Originally posted on April 28, 2014. Reports of restored vision in children in India have been confirmed in a new Psychology Science article, summarized here, on “Improvement in spatial imagery following sight onset late in childhood.” The research, led by Tapan Kumar Gandhi of MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Sciences department, in collaboration with Suma Ganesh and Pawan Sinha, studied children who were blinded from birth by dense cataracts. After surgery removed the cataracts at about 12 to 14 years, the children were no longer completely blind. Their abilities to discern light and dark, enabled some spatial imagery. Practically, I wondered, what does this mean? Doesn’t the brain need to experience normal sensory input early in life in order to produce normal perceptual experience later in life? I asked Dr. Gandhi to explain the children’s post-surgery abilities. Could they potentially ride a bicycle or drive a car? His answer (quoted with permission): The onset of sight is not immediately accompanied by much joy or pleasure, contrary to what is depicted in movies. The child has to get used to the new inputs. Over the first few weeks, the child begins to feel more comfortable with the visual world, even though they might not recognize much of it. Their visual acuity is sub-par, most likely permanently so. But, despite a blurry percept, the brain is able to achieve significant proficiency over the course of the first half year on many visual skills such as face detection, and visually guided navigation. Although driving is well-beyond their economic means, some of the Prakash children have indeed learned to ride a bicycle. We typically find that the children and their parents are in high spirits when they visit us for a clinical follow-up a few weeks after the surgery. ... View more

Originally posted on April 30, 2014. Those of us with hearing loss cheered one of our own, Seattle Seahawks football player Derrick Coleman, as he became a national exemplar in the U.S. for living with hearing loss. We reveled in the Super Bowl Duracell ad chronicling his life story.  And we felt a warm glow when he gifted twin New Jersey 9-year-old sisters with Super Bowl tickets and handwritten encouraging words:  “Even though we have hearing aids, we can still accomplish our goals and dreams!” As 500,000+ Google links to “Deaf Seahawks fullback” testify, Coleman’s story inspires us.  The reports of Coleman’s “deafness” also raise an interesting question:  Who is deaf? By using a combination of hearing aids and the natural lip reading that we all do, Coleman, despite his profound hearing loss, reportedly hears his quarterback call plays amid the din of the Seahawks stadium.  And he converses, as when amiably answering questions at a Super Bowl press session. In doing so, he is akin to millions of others who live well with hearing loss. Without our hearing aids or cochlear implants, some of us among the world’s 360 million people with hearing loss become truly deaf—unable to hear normal conversation.  When I remove my hearing aids before showering in my college gym, the locker room banter goes nearly silent.  In bed at night without my aids, my wife’s voice from the adjacent pillow becomes indecipherable, unless she turns to speak into my ear. So, in his everyday functioning, is Derrick Coleman “deaf”? Am I deaf?  Are my friends in the hearing loss community deaf? Partly out of respect for my nonhearing, signing cousins in the Deaf Culture, my answer is no:  I am not Deaf.  Like Deaf people who fluently communicate with Sign, a genuine language, I am also not disabled or “hearing impaired” (which labels a person).  Rather I am a person with hearing loss.  The Hearing Loss Association of America—“the nation’s voice for people with hearing loss”—offers resources that assist “people with hearing loss and their families to learn how to adjust to living with hearing loss [and] to eradicate the stigma associated with hearing loss”—and thus to live as not-deaf. I asked the Association’s recently retired director, Brenda Battat, whose hearing was partially restored with a cochlear implant, if she considers herself deaf.  “No. From a life experience, functioning, and self-identity perspective I do not consider myself deaf.” Ditto my friend, musician Richard Einhorn, who has a substantial hearing loss and was recently featured in a news story that was headlined: "Hearing Loops Give Music Back to Composer Who Went Deaf in a Day." “The ‘deaf’ label is not accurate,” notes Einhorn, who uses various technologies to hear.  “With a good hearing aid and additional listening technology such as hearing loops, I can hear well enough in most situations to participate fully in conversations and enjoy live music, theater, and films.” Thanks to new hearing technologies, most of us with hearing loss can effectively function as not-deaf.  My state-of-the-art hearing aids amplify sound selectively, depending on my loss at different frequencies.  They offer directionality.  They compress sound (raising soft sound and lowering extremely loud sound).  Via a neck-worn Bluetooth streamer, they wirelessly transmit phone conversation and music from my smart phone to both my hearing aids. And thanks to my favorite hearing technology—the hearing loops that broadcast PA sound wirelessly to my in-the-ear speakers (aka hearing aids)—I hear! Ergo, while most natively Deaf people are served by Sign, the rest of us—the invisible majority with hearing loss—need hearing assistance.  We respect, but live outside of, the Deaf Culture.  We benefit from new hearing technologies.  Lumping all people with hearing loss together as “deaf” respects neither Deaf people nor those with hearing loss.  Here ye, hear ye! ... View more

