of various Speech Aphasias.

http://www.youtube.com/user/speechaphasias

It is a really good resource for various examples of all types of speech aphasias.

Enjoy!

Reverse Turing Test

Hey,

There are several terms used in the aforementioned clip that others, without background knowledge of Professor Alan Turing's experiment, may not be familiar with. The "Imitation Game" refers to the study's initial test. I feel like it should be known that there is a concept known as the Reverse Turing Test. We have all had to interact with this concept every time we register for an online account. Usually, we are presented with a distorted word upon a colored background which prevents automated servers from creating spam accounts. In this way, website designers assume that today's AI technology cannot read and decode a distorted word. The challenge-response process used to determine whether the user is a machine or a human is known widely as CAPTCHA. The acronym was determined in 2000 by Luis Van Ahn and Manuel Blum. According to statistical analysis, with a possible 16 images that can be guessed as the correct image, a machine has a 1 in 65536 chance of guessing correctly. Anyways, thought it would be an interesting story to tell. Enjoy!

-Nishant

-Nishant

Turing Test

Hello,

Here is a cool video I found concerning the Turing test:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zFwsmI95xw

The video has some pretty impressive artificial intelligence. The test is run entirely by computers or so the video says. There is a computer with artificial intelligence to run like an evalutator. It is a really neat video.

-Aravind

Unanswered Questions...

The notion that cognitive processes have their basis in neurological activities has been claimed to have been verified by studies involving imaging techiniques that show correlation between a cognitive act and a corresponding increase in regional activity in the brain. But does correlation imply causation? Which is the cause and which the effect? The cognitive act or the activity in the brain? The chicken or the egg?

In any case, I'm still mystified as to how a regional activity in the brain is translated into a perception or an experience of a sensation, or for that matter, even the awareness of an experience of a sensation. What is the sequence of events that translate external and internal stimuli into an experience of the world? How does activity in the occipital lobe or the primary visual cortex translate into seeing, for example, the colour red? What is "seeing"? What is it that is "seeing" red? Am I seeing? What am "I"?

I think Descartes was being rather glib when he said...well, wrote: Cogito ergo sum. It seems more likely that I think, therefore I can attempt to verify that I am. However, am I, if I am without thoughts? ;)

Colorado Adoption Project

Hey,

I found the Chapter 13 caption regarding the Colorado Adoption Project very interesting. So, I looked it up and did about 30 mins of research on the basis of the study and found some interesting facts. Apparently, the department of Behavioral Genetics at Colorado University studied how closely adopted children resemble their parents in relation to non-adopted children. If you want to read up on it more, check out the website: http://ibgwww.colorado.edu/cap/history.html

-Nishant

Model of Comprehension

Hey,

I was reading through Chapter 11 and I came across a section that I didn't fully understand. If anyone can help summarize the tenets of Kintsch's Model of Comprehension, I would really appreciate it. As of right now, all I know is that there are two extremes: the goal schema and the text. Thanks!

-Nishant

Thanks everyone!

I just wanted to express my thanks to all of you for a great class this summer! I really learned a lot from all of you and your great questions and comments. This blog has also been a great way to exchange ideas and information, and I really appreciate your contributions. Please keep in touch and let us know if you need any help in the future. We look forward to hearing from you and how you are doing! Best of luck with the final exam and life after Cognitive Psychology class!

What is the matrix?

I was looking through random videos on youtube and I found a clip of the Matrix where Morpheus offers Neo two piils.
I found it funny because apparently this clip was used in some decision making classes and I thought it would just be fun to post it after learning about decision making. Enjoy....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvs7AAYz0kU

Lefties really more creative?

A few weeks ago we discussed brain lateralization Today, I noticed this link to Yahoo answers on the Yahoo homepage addressing whether lefties are in fact more creative. I once had an art history professor tell me that some of the greatest artists ever known were left handed, and that there had to be some sort of correlation. I am reminded, however, of one of the greatest tenets of experimental psychology: correlation is not equivalent to causation.
See the articles for yourself:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylc=X3oDMTFtMXI2N3ZvBF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEX3MDMzk2NTQ1MTAzBHNlYwNmcm9udCBwYWdlBHNsawNGUC1Ub2RheUludA--?qid=20060630162104AAR78pk&fr=hp

and:


http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylc=X3oDMTFtMXI2N3ZvBF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEX3MDMzk2NTQ1MTAzBHNlYwNmcm9udCBwYWdlBHNsawNGUC1Ub2RheUludA--?qid=20060821111105AA5J1Sj&fr=hp


enjoy!

For all of the musicians out there...

When I was researching for my research proposal last week, I came across an atricle on whether reading music was an automatic process, just as reading language seems to be. There was an experiment done on the Stroop Effect (the test that asks you to name the color of the ink that is used in a word instead of the word itself) and if it relates to reading music. Interestingly, very similar results were found in this study as to the original stroop effect study that tested language. I think this is really cool because I can apply it to my life.. for me, reading music is just like reading language (I have been taking piano since i was 6) and so it is interesting that this property is similar between the two domains.

Here is a link to the study.. http://www.annalsnyas.org/cgi/reprint/1060/1/377.pdf

Enjoy!
Taylor

Demos on heuristics and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task

Here are a couple of links to check out on heuristics:

Availability heuristic demo

Decision making & heuristics

And here's a demo on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task -- we didn't get to talk about this in class, but it's mentioned in the textbook (Ch. 14, pp. 438-439).


I just wanted to say that I had such a blast teaching to all of you this summer! It was great how you challenged us -- you were very involved and integral to the success of our class. I had a lot of fun, and I hope you did too! Thanks for making this class such a great experience :-)

False Memories

Hey, I was wondering if anyone has any research on false memories... specifically ones that substantially affected the subject. Thanks so much!!

Taylor

God or Not...

