Wait, so if I buy that..it won't actually do that?! Implicit memory & advertising. A guest post by Sal Schiano.

      In this week’s class sessions we learned about short term and long term memory. Short term memory lasts for 15-30 seconds and has the capacity for 4-9 items. Basically everything after that is long term memory (or forgotten). Long term memory can be broken down into two forms, explicit memory (or conscious) and implicit memory (or not conscious).  Explicit memory is memory you are aware of and can voluntarily report the contents of. Implicit memory is memory you are not aware of and cannot voluntarily report the contents of. What fascinates me more is implicit memory. The fact that we can have a skill without being able to explain how we learned it or that we are able to do something without thinking is so interesting.

     Large companies have already tapped into this knowledge just as our representatives in congress have. What they do is use the information about implicit memory such as priming, as well as procedural and classical conditioning, to influence our consumerism decisions and our voter decisions. Companies pay for air, television, billboard, internet, etc. to advertise their product. This is similar to politicians paying for advertising time during election season to promote themselves.

     What companies do in these advertisements is not weigh the costs and benefits of you purchasing their product and how it will affect your bank account (though in some cases they may), but what they are actually doing is presenting their product with a certain stimulus to condition us into thinking that their product causes that stimulus or vice versa. They want us to believe in a relationship that they are presenting.

     There are many examples of this everyday but one stands out, the “Axe deodorant” advertising campaign. If men use their product they will more easily attract female mates.

      Now, what they want to have you thinking is that (↑) will happen to you if you wear the axe product, and it works. While fascinatingly enough revealing little to nothing about the quality, content or even price of their product.

      Similar to companies, political campaigns have made use of our brains doing most of the work for them. For example during the 2004 campaign for president between John Kerry and George W. Bush, GW mentioned terrorism at almost every chance he had. The reason for this was to get voters to associate fighting terrorism with George W. Bush and when this is conducted to a mass of people who ultimately know nothing about the facts of current affairs or the history and actual decisions of policy makers, it is very effective.

      Advertising also makes use of the propaganda effect, the effect that we are more likely to rate statements that we’ve read or heard before as being true, because we have been exposed to them. So for example: when Coors Light advertises their beer as being the “coldest” with mountains on them that turn blue when they’re cold- eventually after hearing this so much we are more likely to believe that Coors has the coldest beer, even though rationally this makes no sense because your beer is only as cold as you allow it to be (or as strong as your refrigerator is). We come to believe what they tell us and we are not even aware of it - that is the magic of implicit memory.

What were the words again? Singing and long-term memory. A guest post by Justyna Dorris.

I started singing when I was in the fourth grade and we were all forced to take part in chorus. I found that I actually really enjoyed it and ended up doing chorus for nine years, from the fourth grade up until my senior year of high school. I loved music, and we sang a wide variety of songs which was nice too. I remember there was one thing that I always wondered about and that was how it was that we could have our songs memorized for the current concert, yet if the teacher played the music from songs we learned years ago, nine out of 10 times we could remember the words and sing the song as if we learned it yesterday. This thought would also come to mind when I would hear old school music from the 90s, like the Back Street Boys, Britney Spears, and of course ‘N Sync. How was it that I still knew every single word when I would sing along? I eventually googled it and found out that it has to do with our long-term memory and that it has a virtually unlimited capacity for holding information. After this week’s class about long-term memory I now know that it’s a little more complicated than that.

Our long-term memory is actually split into explicit and implicit memory and can be broken down even more so. Explicit memories are memories we are aware of, of which we can voluntarily report its content; it’s declarative. This can then be broken down into episodic and semantic memory. Episodic memory is when we remember experiences, personal memories, and mentally time travel. Mental time travel is when you go back to a moment in your memory and picture it in your head. Examples of episodic memories include remembering when your cousin’s child was born, remembering visiting your aunt and uncle in Arizona, and remembering when you first learned someone’s name. Semantic memory is your knowledge of facts and information, but it’s just the facts - no details about how you learned them. For example, you know your mom’s first name, but you don’t remember learning it.

