Psychology Research

You must have been sleeping if you have missed SciCurious’ post Friday Weird Science: Condoms and ‘Blunt Puncture’ the other day. If you missed it – go now and read it. But, the comment section also produced the idea that Sci should do an anonymous survey of the readers who have experienced condom breakage so she can do the analysis targeting the questions/factors not considered by the original article she blogged aboout, make a cute graph or two, and generally have a good excuse to blog about this topic yet again So, now you need to do the survey . A couple of minutes of your time and it’s fun. And it’s all for the sake of science !!! Read the comments on this post…

Coturnix pointed out that many people may feel too shy to just put their condom breakage experiences in the comments, but Sci is extremely curious to find out why condoms in general break in the population. So she made a SURVEY!* Please do take it, and I’ll graph up the results in a few days. *Of course all information entered will be completely confidential. I will be using this survey exclusively for the purposes of enlightening the internet, and possibly enlightening the people who take it when they see the results. There is no obligation to take the survey and you may exit at any time. Also, please let me know if there are any major questions I may have missed on the survey. Sci has never made a survey before, and if her first job is shoddy, she would really like to improve in the future. The survey can be found here: Click Here to take survey High n’s are always better! Please share with your friends! And in the comments on the survey, please try to keep it clinical. My cat reads over my shoulder sometimes. Read the comments on this post…

The father of Camryn Wilson, the first baby born in Summit County, Ohio in 2008, has been sentenced for shaking the baby to death. Sentenced to a term of 15 years to life, the 29 year-old man will probably serve 20 years in prison. To his credit, he offered no excuses for his crime. Stressed from an argument with the mother, he couldn’t tolerate the baby’s incessant crying. He insisted on a guilty plea, even though the autopsy showed evidence of previous abuse that might have implicated others and clouded prosecutorial certainty, as his lawyer, no doubt advocated. Hopefully, the young man is on a path to recovering his soul. Apart from recapitulating my post made at the time of the early adjudication of the case, I can’t help but wonder at the symbolism of the media using victims of the Madoff scam as a symbol of loss, when, as a country, the loss of this child is so much more damaging.    