Last week in class I brought up the issue of whether belief in a "higher being" is universal across different cultures, and some of my classmates correctly pointed out that this is not the case. However, what I had really intended that to say was that perhaps belief in a "higher reality" is universal. Every culture has sought to construct a higher reality that can explain the source (and purpose), not only of our existence, but of all existence. This construct, depending on the culture and the zeitgeist, varied in its level of sentience, ranging from a conscious entity imbued with intent and will, to a mechanical device following deterministic laws modulated by mild uncertainty.

Daniel Oppenheimer: 2006 Ig Nobel Award for literature

Did you know that Daniel Oppenheimer won the Ig Nobel Prize 2006 in Literature for his paper "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with using long words needlessly" which argues that simple writing makes authors appear more intelligent than complex writing.

Another interesting paper by Oppenheimer: Everything you ever wanted to know about discounting of cognitive states in heuristic judgement but were afraid to ask (2005)

ASIMO

Hello everyone!
Here's a link to the latest ASIMO movie.
http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/

Devika

Transformational Grammar

Hello hello!

I was re-reading Chapter 11 (Language Processes) for the final, and I found something worth discussing. I think it's fascinating that no matter how you rearrange a sentence, semantically it has meaning. In our brains, we concieve meaning from a sentence as long as it has potential meaning. The term used by the book to describe an awkwardly worded sentence is "regularity", something that, despite making the sentence difficult to read and consisting of a different underlying structure, makes sense to the human brain. Enjoy!

-Nishant

random question

Hello! I have a question about language. If you are listening to someone speak another language and can pick out some of what they are saying but can't make sense of the whole phrase, would this still be activating Broca's Area since there isn't really "comprehension", but rather the recognition of certain words?

Taylor Wiesmann

South Korea draws up code of ethics -- for robots

So this article made me think of "I, Robot" (which Greg mentioned recently and posted a link to the trailer) and in a way, the 3 Laws of Robotics that they flashed in the movie. South Korea has a goal of having a robot in every household by 2013!

Center for the Mind, Brain, and Computation

I thought you might be interested in this article on the developing Center for the Mind, Brain, and Computation here at Stanford. The Center aims to take an interdisciplinary approach to studying the brain and its various processes.

Who knows, maybe some of you will be part of this group in the future!

Thinking about the Turing Test

Here are my thoughts on the Turing Test...

Being fooled by a computing device into thinking that one has been communicating with a "thinking" being, does not necessarily imply that the device was in fact thinking. We are constantly being "fooled" by our cognitive processes into thinking that the world is continuous in nature, whereas according to modern physics the world is actually particulate in nature. For example, the continuity that we see in water is a macroscopic average, an illusion produced by our inability to visually resolve the discrete molecules of water. In other words, our erroneous impressions do not make reality other than what it is.

On the other hand, if the Turing Test were a valid method to decide whether a computing device is an entity capable of thought, then perhaps we are also misled into "thinking" that we are thinking beings...that is, if we passed the Turing Test.

Prototype Theory: Central Tendency vs. Attribute Frequency

In chapter 4 (Pattern Recognition) of the textbook, prototype formation (not part of the course reading) is one of the theories mentioned to account for the cognitive process of pattern recognition in the human brain. Prototype formation asserts that pattern perception occurs as a result of abstraction of stimuli, which are stored in LTM and serve as idealized forms against which patterns are evaluated.

Two models are proposed by prototype theory: (a) the central tendency model, which states that a prototype presents the mean or an average of the set of exemplars, and (b) the attribute-frequency model, which states that a prototype represents the mode or a summation of the most frequently experienced attributes.

Now, let's consider the central tendency model, which states that the prototype is the mean of a set of exemplars. Instead of thinking of the mean as something static and "central", if we allow the mean to be a measure that can evolve with time, then as more and more and exemplars are introduced, the prototype is modified to reflect the "current" mean or average of all the exemplars sensed so far. From this perspective, the time-varying mean will converge towards the exemplar that is most frequently sensed. Thus, the two models can perhaps be subsumed under one model?

Artificial intelliegence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH9eiLbGKGg

I thought this was an interesting interview. Mark Meadows, researcher for the Stanford Reserach Institute on Artificial Intelligence, talks about artificial intelligence, how it relates to psychology, and how AI will change and develop in the future.

Funny Farm

This post refers back to something we discussed last week, I think. We were talking about why we would confuse words while speaking (saying cat instead of rat, for example) and about the connections our minds make between words.

A few months ago, a friend of mine showed me this game that is built off of that and I thought it would be cool to share with you guys!

Funny Farm

If any of you do try it and want help, or the answers, let me know! We finished it after a ton of work and lots of Googling :)

Jabberwacky AI Program

I discovered a pretty cool site (www.jabberwacky.com) where you can chat with the program that we talked about today in class (that has frequently won awards in the Turing test). I was quite impressed and also entertained. Here is part of our "conversation":

Jabberwacky: And I thought you saw me yesterday in the café.
Me: In Palo Alto, California?
Jabberwacky: I don't work as a chambermaid anymore, and certainly not in California.

"Programming"?

This is more of a random thought than anything, but a lot of people were talking about how even if AI makes a human-like choice, it is still just working on the basis of a program which is originally created by human intelligence. I was just thinking that maybe human intelligence is also just "programmed" as well. It's hard to figure out the exact difference between AI (hypothetically, at this stage in our tech) making choices and acting like a human due to it's programming and humans acting according to our own programming.

I'm not necesarily talking about god or a higher power (though those things are both something to think about), but it is true that we have innate abilities, pre-dispositions, instincts, and intrinsic limitations and talents. Where do these things come from that provide the basis (the 'g' factor, perhaps) for everything we do? We take what we have been intrinsically endowed with and combine it with new knowledge in order to think, act, interact, and decide. Is it so different when we endow a computer with this same basis, then 'teach' it and see if it can also do these "human" processes?