Then we have implicit memories too. Implicit memories are memories we are not aware of, of which we cannot voluntarily report the contents; it’s procedural. So this explains things that we are able to do without thinking or having a skill without being able to explain it. So for example, when I drive from my house to my aunt’s house, I’m on autopilot and don’t have to think about every turn I make and how to get there. I just know how to get there, but if someone wanted me to tell them how to get there, it wouldn’t be that easy.

Back to the music aspect since you now know all about long-term memory. The relationship between music and long-term memory is often referred to as musical memory.  “Musical memory refers to the ability to remember music-related information, such as melodic content and other progressions of tones or pitches. The differences found between linguistic memory and musical memory have led researchers to theorize that musical memory is encoded differently from language and may constitute an independent part of the phonological loop. The use of this term is problematic, however, since it implies input from a verbal system, whereas music is in principle nonverbal” (Wilson). There is some debate, though, over whether music memory is semantic or episodic. In 2005 Platel defined “musical semantic memory as memory for pieces without memory for the temporal or spatial elements; and musical episodic memory as memory for pieces and the context in which they were learned” (Wilson).

Wilson, S. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music-related_memory

You Are Wrong, Sir! That Never Happened!

                So as we learned in my last post, alcohol consumption can lead to the creation of false memories. However, false memories can also occur without any substance-provocation. For example, presidential candidate Mitt Romney once publically recalled attending an event which took place months before he was even born. Why does our brain give us the wrong answers when we want to recall memories or attempt to recover “repressed memories.” Are repressed memories even a legitimate thing?

                Dr. Elizabeth Loftus has done a lot of research on false memories. Her interest stems from parents being accused by their adult children of things they have remembered as “repressed memories.” Now, to be clear, according to Dr. Loftus, repressed memories are not a legitimate thing. Since these court cases, there has been a lot of speculation regarding false memories and people’s abilities to not only create the vivid imagery, but to believe it. However, one important thing to notice is that every time we pull a memory out of the shadows, we edit it and restore it – when we go to pull it out again, it has the most recent edits and is then edited again.

                Dr. Loftus took this a step further by trying to implant false memories into people’s brains. She would literally misinform her subjects to see if they would recall the misinformation or another fact which could potentially be validated. More often than not their recollections revolved around the misinformation they received and supported what Loftus was testing.

               

                However, Loftus also argues that psychologists and psychiatrists, authority figures, etc. can all be at fault for the creation of a false memory. A lot of false memories occur in court rooms – this could be due to leading questions from the attorney, leading cues from the “experts,” or psychological trauma from the event. I think it’s safe to say she’s likely not a fan of hypnosis…

                It is also quite well-known that authority and stress can greatly impact behavior – and memory as well. Stress can cause people to try to recall at a faster speed than necessary, it can decrease optimal memory function and cognitive function, etc. Authority can also lead someone to create false memories because they are scared of an individual or group or repercussion. It can lead to false memories as a latch onto a reasoning and understanding – it can lead to false memories to win over family.

                I have personally experienced the recollection of false memories; on a few occasions I have brought up a memory to my mother, with very vivid imagery to the point that I entirely believed I was remembering an event which had occurred and roughly when it did so occur – however, she was always ready to let me know if my recollections were accurate or inaccurate and I think close to 100% of the times I spontaneously recalled information, she was right and I was wrong (which is really hard to admit – I’ll make sure she doesn’t read this one =P).

                Although false memories are not something you want to go out of your way to have on purpose, they are virtually harmless – depending on the people and subject matter.  Sometimes you have no idea, and sometimes you do. What more can you do but hope you’re right for once?

               

http://blog.ted.com/2013/09/23/elizabeth-loftus-on-embedding-false-memories-in-u-s-soldiers/

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2013/09/elizabeth_loftus_interview_false_memory_research_on_eyewitnesses_child_abuse.html

I'm sorry, what was your name again? A guest post by Dr. Yana Weinstein

One thing that I feel is part of my professorly duty is learning my students’ names.

