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A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing
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- March 19, 2012
- 12:21 AM
- 130 views
What Makes A Story Persuasive?
by Livia Blackburne in A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing
Poking my head out briefly to say hi. Dissertation writing is taking quite a bit of time... (surprise surprise)
What was the last time a work of fiction changed your view on an issue? For me, it was Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, which made me think seriously about government intrusion on privacy. Fiction to make a point is nothing new. But what makes a story persuasive? A study from researchers Melianie Green and Timothy Brock points toward one ingredient.
These researchers were interested in what they called "transportation," the extent to which someone is absorbed and engaged in a story. They wanted to know if transportation made readers more likely to take on story-consistent beliefs.
Green and Brock had participants read a story about a college student whose little sister was stabbed to death by a psychiatric patient at the mall. After participants read the story, they answered a “Transportation questionnaire,” which included questions like "While I was reading the narrative, I could easily picture the events in it taking place," and "The narrative affected me emotionally."
The researchers found that readers with higher transportation scores had more story-consistent beliefs. They were more likely to think that stabbings were common in the United States, and that psychiatric patients should be supervised when they go out into the community.
Of course, correlation does not equal causation. It could be that transportation encourages story-consistent views, or it could be the other way around, that people who already held story-consistent beliefs were more easily transported into the story.
So the researchers did some follow-ups. In one experiment, they surveyed participants about their views 5 to 9 weeks before they read the story. It turns out that initial beliefs did not predict transportation. In another study, the researchers manipulated transportation by having participants circle difficult vocabulary words while they were reading. As expected, this task distracted the readers. They reported both lower levels of transportation and less agreement with story-consistent beliefs.
So the bottom line to persuading with your fiction? Draw people in. Make them emotionally involved. In other words, write a good story.
Have you read any fiction that changed your views?
Hope you enjoyed this post! To get regular updates from this blog, use the subscription options on the sidebar.
Also, friend of the blog Passive Guy a.k.a. David Vandagriff a.k.a Darius Acheson recently released his novel The Titanboar Touchstone. Check it out!
When Jager touches a dead titanboar in the forest, a fierce power blazes into him. From that moment, his girlfriend, Rolinda, is condemned to a lingering death at the hands of corrupt Emperor Dragene.
Jager’s titanboar magic is as changeable as his moods, working with breathtaking power one moment, but failing when he needs it most. The titanboars call him Bright One as he struggles to understand their cryptic expectations.
An old man in the village, Wazdan, has a collection of talking cats and talented vultures. Wazille appears to be a gentle grandmother who enjoys cooking, but she also delights in green explosions in the midnight sky. As Dragene seeks Jager, Wazdan and Wazille try to prepare him for the dangerous challenges ahead.
The secretive titanboars are drawn from their clandestine life in the forest by a need to protect Bright One from his expanding collection of enemies. Terrifying night creatures track Jager by a glow only they can see. Shadow Man appears in his dreams and Dragene sends flying orrocks to hunt him down.
The titanboars are a riveting new magical creature in this epic fantasy. They are vastly superior to humans, but they desperately need one human, Jager, to ensure their survival.
Green, Melanie C.;Brock, Timothy C (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
She makes the point that reading a story literally affects us physically. We are naturally empathic creatures who truly do share the emotional lives of characters . Hubert O'Hearn's review of From Words to Brain
... Read more »
Green, Melanie C.;Brock, Timothy C. (2000) The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. info:/
- December 19, 2011
- 01:50 PM
- 277 views
Spoilers: Good or Bad?
by Livia Blackburne in A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing
One of my favorite Threadless T shirts
I hate spoilers. Once I turned on the TV and accidentally watched last 10 min. of The Usual Suspects (I hadn't seen it before). Whoops. I also figured out the ending of The Sixth Sense halfway through and was grumpy the rest of the movie because I'd missed out on the surprise.
But do spoilers actually decrease enjoyment?
Spoiler alert: A recent study says no.
Researchers at UCSD conducted an experiment to see how spoilers affect readers' enjoyment of a story. They had students read three types of short stories: ironic twist stories, mysteries, and evocative literary stories.
The stories were presented in one of three ways:
1) In its original form (unspoiled condition)
2)With a spoiler paragraph presented before the story (external spoiler)
3)With a spoiler paragraph incorporated as the first paragraph of the story (incorporated spoiler).
Participants rated each story for enjoyment on a scale of 1 to 10.
The result was counterintuitive. For all three types of stories, subjects gave higher ratings for externally spoiled stories than for the unspoiled stories. Interestingly, incorporating the spoiler in the opening paragraph did not raise enjoyment. In those cases, the enjoyment was the same as for the unspoiled stories.
Given these results, will I be less careful about avoiding spoilers? Probably not. The enjoyment rating used in this experiment was a coarse measure, and I don't think it quite captures the delightful surprise of a good twist ending. You might indeed enjoy the story better overall the second time, when you have a better idea of what to look for and aren’t distracted by curiosity, but you can only be surprised once. For me at least, that first naive read is still worth protecting. On the other hand, if a story is accidentally spoiled for me, I probably won't feel quite as gypped as I would have before. And the does change my intuitions about what makes a story enjoyable.
Finally, It's interesting that the external spoiler increased enjoyment, while the incorporated spoilers did not. The researchers suggested that this was because an incorporated spoiler led the reader to believe there was still more to the story that the author would reveal later. So maybe readers weredisappointed when they found out that there actually wasn't anything more, or perhaps the external spoiler allowed the reader to relax and enjoy the story without constantly thinking ahead.
More on this next week, but for now, what do you think? Do you avoid spoilers?
Hope you enjoyed this post! To get regular updates from this blog, use the subscription options on the sidebar.
Also, friend of the blog Catherine Stine recently released her YA novel, a futuristic thriller called Fireseed One. Check it out!
Leavitt JD, & Chris... Read more »
Leavitt JD, & Christenfeld NJ. (2011) Story spoilers don't spoil stories. Psychological science, 22(9), 1152-4. PMID: 21841150
- November 25, 2011
- 05:39 PM
- 245 views
The Psychology of Attraction: The Intertwining of Sex and Aggression
by Livia Blackburne in A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing
A Quick Note: Write to Done is seeking nominations for their Top 10 Blogs for Writers Contest. If you enjoy the articles on this blog, I would really appreciate a mention here. :-)
"His gaze flickered to my lips. I got that. He was once again furious with me and once again perfectly ready to have sex with me. The conundrum that was Barrons. Apparently it was impossible for him to feel anything as far as I was concerned without getting angry about it. Did anger make them want to have sex with me? Or was it that he always wanted to have sex with me that made him so angry?"
--Shadowfever, by Karen Marie Moning
So I’m looking back over the "Psychology of Attraction" series, and so far we have fear, uncertainty, and now aggression. Which makes me think I should clarify some things before y'all stage an intervention. This series is not meant to be a picture of how healthy relationships work, or even how the majority of relationships work. They’re interesting tidbits that might be useful for a novelist. As often is the case, the healthy cases don’t always make interesting stories.