What's it mean to be human, anyway?

I loved the discussions and debates that sprang up in class today! Since we had a lot of material to cover, unfortunately we couldn't completely play those out. But here's your chance to raise those issues again -- on intelligence, artificial intelligence, etc.

I wanted to add some information on the Loebner prize, the annual contest designed to see if a computer passes the Turing Test. Here's the official website of the Loebner prize, and here's an old article from Wired magazine reporting on what it's like to be one of the real humans in the workings of the Loebner prize contest.

Anterograde Amnesia

I found this video of anterograde amnesia. I think the example is very clear and everything is very well explained.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ObnErfTblY&mode=related&search=

The McGurk Effect

Hi guys,

This has little to do with class but is an interesting cognitive effect nevertheless. It involves the crossing of modal information, although not quite like the Synesthesia condition. Here is a video, just follow the instructions, the results are quite interesting!

http://www.media.uio.no/personer/arntm/McGurk_english.html

Brain electrodes help man speak again

Hello all,
Since we have been on the topic of language comprehension and production, I thought this article, posted today on yahoo news would be interesting. It is about a man who, through the use of brain stimulation, regained his ability to speak after 8 years of voicelessness due to a severe beating.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070801/ap_on_he_me/brain_damage

Autism

In class the problems that people with autism have with language was mentioned. I think it's really interesting, because I volunteer with autistic children at home, and I get to observe the problems they have. Some of the kids I work with can not form sentences and sometimes not even words. Others are more advanced and can have normal conversations. There is one girl, however, that I have worked with named Kelly. Most of the time she just repeats certain phrases she hears on TV or in movies and she does not interact much with the other volunteers and me. We will talk to her and try to get her to participate in games, but it seems as if she does not understand what we are saying. There are times, though, where she will look into our eyes and you can tell that she understands everything that is going on. At these times she will then form sentences and converse with us for a few seconds. In class we talked about how autistic people have language problems, but is there any explanation for these sporadic moments of complete understanding?

I found a website that explains what autism is and its characteristics if anybody is interested.
http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/autism.asp

Tests for Aphasia

Phillip and some others were interested in knowing about the tests for aphasia. Here is a list of some of them:

Porch Index of Communicative Ability (PICA)
Token Test
Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE)
Western Aphasia Battery
Minnesota Test for Differential Diagnosis of Aphasia
Halstead-Wepman Aphasia Screening Test
Head's Serial Tests
Language Modalities Test
Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities
Michigan Picture Language Inventory
Functional Communication Profile
Examining for Aphasia
Sklar Aphasia Scale
Neurosensory Center Comprehensive Examination for Aphasia

The most popular test is the BDAE. In this older article they compare that test with another popular one, called the Western Aphasia Battery. They find that the two tests agree on only 27% of the cases! The authors conclude that they both are good and bad in different ways, mainly that the BDAE fails to classify 60% of the patients and the WAB classifies everyone but whether or not it does so accurately remains to be seen.

As for confusing aphasia with other disorders (mentioned by Phillip), there is definitely the possibility that aphasia can be confused with apraxia or dysarthria. Here is what the National Aphasia Association said about confusing aphasia with dementia.

Dementia: A condition of impairment of memory, intellect, personality, and insight resulting from brain injury or disease. Some forms of dementia are progressive, such as Alzheimer's disease, Picks disease, or some forms of Parkinson's disease. Language impairments are more or less prominent in different forms of dementia, but these are usually overshadowed by more widespread intellectual loss. Since dementia is so often a progressive disorder, the prognosis is quite different from aphasia.

They can certainly co-occur as well, so someone with dementia may also have aphasia.

Hyperlexia

Spurred by Noah's comment in class, I did some digging around about hyperlexia. It's really fascinating! I guess it is usually found in people with autism, but what essentially happens is that the kids start recognizing words and becoming really attached to words very early on. Sometime kids will even be able to recite the alphabet by 18 months. However, they are delayed in other language and cognitive development. They may know words but they don't know the rules of a conversation. Here is one of the earlier articles about hyperlexia. (Ignore the random paragraphs in Spanish in the first 2 pages) In this article, they study 12 children who have hyperlexia and try to look for patterns. I think it's a worthy point that most of the parents were really proud of their children's special ability. Of course, that positive feedback may be reinforcing but for people with autism, that social dimension is lost.

Thoughts?

Body Worlds

Someone mentioned Body Worlds today in class. I just wanted to post about it because I saw the exhibit in Chicago and thought it was a great experience. The exhibit gives great scientific background and allows you to see the human body in ways not previously possible. I would recommend it to anyone interested in medicine, physiology, and the human brain. However, you should avoid looking at the pictures from the exhibit if you are sensitive to graphic images of the body - some people find these displays to be very disturbing.

Here is a link to the exhibitions. You can also check out the process by which the bodies are preserved (plastination).
http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/exhibitions/current_exhibitions.html

Can we generalize college student samples to the general population?

In psychology, and in the social sciences in general, much of the research conducted is performed by research institutions like Stanford University. Here at Stanford, and other colleges and universities like it, exists the largest and easiest sample of people to do research on: undergraduate college students. I found an article examining the legitimacy of generalizing college students to the general population in social sciences research. I think it yields some interesting results.

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JCR/journal/issues/v28n3/280307/280307.web.pdf

cross-recurrence analysis

I wanted to follow up on Raven and Deep's questions on cross-recurrence analysis and the plotting system because my answer was pretty rushed and probably unclear. So this is in reference to Figure 3 in Richardson, Dale, & Kirkham (2007), mentioned by Nicolette and Group 2, and also the figure I showed from Richardson & Dale (2005). For Figure 3, the gray band encompasses the area in which there's recurrence (overlapping eye movements by speaker and listener) at 0 ms (no time lag between speaker and listener). So the black boxes contained within this gray band represent the time points at which both speaker and listener were looking at the same thing at the same time. i is time course for the listener, and j is time course for the speaker. The time course is the duration of the experiment, beginning at time 0 until the end (exact duration wasn't listed for Study 2).

