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I'm a fourth year doctoral student in the Developmental Psychology program at the University of Southern California. I do research on the way that the environment interacts with biology in producing innate or learned behavior.
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- April 19, 2010
- 07:15 AM
- 15,508 views
Monday Pets: Why Do Dogs Push Their Food Bowls Around?
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Dog owners have a way - sometimes within DAYS of first becoming dog owners - of becoming EXPERTS on animal behavior. It blows my mind. These are people who observe their animals displaying interesting or curious behaviors and make up things like "dogs like being put in tiny cages, actually, because of when their ancestors were pack animals and lived in caves."
Figure 1: Do they look happy to you? I didn't think so.
That said, a reader sent me an email inquiring about a particular behavior that she has observed in her female poodle. This reader is not one of the above-described self-proclaimed experts. This reader is generally awesome.
She writes:
My dog is pushing around her food, her food dish, or anything in the area. She noses it around every time before she eats, sometimes for a significant period of time. This video is of her pushing the towel under the dish around (which I put there to stop her from pushing the dish entirely across the tile floor and spilling food everyone). Sometimes she noses the food around and doesn't even bother to eat any. What is this all about?
Figure 2: "Shug"
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Bradshaw JW. (2006) The evolutionary basis for the feeding behavior of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) and cats (Felis catus). The Journal of nutrition, 136(7 Suppl). PMID: 16772461
Wells, D. (2003) Lateralised behaviour in the domestic dog, Canis familiaris. Behavioural Processes, 61(1-2), 27-35. DOI: 10.1016/S0376-6357(02)00161-4
LUPFERJOHNSON, G., & ROSS, J. (2007) Dogs acquire food preferences from interacting with recently fed conspecifics. Behavioural Processes, 74(1), 104-106. DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2006.09.006
- February 28, 2011
- 09:45 AM
- 1,435 views
Dogs Can Hear How Big You Are
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Lots of animals are well aware that bigger means scarier. In stressful or aggressive situations, for example, the hair or fur of chimpanzees, rats, cats, and even humans stands up on end (in humans, given our lack of fur, this results in goose bumps) in an effort to dissuade a potential attack. Elephant seals use a display called "rearing up" to make themselves look bigger - as if they need to look bigger in the first place!
Since some animals tend to be good at looking bigger than they truly are, visual cues may not actually be a reliable method of sizing up another individual. In addition, using vision alone to determine body size is error-prone due to distance and visibility. It would seem prudent, then, that some animals would need an alternative mechanism to use in determining body size. It seems as if domestic dogs have just such a method: they listen.
Sound is also prone to distortion, though. From the right spot, one wolf can sound like an entire pack, thanks to the reflection of echoes off canyon walls. However, previous studies have indicated that sound remains a reliable indicator of body size, and that acoustic signals are fairly resistant to distortion over long distances.
A previous experiment of rhesus monkeys showed that they were able to match an given sound - an aggressive call from another rhesus - to a images of other monkeys based on size. However, a critical flaw in this experiment was that the sounds and images both also varied with age. It is possible, therefore, that the rhesus monkeys were determining the approximate age of the monkey in the auditory playback, and the approximate age of the monkeys in the images, and simply matching them. Whatever the method, though, it seems likely non-human primates are able to match auditory and visual information.
This left Anna M. Taylor and colleagues from the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex with several questions: is this ability limited to primates, or is it more widespread among mammals? And after ability to use age as a means of matching sounds and images, would mammals still be successful on this sort of task? They knew that domestic dogs use other dogs' growls in their decision-making processes, so dogs would be a good non-primate species to test.
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Anna M. Taylor, David Reby, & Karen McComb. (2011) Cross Modal Perception of Body Size in Domestic Dogs (Canis familiaris). PLoS ONE, 6(2). info:/doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0017069
- September 23, 2010
- 11:56 AM
- 1,410 views
Origins of Morality: Puppet-Show Style!
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Morality and convention are so mired in culture that it may seem near impossible to determine the extent to which biology and environment give rise to it. And yet it is possible to investigate the evolutionary origins of morality. Research with infants - especially pre-verbal infants - who have not yet been sufficiently exposed to most cultural institutions, can provide an opportunity to determine what the evolutionary and developmental building blocks are for complex moral reasoning.
Human adults evaluate individuals very quickly, on the basis of both physical and behavioral traits and characteristics. What are the origins of this capacity? One group of researchers wanted to determine if preverbal infants would distinguish individuals that might help them from individuals that might be harmful. In this study, 6- and 10-month-old infants watched a short puppet show in which a "climber" shape was struggling to climb up a hill. In some trials, the climber is helped by another shape, and in other trials, the climber is hindered by a third shape. By using simultaneously two methods common in infant studies, the researchers attempted to discern whether young infants were evaluating other individuals on the basis of their behavior.
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Hamlin JK, Wynn K, & Bloom P. (2007) Social evaluation by preverbal infants. Nature, 450(7169), 557-9. PMID: 18033298
- February 28, 2010
- 12:15 AM
- 1,314 views
Are Dolphins People Too?
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
The blogosphere is all a-twitter with talk of the recent commentary in Science that dolphins should be considered people. Well, sort of people. Non-human people.
On the heels of the incident at SeaWorld in Florida in which a trainer was killed by one of the killer whales, this is especially an important issue to consider.