Actually, that's an interesting thought -- that the pathological makes for more gripping stories. Is it true? Is it desirable? Which dovetails nicely into today's post.
When I was researching the article on fear, I ran across some old studies exploring the relationship between aggression and sexuality. The basic idea was that the experimenters made test participants angry and then tested them for sexual arousal.
In one case, the experiment was conducted in a class on the day a midterm was supposed to be returned. The instructor told the students that almost everybody had failed and then went on to lambaste the class on their bad performance. Then, a visiting lecturer from a prestigious Ivy League university gave a guest lecture in which he was very condescending toward the students in the class. (The students were enrolled in a less prestigious institution).
After the anger manipulation, students were given pictures and asked to write stories based on the pictures. As you may have guessed, the angry students had more sexual imagery in their stories than students in a control condition.
Now I'm not sure if there's anything special about aggression and sex. It could be, that any strong emotion (like fear) will cause an increase in sexual drive. However, as a storyteller and a reader, I still thought it was worth discussing.
Many stories mix aggression into their romance threads. In the Fever Series quoted above, Jericho Barrons and MacKayla Lane have a very combative relationship, which increases the sparks when they finally get together. There are so many other examples: Katsa and Po in Graceling, the fight scene turned sex scene in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. My own novel features a conflicted relationship between my main character Kyra and “dangerous-yet-intriguingly-sexy-assassin.”*
So how do I feel about this? Well, on the one hand, it's clearly effective -- I found all the examples above to be very compelling.
On the other hand, I'm of glad that the YA genre doesn't tend to take this too far. Because while situations like these may seem sexy on paper, many women (and men) do learn the hard way that the aggressive and unpredictable alpha type is not so sexy in real life.
So, readers, I turn the question to you. How do you feel about the mixing of violence and sex in literature?
*BTW, it's ridiculously hard to write co-ed close-combat scenes in a PG way. I got so many fight scenes back from my writing group with phrases like “It’s ridiculously hard” circled, and “Lol!” scribbled the margin. Hence, the inspiration for this post.
Hope you enjoyed the post! To get notifications for future articles, please use one of the subscribe options in the left sidebar.
Barclay, A., & Haber, R. (1965). The relation of aggressive to sexual motivation1 Journal of Personality, 33 (3), 462-475 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1965.tb01398.x
She makes the point that reading a story literally affects us physically. We are naturally empathic creatures who truly do share the emotional lives of characters . Hubert O'Hearn's review of From Words to Brain
... Read more »
Barclay, A., & Haber, R. (1965) The relation of aggressive to sexual motivation1. Journal of Personality, 33(3), 462-475. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1965.tb01398.x
- October 9, 2011
- 07:05 PM
- 374 views
The Psychology of Attraction: Uncertainty
by Livia Blackburne in A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing
A while back, I was reading a romance. In the story, the girl meets a charming, handsome guy, and things are proceeding as usual. But then, out of the blue, a boy she’d hated for years suddenly kisses her and runs away. ZOMG! I was mildly interested in guy number one, but when guy number two showed up, I really took notice.
Jump cut to another story, where a girl meets an old flame. He's distant, but sometimes shows flashes of interest. As the shared moments continue, I’m avidly turning the pages. Soon, he's actively courting her -- bringing her lunch and supporting her through emotional trauma, and . . . I lose interest.
In both cases, the guy who might have been attracted to the girl was more interesting to me than the guy who definitely was attracted to the girl. Which got me to thinking. What is it about uncertainty and attraction?
Well funny I should ask! In fact, there was a recent study . . .
This study was done on female college students. They signed up in advance and gave researchers permission to show their Facebook profiles to others. When the women arrived, researchers told them that they were testing Facebook as an online dating site and that male students from other universities had reviewed their Facebook profiles and rated how much they thought they would like each woman. Then, the women were given Facebook profiles of four men to rate.
And here's the important part. One group was told that these four men had given them the highest ratings (the liked-best condition). One group was told that these four men had given them average ratings (the average-like condition). And yet a third group was told that the four men gave them either high or average ratings (the uncertain condition). In truth, the four men were fictitious.
So which group was most attracted to the men? Participants in the liked-best condition were more attracted to the men than participants in the average-like condition. Women were more attracted to guys who like them.
But here’s the kicker: Participants in the uncertain condition were more attracted to the men than women in either of the other groups. They also reported thinking about the men more often.
So looks like there is something to uncertainty. Perhaps the sheer excitement of wondering is enough to make that hot guy that much more desirable. So if you're looking to inject some romantic tension into your story, consider making things more uncertain.
Have you read any romances lately that did this?
Whitchurch ER, Wilson TD, & Gilbert DT (2011). "He loves me, he loves me not . . . ": uncertainty can increase romantic attraction. Psychological science, 22 (2), 172-5 PMID: 21169522
Hope you enjoyed this post! To receive regular updates from the blog, please use the subscription options in the left sidebar.
She makes the point that reading a story literally affects us physically. We are naturally empathic creatures who truly do share the emotional lives of characters . Hubert O'Hearn's review of From Words to Brain
... Read more »
Whitchurch ER, Wilson TD, & Gilbert DT. (2011) "He loves me, he loves me not . . . ": uncertainty can increase romantic attraction. Psychological science, 22(2), 172-5. PMID: 21169522
- September 5, 2011
- 06:04 PM
- 601 views
The Psychology of Attraction: Fear
by Livia Blackburne in A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing
Happy Labor Day! If you haven't looked at the comments in my critique styles post, take a look. People have left quite a few amusing comments. Also, I forgot to mention that the five profiles I posted are actually caricatures of the five members of my critique group. Can you guess which one is me?
I've been reading some articles on the psychology of attraction and thought it'd be interesting to write about ways to attract the opposite sex. As writers, our interest in this is of course strictly academic -- we want to write more realistic romances (right? :-P).
Imagine that you're a young man crossing a rickety suspension bridge. It's not exactly sturdy. It sways and twists in the wind, and there's only a low wire handrail to protect you from the rocks 230 feet below. As you cross, you're approached by an attractive young psychology student. She asks you to fill out a survey and write a short story. After you finish, she tells you that she'd be happy to talk further about the experiment, and then she hands you her phone number.
Got that?
Now a slightly different scenario.
You're still young man, but now you're crossing a different bridge. It's built of solid wood and stands 10 feet above a small creek. Again, a pretty young psychology student asked you to fill out a survey. Again, she has you write a story and slips you her phone number.
It turns out that the young men crossing the two different bridges behaved differently in two crucial ways. First, men crossing the rickety suspension bridge were more likely to call up the female interviewer afterwards. Second, the scary bridge group also included more sexual imagery in their stories. It appears that men who crossed the scary bridge were more attracted to the female interviewer.*
Why might this be? Well, what happens when you cross a scary bridge? Your heartbeat goes up. Your palms get sweaty. You start breathing quicker.