For the Richardson & Dale (2005) figure, recurrence occurs at 0 ms and then with a 2 ms lag (listener lagging behind speaker). The axes of t-listener and t-speaker here represent the time course of the experiment. The black diagonal lines are drawn within the gray boxes only when there was recurrence, so at certain time points (such as time 2, as seen on the left-hand scarf plot), at 0 ms (no lag) both speaker and listener were looking at the same thing at the same time. Also at a 2 ms lag, there was recurrence (even more so) of speakers and listeners looking at the same thing, but listeners looked at the thing 2 ms after the speaker did. Had there been recurrence at a 4 ms lag, that would've been plotted on a diagonal below the 2 ms data points.

Hope that helps to clarify things!

While reading the articles for my research project and
for the class quizzes I have noticed that some scientists
that are noted are followed with an "et al."

In the Richardson, Dale and Kirkham article it notes a
scientist as follows: (Allopenna et al., 1998)

I was wondering if anyone knew what the "et al."
stood for.

Thanks

The Secret Life of the Brain

I received this website suggestion from a colleague in Australia -- it's for the PBS series called "The Secret Life of the Brain" and includes various bits of information on the developing brain, brain scanning methods, 3-D models, and more. Enjoy!

The Real Transformers

This weekend's New York Times magazine has an interesting cover story. The blurb summarizes it as:

"Researchers are programming robots to learn in humanlike ways and show humanlike traits. Could this be the beginning of robot consciousness — and of a better understanding of ourselves?"

It's a pretty long article, so I won't post the text, but you can access it here. You have to be a TimesSelect member to read it though. If you're not already a member, it's actually free for students who have valid college/university email addresses. You can go here to sign up.

Brain scans reveal why meditation works

Hello all, this was an interesting article I came upon on the latest FMRI research on the effects of meditation on emotion. I thought it would be interesting. Enjoy!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070630/sc_livescience/brainscansrevealwhymeditationworks

Computer program can learn baby talk

This article reminded me of Dev's question in class last Wednesday regarding a baby's capacity for learning language. This is work done by one of our Cognitive faculty, Jay McClelland; Gautam Vallabha, a former post-doc here; and colleagues. I haven't been able to track down the article in PNAS, but it's called "Unsupervised learning of vowel categories from infant-directed speech". Jay mentioned that he'd be doing an NPR interview about it today on "Science Friday", so that should be available on the Web soon.

Here's the Reuters press release anyway:

*Computer program can learn baby talk *

Wed Jul 25, 9:04 AM

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A computer program that learns to decode sounds from different languages in the same way that a baby does helps to shed new light on how people learn to talk, researchers said on Tuesday.

They said the finding casts doubt on theories that babies are born knowing all the possible sounds in all of the world's languages.

"The debate in language acquisition is around the question of how much specific information about language is hard-wired into the brain of the infant and how much of the knowledge that infants acquire about language is something that can be explained by relatively general purpose learning systems," said James McClelland, a psychology professor at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

McClelland says his computer program supports the theory that babies systematically sort through sounds until they understand the structure of a language.

"The problem the child confronts is how many categories are there and how should I think about it. We're trying to propose a method that solves that problem," said McClelland, whose work appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Expanding on some existing ideas, he and a team of international researchers developed a computer model that resembles the brain processes a baby uses when learning about speech.

He and colleagues tested their model by exposing it to "training sessions" that consisted of analyzing recorded speech in both English and Japanese between mothers and babies in a lab.

What they found is the computer was able to learn basic vowel sounds right along with baby.

"It learns how many sounds there are. It figures that out," he said in a telephone interview.

And if the computer can do it, he said, a baby can, too.

"In the past, people have tried to argue it wasn't possible for any machine to learn these things, and so it had to be hard-wired (in humans)," he said. "Those arguments, in my view, were not particularly well grounded."

Any connection?

I found an interesting, and controversial, article in the New York Times about the spead of obesity among friends. One of the explanations for the findings of this particular study is as follows:

"Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, a physician and professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School and a principal investigator in the new study, said one explanation was that friends affected each others’ perception of fatness. When a close friend becomes obese, obesity may not look so bad."

I thought this idea was interesting, and since this is a cognitive psych course, I thought I'd bring up the topic within a psychological framework. Can you think of any explanations for this finding in terms of cognitive processes, mental schemes, protptypes, etc? I know this is a pretty far-out discussion, but I thought it might provide some interesting debate (and the opportunity for people to write some blogs).

Here is a link to the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/health/26fat.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1185567477-np7nw98CwaXbLnF53K/N6A

Science Friction by Michael Shermer

Science Friction is an interesting book that i bought when i was home in seattle. The slogan on the front states "where the known meets the unknown", and this has always intrigued me. How do we humans know that we are in possession of all scientific knowledge? Can we know what we dont know, and subsequently pursue a scientific explanation to the unknown?

The book explores a variety of scientific hypotheses and disproves a variety of myths. Basically, it explains the ability of science itself to conflict with itself, hence the name Science Friction.

More importantly, it talks about the shortcomings of human psychology. For example, we assume that the origin of the universe is beyond comprehension, and is a mystery in itself. However, the problem may very well lie within the human mind. In past centuries we have failed to grasp concepts such as infinite and zero, for example, only to later derive a mathematical explanation for both. Similarly, we assume such an issue exists within the origin of the universe, but we fail to consider the fact that our minds may simply be too primitive to comprehend an alternative explanation.