Last semester, my first time teaching a large group, I approached the task of learning approximately 67 names – spread across two very different classes – with the zeal and fervor you would expect from a cognitive psychologist armed with all the right mnemonic tools. I created memory cues for each student, and tested myself frequently, after every few names that I learned – just like my own research recommends. Within a few class sessions, I had all the names down, except for those of a few people who attended class only infrequently.

So this semester, imagine my surprise when my same strategy was far less successful. Six weeks in, although I can just about manage handing back students’ quizzes while peaking at my “memory cues” (basically, hints about who’s who – more on those later), when it comes to producing students’ names while staring at them in the face, it’s pretty hit or miss. My latest desperate strategy involves standing a few yards away from a student whose name I am about to possibly get wrong, saying their name loudly with an inquiring intonation, and seeing whether that person looks up.

What has gone wrong? Have I aged so much from the stress of my first semester on the tenure track that my mental faculties have now been significantly compromised? Well, probably not, although some days I can’t help wondering. So, what are the barriers standing in my way this semester?

·         Reduced novelty.

Last semester, everything was new. My job was new, the classrooms I taught in were new, the student population was new, even the whole state of Massachusetts was new to me. This made all the new students I met very distinctive and thus, easier to remember. This semester, it’s the same thing all over again. Same state, same university, same class, similar students. Which leads me on to the next point.

·         Interference.

As we know, memory for previous information can interfere with the formation of new memories. If you park your car in a different spot every day, today you might go looking for it in yesterday’s spot. This is also why it is hard to remember whether you locked the door or turned off the stove, which are actions you repeat very frequently. It is the same with name-learning. Even though I do not explicitly think about last semester’s students when I am looking at my current students, it is inevitable that I am going to be less efficient at learning the names of a new group, especially while I still remember many names from last semester.

·         Ineffective Cues.

The interference and reduced novelty factors come together in making the “memory cues” I use much less efficient this semester. What do I mean by “memory cues”? These are little hints I give myself to help me remember which person each name belongs to. Some of them I am happy to share, such as “colorful bag” (I had to ask the student if she was planning on always bringing this bag to class, and luckily she said yes; when I asked another student if she would always be wearing the particular sweatshirt she had worn to the first class, that question was less well received). Other hints I’m a little less ready to disclose, so I live in fear of losing the list of student names where I scribbled the hints. None of these are particularly incriminating, but suffice it to say, that if you are in my class and you have three noses or wear a plant-pot on your head, that will be my memory cue. Unfortunately, it turns outthat there are multiple students with the proverbial plant-pot on their heads, so I’m having to re-use memory cues from last semester, and they are a little less effective each time I re-use them.

So, if I get your name wrong this semester, blame it on cognitive psychology.

Categories or Stereotypes? A guest post by Nicholas Imlach

Last week’s class on categories and categorization (the process by which categories are placed into groups) got me thinking about stereotypes and labeling. The topic of stereotypes has been brought up in other classes and I couldn’t help but see categories and stereotypes as synonymous. Both rely on past knowledge or top down processing to place members into a group based on similarities. Both are nothing more than an oversimplified explanation or a shortcut that allows us to simplify our lives at the cost of accuracy.

            The realization is that both are a part of most people’s lives, and they are both a bad habit to break. When people focus on categories they often find themselves stumped when something is not so clear cut. The truth is, life is not full of neat little categories that can be easily labeled and placed into a column. The same can be said for people and stereotypes. Yes the jokes may get a laugh at a party, but at what cost? It always seems easier to talk about someone or label him or her when they are not around. The point I am trying to get at is that categories, as well as stereotypes, are more of a hindrance than a benefit.

            Getting attached to neat little columns leads to complacency. In terms of criminal justice there is an idea called legalism, where the person who believes in it only sees right and wrong. An example of this would be a cop giving someone a speeding ticket when they were rushing to the hospital because their wife was having a baby in the car. Some may see that as a good enough reason to speed, some may use their discretion to identify the situation for what it was and understand that the person was justified. The world should not be seen in terms of black and white. I believe it was Einstein who once said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. How can things change when people are so used to doing things the same way.