And what happens when you really attracted to someone? Hmm, your heartbeat goes up. Your palms get sweaty…
So you’re crossing the bridge, your brain is getting all these fear messages from your body, and in the meantime, your brain also notices that you’re talking to a sexy psychologist (I love that phrase). And your brain thinks, “Wow, my heart is speeding up, my palms are sweaty, I must really be attracted to this girl!”**
The takeaway message: fear will sometimes lead to an illusion of romantic attraction. And we actually see this a lot in books and movies. Think about pretty much every action movie that transitions from scary chase/fight/brush with death scene to a love scene.
So, dear readers, can you think of any examples of this in recent books you've read? Or in your own writing?
* On a side note, the psychologists also did the same experiment with the male interviewer. In that variation, there was no difference in how each group behaved.
** Another interesting aside. It seems like the presence of a hot young thing will actually trick your brain into thinking that you're less scared than you actually are. In a similar experiment using the threat of electric shock instead of a scary bridge, men reported being less scared when the pretty girl was around, presumably because their brains misinterpreted their bodies fear reactions as attraction for the girl.
Hope you enjoyed the post! To receive updates from this blog, please use the subscription options on the left sidebar.
Dutton, D., & Aron, A. (1974). Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30 (4), 510-517 DOI: 10.1037/h0037031
She makes the point that reading a story literally affects us physically. We are naturally empathic creatures who truly do share the emotional lives of characters . Hubert O'Hearn's review of From Words to Brain
... Read more »
Dutton, D., & Aron, A. (1974) Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30(4), 510-517. DOI: 10.1037/h0037031
- August 13, 2011
- 02:18 PM
- 555 views
Yes, Reading About Edward Cullen Will Make You Sparkle
by Livia Blackburne in A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing
Every once in a while I present some tools in the writer’s arsenal for taking over the world. We've talked about writers as brain manipulators, and storytelling as Vulcan mind meld. Today, I will show you how Stephanie Meyer and JK Rowling are actually Borg queens, assimilating all unsuspecting readers in their path.
Reading assimilation is a common experience. Perhaps you're walking to work after reading Harry Potter and find yourself wishing for a broomstick. Or you step into the sun after reading Twilight and half-expect your skin to sparkle. Psychologists Shira Gabriel and Ariana Young have coined the term narrative-collective assimilation for the idea that reading a story will cause the reader to assimilate into the “collective”, or people-groups, described in the narrative. And now they have experimental evidence.
The study they ran was a fun one for bookworms. Gabriel had 140 undergraduates read a passage from either Twilight (Chapter 13, Confessions), or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Chapter 7, The Sorting Hat, and Chapter 8, The Potions Master). They predicted that people who read Harry Potter would identify more with wizards after reading, and that people who read Twilight would identify more with vampires. After the participants read the passage, they took several tests to measure how much they had assimilated.
The first test was called the Implicit Association Test. It's a bit confusing, but I'll do my best to explain it. The task was to categorize words at a computer. For example, they see a display like this:
WIZARDS VAMPIRES
wand
The top line is just a reminder to press the left button for words having to do with wizards, and press the right button for words having to do with vampires. Then, words like "wand" appear underneath, and in this case, the correct answer would be to press the left button to categorize it as a wizard word.
Okay so far? Then, the participants do the same task with different categories. For example, a display like this:
ME NOT ME
myself
This time, they press the left button for words having to do with “me” (myself, mine, etc.), and the right button for “not me” words (they, there's, etc.).
Now comes the important part. They do both categorization tasks at once. For example:
WIZARDS VAMPIRES
ME NOT ME
fangs
They get vampire, wizard, “me,” or “not me” words on the screen, and they have to categorize it to the correct side. They key is this: if the participant self-identifies as a vampire, they will be faster if the vampire words and the "me" words are on the same side. On the other hand, participants who self-identify with wizards will be faster if the “me” words are on the same side as the wizard words.
So by swapping whether the "me" words are on the same side as the vampires or the wizards, psychologists can get a measure of whether a participant identifies more with vampires or wizards. As predicted, Harry Potter readers identified more with wizards, and Twilight readers identified more with vampires.
The implicit association task is a strange one though, because it's very artificial. It's hard to take some data about reaction time differences for categorizing words and drawing any strong conclusions about what it actually means. So it's nice that the experimenters also rounded out their study with an explicit measure. They gave participants a questionnaire called The Twilight/Harry Potter Narrative Collective Assimilation Scale (Ah, I love psychology). Mixed in amongst filler questions were some key questions like “How sharp are your teeth?”(vampire), “How British do you feel?” (Harry Potter), and “Do you think, if you tried really hard, you might be able to make an object moved just using the power of your mind?” (Accio horcrux!). Again, Twilight readers rated more highly for the vampire questions and Harry Potter readers rated more highly for the Wizard questions.
Not all participants were equally likely to be assimilated into the "collective". Participants were also tested on a scale that measured their tendency to fulfill their social needs by fitting into groups, with questions like "When I join a group, I usually develop a strong sense of identification with that group.” It turns out that the people who were more likely to assimilate into groups in real life were also more likely to assimilate into the books they read.
So writers, go forth and assimilate your readers into your respective narrative worlds. Resistance is futile.
In the meantime, tell me. Have you ever read a book that made you want to jump in and become one of the characters?
Gabriel S, & Young AF (2011). Becoming a Vampire Without Being Bitten: The Narrative Collective-Assimilation Hypothesis. Psychological science PMID: 21750250
Hope you enjoyed this post! For regular updates from the blog, use one of the subscribe options on the left sidebar.
Code: Pyn
You can tell Livia is fascinated by people, the way we think and react, use language, read and write. That passion, backed up with solid scientific research, makes this highly recommended reading! ... Read more »
Gabriel S, & Young AF. (2011) Becoming a Vampire Without Being Bitten: The Narrative Collective-Assimilation Hypothesis. Psychological science. PMID: 21750250
- June 22, 2011
- 05:24 AM
- 557 views
N1 Specialization in Children with Dyslexia
by Livia in Reading and Word Recognition Research
Accessibility: Advanced
It's been a little while, but we've been talking about the N1 component and how it relates to reading. Just to recap, the N1 component is an ERP component occurring at around 170 ms. In normal reading adults, the component is stronger for words than for symbols. We will refer to the words minus symbols difference as “N1 specialization for words .” Pre-reading kindergartners do not have this N1 specialization, while second graders have a stronger N1 specialization compared to adults. Today we focus on children with dyslexia.
As you might've guessed, Maurer and colleagues did the same experiment on children with dyslexia as well (see previous article for more information on what they did). These are the findings:
1. N1 specialization for words over symbols was much reduced in dyslexic second graders compared to normal reading second graders.
2. N1 specialization correlated with reading speed in second graders.
3. Interestingly, although dyslexic second graders had reduced specialization, they actually had a greater specialization two years earlier (in kindergarten) than their normal reading counterparts. I'm not quite sure why this would be.
4. In addition to the N1 difference, there was also a reduced response in the earlier P1 component in children with dyslexia (at both ages – kindergarten and second grade). This reduction was general for both words and symbols though, and not specialized to words.