Let me first introduce myself and this blog, which is titled Total Brain Workout. I am a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto, and one of my main areas of cultural research is puzzles. I have also been teaching an undergraduate course on puzzles (their history and cultural meaning) at the University for many years. It is one of the most satisfying courses I have ever taught because, by the end of it, the students not only develop puzzle-solving skills (which they may have thought they didn’t have at the start), but also come out of it with a better perspective about the role of puzzles in human life. This blog is modeled on puzzles that I put together for my recent book, The Total Brain Workout: 450 Puzzles to Sharpen Your Mind, Improve Your Memory & Keep Your Brain Fit, published by Harlequin Books. It will contain one or two puzzles, and (if relevant) the history behind them, to tease your brain and thus keep it fit. As I indicate in the preface to that book, it would seem that such apparently “trivial amusements” foster brain growth, by stimulating logical and creative thinking regions of the brain. Research has come forward to suggest (although not prove beyond a shadow of a doubt) that puzzles sharpen the mind, improve memory, and keep the brain fit throughout life, and especially later life. As a boomer myself, and a puzzle addict since my childhood, I welcome this news. If puzzles are to the brain what physical exercise is to the body, then let’s do puzzles-not just for fun, but more importantly for brain fitness. And even if the research is not exactly what it is claimed to be, so what! Doing puzzles cannot hurt. Puzzles are as old as human history. They are found in all cultures throughout time. One of the first documented puzzle-and still one of the most famous-is the Riddle of the Sphinx. According to myth and legend, when Oedipus approached the city of Thebes he encountered a gigantic sphinx guarding entrance to the city. The menacing beast confronted Oedipus, posing the following riddle to him, and warning him that if he failed to answer it correctly he would die instantly at the Sphinx’s hands: What has four feet in the morning, two at noon, and three at night? The fearless Oedipus answered (paraphrasing his statement somewhat): “Humans, who crawl on all fours as babies, then walk on two legs as grown-ups, and finally need a cane in old age to get around.” Upon hearing the answer, the astonished sphinx killed itself, and Oedipus entered Thebes as a hero for having gotten rid of the terrible monster that had kept the city in captivity for so long. Ironically, by solving the riddle the devastating prophecy, which Oedipus tried to elude-that he would kill his father (which he did unwittingly on the way to Thebes) and marry his mother, the widowed queen of Thebes-came true. Why are we so intrigued by stories such as this one which revolve around puzzles? The answer might lie in the origin of the English word puzzle itself, which comes from the Middle English word poselen “to bewilder, confuse.” And indeed, puzzles generate bewilderment and confusion, because they cannot be solved by applying any formula or method mindlessly. They always require a dose of creative, unconventional thinking, which psychologists call “insight thinking.” This is essentially an intuitive grasp of a pattern or twist concealed by the puzzle. Given their appeal, some puzzles have given origin to commonly-held ideas, such as the one that life is comparable to the three main parts of a day (the Riddle of the Sphinx). Others are the source of everyday expressions. Here is a brainteaser that gave origin to the expression “thinking outside the box.” Many readers undoubtedly know it: Without letting your pencil leave the paper, can you draw four straight lines through the following nine dots? Those who may not have come across this puzzle before might tend to approach it by joining up the dots as if they were located on the perimeter (boundary) of an imaginary square or flattened box. But this reading of the puzzle does not yield a solution, no matter how many times one tries to draw four straight lines without lifting the pencil. A dot is always left over. It is at this point where creative thinking comes into play: “What would happen if I extend one or more of the four lines beyond the box?” That hunch turns out, in fact, to be the relevant insight. One possible solution is as follows: Can you find the others? It should now be obvious why this puzzle gave rise to the expression “thinking outside the box,” which entered the English language around the middle part of the twentieth century when people in business and education started referring to it as a prototypical example of what creative or “lateral” thinking is all about. It continues to be cited by psychologists as an example of how the mind tends to impose unnecessary limitations upon methods of attacking problems. Who invented the puzzle? I have looked into several sources and have been able to trace it as far back as 1914, in the first edition of puzzlist Sam Loyd’s (1841-1911) Cyclopedia of Puzzles. But the principle it embodies is probably older, as Martin Gardner indicates in his 1960 edition of Loyd’s work (titled The Mathematical Puzzles of Sam Loyd). The Nine-Dot puzzle is a 3 × 3 version of what can be called generally a Dot-Joining puzzle. Can you solve the Sixteen-Dot (4 × 4) and Twenty-Five Dot (5 × 5) versions? Again, you just connect the dots without lifting your pencil. How many lines are required in each of these two cases? Do you detect a correlation between number of dots and number of connecting lines? Sixteen-Dot Version Twenty-Five-Dot Version As a final word on Dot-Joining puzzles, I should mention that, as with any puzzle genre, once the general principle involved in solving them is deciphered, the genre starts losing its appeal. However, like any good joke, Dot-Joining puzzles can be played on others over and over to great effect. I await your answers, solutions, discussions, anecdotes, etc. for this particular puzzle, including any general formula for solving any general version (n × n) of the puzzle (if there is one). I also welcome suggestions for future puzzles on this blog. This is going to be fun!  (Scroll down for the answers)                           Answers Each of the following constitutes only one possible solution. Sixteen-Dot Version Six lines are needed for this version of the puzzle. As mentioned other solutions are possible. All involve six lines. Twenty-Five-Dot Version Eight lines are needed for this version of the puzzle. Other solutions are possible. Can we generalize? By making the Nine-Dot puzzle as complex as we desire (increasing the number of dots to 16, 25, 36, 49, etc.), a pattern seems to emerge through inspection. This pattern can be charted as follows: Dots    Lines Required 3 × 3    (3 + 1) = 4 4 × 4    (4 + 2) = 6 5 × 5    (5 + 3) = 8 6 × 6    (6 + 4) = 10 …    … n × n    n + (n – 2) = 2n – 2 I should point out that I have not tested this pattern beyond a 6 × 6 version of the puzzle. As with all inductively-derived formulas, there is no way to be sure that the formula works all the time. It thus can be called, simply, a working formula.  