            Categories, labels, stereotypes are all, in my opinion, counterproductive to change and growth. It allows people to make a knee jerk decision to write something or someone off instead of redirecting their attention and thinking. In my last post I alluded to the benefit of being able to make decisions based off of minimal information, and that can be a benefit; however, when it becomes a way of life then issues arise. When people allow themselves to go through the motions on an autopilot-like sequence, just fitting people and things into neat little categories, they are basically insulting their own intelligence. We, as a species, seem to have the uncanny ability to go thorough the motions as they were; many of us get into routines that become second nature. Going through the day from one task to another with minimal thought inhibits what makes everyone unique.

            The ability to see things in different perspectives is one of the most interesting things about people. If we all begin to fall into the neat little categories or succumb to stereotype threat, we lose the one thing that makes each of us an individual. There is something to be said about unity and its importance, but what makes unity strong is the ability of the individual to contribute his or her own strength, not that of everyone else. 

Last Friday Night

                Welcome to college. Here you will gain a lot of knowledge, make some amazing connections, meet some wonderful people, and learn from some phenomenal professors. Here you will begin the rest of your life. Here, you might forget what happened last Friday night.

                So you’ve just turned 21 and it’s time to go bar-hopping with your closest friends. From the first beer to the fourth tequila shot to that fruity margarita, you’re having a great time…and gradually losing some of your basic capabilities. Alcohol impairs your ability to form new long-term memories; the more alcohol you intake, the greater the impairment. However, alcohol does not impact your previously established long-term memories (you’ll still remember things from earlier that day, the day before, etc.) nor does it impact your short-term memory (you still have 15-30 seconds of remembering new information). However, these 15-30 seconds don’t get you very far.

                So back to your 21^st birthday; you are drinking a lot of alcohol and likely very quickly. This is what results in partial or complete blackout. Come tomorrow morning, there will be a lot of events that you don’t remember from your birthday.

                Why does this happen?

Work done by Aaron White, supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism looked into just that. Alcohol disrupts activity in the hippocampus thus impairing our ability to form new autobiographical memories. This can lead us to forget things from meeting people, having conversations, or worse, and far more common with college students, having intercourse. When the impairment is so strong that these things are forgotten and these memories cannot be formed, you are blacking out. Alcohol begins producing detectable memory impairments after just one or two drinks. That is all it takes to begin losing those capabilities (not to mention coordination, balance, decision-making, and other cognitive impairments, etc.).

Blackouts act similar to amnesia. Events, no matter how strong the physical or emotional attachment, are easily forgotten. My first year roommate, for example, could come home and punch the wall crying and then wake up wondering where the cuts on her hand came from. My friend from Worcester fell off the sidewalk and spent an entire week wondering why her arm hurt so much before someone told her that she fell and landed on it and refused to continue walking until multiple people promised it wasn’t broken. And multiple men and women I have met since coming to college have been informed by outside sources of their intimate activity, which they were incapable of recalling.

Robert Nash and Melanie Takarangi surveyed 280 college students and not only did they experience blackouts, but they also tried so hard to fill in the blanks that they were prone to creating false memories. According to this study, men are more likely to experience a blackout than women, however both groups were prone to creating false memories.

So with all of this information and all of these risks, why is blacking out such a common occurrence? Well, binge drinking is commonly portrayed on television and in the media. “Jersey Shore” is a great example of this. This television show advertised binge drinking every single week. These “television stars” went out to clubs and participated in binge drinking and oftentimes woke up and asked each other what happened the night before. Another “great” example is portrayed in all three renditions of “The Hangover.” This group of friends is forced to retrace their footsteps every movie because they have totally blacked out and are unaware of what happened the previous night (and usually there is a person missing – so it’s kind of urgent). However, they are incapable of truly retracing their footsteps because their memories were so greatly impaired. They must rely on the recollections of people they ran into along the way in order to find the next person and location. This exposure leads people to become less concerned about this behavior and college kids tend to “brush it off” and “move onto the next.”

Now that you have this knowledge, I hope you have a great time Friday night (and remember it all Saturday morning)!

Also, if you'd like some more media coverage, please enjoy this lovely song.