Originally posted on September 9, 2014. How do we know ourselves?  It’s partly by observing our own actions, proposed Daryl Bem’s self-perception theory.  Hearing ourselves talk can give us clues to our own attitudes.  Witnessing our actions gives us insight into the strength of our convictions (much as we observe others’ behavior and make inferences). Our behavior is often self-revealing. The limits of such self-revelation have recently been explored by one of psychology’s most creative research teams at Sweden’s Lund University. The researchers, including Andreas Lind, were curious: “What would it be like if we said one thing and heard ourselves saying something else?” Would we experience an alien voice?  An hallucination? Would we believe our ears? Through a noise-cancelling headset, the participants heard themselves name various font colors, such as the word green presented in a gray font color. But sometimes, the wily researchers substituted a participant’s own voice saying a previously recorded word, such as “green” instead of the correctly spoken “gray.” Surprisingly, two-thirds of these word switches went undetected, with people typically experiencing the inserted word as self-produced! (For more from the creative Lund University "choice blindness" research group, see here.) A second new demonstration of the self-revealing power of our own behavior comes from research on the effects of feedback from our face and body muscles. As we have known for some time, subtly inducing people to make smiling rather than frowning expressions—or to stand, sit, or walk in an expansive rather than contracted posture—affects people’s self-perceptions.  Motions affect emotions. At the University of Cologne, Sascha Topolinski and his colleagues report that even subtle word articulation movements come tinged with emotion.  In nine experiments they observed that both German- and English-speaking people preferred nonsense words and names spoken with inward (swallowing-like) mouth movements—for example, “BENOKA”—rather than outward (spitting-like) motions, such as KENOBA.  Ostensible chat partners given names (e.g., Manero) that activated ingestion muscles were preferred over chat partners whose names activated muscles associated with expectoration (e.g., Gasepa). Self-perception theory lives on.  Sometimes we observe ourselves and infer our thoughts and feelings. ... View more

Originally posted on February 4, 2015. Friday my focus was hearing research and care—at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, where I sit on the Advisory Council (assessing federal support for hearing research and hearing health).  Days later, I was cheering on my ill-fated hometown Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl. Alas, there is some dissonance between those two worlds, especially for fans of the team that prides itself on having the loudest outdoor sports stadium, thanks to its “12th Man” crowd noise—which has hit a record 137.6 decibels . . . much louder than a jackhammer, notes hearing blogger, Katherine Bouton. With three hours of game sound rising near that intensity, many fans surely experience temporary tinnitus—ringing in the ears—afterwards...which is nature’s warning us that we have been baaad to our ears.  Hair cells have been likened to carpet fibers. Leave furniture on them for a long time and they may never rebound. A rule of thumb: if we cannot talk over a prolonged noise, it is potentially harmful. With repeated exposure to toxic sound, people are at increased risk for cochlear hair cell damage and hearing loss, and for constant tinnitus and hyperacusis (extreme sensitivity to loud noise). Men are especially vulnerable to hearing loss, perhaps partly due to greater noise exposure from power tools, loud music, gunfire, and sporting events (some researchers have implicated noise is men’s greater hearing loss).  But some men know the risks, as 2010 Super Bowl-winning quarterback Drew Brees illustrated, when lifting his son Baylen, with ear muffs during the post-game celebration. For more on sports and noise, visit here. ... View more