Maurer U, Brem S, Bucher K, Kranz F, Benz R, Steinhausen HC, & Brandeis D (2007). Impaired tuning of a fast occipito-temporal response for print in dyslexic children learning to read. Brain : a journal of neurology, 130 (Pt 12), 3200-10 PMID: 17728359What is it that transforms a page full of words into an experience that moves us and leaves us changed? K. Okada From Words to Brain
... Read more »
Maurer U, Brem S, Bucher K, Kranz F, Benz R, Steinhausen HC, & Brandeis D. (2007) Impaired tuning of a fast occipito-temporal response for print in dyslexic children learning to read. Brain : a journal of neurology, 130(Pt 12), 3200-10. PMID: 17728359
- June 22, 2011
- 05:24 AM
- 565 views
N1 Specialization in Children with Dyslexia
by Livia in Reading and Word Recognition Research
Accessibility: Advanced
It's been a little while, but we've been talking about the N1 component and how it relates to reading. Just to recap, the N1 component is an ERP component occurring at around 170 ms. In normal reading adults, the component is stronger for words than for symbols. We will refer to the words minus symbols difference as “N1 specialization for words .” Pre-reading kindergartners do not have this N1 specialization, while second graders have a stronger N1 specialization compared to adults. Today we focus on children with dyslexia.
As you might've guessed, Maurer and colleagues did the same experiment on children with dyslexia as well (see previous article for more information on what they did). These are the findings:
1. N1 specialization for words over symbols was much reduced in dyslexic second graders compared to normal reading second graders.
2. N1 specialization correlated with reading speed in second graders.
3. Interestingly, although dyslexic second graders had reduced specialization, they actually had a greater specialization two years earlier (in kindergarten) than their normal reading counterparts. I'm not quite sure why this would be.
4. In addition to the N1 difference, there was also a reduced response in the earlier P1 component in children with dyslexia (at both ages – kindergarten and second grade). This reduction was general for both words and symbols though, and not specialized to words.
Maurer U, Brem S, Bucher K, Kranz F, Benz R, Steinhausen HC, & Brandeis D (2007). Impaired tuning of a fast occipito-temporal response for print in dyslexic children learning to read. Brain : a journal of neurology, 130 (Pt 12), 3200-10 PMID: 17728359What is it that transforms a page full of words into an experience that moves us and leaves us changed? K. Okada From Words to Brain
... Read more »
Maurer U, Brem S, Bucher K, Kranz F, Benz R, Steinhausen HC, & Brandeis D. (2007) Impaired tuning of a fast occipito-temporal response for print in dyslexic children learning to read. Brain : a journal of neurology, 130(Pt 12), 3200-10. PMID: 17728359
- May 7, 2011
- 11:43 AM
- 1,062 views
Your Memory For Construction Workers Is Worse Than You Think (Unless You Are One)
by Livia Blackburne in A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing
I recently read Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins, an eye-opening novel about child soldiers in modern-day Burma. It tells the story of two boys from different ethnic groups: Chiko, a Burmese boy forced into the Army, and Tu Reh, a Karenni boy whose family is driven from their home by Burmese soldiers. When chance events throw the two together, Chiko and Tu Reh get to know each other not as faceless enemies, but as people.
There's quite a bit of social psychology research on group identity, in-groups, and out-groups, but this story actually brought to mind some vision science experiments on a phenomenon called change blindness. The basic idea is that we notice a lot less than we think we do. For example, watch this video from psychologist Dan Simons.
The man who picks up the phone is a different actor wearing different clothes, but people very rarely notice the switch. We’re less observant than we think.
But maybe we're less observant int his case because it's a video. Surely, people would notice changes in real life! And this is where we get another one of my favorite psychology experiments ever. It's explained in this video here.
In this experiment, psychologists posing as visitors to campus asked random pedestrians for directions. Halfway through the conversation, several people carrying a door forced their way between the speakers, and took advantage of the distraction to substitute a different person as the direction-asker. Surprisingly, about 50% of the pedestrians did not notice the change in conversation partner.
The psychologists noticed that pedestrians closer in age to the direction-askers were the most likely to notice the switch. They guessed that this was because people paid more attention to individuals in their own social group.
To test this hypothesis, they reran the experiment, but this time the direction-askers were dressed as construction workers. And as predicted, the percentage of pedestrians who noticed the change dropped dramatically. It seemed that pedestrians labeled the direction-askers as construction workers and didn't notice any details beyond that.
I find it fascinating that people automatically sort the people they meet into different groups and adjust the amount of attention they pay to them. It's an interesting question to ask when building your characters. What types of people would your character view as part of her social group, and what types of people would your character see without really seeing?
This week, I am also giving away a signed copy of Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins. There are two ways to enter the drawing.
1. Share this post on twitter and leave a comment with your twitter handle.
2. RSS subscribers will find a secret word at the end of this article. To enter the drawing, e-mail liviablackburne at gmail dot com with the secret word in the subject line.
I will draw a winner on Wednesday, May 11 2011.
Hope you enjoyed the post! To get regular updates on psychology and writing, use the subscribe option in the left sidebar.
Daniel J. Simons, & Daniel T. Levin (1998). Failure to detect changes to people during a real-world interaction PSYCHONOMIC BULLETIN & REVIEW
Bamboo People Giveaway Password: Karenni
" Writers in the audience should go purchase and read it forthwith." Dana Hunter review of From Words to Brain
... Read more »
Daniel J. Simons, & Daniel T. Levin. (1998) Failure to detect changes to people during a real-world interaction. PSYCHONOMIC BULLETIN . info:/
- April 12, 2011
- 03:31 PM
- 558 views
The N1 Component in Second Graders
by Livia in Reading and Word Recognition Research
Accessibility: Advanced
Last week, we learned that the N1 component in normal reading adults differentiated between words and symbols, while the N1 component in pre-reading kindergartners did not. The question now is, at what point in development does N1 component start resembling that of adults? Maurer and colleagues tested the same kindergartners from their 2005 paper when the kids were in second grade to see how their brain activity changed after two years of reading instruction.
These were their findings:
1. The N1 component differentiates between words and simple strings in the second graders.
2. Second graders actually had a greater words/symbols N1 difference than adults.*
3. There is a correlation between N1 specialization and reading fluency. In other words, the difference in N1 amplitude between words and symbols was correlated with faster reading in the second graders.
4. The N1 negativity was more left lateralized in adults than in children. The N1 topography was bilateral for 2nd graders, and right lateralized in kindergareners.
Conclusions: Two years of reading instruction is enough for the brain to start differentiating between words and meaningless symbols. In terms of the development of N1 specialization, there are hints of a U shaped curve, with 2nd graders displaying even greater word/symbol differences than adults.