If scientists ever come up with a physics of the psyche, one of its first axioms might be the above title. We humans crave stimulation, and on many different levels. To experience ourselves as fully alive, we all have various “arousal requirements”-whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. And if we feel under-stimulated, we’ll generally complain of being bored, antsy, anxious, irritable, lonely, or even depressed. This post explores some of the less fortunate ramifications of our constant need for stimulation. Perhaps more than anything else, our arousal needs–and the negative emotions and states of mind we experience when these needs aren’t being met–can interfere with our better judgment. People who suffer accidents and injuries, for example, frequently do so because their personal arousal requirements compel them to take risks ranging from the not-entirely-prudent to the foolhardy or downright reckless. Others may join religious cults or fringe organizations because they’re frantically searching for a more fulfilling, spiritual life–but don’t really know where to turn. Their need to fit in somewhere , to fill the internal void of un-relatedness, drives them (at times, quite indiscriminately) to put their faith in an ideology, or charismatic leader, that can easily lead them astray. Since as a therapist I typically focus more on mental/emotional problems than physical or spiritual ones, I’ve become acutely aware of how experiencing an inner vacuum can lead people to make poor life choices, especially in relationships. Many people I’ve worked with who’ve gotten into bad or inappropriate relationships did so because at the time they felt alone, abandoned, or rejected. Consequently, they experienced an overwhelming need to prove to themselves they were still lovable. Perhaps they’d been having problems dating, or recently “loved and lost,” or maybe gone through a painfully one-sided divorce, which they’d strenuously sought to avert. Anxious to escape intolerable feelings of emptiness–the emptiness of loneliness or desertion–they rushed to embrace (as it were) the first person that came along. Unable to simply allow themselves to fully experience their disappointment, or grieve their loss, they propelled themselves headlong into a new relationship–one which they weren’t at all ready for. Additionally, they may have feared going within themselves (or, for that matter, eliciting professional help) to learn just why their relationship had gone sour. Feeling hollow, desolate and forsaken–and without the ability to self-soothe –they hastily paired up with the first available person they could find. It reminds me a little of the lyrics to B. J. Thomas’ song, “No Love at All,” in which he opines: “A little bit of love is better than no love/Even a bad love is better than no love/And even a sad love is better than no love at all.” In fact, in the mind of an individual unable to tolerate the emotional vacuum of dis-connectedness, it must certainly feel that almost anything is better than the unnerving void of being alone. But I myself would argue that if you can develop a secure, nurturing relationship with yourself , you’re in a much better position to “stabilize” your thoughts and feelings after a failed relationship and patiently wait for the right person. To me, such an alternative is far preferable to making any person the “right” person simply because he or she can immediately fill what is “abhorred” as an unbearable vacuum. Finally, the vacuum that some people strive so assiduously to avoid is really a “vacuum of self.” When we’re not enough for ourselves (i.e., can’t somehow fill our own vacuum), we can’t help but focus our attention on what we can import into ourselves to feel more whole and complete. Another PT blogger, Robert W. Firestone, recently made a similar point in a post entitled Emotional Hunger Vs. Love . As he put it, emotional hunger is the “pain and longing which people often act out in a desperate attempt to fill a void or emptiness.” When people precipitantly get into unhealthy relationships, it’s almost always to keep at bay some inner void they only vaguely understand. But to try to get from without what we haven’t yet learned to give ourselves from within is almost always an exercise in futility. Of course, there’s nothing wrong in striving to fulfill ourselves by pursuing people and things that might offer us what–personally–will afford us just the right degree of stimulation. As I stated earlier, although what is an optimal degree of stimulation varies with the individual, the basic need for such arousal is universal. And it’s certainly worthy of respect. But we still need to carefully monitor our behavior to ensure that our requirement for stimulation doesn’t ultimately end up jeopardizing our health or peace of mind. In instances where our best judgment is not available, we ought at least to confide in someone who cares about us as to whether we might possibly be getting ourselves into something questionable. Are we perhaps on the verge of making a decision that hasn’t really been thought out? that may be wrong-headed, or foolish? Many people I’ve worked with have told me that before they made what, ultimately, was a disastrous decision, friends and relatives had already warned them against it. So it’s not simply a matter of informing others about what you may be planning to do, but listening painstakingly to their feedback–whether it’s welcome or not. I’d caution anyone on the brink of acting impulsively to stop, reflect, and speak to people they trust before giving themselves final permission to embark on such a venture, or commit to such a relationship. Although it may be true that our need to fill a vacuum can productively direct our behaviors, it can also end up seriously threatening our welfare. To conclude, if you’re harboring some ambivalence about making a decision, most of the time it will be in your best interest not to until you’re able to resolve this ambivalence. At the very least, you might ask yourself the question, “Am I driven to do this because I’m desperate to fill a void inside me?” If the answer is “yes,” or “probably,” I’d suggest–before going any farther–that you talk to others. . . . Or, if at all possible, go within and consult your own wiser, more prudent self.

