cognition – Page 2

02.13.2013

thinking is harder in the heat

SciAm profiles a series of studies on temperature and cognition. Researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Houston tested and compared decision making skills at warm and cooler temperatures. They found significant performance drop-offs when participants were kept at warmer temperatures. Excerpt:

The researchers decided to test this apparent link between weather and complex decision-making in the lab by performing a series of experiments comparing participants’ cognitive performance at two seemingly unremarkable temperatures: 67° and 77° Fahrenheit. People tend to be most comfortable at around 72° Fahrenheit, so each temperature represented just a 5° deviation from maximum comfort.

Despite this minimal deviation in temperature, the researchers found remarkable differences in cognitive functioning. In one lab study, participants were asked to proofread an article while they were in either a warm (77°) or a cool (67°) room. Participants in warm rooms performed significantly worse than those in cool rooms, failing to identify almost half of the spelling and grammatical errors (those in cool rooms, on the hand, only missed a quarter of the mistakes). These results suggest that even simple cognitive tasks can be adversely affected by excessive ambient warmth.

In a second study, the researchers showed similar effects for more complex cognitive calculations. In this study, another group of participants were asked to choose between two cell phone plans, again in either a warm or a cool room. One plan looked more attractive on the surface, but was actually more expensive; simple patterns of decision-making would therefore lead participants to choose the more expensive plan, whereas more complex analyses would lead participants to correctly choose the more cost-effective plan. Participants in the cool room made the correct choice over half the time; those in the warm room, on the other hand, made the correct choice only a quarter of the time. Warmer temperatures seemed to make participants more likely to rely on simplistic patterns of decision-making, which in turn led to inferior choices. These results suggest that complex decision-making, like simple cognitive tasks, is adversely affected by warm temperatures.

More at the link, including summary of a third study.

09.04.2012

can you learn in your sleep?

Learning in your sleep.

Apparently we can learn simple responses while we are sleeping. Unfortunately we can’t pick up French from playing the audio recording overnight. From Ed Yong over at The Scientist:

Several groups have tested for advanced forms of learning during sleep, like picking up the links between pairs of words. All such experiments have failed. The only positive results came from studies showing that a very basic form of learning known as classical conditioning can occur in sleeping rats and infants, which begin to associate two stimuli—say, a tone and a puff of air—if they are presented together.

By contrast, Arzi’s experiments used a different technique called “trace conditioning,” where the tone and the smells are separated by more than a second. “This is considered a more advanced type of learning, and unlike classical conditioning, it depends on the hippocampus,” she said. “This is the type of learning associated with more complicated cognitive tasks, and therefore finding it in sleep is potentially important and novel.”

Arzi also took steps to ensure that her subjects were not inadvertently waking up. Throughout her study, a sleep technician monitored the volunteers’ brain activity and halted the experiment whenever they showed signs of rousing. All such trials were left out of the final analysis.

Arzi’s volunteers only learned a very simple response, and it is not clear if we can pick up more complex information while sleeping. “This does not imply that you can place your homework under the pillow and know it in the morning,” she said. “There will be clear limits on what we can learn in sleep, but I speculate that they will be beyond what we have demonstrated.”

04.03.2012

clothes do make the man

It turns out that what we wear and what we think we are wearing changes how we think in certain situations. From the New York Times:

If you wear a white coat that you believe belongs to a doctor, your ability to pay attention increases sharply. But if you wear the same white coat believing it belongs to a painter, you will show no such improvement.

So scientists report after studying a phenomenon they call enclothed cognition: the effects of clothing on cognitive processes.

It is not enough to see a doctor’s coat hanging in your doorway, said Adam D. Galinsky, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, who led the study. The effect occurs only if you actually wear the coat and know its symbolic meaning — that physicians tend to be careful, rigorous and good at paying attention.

The findings, on the Web site of The Journal of Experimental Social Cognition, are a twist on a growing scientific field called embodied cognition. We think not just with our brains but with our bodies, Dr. Galinsky said, and our thought processes are based on physical experiences that set off associated abstract concepts. Now it appears that those experiences include the clothes we wear.

More here.

GOLLYGEE!

Tag: cognition (page 2 of 2)

thinking is harder in the heat

can you learn in your sleep?

clothes do make the man