Originally posted on March 25, 2015. During a recent visit to Stanford University, psychologist Jeremy Bailenson (pictured) invited our small group of conferees to his Virtual Human Interaction Lab, where he explained his studies and invited us each to experience a virtual world, complete with surround sound and vibrating floor. His expressed aim is to “give you an experience that changes how you think about yourself,” and then to assess the aftereffects. In our group, brain scientist Antonio Damasio found his left and right legs and arms switched, as he popped virtual balloons.  Anthropologist Mel Konner found his identity shifted into a mirrored person.  I found myself in a beautiful forest, cutting down trees, and then underwater in a beautiful lagoon, with fish flying by. Bailenson reports that men who become female avatars later are more nurturing.  Heroes who gain the ability to fly around a city (navigating by arm movements, as below) later become more helpful.  Those who age in front of their eyes become more future oriented. In such ways, Bailenson explores “how virtual reality can change the way people think about education, environmental behavior, empathy, and health.” ... View more

Originally posted on March 27, 2015. At a recent foundation consultation at Stanford, I enjoyed meeting Andrew Meltzoff, the amiable and articulate co-director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences in my home city (where he lives but a short walk from my former high school). Meltzoff is known to psychology teachers and students for his many studies of infant imitation, including his classic 1977 Science​ report on 2- to 3-week old infants imitating his facial gestures. It was, he reported, a powerful experience to stick out his tongue and have newborns do the same. “This demonstrates to me the essential socialness of human beings.” I’ve always wondered what newborns really are capable of visually perceiving, and he reminded me that it’s not much—but that they have their best acuity for the distance between their mother’s breast and eyes, which also was the distance between his face and the infants’ eyes. His lab is now reading infants brains using the world’s only infant brain imaging MEG (magnetoencephalography) machine, which reads brain magnetic activity more finely than possible with EEG. He reports that “When a brain sees, feels, touches, or hears, its neuronal activity generates weak magnetic fields that can be pinpointed and tracked millisecond-by-millisecond by a MEG machine.” That is allowing Meltzoff and his colleagues to visualize an infant’s working brain as the infant listens to language, experiences a simple touch on the hand, or (in future studies) engages in social imitation and cognitive problem solving. On the horizon, he envisions future studies of how children develop empathy, executive self-control, and identity. He also anticipates exploring how children’s brains process information from two-dimensional digital media versus their three-dimensional everyday world, and how technology can best contribute to children’s development. In such ways, they hope to “help children maximize their learning capabilities.” ... View more

Originally posted on October 27, 2015. Phantom limb sensations are one of psychology’s curiosities. Were you to suffer the amputation of a limb, your brain might then misinterpret spontaneous activity in brain areas that once received the limb’s sensory input. Thus, amputees often feel pain in a nonexistent limb, and even try to step out of bed onto a phantom leg, or to lift a cup with a phantom hand. Phantoms also haunt other senses as the brain misinterprets irrelevant brain activity. Therefore, those of us with hearing loss may experience the sound of silence—tinnitus (ringing in the ears in the absence of sound). Those with vision loss may experience phantom sights (hallucinations). Those with damaged taste or smell systems may experience phantom tastes or smells. And now comes word from the Turkish Journal of Psychiatry that 54 percent of 41 patients who had undergone a mastectomy afterwards experienced a continued perception of breast tissue, with 80 percent of those also experiencing “phantom breast pain.” As I shared this result (gleaned from the Turkish journal’s contents in the weekly Current Contents: Social and Behavioral Sciences) with my wife, I wondered: Is there any part of the body that we could lose without the possibility of phantom sensations? If an ear were sliced off, should we not be surprised at experiencing phantom ear syndrome? The larger lesson here: There’s more to perception than meets our sense receptors. We feel, see, hear, taste, and smell with our brain, which can experience perceptions with or without functioning senses. ... View more