* Amplitudes in general were bigger in the second graders, but the difference held when amplitudes were normalized between children and adults
Maurer U, Brem S, Kranz F, Bucher K, Benz R, Halder P, Steinhausen HC, & Brandeis D (2006). Coarse neural tuning for print peaks when children learn to read. NeuroImage, 33 (2), 749-58 PMID: 16920367
What is it that transforms a page full of words into an experience that moves us and leaves us changed? K. Okada From Words to Brain
... Read more »
Maurer U, Brem S, Kranz F, Bucher K, Benz R, Halder P, Steinhausen HC, & Brandeis D. (2006) Coarse neural tuning for print peaks when children learn to read. NeuroImage, 33(2), 749-58. PMID: 16920367
- April 8, 2011
- 11:10 AM
- 649 views
The N1 Component in Prereading Children
by Livia in Reading and Word Recognition Research
Accessibility: Intermediate-Advanced
Just to recap from the last article, the N170 is an ERP component that differentiates between words and symbol strings in normal reading adults. This the specialization developed after learning to read, or does it have something to do with the visual properties of symbols?
Maurer and colleagues tested pre-reading kindergartners to see whether the specialization is there before they learn to read. They had kids perform the same task as adults (looking at a series of words, pseudowords, symbol strings, and pictures).
They found several things:
1. Adults again had the same N170 (called N1 in this paper), which was stronger for words than symbols.
2. Kids also had an N1, but it was later, had a larger amplitude, and most importantly, did not distinguish between words and symbols, suggesting that this N1 specialization stems from experience with words.
3. Some of the kids, the ones with high letter knowledge, did have an N1 that differentiated between letters and symbols. However, the pattern was different from adults. While adults had the strongest effect on the left side of the brain, these children showed an effect on the right side.
So in conclusion, the N1 specialization seems to be related to reading. However, there seem to be some intermediate steps in the development of the specialization. At least in an early stage, the right hemisphere is involved, and then the processing becomes more left lateralized.
Maurer U, Brem S, Bucher K, & Brandeis D (2005). Emerging neurophysiological specialization for letter strings. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 17 (10), 1532-52 PMID: 16269095
What is it that transforms a page full of words into an experience that moves us and leaves us changed? K. Okada From Words to Brain
... Read more »
Maurer U, Brem S, Bucher K, & Brandeis D. (2005) Emerging neurophysiological specialization for letter strings. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 17(10), 1532-52. PMID: 16269095
- April 7, 2011
- 03:13 PM
- 613 views
Introduction to the N170 Response to Words
by Livia in Reading and Word Recognition Research
Accessibility: Intermediate-Advanced
This month is N170 month. I'm going to be going through a bunch of papers by Urs Maurer on the N170 ERP component and how it relates to word processing. EEG is not my specialty, so hopefully I won't mess anything up.
For this post, we'll start with the basics. The N170 is an ERP component measured in EEG experiments. The N means that it is a negative potential, and the 170 means that it peaks roughly at around 170 ms, although the timing can vary. The N170 tends to be elicited by certain categories of visual images (like faces), and is enhanced for categories for which the subject has some expertise (for example, enhanced N170 response for bird experts when viewing birds).
This last characteristic makes the N170 helpful for studying word processing. Urs Maurer and colleagues tested adults by showing them words, pseudowords, and symbol strings*. The adults showed a greater N170 to words than symbol strings, which would be consistent with an expertise for words acquired over years of reading. The N170 was also more left lateralized for words than to symbol strings, which is not surprising given the general left lateralization of language. Also, the N170 seems to be stronger over the inferior occipital temporal channels, close to the visual word form area.
So those are the basics for the N170 in normal reading adults. It's a useful tool for studying word processing in populations like children and people with dyslexia, so that is where we will continue.
*the task was to detect repetitions
Maurer U, Brandeis D, & McCandliss BD (2005). Fast, visual specialization for reading in English revealed by the topography of the N170 ERP response. Behavioral and brain functions : BBF, 1 PMID: 16091138
What is it that transforms a page full of words into an experience that moves us and leaves us changed? K. Okada From Words to Brain
... Read more »
Maurer U, Brandeis D, & McCandliss BD. (2005) Fast, visual specialization for reading in English revealed by the topography of the N170 ERP response. Behavioral and brain functions : BBF, 13. PMID: 16091138
- March 22, 2011
- 11:34 PM
- 763 views
Why Justin Timberlake Should Avoid Transitive Verbs
by Livia Blackburne in A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing
As writers, we're always trying to find words that perfectly capture our meaning. "I broke the cookie jar" has a different feel than "The cookie jar broke." But does it really matter? Would the average reader really notice the difference? A recent study suggests that subtle wording changes can have real psychological effects.
Psychologist from Stanford University were interested in the distinction between agentive (a.k.a. transitive) or nonagentive (a.k.a. nontransitive) verbs. For example, in the example above, my role in the cookie jar mishap is emphasized in the agentive version ("I broke the cookie jar") while it is completely ignored in the nonagentive ("The cookie jar broke") version. So how much does wording matter?
The researchers wrote two versions of a report describing a restaurant fire. One used agentive verbs, while the other version used nonagentive verbs. Here's the actual passage used:
Agentive version:
Mrs. Smith and her friends were finishing a lovely dinner at their favorite restaurant. After they settled the bill, they decided to head to a nearby café for coffee and dessert. Mrs. Smith followed her friends and she stood up, she flopped her napkin on the centerpiece candle. She had ignited the napkin! As Mrs. Smith reached to grab the napkin, she toppled the candle and ignited the whole tablecloth too! As she jumped back, she overturned the table and ignited the carpet, as well. Hearing her desperate cries, the restaurant staff hurried over and heroically managed to put the fire out before anyone got hurt.
Nonagentive version:
Mrs. Smith and her friends were finishing a lovely dinner at their favorite restaurant. After they settled the bill, they decided to head to a nearby café for coffee and dessert. Mrs. Smith followed her friends and she stood up, her napkin flopped on the centerpiece candle. The napkin had ignited! As Mrs. Smith reached to grab the napkin, the candle toppled and the whole tablecloth ignited too! As she jumped back, the table overturned and the carpet ignited, as well. Hearing her desperate cries, the restaurant staff hurried over and heroically managed to put the fire out before anyone got hurt.
Participants got either one version or the other and had to answer questions regarding how much Mrs. Smith should be blamed and how much she should pay the restaurant for damages. And here's the interesting part. Participants who got the agentive version thought that Mrs. Smith should pay $935.17 on average. This is $247 more than the amount assigned by the participants who read the non-agentive version ($688.75)
This is interesting, but how far can you push it? The paragraph in this experiment was the only source of information participants had about the restaurant fire. Would language be as important if participants had other sources of information?
To answer this question, the experimenters took advantage of the infamous wardrobe malfunction between Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson at the 2004 Super Bowl (yeah, remember that?). For those of you unfamiliar with the event, you can watch it here.
In this second experiment, participants watched the video and read a description of the event (the order of the video and written description were counterbalanced between subjects). The description was either transitive "In the final dance move, he unfastened a snap and tore part of the bodice! He slid the cover right off Jackson's chest!", or non-transitive “In this final dance move, a snap unfastened and part of the bodice tore! The cover slid right off Jackson's chest!"
