Tag Archives: individual differences

Do you see what I see?

I’ve always wondered how we know that someone else sees the same thing we see. On one hand, people don’t all see the same thing because their perception is different. On the other hand, people do see the same thing in the sense of being taught to identify objects the same way.

For example, a teacher holds up a crayon for a group of kids and tells them it’s red by saying “What color? (slight pause) Red.” This is done with various other stimuli over time, teaching the kids the color red, and reinforcing when they say “red.” When the prompt of the teacher providing the answer fades over time, the kids are able to respond to the question with the correct answer of “red.” This group of kids are taught the color red with the same stimuli, and are able to identify new stimuli when presented in an array of other colors. All the kids identify the same stimuli as being red when presented with the array.

This makes sense, but do people who are taught to identify red with different stimuli see red as something else? What if I took what I was taught to be blue and taught a group of kids learning their colors that it was pink?

While I’ve always wondered about this topic, and I recently experienced a situation which brought my question to life. I was working with a client who was trying to pull a red piece to a board game out of a clear bag for me. They had already pulled out the other colors and two of the red pieces, leaving one red piece and four green pieces. My client kept missing the red piece and for a moment I wondered if they had some sort of visual depth and motor dysfunction like apraxia. Next, they pulled out all the pieces, held their hand out to me and asked if the pieces were red and green. I asked them if the pieces all looked the same, to which they said yes,but they thought certain ones were red and others were green and then pointed them out to me. They were correct as they had pointed out the pieces I knew to be red and green. I asked them to look at some pictures and pulled up images typically used to test for red/green colorblindness. 

Image result for how to test red green color blindnessImage result for how to test red green color blindness Image result for test red green color blindness duck

They reported not being able to see the images in the center of the circles at all. I told them what the picture in the center was and they still said no. I finally showed them one that was blue and red, and they reported being able to see the numbers in the middle, which they shouted out to me with joy.

Image result for test red green color blindness

After doing some research, people see color differently because of the cones in their eyes. Whoa! It’s like we talked about that in class or something… It is, however, way more complex than what we have covered. Those with typical color vision (trichromats) tend to prefer blue hues the most and yellow-green hues the least, but that is not always the case. There are also two categories of red-green dichromatic vision: protanopes and deuteranopes. Protanopes perceive red as a darker-yellows and deuteranopes perceive red as lighter-yellows, however they both prefer saturated yellows.

EyeImage result for cones in eye 

https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S1364661315001990?token=8907E4F0BFC0230172EA3CE6C2EECD3EE053DAB15B5FBC985BDFA29E84A9DDACB267272010E7399F1796A3B41E5F16C3

While top-down processing works its magic by telling us what is what based off of what’s been taught and experienced, bottom-up processing tells us what we like and dislike when it comes to color based off what information is being processed through the cones in our eyes. So, while we are taught to identify something such as color the same way, we have the cones in our eyes and bottom-up processing to thank for making our preferences different and even unique.

 

Additional readings:

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/jlin.1996.6.2.223?casa_token=rJQxQUwHxaEAAAAA%3ARZ5wg-BqF_he5A8DMAxZDlJhwiSBo6Gj9w770lPAkedVN0HjbtrBF910WrWxU1H2YLU65S2O_xDKUDk

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.182.4318&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Link

Can Virtual Realities Help Eliminate Racism?

 

Has there ever been a time when you looked at someone differently because of their race? It is probably something we are all guilty of. Even though a large portion of us mean no harm, there are people that judge other purely based on race, and are very judgmental and hurtful when doing so. What if all of that could be eliminated? This world may be a much better place to live in.

In an article from Pacific Standard researchers decided to use virtual realities to try and reduce racial bias in people. This was all done by a research team led by Mel Slater and Tabitha Peck. They recruited 60 female college students, all light-skinned. The participants were asked to take the Implicit Association Test. This was done to bring to light any unconscious racial prejudice. The participants were then asked to leave the lab. Upon their return to the lab they entered their virtual realities. They did this by wearing a suit with sensors. In the virtual realities the participants would look into a mirror, and the reflection would show the participant as dark skinned, light skinned, or purple skinned. The research found that only participants made dark-skinned had a significant decrease in implicit racial bias. This particular study was also published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition.

A similar study was done, and the findings were very similar as well. This study was titled Experiencing ownership over a dark-skinned body reduces implicit racial bias. It can be found in Science Direct. This study argues that a certain areas of the brain activate when we see someone else’s bodily state, like their skin color. When we have the same body state as someone else the regions in the brain tend not to activate. The study calls these multiple reacting regions in the brain “mirror neuron systems”. The study also explains a recent EEG study on the subject. The EEG study found that participants observing action of someone not in their racial group would have low activation in the motor cortex. When the participant observed someone in their racial group performing some sort of action the same participants have activation in the motor cortex. These variations are also true not only when a participants just sees a person of a different race, but there are also differences if they see the other person in pain. Another study has been done showing that when a person sees someone of the same race in pain they have brain reactions as if they were experiencing pain themselves. If the person sees someone of a different race they tend to have no brain reaction.

