Behavior Archives — Page 3 of 3

Transient Global Amnesia (Or how I learned we are automatons)

November 9, 2011

Radiolab aired an episode on loops a few weeks ago on which they chronicled the case of a woman who was hospitalized for what she thought was a stroke, but turned out to be a case of Transient Global Amnesia … meaning that her short term memory was resetting every two minutes … which led them to having the same conversation, looping over and over again, for nine and a half hours.

Her daughter filmed the conversation in the hospital:

When you watch this video, if you're paying attention, you'll notice that the conversation happens a couple of times. But if you listen to the Radiolab episode, they break it down, do some editing, and it becomes apparent that she's reacting in exactly the same way to the same questions every time they have the conversation.

Which leads them to question whether we have free will or whether our personalities are just made of chemicals sloshing around in reaction to stimuli … meaning that we're essentially machines with little control over our actions. Which is just fascinating enough and just terrifying enough to cause loss of sleep and strange self-experimentation.

When thinking gets in the way of talent

July 2, 2011

Sian Beilock, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, has helped illuminate the cascade of mental events that lead professional athletes to choke. She uses golf as her experimental paradigm. When people are learning how to putt, it can seem like a daunting activity: There’s just so much to think about. Novice golfers need to hold the putter properly and keep their shoulders square. Then, they have to make sure that they hit the little white ball with a smooth stroke, making contact at the center of the putter head and letting the club move to the inside after impact. For an inexperienced player, a golf putt can seem like an endless checklist of do’s and don’ts.

But the mental exertion pays off, at least at first. Beilock has shown that novices hit better putts when they consciously reflect on their actions. The more time they spend thinking about the putt, the more likely they are to avoid beginner’s mistakes and sink the ball in the hole.

A little experience, however, changes everything. After golfers have learned how to putt — once they have memorized the necessary movements — analyzing the stroke is a dangerous waste of time. Beilock has found, for instance, that when experienced golfers are forced to think about their putts, they hit significantly worse shots. All those conscious thoughts erase their years of practice; the grace of talent disappears. And this is why it’s dangerous to compete against a superstar: Players end up thinking up too much.

via www.wired.com

The Subjectivity of Wine (or, you taste what you’re told to taste)

June 23, 2011

In 2001, Frederic Brochet, of the University of Bordeaux, conducted two separate and very mischievous experiments. In the first test, Brochet invited 57 wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn't stop the experts from describing the "red" wine in language typically used to describe red wines. One expert praised its "jamminess," while another enjoyed its "crushed red fruit." Not a single one noticed it was actually a white wine.

The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings. The grand cru was "agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded," while the vin du table was "weak, short, light, flat and faulty". Forty experts said the wine with the fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 said the cheap wine was.

via scienceblogs.com

I can't remember if I've blogged about this before, but I love these experiments. The idea that our senses are interpretted by our subjective brain, and so heavily influenced by expectations, shows that we're not the masters of taste that we think we are. Everything that we experience informs how we perceive the world, which means that we are more influenced by things like other people, context and marketing than we would like to believe.

Also, it makes somelliers look like charlatans.