Just thought id throw that out there.

Synesthesia

This is really just a personal anecdote, but I thought I’d share this interesting experience with you all (out of class time). My friend came over last night to introduce me to his younger brother. While looking at the map of Europe on my wall, they started arguing about what color different countries and states were – this seemed odd until they explained to me that they both have synesthesia!

Imagine my delight! I started questioning them about their conditions, associations, family history, and how their perceptual experiences compared to each other. They have both had strong color associations with letters, words, states, and countries (among other things) for as long as they can remember. Neither of their parents have synesthesia. Here are some interesting things I learned from them.

They experience these colors as strong associations, but they can suppress them to a certain degree. For example, letters do not have distracting colors when they are reading.

When they were younger, they just assumed that other people had the same perceptual experiences. In fact, they thought it was rather strange that I do not perceive certain states as certain colors.

California is yellow. Maine is pink (according to one) or purple (according to the other).

My name is green (Raven, mostly because the first letter is R).

My friend’s brother described the color as analogous to a toy some of you might know: the fluid-filled plastic tubes that you can squeeze in your hands and slide around. He said that the colors of letters are like the glow of that liquid with silver glitter inside.

My friend also sees numbers on a continuum, increasing from East to West and moving up to the thousands.

He also has a mental calendar, so when someone mentions a particular month, he sees the calendar months in a visual scene. He also gets certain months confused because they have the same color. For example, June and July share a color, although June is a lighter shade of brown. August and September are also different shades of blue.

Lera's Interview

Prof. Lera Boroditsky has been doing some fascinating research on the cognitive processing of language for quite some time now. Here's a link to a really interesting interview about language and thought:

http://cognation.stanford.edu/press/interview-low-quality.html

"Less is more" online

I just read this news story from the University of Missouri-Columbia about a study done on attention and memory related to the amount of pictures viewed online. When people were given fewer pictures to view, they had better memory for those pictures vs. people who viewed a larger amount of pictures. Makes sense, given our knowledge of divided attention, right? Maybe some Web designers will take note and stop overloading/overstimulating us with all kinds of stuff on their websites.

So like some of the eye-tracking studies done on the Web (connecting to a post I wrote ages ago!), it has interesting implications for Web-related behavior, advertising, etc.

Deep Structure Ambiguity

On this website, I found a helpful explanation of technical differences between phrase structure ambiguity and deep structure ambiguity that clarifies some questions we had in class. Using the sentence "the duck is ready to eat", the website explains that "duck" can either be the logical subject or the logical object. Also, on the third page of the article there are more examples of phrase structure (surface-structure) ambiguity and deep structure ambiguity.

The study that these examples are part of is also fairly interesting. It examines how children of different ages detect ambiguity in sentences and is slightly related to our discussion today about children's acquisition of language.

Language- Koko the gorilla

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Po2JGdx9WBI

This is a really bad video example of Koko but it was the only one that would show up on the search. Anyway, today we talked about language, and when the topic of language with the chimp, Kanzi, was brought up it reminded me of a video I saw on the discovery channel. Koko was brought up by a woman and Koko communicates through sign language. I can't remember if the woman used sign language as well but I thought it was amazing how well Koko and this woman were able to communicate with each other. Koko was able to express sadness, anger, and happiness through body language. If anyone can find a full video on Koko, I'd appreciate it. It's easier to watch the video versus me describing it in words.

book recommendation

In Chapter 11, the authors of our text introduce the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I took an anthropology course last semester entitled "Language, Culture, and Society," in which I spent a lot of time studying this hypothesis, its criticisms, and its implications for intercultural communication. I'd like to recommend a book that I read for that course: "Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation" by Michael H. Agar. It's an interesting read with lots of entertaining stories and some great contemporary ideas about the importance of language. I also wrote a paper involving the theories proposed in this book - I'd be happy to pass it along if anyone is actually interested.

lateral inhibition

While studying the section in the text on optical illusions, I noticed that the authors only briefly mention lateral inhibition (page 111). They note that lateral inhibition explains illusory contours, but they do not actually explain what that means. I thought this concept would be worth a closer look for some of you. Lateral inhibition is an interesting neural process - I studied it a lot for a course in sensation in perception, so I thought some of you might be interested.

Here is a link that gives a pretty good explanation:
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/latinhib.html

Not a false memory...

...but it may have been a dream. Well, it's probably in the book somewhere...I just need to find it. This is regarding the little disagreement we had during the review session regarding commissurotomy vs. callosotomy. Please check out the above wikipedia links. Are they the same or is there a difference between the two surgical procedures? Now, since Devika and I were both right, what is to be the outcome of the bet?

More on False Memories

Everyone seemed to get into the false memories discussion today. It is indeed very interesting, so I thought I'd follow up with a few notes.

The Harvard researcher that studies false memories and alien abduction (I'm an X-Files fan, too, but I know it's not real!) is Susan Clancy. Here is an article in the NYTimes about her work. She is very careful with her methodology because it is such a sensitive topic.

Another researcher who studies false memories is Jennifer Freyd at the University of Oregon. Her story is quite interesting. She is someone who recovered some memories of abuse from her childhood. She accused her father, and her parents completely denied everything. The parents started a False Memory Syndrome Foundation to create a network of people who have been accused of abuse by their children or other people. Their main argument for why they couldn't possibly have abused their children is that they are upstanding citizens of the community. Anyway, Jennifer Freyd has devoted her life's work to proving that recovered memories are not false. The whole debate is very interesting and controversial. What do you guys think about this controversy?

Fun fact #1: I worked in a consulting firm for a couple of years in Massachusetts. My boss's boss (the CEO of the company) is Kevin Clancy, the father of the aforementioned Susan Clancy.
Fun fact #2: They just announced that they are making another X-Files movie to come out sometime in 2008 or 2009. Hooray!