Blackouts and the Brain: http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh27-2/186-196.htm

Survey of college students / false memories: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2011/11/did-i-do-that-psychology-of-alcohol.html

Language and Culture from a Chinese-American Perspective. A guest post by Kyle Luke.

        When people hear the word “language,” they generally think of vocal languages such as English, French, Arabic, Mandarin, or Cantonese.  To most people language is just a way that people communicate with each other.  Yet language is much more than that; language can provide valuable insight into the way that cultures work and what is generally considered most important to them.  Whether it is the person’s body language, mannerisms, or speaking style, it clearly reflects a lot about the individual and their personality.   It also demonstrates a lot about how the person was raised and the morals and lessons that were instilled on the individual.  Take me, for example; as a Chinese American I have seen a good amount of these differences. 

Now I was born here in the United States, my parents spoke English to me at home, and I only learned a little bit of Cantonese and Taishanese from my grandparents when they babysat me.  Some of my earliest memories are of my grandparents teaching me my Chinese name. I soon noticed that my Chinese name had my family name first followed by my given name while my English name has my given name first followed by my family name.  When I asked my grandparents about this, they told me it was because, like most eastern countries, China puts a lot of emphasis on honoring your ancestors and those who are older.  They told me that having the family name first is a reminder that everything I do reflects on my parents and my family.  Even today I find that I still have the body language and mannerisms that were instilled in me by my family.  An example of this is something incredibly subtle but I am sure most people will realize that I did it to them as well when we first met after reading this.  When I first meet someone I always stand up; smile, look the person in the eyes, and shake the person’s hand telling them my name.  What people don’t usually perceive is that I also subconsciously give a slight bow as I reach out to shake their hand.  I believe this is just my way of demonstrating to the person who I am meeting that I am pleased to meet them and that I respect them.  This probably carried over from when I met my grandparents’ friends as a child, as I was told to bow to them and introduce myself. 

I have also found that there is a noticeable difference in vocal language between western and eastern languages; for example, in the Japanese culture there are multiple ways of saying “no.”  As the Japanese language is extremely polite, using a large number of honorifics, it is also considered extremely rude to give a blatant “no” to someone.  Therefore, the translation for the way that a Japanese individual would say they did not want to do something is similar to “I could but it would be difficult,” which would be understood for someone who knows Japanese as “no,” but for an English speaker who does not know about the Japanese culture this could be understood as a “maybe” or even a “yes.”  This is a perfect example of how just knowing the translations from one language to another are not enough to understand the individual’s meaning.  To fully understand another language one must also understand the culture and the significance behind the language.  

Context is Key. A guest post by Danielle Sugrue.

In our cognitive psychology class last week we had been informed that we had to give a presentation regarding language.  We were each assigned a question that we had to present for one minute on one slide.  My question was “what is speech segmentation?”  Speech segmentation is the ability to recognize words in a conversation; it is the break or pause in between each word we say.  But when you hear a language you have never heard before it becomes very difficult to distinguish where the pauses are when that person is speaking. Therefore, speech segmentation is not only the ability to perceive words in conversations but it is also aided by the context provided by the words and sentences that make up the conversation. 

            All of the presentations were very well explained and helped broaden my understanding of language.  I did enjoy the idea of practicing presenting in front of a class; however, I did not like how short the presentations had to be.  Trying to meet the minute requirement made me nervous.  I did not feel very confident once I finished because I was focusing more on the time rather than the information I had practiced to present.

            In addition, it was nice to mix things up and have the students teach the class instead of our professor.  It was fun and it was nice to see how supportive and respectful our classmates were. 

            The information provided by the students was informative and sparked my interest in language and how much there is to it.  One question that stood out to me was lexical ambiguity.  This refers to the fact that a word can have more than one meaning and that the word’s meaning in a sentence may not be clear.  Lexical priming experiments show that all meanings of a word are activated immediately after the word is presented but then context quickly determines the appropriate meaning.  For example the word bug can refer to insect, or a hidden listening device, or even being annoyed.  When these ambiguous words appear in a sentence we normally use the context of the sentence to determine which definition applies. 