When asked “What do most people do on a date?” Martin (age 10) replied: “On the first date, they just tell each other lies, and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.” I doubt that Martin realized just how accurate he was. There is more deception in dating than in any other social context in our culture. So the obvious question would have to be something like this: “If deception runs rampant when I am in the dating scene, how can I know whether I am dating a jerk? How can I tell whether this is someone who is going to tilt the nice-to-nasty ratio so that I end up with more nasty than I had bargained for?” I would like to offer the following litmus test. [By the way, next week I will offer a litmus test for discerning a jerkett.] One day in class a young woman remarked: “I just can’t understand why men don’t want to get intimate — why won’t you get close?” To this, a man in the back of the room piped up (obviously without thinking a whole lot before speaking): “We do too want to get close, but you women just won’t put out.” For a moment, I thought a fight was going to break out right there on the spot, but in the end, we had a lively, engaging, and fruitful discussion. The bottom line is this: Men are inclined to use intimacy to get sex. The problem is not that we men don’t know how to be intimate — in other words, how to show fondness and affectionate, how to be warm and romantic, how to touch and hug, how to listen to what is going on in your life. We know how — we have done it many times in the past and we will do it many more times in the future. The problem is that we typically only do these things when there is a pay-off. We were talking about this phenomenon one day in a different class and a female student had a flash of insight as she suddenly blurted out: “Just last week, my partner and I were having this great conversation and in the middle of it, he said, ‘Have we talked enough yet?’ I didn’t get it at the time, but now I know just what he was saying!” She was angry. (This couple is no longer together.) So here is the litmus test. Is he capable of touch that is not a part of foreplay? Is he capable of simply holding you without it leading to a pay-off for him? Does he express his affection for you even when he doesn’t have his sights set on getting you into bed? Does he spend time listening to you / talking with you even when sex is not going to be an outcome? This gets somewhat complicated because of the fact that women are inclined to use sex to get intimacy. So we man have grown rather accustomed to this tit-for-tat arrangement. But if you want to know whether he is a prince or whether he is a toad hidden behind a prince’s mask, see if he is capable of intimacy — is he capable of warmth, fondness, touch, affection, romance, sincere give-and-take conversation — without sex being an expected part of the package? If he is, then there is a pretty good chance that the nice-to-nasty ratio will not unexpectantly be flipped over, adding to the scar tissue on your heart.       Using Intimacy To Get Sex Custom Teaser When asked “What do most people do on a date?” Martin (age 10) replied: “On the first date, they just tell each other lies, and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.” Teaser Image SexIntimacy.jpg Love Bytes Editors Pick:  0Editors Pick