Originally posted on June 22, 2016. As every psychology student knows well, human perception is both a “bottom-up” and “top-down” process. Our perceptions are formed, bottom-up (from sensory input)...but also top-down (constructed by our experience and expectations). Top-down perception is usually illustrated visually. Reading from left to right, our expectations cause us to perceive the middle figure differently than when reading from above. And when first reading the phrase below, people often misperceive it: ...by seeing what they expect (and failing to detect the repeated word). The same constructive process influences what we hear. Told about a young couple that has been plagued by their experience with some bad sects, people may—depending on what is on their mind—hear something quite different (bad sex). The context of a sentence will determine whether you hear “the stuffy nose” or “the stuff he knows.” Likewise, the weather-forecasting “meteorologist” may become, in a discussion of a muscular kidney specialist, the “meaty urologist.” The reality of top-down hearing helps explain why theater instructors and directors, who are training their actors to project their voices, may not appreciate the hearing difficulty faced by those of us with hearing loss—and why we appreciate mic’d actors and the hearing assistive technology described here. The problem has two sources: Most theater directors hear normally, and thus may naturally assume that others hear what they hear. The directors already know what the words are. When my TV captioning is on, I can—thanks to top-down perception—hear the spoken words clearly. My expectations, formed by the captions, drive my perception. If I turn the captions off, I no longer understand the words. Play directors who know their scripts are like those of us who watch captioned TV. But their patrons are in the no-captions mode. Happily, here at my place called Hope (Hope College), hearing accessibility is being addressed. My theater colleagues are working to support their patrons with hearing loss—by seeking to understand their needs, by equipping their facilities with hearing assistance, and by welcoming feedback after plays. ... View more

In this 3 minute and 30 second video (posted June 30, 2016), Mary Roach, author of some of my favorite books, like Grunt, Bonk, and Stiff, reports that the Veterans Administration spends one billion dollars annually on hearing loss treatment. After covering hearing in the Intro Psych sensation chapter, but before showing this video, ask students to consider why there is so much hearing loss in the military (for example, there are lots of things that go boom). Now ask students for some possible solutions. Students may say better ear protection. Better ear protection would block out the sudden loud sounds, but ask students if someone out on patrol might want to also hear softer sounds, like what their fellow patrol-mates are saying. Now, show students this short video. Video Link : 1633 Roach notes that it’s likely that this technology will be available to civilians. Ask students who else might benefit from this technology. ... View more

White light is the presence of all of the visible light waves. White noise is the presence of all of the sound waves within the range of human hearing. Because our sensory systems are optimized to detect change, noises at night are likely to jar us awake. White noise machines or smartphone apps (or fans) mask other noises. The frequencies from those other noises blend into the white noise as long as the loudness of the other noises is the same or lower than the white noise. If they blend in well enough, our brains won’t detect them, and we sleep right through the sound. (Mileage varies. Some people are more sensitive to other noises when presented inside of white noise.) Side note: Pink noise is like white noise in that all of the frequencies are there, but with pink noise, the higher frequencies have decreased loudness. LiveScience has a nice explanation of the difference. Why is it called pink noise? In light, the higher frequencies are on the blue end of the spectrum. If those higher frequencies in white light are reduced, the light would appear more pink. Some people prefer pink noise over white because white noise sounds too high-pitched. World War II (source: 99 Percent Invisible, Episode 208: Vox Ex Machina) The 1939 World’s Fair in New York debuted the first voice synthesizer, created by sound engineer Homer Dudley of Bell Labs. After the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the US called on Dudley to solve a serious communication problem. For allied military leaders to talk with each other, they had to use shortwave radio – that anyone could listen in on. They had been using a scrambling technique that would switch the frequencies of the voices, so that high frequency sounds would transmit as low frequency and vice versa. Decoding those transmissions was as easy as it appears – for anyone listening in. Homer Dudley created a 2,000 square foot, 50-ton computer that compressed and digitized voices then masked them in white noise, on the fly. The trick? Two identical vinyl records of recorded white noise – for each conversation. At least 3,000 pairs of these records were made – each with a different white noise pattern. One set stayed in Washington, DC; the other set was sent to London. Each pair had a codename, such as wild dog. Before a call, the communication officers would decide which record to use. At the Pentagon in Washington, DC, the communication officers would open a short wave radio connection to London. At the designated time, each side would start their records. The voice from, say Truman, would be sent from his microphone, through the machine that digitized his voice, then mixed his digitized voice with the white noise from the record, and finally sent it out over the shortwave radio frequency. To anyone listening in on that radio frequency, they would hear only white noise since Truman’s voice would blend into the white noise. Across the pond in London, the signal would be intercepted, run through the machine where the white noise playing on the vinyl record would be subtracted, and Churchill would hear Truman’s digitized voice. After the call, the records were destroyed. For the next call, a new pair was used. This device “was involved in virtually every major military operation after 1942. It was even critical in the planning of the Manhattan Project and the dropping of the atomic bombs over Japan.” Another side note: When this technology was declassified in the 1970s, researchers put it to good use. It’s digital compression that smooshes our voices enough to be sent through cell phone towers. Our MP3 audio files and streaming video files use this same compression technology. Conclusion This Memorial Day weekend, when you turn on your white noise generator, give a special nod to those fought in World War II. ... View more