These studies believe they can give us a very uncommon first-person account of others experiences, and how we truly see others that have different outside appearances. This is something that is not usually done. If we can somehow see what others see and why they react a certain way, we can maybe change that person negative reaction or make them aware they are even reacting in such a way.

http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/experiencing-yourself-as-a-black-avatar-decreases-bias-59399

http://dj4uu9gr5z.search.serialssolutions.com.ezproxy.umw.edu/?sid=EBSCO:MEDLINE&genre=article&title=Consciousness%20And%20Cognition&atitle=Putting%20yourself%20in%20the%20skin%20of%20a%20black%20avatar%20reduces%20implicit%20racial%20bias.&author=Peck%20TC&authors=Peck%20TC%3BSeinfeld%20S%3BAglioti%20SM%3BSlater%20M&date=20130901&volume=22&issue=3&spage=779&issn=10902376

Multitasking: Do Music and Studying Mix?

I usually like to study alone, but if I’m ever over with a friend having a study session or just mutual homework time, a common question I get is often, “Hey, do you mind if I put on some music? I work better with it on.” In high school I used to religiously put on music when I did homework, but as I’ve gotten older I stopped. I kept finding it harder and harder to concentrate, and thinking back on it now, in the times that I had my music on while trying to do homework, I was very slow and pretty unproductive. This brings me to my question: is listening to music while doing homework harmful or helpful?

The first article cites two studies (both of which I have not found away around having to pay for to access: 1 & 2). The gist of the first study cited is that people were asked to remember information in a specific order after either being in a quiet environment, listening to someone say “three” repeatedly, listening to random numbers being said, listening to music they reportedly liked, or listening music that they reportedly did not like. The findings were that those who were in the quiet environment or with the person saying “three” over and over scored higher than the other three groups, which were not significantly different from each other. However, the other study that was cited, though getting similar results showing that those who listened to music scored lower than those who did not, also concluded that individual differences must account for a large variation in scores in general. Some of these differences may include if the participants were used to listening to music while studying or not.

Interestingly, this study talks about how music can influence mood, therefore influencing productivity. It states that what a person feels towards a musical piece depends on their past experiences with that specific piece. This was all being studied in the context of software development company, which reportedly is very stressful in nearly all stages of development. The interest in music comes from thinking that lower stress means higher productivity (which may be an entirely wrong assumption but might not be either, I haven’t done the research to know *cough,cough* someone should maybe find out and comment? *cough*). The researchers found that when music was taken out of a person’s daily work habits the person was likely to go through what may have been considered music withdraw, therefore they experienced more stress and less productivity. In the case where music was integrated into a work environment where people were not used to listening to music, results were not positive in the beginning, but after a few weeks people showed a more positive emotion than on the first week. The overall conclusion was that to keep people as stress-free and as productive as possible (when considering music during work) people should be able to choose to listen or to not listen, and also pick their own duration of listening to music.

Even after all that, I still have some unanswered questions. What would the difference be in listening to different cultural music than what you may be used to? Say, for instance if I listened to Indian music? Or, which I’m sure has already be addressed in some study out there, what is the difference in listening to music with lyrics vs. no lyrics? Or even the difference between music that you like but do not know the lyrics, vs. music that you like and you do know the lyrics? I often would find myself singing along and not paying attention to my work when I used to listen to music while trying to study. There is so much music in the world that I feel you would have to read an obscene amount of literature to understand how each one effected you, not even including one’s own feelings and experiences with certain types of music.

One of the things that inspired me to write about music is that, on occasion, either while going about my daily life or while doing homework assignments such as this one, certain songs will get stuck in my head and they often feel very relatable to my current situation. Is this a form of listening to music while working? Or is it something that your brain uses to help you remember things? I’ve heard from teachers that you should try and take tests in the same exact spot that you sit in in class. Or that you should chew the same flavored gum while you study as when you take a test, that supposedly these things will help you hold onto memories that are associated with your gum chewing or seat position as long as they stay constant. Could music be the same way? Though I’m sure it’s not permitted, if I listened to, for example, Jason Mraz’s “Remedy” (the song that happens to be stuck in my head right now), while reading my textbook, would I better remember what was written there on the test day if I listened to the same song while taking the test?

In addition to such questions, which as it turns out just leads to many more questions, do the songs that get stuck in our heads have meanings? In trying to understand why this “Remedy” song (which I dislike greatly and have not listened to since middle school) is stuck in my head, I’m thinking that these lyrics maybe have something to do with what’s going on in this blog post?

This is about to get really outlandish so bear with me… There is a section of the song that goes, “the remedy is the experience/ this is a dangerous liaison.” The definition of liaison being: “communication or cooperation that facilitates a close working relationship between people or organizations” (Google). Is that not relevant to what I’m writing about in an abstract way? If the remedy (music) is experience, which is what this whole article is about, how we experience music in different situations, then perhaps dangerous is a bit of a stretch, but it may be a cooperation of mental faculties to facilitate music and our brains working closely together to help us understand information in certain situations?

Perhaps that’s a load of nonsense.

Do you ever get songs stuck in your head that pertain to your life’s situation? Tell me what you think.