Even though participants watched the video, language still had an effect on perceived blame, increasing both the rating of Timberlake's fault in the event and the amount of money participants thought he should be fined.
So writers, use your verbs carefully, and make sure you're saying exactly what you mean.
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Fausey CM, & Boroditsky L (2010). Subtle linguistic cues influence perceived blame and financial liability. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 17 (5), 644-50 PMID: 21037161
"The reader begins to understand how his own experiences color the black-and-white text laid out before him." Gloria McGee review of From Words to Brain
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Fausey CM, & Boroditsky L. (2010) Subtle linguistic cues influence perceived blame and financial liability. Psychonomic bulletin , 17(5), 644-50. PMID: 21037161
- February 27, 2011
- 11:13 PM
- 397 views
Brain Measures Predict Future Improvement in Children With Dyslexia
by Livia in Reading and Word Recognition Research
Accessibility: Intermediate
Disclaimer: My PI is an author on this paper.
There is a lot of variability in outcomes for children diagnosed with dyslexia. Some children improve greatly over time, while others don't. Today, we're looking at a paper that asks whether it's possible to predict improvement in children with dyslexia.
Fumiko Hoeft and colleagues scanned children with and without dyslexia while performing a word rhyme task. They also tested the children on several reading measures. Two and half years later, they retested the children again on the same reading measures. Some of the children improved, while others didn't . The question then, is whether there is something from the brain scans or test scores in the first session that can predict performance 2 1/2 years later.
The researchers found two brain measures that predicted improvement in reading skills: greater white matter integrity in the right superior longitudinal fasciculus, and activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus during the rhyming task. Note that these regions are not your typical language regions. In fact, they are the right hemisphere counterparts of language processing regions in typical readers. Also, these didn’t correlate with reading improvement in control readers.This suggests that rather than imitating what typical readers are doing, the dyslexics who improve are bringing in compensatory mechanisms.
So if we have a dyslexic child, how accurately can we predict future improvement? The researchers found that brain data from those two regions by themselves predicted reading gains with 72% accuracy. When the researchers used data from the entire brain, they predicted reading gains with 90% accuracy. (Chance would be 50%. The researchers were trying to predict whether a child’s improvement was below or above the median improvement for the entire group.)
These results are an interesting case of brain data giving us more information the behavioral measures. None of the behavioral measures predicted which children will greet could improve, but the brain data did.
One might ask how useful these results would be for dyslexics. On the one hand, any information is helpful. On the other, if you are in the group predicted to not show improvements, would you really want to know? One good thing about this type of research is that perhaps if we keep going in this direction, we might be able to not only predict improvement, but predict improvement to different types of interventions, thus leading to better treatment.
Hoeft F, McCandliss BD, Black JM, Gantman A, Zakerani N, Hulme C, Lyytinen H, Whitfield-Gabrieli S, Glover GH, Reiss AL, & Gabrieli JD (2011). Neural systems predicting long-term outcome in dyslexia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108 (1), 361-6 PMID: 21173250
What is it that transforms a page full of words into an experience that moves us and leaves us changed? K. Okada From Words to Brain
... Read more »
Hoeft F, McCandliss BD, Black JM, Gantman A, Zakerani N, Hulme C, Lyytinen H, Whitfield-Gabrieli S, Glover GH, Reiss AL.... (2011) Neural systems predicting long-term outcome in dyslexia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108(1), 361-6. PMID: 21173250
- February 21, 2011
- 11:02 PM
- 1,037 views
Men Prefer Reading About Men, and So Do Women
by Livia Blackburne in A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing
Note: Congratulations to J. J. Brown for winning a copy of The Forest For the Trees. I will be contacting you for your mailing address. Also, I'm doing a Goodreads question and answer session on reading, writing, neuroscience, and psychology. If you're a Goodreads member, come on by. And finally, remember to submit entries for the guest post contest.
Would The Hunger Games have made it big if Katniss had been a boy? If Pride and Prejudice had been about five Bennett brothers and the proud (and wealthy) Miss Darcy, would readers still swoon? Keith from On Fiction recently covered a study that speaks to these questions.
The authors of the study wondered whether a protagonist’s gender affects the reading experience. They took passages from popular novels and presented them to readers either in the original form or with the protagonist’s gender switched. The researchers then had male and female readers read the text and answer questions evaluating the passage.
To give you an idea of what this is like, here is a sample paragraph from the experiment.
Original excerpt from The World Unseen:
Even lying on the roof, with only the cheap slates in her line of vision, she could tell that it was a police car. There was a carelessness in the skid of the tires over the sandy road, and in the way the handbrake was pulled up while the wheels were still turning, leaving a slight screech hanging in the heavy air. She stopped hammering, and peered over the edge of the ease. They had parked so close to the restaurant door that they had broken one of the flowerpots Jacob had planted only the day before.
"Bastards," she said, under her breath.
Modified excerpt:
Even lying on the roof, with only the cheap slates in his line of vision, he could tell that it was a police car. There was a carelessness in the skid of the tires over the sandy road, and in the way the handbrake was pulled up while the wheels were still turning, leaving a slight screech hanging in the heavy air. He stopped hammering, and peered over the edge of the ease. They had parked so close to the restaurant door that they had broken one of the flowerpots Jacob had planted only the day before.
"Bastards," he said, under his breath.
Did the passages read differently to you? Did one seem more interesting or more literary?
Turns out that both male and female readers both preferred male protagonists. They were more likely to agree with the sentences, "I feel I can understand and appreciate the main character and situation in the story" and "I would like to continue reading to find out what happens next in the story" when the main character was male.
Why would this be? Here are some random guesses:
1. The subjects in the study were from Western industrialized countries (Canada and Germany). While Western countries have made progress in gender equality, males still tend to be the dominant gender. Maybe this would be incentive for both men and women to identify better with the males.
2. Perhaps it had to do with whether the protagonists matched gender expectations. It's possible that in the passages used, the characters acted in a more stereotypically male way. The authors did note that two of the four original passages had confident, assertive women as protagonists (the other two passages started out with male progtagonists). Like it or not, confidence and assertiveness are often seen as masculine characteristics. It would be interesting to have readers rate the masculinity or femininity of the protagonists in these passages and see if that relates to whether they liked them.
3. The authors give a related explanation. It's rather complicated and I’m not quite sure I believe it, but the idea is this: People generally view men's actions as due to situational factors, while they view women's actions as due to personality or character. Since the fundamental attribution error says that we see ourselves as situationally motivated, we identify more with male characters.
All in all, this is an interesting result, and somewhat disturbing if it turns out to be true for books beyond the scope of this experiment. What are your thoughts?
Hope you enjoyed the post! To get regular updates from this blog, please use the subscribe options on the left sidebar.