Last week I wrote about how it is I came to wear psychology-related t-shirts to my Intro Psych classes. That post included nine t-shirts. [Read that post.] This week I have ten to share. Vision – Childish Side of the Moon This is a pretty straight-forward illustration of how white is the presence of all wavelengths of light. And the Pink Floyd fans in your class will enjoy the reference. Sleep – Big Fan I hammer pretty hard the importance of sleep. Too many students think that staying up all night studying is a good idea, and I present the landslide of evidence that says it’s not. In case they miss my message, perhaps due to sleep deprivation, this t-shirt drives home the point. Sleep – Counting Sheep If I’m feeling more whimsical, I will go with this shirt depicting counting sheep – on a calculator, on “fingers,” on an abacus. Psychoanalysis – Devil and angel bunnies If you talk about the id, ego, and superego, this shirt is a must. Wear a shirt over top, like a denim shirt or a light fleece. As you describe the conflict between the id and the superego, if you’re lucky, a student will say something like, “Oh! Like the devil and angel on your shoulders!” That’s your cue to remove your outer layer, revealing the devil and angel bunnies on your shoulders. Research methods – Science of the Lambs When introducing research methods in Intro, I sometimes talk about how people think that what determines what is a science and what is not are the apparatuses that are used. “If there are flasks and Bunsen burners, then it is science.” If class time allows, I ask students to consider that question: What makes a science a science? This makes for a nice think (on your own for a minute or two), pair (talk with the person next to you for a minute or two), share (ask for volunteers to share their responses) activity. Personality – Introverting When covering the Big Five personality traits, I use this shirt to come out as an introvert. The best metaphor I have heard for introversion and extraversion says that which way you lean is determined by what recharges your batteries most of the time. If your batteries recharge when you are with people, you are more extraverted. If your batteries recharge when you are alone, you are more introverted (see this blog post for example). The message in this shirt is “back off; I’m recharging.” Sensation — Hello? Can anybody hear me? I use this shirt to introduce the idea that sound and color only exist in our brains. Sound waves and light waves exist outside of us, but what we describe as sound and what we describe as color don’t. They are sensations created by our brains, a conversion of those waves into something we can experience. Development – Donkey Kong and Mario  This shirt’s a nod to the gamers in your class. If you’d like to use this shirt for discussion, ask students questions like: Given that Mario is walking, how old would you guess he is? [2-ish] What reflex is Donkey Kong exhibiting with the baby bottle? [grasping] Years later, do you expect them to remember this event? Why? [nope, infantile amnesia] You can also reprise this shirt for the social psych chapter. What are some ways in which Donkey Kong and Mario could work to resolve their conflict? [e.g., superordinate goals].            Optimism/pessimism – Which glass are you? When covering optimists and pessimists, this shirt provides an opportunity to introduce students to some other -ists, such as utopists and surrealists. Be prepared to explain some of these; students will ask. Final exam day – Pencils Since students are required to bring a Number 2 pencil to take the final exam, this handy shirt depicts pencil numbers 1 through 12. ... View more