Cognitive therapy is a generic term that refers to diverse cognitive approaches to modifying human experiences and activities. This critique focuses on cognitive therapy that focuses on altering negative self concepts. This approach is based on the theories developed by A. Beck and A. Ellis. The self-focused cognitive approach assumes that it is irrational or negative cognitive beliefs about the self, rather than negative activating experiences, that lead to negative emotional states (e.g., depression or anxiety) and dysfunctional behavior. The behavior includes a sense of defeat and the withdrawal of investment in people and in conventional goals, as well as an intensified sense of vulnerability. The purpose of cognitive therapy is to restructure the client’s irrational/negative beliefs into rational or positive ones. Although the self-focused cognitive therapy has been shown to be superior to medication treatment for the symptoms of depression and anxiety, it also suffers at least the following weaknesses: First, this model appears to confuse the symptoms (i.e., negative self concepts) of depression with its causes. Examples of the negative cognition include low self-esteem, self-blame and self-criticism, negative predictions, unpleasant memories, erroneous interpretations of experiences, all-or-nothing thinking (dichotomous thinking), jumping to conclusions, selective abstraction, overgeneralization or exaggeration of negative experiences, the presence of a negative cognitive shift (i.e., positive information relevant to the individual is filtered or blocked out, whereas negative self-relevant information is readily admitted). In short, for those individuals, negative cognitions permeate internal conversations about self-evaluation, attributions, expectancies, inferences and recall. Are they the cognitive causes or they are the symptoms? Second, this cognitive therapy uses such terminology as negative self-concepts, irrational belief about the self, dysfunctional self-concept, and biased cognitions about the self, as if they are synonymous and interchangeable. In fact, they have diverse meanings. Research has shown that the valence of evaluations (e.g., being positive or negative) is independent and separate from the accuracy of evaluations. In many cases, clients’ appraisals and reports of their negative or distressful experiences are quite rational, realistic, and accurate. For example, their experiences of sexual or physical abuse at the hands of another or the tragedies of their loved ones have left enormous scars in their life. In such circumstances, cognitive-restructuring exercises, with their emphasis on reframing reality and not on changing it, do not deal with the true problem. Third, research has shown that positive self-evaluations may be dysfunctional and maladaptive. It is the positive, rather than the negative self-assessment that is characterized by inaccuracy and bias in the fields of health, education and the workplace. Fourth, the self-focused cognitive model puts a strong emphasis on examining the association between negative thoughts and mental dysfunction, but it has not answered the question of why individuals choose to focus on their negative attributes when the positive evaluation of the self is more accurate. Neither the cognitive model adequately reconciles the two types of finding: (1) self-blame bias and (2) self-serving bias. Research has shown that people have the motivation to see the self positively and avoid a negative self-concept, exhibiting a self-serving bias (including blaming failures on the situation while taking credit for success).   Four Drawbacks of Cognitive Therapy Teaser Image cogntive therapy.jpg The Justice and Responsibility League

Fora.TV has a great video discussion with science writer Jonah Lehrer where he gives a wonderfully engaging talk on the on decision making, meta-cognition and the paradox of choice. The discussion is an hour long and well worth the time, although for those with pathological impatience or only five minutes to spare, the section on metacognition is a particular highlight. I also notice from his blog that he’s also just reviewed a recent book on consciousness and embodied cognition called ‘Out of Our Heads’ by philosopher Alva Noë for the San Francisco Chronicle which is also worth checking out. Link to Fora.TV interview with Lehrer (thanks Rich!)

Background Cerebral activation during planning of reaching movements occurs both in the superior parietal lobule (SPL) and premotor cortex (PM), and their activation seems to take place in parallel. Methodology The activation of the SPL and PM has been investigated using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) during planning of reaching movements under visual guidance. Principal Findings A facilitory effect was found when TMS was delivered on the parietal cortex at about half of the time from sight of the target to hand movement, independently of target location in space. Furthermore, at the same stimulation time, a similar facilitory effect was found in PM, which is probably related to movement preparation. Conclusions This data contributes to the understanding of cortical dynamics in the parieto-frontal network, and suggests that it is possible to interfere with the planning of reaching movements at different cortical points within a particular time window. Since similar effects may be produced at similar times on both the SPL and PM, parallel processing of visuomotor information is likely to take place in these regions.

Although many studies have shown that attention to a stimulus can enhance the responses of individual cortical sensory neurons, little is known about how attention accomplishes this change in response. Here, we propose that attention-based changes in neuronal responses depend on the same response normalization mechanism that adjusts sensory responses whenever multiple stimuli are present. We have implemented a model of attention that assumes that attention works only through this normalization mechanism, and show that it can replicate key effects of attention. The model successfully explains how attention changes the gain of responses to individual stimuli and also why modulation by attention is more robust and not a simple gain change when multiple stimuli are present inside a neuron’s receptive field. Additionally, the model accounts well for physiological data that measure separately attentional modulation and sensory normalization of the responses of individual neurons in area MT in visual cortex. The proposal that attention works through a normalization mechanism sheds new light a broad range of observations on how attention alters the representation of sensory information in cerebral cortex.