Bortolussi, M., Dixon, P., & Sopčák, P. (2010). Gender and reading Poetics, 38 (3), 299-318 DOI: 10.1016/j.poetic.2010.03.004
"This is the sort of subject where all the answers give rise to more questions and this very readable book takes you through a lot of them in quite a short space" Steve Wales review of From Words to Brain
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Bortolussi, M., Dixon, P., & Sopčák, P. (2010) Gender and reading. Poetics, 38(3), 299-318. DOI: 10.1016/j.poetic.2010.03.004
- January 27, 2011
- 07:01 PM
- 399 views
Don't Assume that fMRI and MEG Will Give You Comparable Results
by Livia in Reading and Word Recognition Research
Accessibility: Intermediate/Advanced
There are three common methods of studying brain function in normal human populations: fMRI, MEG, an EEG. There is surprisingly little crosstalk between the techniques, mostly due to practical issues.For better...
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Vartiainen J, Liljeström M, Koskinen M, Renvall H, & Salmelin R. (2011) Functional magnetic resonance imaging blood oxygenation level-dependent signal and magnetoencephalography evoked responses yield different neural functionality in reading. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 31(3), 1048-58. PMID: 21248130
- January 27, 2011
- 12:36 PM
- 567 views
Typing vs. Longhand: Does it Affect Your Writing?
by Livia Blackburne in A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing
Do you write longhand or on a computer? How does this affect your writing process? I ran across a study with interesting results.
The researchers wanted to know how computer writing differed from pen and paper writing. They recruited university faculty and graduate students to write two reports, one on a computer and one on pen and paper. The participants were given background information for the reports (about a new system of bank charges and new company regulations) two days beforehand. When they came in for the experiment, they had three hours to write each report, and the researchers used keystroke tracking and video cameras to record their progress.
Here are some of their observations:
1. The computer writers took half as much time to write the first draft than pen and paper writers.
2. The computer writers wrote texts that were approximately 20% longer.
3. The computer writers had a more fragmented writing process than the pen and paper writers. They paused more, and more of their pauses were in the middle of a sentence (as opposed to sentence or paragraph boundaries). However, in the instances when pen and paper writers did pause, it was for a longer period of time than the computer writers.
4. Computer writers made 80% of the revisions in their first draft, as compared to pen and paper writers, who made only 50% of revisions in the first draft. Pen and paper writers tended to wait until a draft was complete and then revised systematically from beginning to end. Computer writers revised in smaller chunks throughout the writing process.
The authors observed that pen and paper writing seemed a more systematic and planned out process. This makes sense because it's harder to make a change on pencil and paper. With computer writing, you can just start writing and make changes as you go along.
After the researchers looked at average behavior of the entire group, they analyzed the writers as individuals. They classified the writers into different writing profiles, including nonstop writers who hardly revised at all, writers who revised more in their first draft, writers who revised more in their second draft, and initial planners who spent a lot of time planning up front but did little revising afterwards.
The researchers found that there was quite a lot of variability between writing styles, even within the same modality (computer/pen). The researchers also found that almost everybody changed their writing style when switching from pen to computer. The participants didn't all change their writing styles in the same way, but almost all of them did something different. This makes me think that it’s worth experimenting with yourself in different writing modalities, just to see how it affects you personally.
I kind of wish these researchers had to analyzed the final products to see if the modality affected the complexity of the sentence structure or the ideas presented. If anybody knows more about this, please let me know. And also, I wonder how the experiment would look for people using voice recognition software. :-)
Have you tried experimenting with different writing modalities? How has that worked for you? Which modality do you prefer?
VANWAES, L., & SCHELLENS, P. (2003). Writing profiles: the effect of the writing mode on pausing and revision patterns of experienced writers Journal of Pragmatics, 35 (6), 829-853 DOI: 10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00121-2
"I found myself quoting it repeatedly for several weeks after reading it." K. Okada From Words to Brain
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VANWAES, L., & SCHELLENS, P. (2003) Writing profiles: the effect of the writing mode on pausing and revision patterns of experienced writers. Journal of Pragmatics, 35(6), 829-853. DOI: 10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00121-2
- January 24, 2011
- 06:41 PM
- 422 views
Recycling Neurons for Reading
by Livia in Reading and Word Recognition Research
Accesibility: Intermediate-Advanced
Our brains have evolved to be good at certain things: seeing, hearing, learning language, and interacting with other similar brains, to name a few examples. But say you want it to do something new – look at symbols...
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Dehaene S, Pegado F, Braga LW, Ventura P, Nunes Filho G, Jobert A, Dehaene-Lambertz G, Kolinsky R, Morais J, & Cohen L. (2010) How learning to read changes the cortical networks for vision and language. Science (New York, N.Y.), 330(6009), 1359-64. PMID: 21071632
- December 21, 2010
- 01:39 PM
- 696 views
What Mirror Images and Foreign Scripts Tell Us About the Reading Brain
by Livia Blackburne in A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing
Here’s a simple exercise. Count the number of times the letter ‘A’ appears in the sentences below. Easy enough, but, there's a catch. You have to do it without reading the words.
Ready?
One day, after Little Red Riding hood woke up, mother called her into the kitchen and handed her a basket of cakes and pastries. “Take these to grandmother. She's sick, and perhaps these cakes will make her feel better.”
If you have been reading for years, you probably found it difficult, if not impossible, to keep yourself from reading. You may have kept yourself from understanding the sentence, but odds are, you probably understood some of the words. When I try to do it, I have to blur my vision because if any letters come into focus, I automatically decode their meaning. For most adults in literate countries, reading is so well practiced that it’s reflexive. If the words are there, it's impossible not to read.
Now think about this for a minute. Here we have a completely artificial task. It’s not part of our biology – humans aren’t born with an innate reading reflex. If you raise a child on a desert island, he'll learn to eat, walk, and sleep, but odds are he won't spontaneously pick up a stick and start writing. For most of human history, written language didn't even exist. Reading as a cultural invention has only been around for a few thousand years, a snap of a finger in evolutionary terms. We have not, and will not within any of our lifetimes, evolve a genetic program for reading. Yet our brains are so adept at this skill that it becomes as reflexive as seeing itself.
That we are able to become so skilled at reading is a testament to the flexibility and plasticity of our brains. Of course, we don't start from scratch. We already have fine tuned machinery for similar tasks – we’re very good at seeing, and the trick is just to retune that machinery to the demands of reading. These demands are multiple. On one hand there’s the mapping from sound to symbol, and getting our visual and language systems to work together. But even on a basic visual level, we have to somewhat reprogram our visual systems.
For example, imagine a horse. Now in your head, imagine that the horse is standing in front of a mirror, and you're looking at its reflection. What does it look like now? Of course, it still looks like a horse. Mirror invariance, the idea that something flipped sideways is still the same object, is a core property of our visual systems, and for good reason. Imagine how confusing it would be if every time we saw something from the opposite direction, it became something different. But now, imagine the lowercase letter b. What's the mirror image of b? Now it's a completely different letter: d. In most writing systems, left-right orientation matters. When a character is flipped, we see it as something else.