Lexical-Gustatory Synesthesia

Hey,

I was talking to my grandpa about our class (he has a degree in psych), and it led up to him telling me about my great grandpa who apparently had synesthesia. The variation that he had is called lexical-gustatory synesthesia, where sounds (phenomes) are replaced by taste sensations. This is a particularly rare form of synesthesia and studies have shown that it is developed by early food experiences. Anyway, just thought I'd throw it out there because it's not something you'd hear about every day.

-Nishant

False memories and brain activation

During the discussion on false memories today, I had the thought of posting this article for you guys on differential brain activation for "true" vs. "false" memories. It might be helpful in terms of mapping what's happening in the brain during recollection of these two types of memories.

Here are two links for more information:

Short news-digest version

Journal article version (which includes fMRI scans)

Also, here's an NPR segment that you can listen to -- it includes an interview with a researcher that studies the creation of "real-life" false memories and what's happening in the brain as that happens.

A lot on your mind

I have a question about thinking while trying to fall asleep. There are times that I go to bed, and just can't fall asleep. Though I wasn't, at the time, thinking of anything, my dad said that there was a lot going through my mind which kept me from sleeping. After staying up for about 2 more hours, I eventually fall asleep from exhaustion, but in the morning, I spent time trying to think about what was bothering me that kept me from sleeping. What do you guys think? Sometimes, this still happens, and it really does get annoying to not be able to sleep and not figure out why.

A use for prions?

My questions open to anybody to answer are, "What are the known roles for memory proteins? What types of memories can be stored in this media? Where can I find new information on this subject?" Thanks. This link might help: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9353594&dopt=Abstract

Eidetic (photographic) memory

There were lots of really good questions and comments on the topic of eidetic memory towards the end of class today. Noah mentioned the expert chess players who could recreate pieces on a chess board from memory. Here's some more information on this topic:

"Scientists who study memory phenomena generally believe that eidetic memory (more popularly known as 'photographic memory') does not exist. Early experiments on eidetic memory were intriguing, but could not be replicated.

People do show extraordinary memory performance in certain circumstances. For example, expert chess players can typically play blindfolded chess against several opponents at the same time, easily memorizing many chessboard configurations. Others use special tricks to memorize long lists of randomly selected numbers.

Impressive as these feats are, scientists attribute them to specialized ways of thinking about the information, not to any kind of enhanced visual memory. One interesting experiment that makes this point was performed by a cognitive psychologist named DeGroot. Expert chess players were shown a chess board with pieces on it for a brief period, such as 15 seconds, and then asked to reconstruct what they had seen on a new chess board. That is, they were asked to place chess pieces in the same positions as they had appeared on the board they'd been shown. The expert players were very good at this, much better than novice players. One hypothesis was that the experts had developed an enhanced ability to memorize visual information.

In the next experiment, the expert chess players were asked to do the very same thing; but this time, they were shown boards whose pieces were arranged in ways that would never actually occur in a game of chess. Not only did their ability to remember the positions go down, but it went down all the way to the level of the novice players. We can conclude that the original, enhanced performance at remembering chess positions came from the experts' ability to mentally organizethe information they had observed, not from any ability to 'photograph' the visual scene."

The pi guy

Here's more information on the "super-memorist", Rajan Mahadevan, who was able to recite all those digits of pi.

Interestingly, he has a doctorate in Cognitive Psychology from Florida State!

More demos and info on memory processes & strategies

Here's the site I mentioned in class -- I had taken the "Biology of Working Memory" diagram from here. It has good, interactive demos on memory processes we discussed in class today, and a couple of other specific memory strategies that we weren't able to get to in class (but which are discussed in your textbook).

On a different note, thanks so much for taking the time today to discuss our class with Mariatte!
We really appreciate it, and we'll address your general feedback at the beginning of Wednesday's class.

question on the reading

About the first article on amnesia.. are the people with amnesia able to remember "how to's" more than things that are more factual due to different regions of the brain not functioning properly? The idea that they could remember how to perform a certain action but not remember factual events (the words they were shown) reminded me of something we discussed in Affective Neuroscience the other day.. we learned about how damage to the hippocampus or the amygdala can affect how a person reacts to or perceives a stimulus... for example, if there is damage done to the amygdala, the person will be able to be aware of the arousing (fear-inducing) qualities of the stimulus that they are faced with, but are unable to produce the typical physiological responses evoked by arousing stimuli. If the person's hippocampus is damaged, they will not be aware of the arousing qualities of the stimulus, but they will produce the physiological reponses. This concept seems similar to the idea of amnesia and being able to learn tasks that are behavioral, but unable to learn explicit information. Are the general concepts somewhat related?

Sidenote... I love how the classes I am taking overlap.. it is so cool! =)

-Taylor Wiesmann-

evolution of consciousness

The following was discussed in class, but an exact answer was not given:

Human consciousness is unique in that it has not been identified as a clearly visible or physical substance. Though it is present in other organisms, the role of consciousness is insignificant relative to the function of consciousness in humans. Do animals utilize their surroundings to aid their survival, or use their intelligence to explore the unknown? Humans are able to consistently reason and judge, applying intelligence where no other organism is capable of doing so. Because of this, can it be inferred that human consciousness, similar to any other biological trait, has evolved with time? Is the ability to recognize one's own existence a product of years of evolution, originating with the simple ability to, for example, recognize and use fire?

Personal experience has shown me that some may view conscious thought as 'above materialism', or outside the realm of substance; some view consciousness as something that exists, but cannot be seen or touched. Personally I find this hard to believe. Conscious thought is clearly a cognitive process, for we see the products of its existence (e.g., questioning, reasoning, problem solving). And with a damaged brain, as in the case of Terry Schiavo for instance, conscious thought is clearly damaged as well. And even in the case of death, for example, death of the body means death of consciousness. In summary consciousness very much a physical substance contained within the brain.