As a psychology instructor it is clear to you the myriad ways in which psychology can be used to both understand social issues and speak to solutions. In fact, the APA Guidelines for the Major (2013; see below) encourages us to help our students see the same. Debra Mashek (2016) suggests a few assignments that provide our students opportunities to connect psychology with today’s social issues. Integrative essay The instructor chooses three articles (interesting, nifty methodology, and not too difficult for students to understand – but on the surface may not have anything obviously to do with each other), and assigns one of those articles to each student, i.e. 1/3 of the class gets article A, 1/3 gets article B, and 1/3 gets article C. Each student writes a one-page summary of their assigned article and brings that with them to class. The class breaks up into groups of three, where the groups are composed of students who have all read different articles. In a jigsaw classroom format, the students tell the others in their three-person group about their article. Students then “articulate an applied question that invites application of ideas from all the articles.” Each 3-person group then co-authors a short paper (two to three pages) that identifies their applied question and how each of the three articles speak to that question. Persuasion research activity Right after Hurricane Katrina, Mashek decided she wanted her Intro Psych students to experience psychological research firsthand while also contributing to the relief effort. Mashek gave a brief lecture on foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face, and reciprocity. She randomly assigned ¼ of students to foot-in-the-door, ¼ to door-in-the-face, ¼ reciprocity (she gave these students lollipops to hand to people before asking for a donation), and ¼ to a command condition (“give money”). During that same class period students were sent out in pairs to different areas of campus to return an hour later. Thirty-five students collected $600. Students reported a greater connection to the victims of Katrina after they returned than they reported before they left. Mashek used this experience as a leaping off point for discussing research methodology in the next class session. Current headline classroom discussion Pick a current headline. Break students into small groups, perhaps as an end of class activity, and give them one or two discussion questions based on the current chapter you are covering that are relevant to the headline. For example, if you are covering the social psychology chapter in Intro Psych, give students this headline from the January 9, 2016 New York Times: “Gov. Paul LePage of Maine Says Racial Comment Was a ‘Slip-Up’.” This is a short article, so you could ask students to read the article itself. Sample discussion questions: (1) What evidence is there of ingroup bias? (2) Do Gov. LePage’s comments illustrate stereotyping, prejudice, and/or discrimination? Explain. If time allows, student groups can report out in class. Alternatively, this could be a group writing assignment or a scribe for the group could post a summary of the group’s responses to a class discussion board. Students will gain an appreciation of the scope of psychology and how it is relevant to today’s social issues. This activity throughout the course should help students, after the course, to continue to see psychology at play. The APA Guidelines for the Major (2013) include these indicators related to social issues: 1.3A Articulate how psychological principles can be used to explain social issues, address pressing societal needs, and inform public policy 3.3c Explain how psychology can promote civic, social, and global outcomes that benefit others 3.3C Pursue personal opportunities to promote civic, social, and global outcomes that benefit the community. 3.3d Describe psychology-related issues of global concern (e.g., poverty, health, migration, human rights, rights of children, international conflict, sustainability) 3.3D Consider the potential effects of psychology-based interventions on issues of global concern American Psychological Association. (2013). APA guidelines for the undergraduate psychology major: Version 2.0. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/undergrad/index.aspx Mashek, D. (2016, January 4). Bringing the psychology of social issues to life. Lecture presented at National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology in Tradewinds Island Grand Resort, St. Petersburg Beach. Seelye, K. Q. (2016, January 9). Gov. Paul LePage of Maine Says Racial Comment Was a 'Slip-up'. The New York Times. Retrieved January 9, 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/01/08/gov-paul-lepage-of-maine-denies-making-racist-remarks ... View more