            This topic was interesting to me because I never actually thought about how a word can mean something else if someone did not finish their sentence.  Take for example: “Amanda believed the senator…” This could mean a number of things, which then ties into semantics and syntax.  It is important to understand the meaning of the word and the rules for combining words in order to carry on a conversation and prevent serious misunderstandings.

What are you REALLY saying?

                 This week in class we discussed the psychology of language. However, what we looked over was the psychology of body language. As someone with a personal interest in body language, this is a topic I chose to delve into deeper. 

                By watching the above video, you can allegedly learn how to become “a human lie detector.” Now this may sound somewhat outrageous, but the study of body language is not entirely pseudoscience. Research results have actually shown some great promise and it is through these results, media acknowledgements, and personal experience that I will describe the psychology of body language.

                One main focus point for those interested in body language actually stems from political debates and public opinions. As a psychology and political science double major, I absolutely love watching political debates. When you watch a debate, you probably try hard to focus on the questions being asked and the responses being given. However, subconsciously you are also paying attention to the body language of the debaters; if the speaker’s opponent is making faces, rolling his/her eyes, making exasperated or aggravated noises, etc. You pick up on these things with or without actively trying to.

                  In a study done by Seiter et al. in 1998, viewers had more positive attitudes toward the speaker when the speaker’s opponent displayed visible disagreement by rolling his eyes, shaking his head, etc. When they witnessed this they were far more likely to rate the speaker higher in competence, character, sociability, and composure. This study shows that even without focusing on body language, negative body language draws our attention and evokes psychological and emotional responses. Another study done by Seiter in 2001 showed that the same behaviors can even lead viewers to believe the speaker’s opponent is deceptive and thus that the speaker is truthful. 

                 If you have ever watched the show “Lie to Me” (and if you have not you absolutely should!), then you would see a lot of cases of assessing body language, especially through facial ticks and expressions and cues. In the show they often point to real examples (often of politicians) and give legitimate explanations of what these subconscious signals mean. There are a lot of aspects of our body language that are subconscious and therefore virtually uncontrollable. For example, depending on who we are talking to, subconsciously our blink rate can alter to show that we may be emotionally or physically interested in the person we are talking to, or even that we are lying or nervous. However, it does not come close to ending there. Other eye mannerisms, such as the direction we are looking, can also give way to information. It is believed that if someone is looking to the left, it means they are reminiscing or trying to remember something. On the other hand, if someone is looking to the right it could mean they are lying or trying to make something up (note the meaning of directions can change if the subject is left-handed).

                However, this only examines eye cues (and not even all of them!). Another interesting thing about body language is how people try to consciously use it or be aware of it to hide things or deceive. For example, a common occurrence with people (I’m guilty of this myself) includes putting a very active effort into hiding emotions, i.e. smiling to hide if you are upset. We also try to be actively aware of other’s body language in hopes of understanding what our significant others, professors, or friends really mean (though without the appropriate training, background, and research, we often do this incorrectly). Poker players are known for their “poker face:” which is being actively aware of their own facial cues and those of others in hopes of deceiving their opponents. People who are arrested (especially on television) try to keep a straight face and use very little body language in hopes of deceiving the police and hiding their actual thoughts and feelings, but to the trained eye this is unsuccessful. We cannot control every single aspect of our body language. Think about this the next time you’re entering a poker match or trying to tell your significant other “No, I did not cheat on you” or tell your parents “No, I have no idea who broke that!” Or perhaps if you are someone’s roommate and want to be civil and maybe even kind, don’t let your body language deceive your façade. For all you know, the person you are talking to is going to be far more aware than you expect them to be. Especially if they just read this post.

articles referenced for this post:

http://www.psychologistworld.com/bodylanguage/eyes.php

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beyond-words/201210/the-science-body-language-the-debates

Excuse me, sir. That's a trash barrel. A guest post by Sal Schiano

Have you ever been to a fast food drive thru and tried to order your food through one of these…

                    ?

If you are like most people this may happen every now and again when you are distracted by other things or just having a rough day. A possible explanation for why this happens is as follows.