And this brings me to my question: In our original ancestors, were human consciousness and self-awareness always present in a more primitive form, such that it has evolved to its current state? If so, what is to prevent other organisms from evolving in a consistent manner? If not, where did this cognitive process come from? Why is it unique to humans?

Selective Attention Experiment

I found this link on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wK5_P_qc4w.
It's an experiment done just like the one done in the Simons and Levin Article. I found it interesting to watch because it showed people of various age groups being tested and also showed how people were more likely to notice changes if clothes color was different or if the individual's attention was focused more on the person he or she was helping than on the map.

Gestalt jokesters

Has anyone noticed a problem with the cartoon on page 112 of the textbook entitled "Gestalt jokesters test an illusion"? If the firemen were only holding up truncated circles, then the bottom of the building where it touches the ground, and the fireman's legs should be visible. Perhaps I've been in engineering far too long and have begun to expect consistency even in humour.

More on neurons and neural networks

I wanted to add these two links in response to Phillip's comment on the neurotransmission video post:

Computation in the brain - talks more about neural networks and how synapses play a role, synaptic learning, etc.

Hubel and Wiesel videos - beyond the scope of our class and our coverage of cognitive neuroscience, but I wanted to include this if you're interested (and since I mentioned it in my comment reply).

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Yesterday in my General Psychology class, we had a discussion on the
IAT (Implicit Associations Test) and we discussed a book called Blink.

I bought the book last night and have began to read it, it's a very interesting
book. If you are interested in different Psychological experiments about married
couples and subconcious thinking, I highly recommend this book.

Again, the book is Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.

Synesthesia Article

I'm really interested in synesthesia and have had some great discussions about it in psych, neuro, and even anthropogy courses. I found a couple of links that give some more details about synesthesia. This first link is a good overview and covers some of the questions that came up in class today:

http://www.neurologyreviews.com/jul02/nr_jul02_mindseye.html

Here is a link to one of Ramachandran's articles - it also includes the kiki and bouba finding. This is a pretty dense and in-depth article, but take a look at some of the sections if you are interested in the topic.

psy.ucsd.edu/chip/pdf/Synaesthesia%20-%20JCS.pdf

Brain plasticity in children after hemispherectomy

Continuing with my response to Dev's comment to the last post, here's more info on what happens to kids that have one hemisphere completely removed:

"There are cases, however, in which the affected part of the brain [in epilepsy] is quite large, the seizures completely unmanageable, and the only recourse is radical surgery. Since severe chronic epilepsy due to brain lesions is usually first diagnosed in young children, it is such children who are the usual patients in radical brain surgery for epilepsy. The most radical and fairly common procedure is hemispherectomy, removal of an entire half of the brain, and the most remarkable aspect of this is that when the surgical procedure is successful, not only are the seizures eliminated, but the child can function as well or almost as well as any other child. It is an example of a phenomenon well-known to neuro-biologists called "brain plasticity", the ability of the brain to recover the function of a damaged or removed region by assignment of the function to an undamaged location. The language area of the brain, for example, is often considered to be fixed on the left side of the brain by genetics, but in truth it is not so fixed, and if the left side of the brain is removed at an early age, the right side of the brain will quickly develop a language center and there will be little functional impairment. In a recent publication, Eileen P. G. Vining (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD US) reports the progress of 54 children who underwent hemispherectomy for recurrent severe epileptic seizures. The majority of the patients were seizure-free following surgery, no longer needed drugs, and many of the patients are now in school. One of the most significant facts about the human brain is that its histological development continues at least until adolescence, and the dynamism of this histological development is what is responsible for its remarkable plasticity. QY: E. Vining, Johns Hopkins University (410) 516-8171. (Pediatrics August 1997)."

Split-brain patients in daily life

Raven, thanks very much for commenting on the last post and for bringing up those key points - I appreciate it!

The split-brain patient's actions in the video were not representative of what happens in daily life, and yes, it is true that motor functioning is not impaired. Here's a quote from a paper that addresses this:

"[M]ost of the changes are subtle and require special laboratory tests to emerge. But it is true that the daily lives of 'split-brain' patients stand in sharp contrast with their performance in laboratory tests and defy some simple, unitary understanding of how the mind is organized in the brain...[I]n daily life, the patients appear to behave as if there was no evolutionary purpose to this major forebrain neuronal connection [corpus callosum] between the hemispheres. Certain functions considered by some to be specialized in the right hemisphere such as voice modulation or prosody appear unimpaired. Left hemisphere functions such as speech and language comprehension also appear unimpaired. Previously learned functions that require bilateral interaction such as, cooking, cycling, swimming, or piano playing appear unchanged, and have remained so until now, as long as 30 years post-surgery in some cases. Neither have there been major changes in personality or mannerisms, or in general intelligence. There are no psychiatric symptoms such as hallucinations, dellusions, fugue states, or multiple personalities. Each patient behaves as one with a single personality and unified consciousness."

So in short, the split-brain experiments are an oversimplification of brain functioning within a controlled environment and shouldn't be taken as representative of what those patients go through every day. But they are an interesting example of hemispheric functioning in that specific setting.

Brain lateralization, ambidexterity, split-brain, and the two-headed turtle

All your great questions today intrigued me, so I wanted to write and share some resources that will hopefully add more to my (limited) answers:

Do you notice that when you try to think of something, your eyes move either to the left or to the right? Here's a site with instructions on how to do a mini-experiment with someone to observe this in action.

Other sites:

Handedness and brain lateralization

Becoming ambidexterous(?) - this discussion forum reminded me of a lot of comments/experiences shared in class today -- Christopher and air rifle shooting, Philip and pool playing, Nicolette and batting righty, and Minerva talking about her dad (was that right?)doing different things with his left vs. right hand.