So what happens when you take a brain used to making mirror generalizations and teach it to read? Any parents of school-age children could tell you. When you're first learning, you make lots of mistakes. Mirror reversal is overwhelmingly common in beginning writers, from the occasional flipped letter to whole words written as a mirror image. Kids do this spontaneously. They never actually see flipped letters in the world around them. It's as if their brains are too powerful for the task. They generalize letters to other orientations because that's what they've done with every single other object they've seen. You have to learn to recognize a letter only in a certain orientation .
With practice however, we do retrain our brains to read, and as you saw when we did the letter counting exercise, we become quite good at it. With such an ingrained skill, it makes you wonder if you can see its footprints in the brain. Does the brain of a reader look different from that of a nonreader?
To answer this question, we must first step back and see how our brain’s visual regions are organized. Much of the research in this area has been conducted by Nancy Kanwisher, a psychologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her primary tool is fMRI, an imaging technology that allows neuroscientists to measure blood flow in the brain as people perform tasks. Since blood flow is tied to brain activity, fMRI allows us to see the patches of brain involved in different tasks. Kanwisher’s experiments often involve participants looking at different categories of images. By looking for areas that respond more to one category than another, she can find brain regions specialized in dealing with a certain image type. Using this technique, Kanwisher has found many specialized regions: a face area, a place area, and even an area that responds preferentially to body parts. It makes sense that these areas would exist. As a species, our survival has long depended on our ability to recognize and process faces, places, and body parts, so it's not surprising that we would have developed brain regions specialized for those things.
But what about words? Would they have their own region? A few years ago, Chris Baker, a researcher in Kanwisher’s lab, conducted the same type of experiment to look for a word region. Baker scanned native English speakers while they looked at different types of images, including words, line drawings, and Hebrew letters. They found that most participants did indeed have a brain region that responded more to words than objects.
This is rather remarkable, that the brain would develop a specialized area for an artificial category of images. But to fully interpret the results, we need more proof that this region developed as a result of learning to read. It could be that the region is there simply by coincidence, that the area is responding to some visual characteristic of print words regardless of whether a person is literate or not. To follow up, Baker tested monolingual English readers and bilingual English/Hebrew readers on the same experiment. If reading experience does alter the brain, you would expect English readers and English/Hebrew readers to have different brain responses to Hebrew. And this is indeed what Baker found. The bilingual readers had high activation for both Hebrew and English in their word region, while monolingual English readers only had high activation for English. Experience with a written language does indeed shape the brain’s response to that language.
Note from Livia: The above passage is an excerpt from my essay From Words to Brain, which follows the reading process from the moment a reader sees words on a page, through understanding the story and ultimately extracting meaning. If you know anyone who's interested in this topic, please do pass the excerpt along to them. :-)
The essay is available from:
Amazon (kindle)
Amazon UK (kindle)
Smashwords (various electronic formats, including epub and printable pdf)
Bookrepublic (Italian translation, epub)
Baker CI, Liu J, Wald LL, Kwong KK, Benner T, & Kanwisher N (2007). Visual word processing and experiential origins of functional selectivity in human extrastriate cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104 (21), 9087-92 PMID: 17502592
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Baker CI, Liu J, Wald LL, Kwong KK, Benner T, & Kanwisher N. (2007) Visual word processing and experiential origins of functional selectivity in human extrastriate cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(21), 9087-92. PMID: 17502592
- November 4, 2010
- 11:27 AM
- 887 views
Erotic Romance, Condoms, and Social Responsibility
by Livia Blackburne in A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing
Hey folks. Sorry for the sporadic posting lately. My writing time for the last two months has been tied up on a sekrit project. In true graduate student fashion, I attacked the project with some top sekrit procrastination, and things got pretty hectic towards the end. But that should be wrapping up soon.
But enough about me. Let's talk about something more interesting. Like erotic romance novels. And condoms. And of course, science.
Raymond Moore at On Fiction recently described a study about the influence of romance novels on condom use. Erotic romance as a genre generally focuses on spontaneous and passionate sex. Since rubbers don’t exactly scream passion, love scenes rarely mention their use.
Researchers at Northwestern University were interested in how novels affected attitudes toward condom use in readers. They surveyed college students about their reading habits and found that students who read more romance novels had more negative attitudes towards condom use and less intention to use condoms.
But correlation does not necessarily equal causation. To prove that romance novels actually influence condom behavior, you need a controlled experiment. And here’s where we get to one of the more amusing psychology experiments in recent history.
Participants were recruited to come into the lab and read once a week for three weeks. One group of participants read unedited romance novel excerpts. For example, here's an actual excerpt used in the study.
He touched, hardly touching at all, and left her weak. His mouth, gliding like a cool breeze over her flesh, was rapture… When she sighed, he brought his lips back to hers.
He undressed her slowly, bringing the gown down inch by inch, wallowing in the delight of warming the newly bared skin. Fascinated with each Trevor he brought her, he lingered. Then he took her gently over the first crest.
Don't you feel for the poor research assistant who had to read through romance novels looking for these passages? It's a hard job, but somebody's got to do it. (No pun intended. Get your mind out of the gutter.)
In the safe sex condition, participants read the same thing, except that a paragraph about condom use was added. For example, the following paragraph was inserted between the previous two.
He pulled back slightly so he can look at her. “Should we use protection?” He asked gently. She nodded at him, her face warm, as he unwrapped the bright foil. Pleased with his concern for her, she smiled at him and kissed his throat.
So what did the scientists find? After just three sessions of reading, participants in the safe sex condition had more positive attitudes about condoms. The safe sex participants also expressed marginally more intention to use condoms in the future.
So that's an amusing study. But now let's step back now and think little more seriously. The study suggests that what people read has some measurable effect on their behavior and lifestyle.
Here’s a question then. What, if any, obligation does an author have to avoid promoting dangerous or self-destructive habits in their fiction? Now this question applies to all authors, but I’m particularly interested in what authors who write for young adults have to say, since those readers are probably the most active in building their worldviews. And I'm not just thinking about condoms. What about other themes, like violence, destructive relationships, etc.?
Discussions about morality in fiction usually go in the direction of, “Readers can tell when they're being preached to and it makes for bad stories.” Most can agree that hitting readers over the head with a moral is not the way to go, but I’m asking about more subtle influences. What actions and situations do we present as sexy? What do we present as boring? And is this complicated by the fact that self-destructive/unsafe behaviors often make for the most exciting stories?
I don't have a good answer either way, but I would like to hear your thoughts. What social responsibility do we have as writers? Or do you think we only responsible to our muses?
Diekman, A., McDonald, M., & Gardner, W. (2000). LOVE MEANS NEVER HAVING TO BE CAREFUL. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 24 (2), 179-188 DOI: 10.1111/j.1471-6402.2000.tb00199.x
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Diekman, A., McDonald, M., & Gardner, W. (2000) LOVE MEANS NEVER HAVING TO BE CAREFUL. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 24(2), 179-188. DOI: 10.1111/j.1471-6402.2000.tb00199.x
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If you don't have a blog, you can still use our site to learn about fascinating developments in cutting-edge research from around the world.