Our brains are essentially just incredibly fast computers, but they need some shortcuts to operate efficiently. We tend to categorize different concepts, through a process by which things are placed into groups, or categories. Once you know something is in a certain category you know a lot more about it. For example, because this trash barrel above does not look like your average trash barrel and is usually positioned right next to the menu at a drive thru window, it is harder for your mind to categorize it. The real purpose of the barrel is to make the trash toss from your car a bit easier. However if you are hungry and distracted staring off at the menu you may start to call out your order into the shoot of the barrel, misperceiving it as the order window.

Why does this happen? Because it looks just like something you would talk into…it also does not look like a normal trash barrel. Your rules for the category “trash barrel” may be a container that is round/square and open, holds trash and has a bad odor.

At first glance this does not fit into your rules of a trash barrel. Nor does it look like a typical member, or a prototype, of the trash barrel category, meaning it has low prototypicallity. This barrel also does not look like any other trash barrel you have seen in the past. For you, an exemplar of a trash barrel looks more like this…

               or this 

Hopefully though, you realize that the drive thru trash barrel does have some similar characteristics to the barrel you know, such as smell, and that it actually might be a trash barrel that you are ordering into. At that point you’d probably play it off, toss something in, drive up to the correct window, and order your food.

So why are categories important?

They allow us to recognize new things. After taking a second gander and realizing that the drive thru barrel really looks like a trash barrel, just with a funky attachment on top, we realize that it fits into the category of a trash barrel.

Once we realize the category we understand how to use it. Or in this case how not to use it, and we behave appropriately i.e. stop talking into a trash barrel.

Pay Attention or You Might Miss a Trick. A guest post by Kyle Luke.

          When I first started as a martial artist, I remember having sparring matches against opponents and getting a form of tunnel vision in which I completely focused on the opponent in front of me.  This was helpful because I was able to notice when my opponent was about to attack, thus I was usually able to counter the attack; however, it meant that I had difficultly perceiving anything besides my opponent.  My attention was so focused on my opponents that I used to lose track of my surroundings and I lost a good amount of points and matches because I stepped out of bounds. As I continued training and practicing my martial arts I was able to get more comfortable with my surroundings in the ring and was soon able to determine my location just by muscle memory,  which allowed me to divide my attention between my footing and my opponent.   Thus, much like the experiments conducted by Walter Schneider and Robert Shiffrin (1977) showed that it is possible to carry out two tasks at the same time with practice and by processing one of the tasks almost without thinking, I was able to achieve a similar outcome as I could track my location in the ring without consciously thinking about it.  This is pretty similar to the way I performed my sleight of hand and magic.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I used to practice and perform sleight of hand and magic when I was young.  I had to spend many hours practicing the techniques and the tricks so that I could perform them with little thought by relying on the muscle memory I had acquired by practicing and performing the techniques for days on end.  By using my muscle memory I was free to focus on interacting and communicating with the audience, which allowed me to get the audience to focus on what I wanted them to.

Many of the techniques that I used are based on the fact that people are not able to consciously pay attention to two things at the same time.  This worked because most people are not practiced enough to pay attention to one thing yet notice the subtle movement happening somewhere else.  The techniques rely on spectators getting a similar form of tunnel vision as the one I got in martial arts. They would focus on a misdirection that I caused and would be so intent on not letting anything sneaky happen in that location that they do not realize that the “magic” happened right in front of their very eyes. 

           Thinking about it now, essentially all the tricks and sleights of hand that I am able to successfully perform are due to selective and divided attention.  Due to the amount of time that I spent practicing my techniques I am able to divide my attention between both the audience and the trick without difficulty and I am able to influence what the audience pays their selective attention to.  The audience, which is generally looking to discover the secret to the tricks anyways, will focus so much on one location that they completely miss which is actually happening.  Therefore, next time someone is showing you a magic trick try not to focus so much on a small portion of the trick but on the act as a whole and see what a difference it makes.

*I included a youtube video with a simple trick that uses misdirection.  I tried to find the fairest video I could of the trick that did not reveal how it was done and this was the best I could find.  So take a look, think about what grabs your attention and what slides under it. Have fun.