But actually there are two different terms, and we generally conflate the two:
1. Cross-dominance (or mixed-handedness) -- a term not really used -- but this term is more accurate for what we talked about today. We have preferences for using each hand for certain tasks, like Noah mentioned opening jars with his left hand though he's right-handed.
2. Ambidexterity -- having equal ability for both hands, which is rare!

Badminton players - another discussion forum that talks about playing left-handed or playing against left-handers (also a challenge in tennis -- I've never played against any left-handers though)

Gazzaniga review article on split-brain research - the author was the researcher in the last video we watched in class.

Here's another example of two split-brain patients and their behaviors (written report, not video -- but there are more videos on YouTube that you can check out.)

And I did find a video clip of the two-headed turtle that I told you about!

Neurotransmission video

Here's a good, short video on neurotransmission to help liven up the textbook reading. Make sure you have a Flash Player to watch -- if not, you can download it at the website.

Response to illusions post

(I had problems with the links when I posted this as a comment to Raven's post, so here's a new post:)

I was also struck by this in reading the text. I did a Google Scholar search on "illusory contours" for papers published this year and I got 41 hits. Most of the papers are from neuroscience journals -- here's one short paper on it.

Even now, researchers don't seem to agree on the mechanisms behind it. Here's another site that mentions 8 different hypotheses that have been proposed to explain it.

Illusions

In Chapter 4 of our text, the authors note that illusory contours “have real perceptual presence, although the observer seems to have the feeling that they are not really ‘real’” (110). They note that this gap in the research literature should be further investigated.

It seems to me that in the context of visual illusions such as the one printed in the text, the effects of past experience could logically explain this concept. If people have seen similar illusions in the past, then they have the feeling that the contours are not “real” because they are aware that they are viewing an illusion and have prior experience with similar perceptual experiences. Of course, this explanation would not hold if someone naïve to illusions also experienced the doubt of the contours being “real.”

I’m just curious to see if anyone has any other possible explanations for this, or just any ideas about the phenomena. If so, is there a way to test these hypotheses?

Book Recommendation

I’d like to recommend a book to those of you who are interested in the discussion that came up in class about the distinction between the mind, body, and soul. Paul Broks writes about his clinical work in "Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology." This book contains a lot of interesting scientific and psychological information, which is presented in entertaining prose (à la Oliver Sacks). It circles around to bigger questions about the mind and soul. This book was truly an inspiration that lead me to pursue neuropsychology – I highly recommend it.

Here is a link to a review of the book:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,976721,00.html

More "change detection" videos

There is actually a multitude of change detection videos on the internet.
I found this video on Youtube, and it is pretty interesting (although unfortunately there aren't any dancing gorillas in it). I have shown it to some of my friends and none of them could describe any specific changes; although, a few of them said "something looks different".

Also, I found many videos on this website that features work by Daniel J. Simons. In the "changes across cuts in a motion picture", there are 9 intentional changes, but even after I watched it at least 5 times, I had trouble finding all of them. I believe the changes in that video were not obvious enough. Anyways, I just wanted to point out all of these videos for people who are fascinated by change detection.

Partial Report Experiment

Hey Guys,

I found a great site that refers to the Partial Report Experiment (Sperling) in the textbook. The site lets you be the participant of the 3 x 3 short term memory experiement. Enjoy!

-Nishant

Response to IQ Article

I'm very surprised that you mentioned the family IQ article, mainly because I remember reading the same article in the NY Times a week or two ago. I both agreed and disagreed with what Carey, the article author, was arguing. Firstly, I disagree in that I don't necessarily feel that the elder sibling has a greater capacity to succeed than his/her siblings. While the elder sibling may be smarter, I definitely don't feel that they are more confident as growing kids. I agree, though, that the elder sibling has an intellectual edge over the other children because of the parental tendency to focus more energy on the grown child. Anyway, I just thought that I'd offer my opinion of the article and I'm looking forward to a great summer!

Nishant

Eye-tracking, attention, and advertising

(The red spots on the image are areas that people paid the most attention/spent the most looking time.)

As a follow-up to Phillip's eye-tracking question (and lead-in to the next class on Perception and Attention), I wanted to share a summary of research findings related to website looking behavior and ads.

I also just came across a recent Wired article that talks about eye-tracking and digital billboards. Pretty interesting stuff.

How to get started on our blog

I'm looking forward to our class tomorrow and meeting all of you!

I-Chant and I decided to have a blog for our class this year because we wanted to have another way for all of you to contribute and communicate outside the classroom. It's the first time that we've used a blog as a course component, and I'm very interested to see how it develops throughout the summer!

If you haven't used Blogger before, you'll need a Google account to sign in and use the service. If you don't have an account, you can easily create one here.

I'll email you an invitation to be authors on our blog. By the way, if you have a preferred email account (you might check some other account more than your Stanford one), email me to let me know.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Stanford Summer Cognitive Psychology blog! I am really excited and looking forward to our class this summer. For me, this class will be a great opportunity to remember all the parts of cognitive psychology that made me want to become a researcher. I hope you will find cognitive psychology as inspiring as I do.

This blog is a space for all of us to discuss ideas, questions, comments that come up in the course. They can be based on our textbook, lectures, journal articles, discussions, or just your observations in the real world. Please also feel free to share links or other online resources. For example, the New York Times recently published this article about IQ and whether family dynamics and birth order affect your IQ. The article even quotes Stanford psychologist, Robert Zajonc. I have one brother much younger than me, and I think we had very different roles in the family. Could this have affected our IQs? What about other parts of our cognition? How useful is it to think of our intelligence in terms of an IQ anyway? I would like to take a closer look at the study to see how they conducted the experiment and whether they consider some of these questions. We will be discussing human intelligence at the end of the summer, so these questions will definitely come up again.