Frequent commenter [...]... Read more »
Grimm, D. (2010) Is a Dolphin a Person?. Science, 327(5969), 1070-1071. DOI: 10.1126/science.327.5969.1070-c
Marino, L. (2004) Dolphin cognition. Current Biology, 14(21). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2004.10.010
- November 24, 2010
- 02:53 PM
- 1,300 views
The Social Cognition of Your Thanksgiving Dinner
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Even still, we tend to think of the turkey as a fairly unintelligent bird, skilled at little more than waddling around, emitting the occasional "gobble," and frying up golden-brown-and-delicious. But...what if I told you that the domestic turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) could actually be quite clever, at least when it comes to social cognition? Apocryphal or not, Ben Franklin may have been on to something with the "Bird of Courage."
Head on over to Scientific American to catch my latest contribution to their Guest Blog: Turkey talk: The social cognition of your Thanksgiving dinner
Buchwalder, T. (2003). A brief report on aggressive interactions within and between groups of domestic turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 84 (1), 75-80 DOI: 10.1016/S0168-1591(03)00149-7 Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Buchwalder, T. (2003) A brief report on aggressive interactions within and between groups of domestic turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo). Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 84(1), 75-80. DOI: 10.1016/S0168-1591(03)00149-7
- March 8, 2011
- 11:45 AM
- 1,285 views
Defending Your Territory: It Pays To Have a Bigger Brain
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Welcome to the second installment of Animal Territoriality Week. Today, we'll look at a case where differences in territory size can have implications for neuroanatomy. If you missed part 1 of Animal Territoriality week, check it out here.
Let's say you have two very very closely related species. You might even call them congeneric, because they are from the same taxonomic genus. In most ways, these two species are very similar, but they differ behaviorally in some very big ways. Might those behavioral differences predict neurobiological differences?
The different species of the genus microtus display the full range of mammalian mating systems: some species are entirely monogamous, with two individuals mating for life, while other species are fully polygamous, with males having multiple female mates.
Meet the monogamous pine vole (microtus pinetorum).
Meet the polygamous meadow vole (microtus pennsylvanicus).
The difference in mating style leads to a very important difference in spatial memory requirements: for monogamous species, males and females both tend to live their lives in areas of land roughly the same size. For polygamous species, however, males' home ranges are much larger in spatial extent than the home range of the females (as well as the typical home ranges of the monogamous male voles). This makes sense: the polygamous male's home range needs to include the smaller home ranges of multiple female mates.
On the left, a schematic diagram for the home ranges of monogamous voles. On the right, a schematic for the home ranges of polygamous voles. Solid pink blobs for females, dotted red lines for males. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Jacobs, L. (1990) Evolution of Spatial Cognition: Sex-Specific Patterns of Spatial Behavior Predict Hippocampal Size. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 87(16), 6349-6352. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.87.16.6349
- September 27, 2010
- 11:30 AM
- 1,280 views
Children and Their Pets
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Your humble narrator finds himself sick with a cold, so here's a post from the archives.
There is considerable research on how children interact with other children and with adults, and how child development can be influenced by those interactions. But research on children's interactions with non-human animals seem to be limited. Given how ubiquitous pets are in the homes of children (at least, in WEIRD cultures), it is somewhat surprising that there hasn't been more work on the way pet ownership might affect child development.
According to the US Humane Society:
There are approximately 77.5 million owned dogs in the United States
Thirty-nine percent of U.S. households own at least one dog
Most owners (67 percent) own one dog
Twenty-four percent of owners own two dogs
Nine percent of owners own three or more dogs
On average, dog owners spent $225 on veterinary visits (vaccine, well visits) annually
There are approximately 93.6 million owned cats in the United States
Thirty-three percent of U.S. households (or 38.2 million) own at least one cat
Fifty-six percent of owners own more than one cat
On average, owners have two cats (2.45)
Cat owners spent an average of $203 on routine veterinary visits
Developmental scientist Gail F. Melson noted this paucity in research in a 2003 review paper in The American Behavioral Scientist. Melson points out that most parents report that they acquired their family pets "for the children," and given the ubiquity of child-pet bonding and interaction, she suggests that it is an important area for child development research to investigate. She goes through several topic areas in child development and examines what has been learned, or could be learned, by investigating human-animal bonding.
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Melson, G. (2003) Child Development and the Human-Companion Animal Bond. American Behavioral Scientist, 47(1), 31-39. DOI: 10.1177/0002764203255210
- May 24, 2010
- 08:30 AM
- 1,248 views
Obedience, Longevity, and Domestication: Why I'm Confused (Monday Pets)
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Lately, a paper to be published in the June edition of the American Naturalist has been getting some attention. The findings that are getting reported out of this paper didn't make sense to me, but I wondered if this was an issue with accuracy in reporting. So I went and found the paper. Turns out that the reporting is accurate, its the actual findings from the paper that confuse me. I really wanted to make sense of this paper, so I've been waiting a while to blog about it. But I can't make sense of one key finding.
Figure 1: An artist's rendition of me, being confused. If, you know, I were an otter.
But before we get to the confused, let's just review the paper, shall we?
The basic finding is that personality, energy expenditure, and longevity are correlated in domestic dogs. Dogs are a really good species to study the potential relationships between psychological attributes (like obedience), physical attributes (like body mass), physiological attributes (such as energy expenditure or metabolism), and average length of life. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Careau, V., Réale, D., Humphries, M., & Thomas, D. (2010) The Pace of Life under Artificial Selection: Personality, Energy Expenditure, and Longevity Are Correlated in Domestic Dogs. The American Naturalist, 175(6), 753-758. DOI: 10.1086/652435
- April 15, 2010
- 07:06 AM
- 1,246 views
What Is Beauty? Your Kids' Newest Art Critic
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Do animals create art? So far, this seems a uniquely human ability.
But do animals have a sense of the aesthetically pleasing? What about the ability to judge and critique art? Can an animal decide if a given work of art is beautiful or ugly? What is beauty in the first place? All good questions.
Shigeru Watanabe of Keio University in Tokyo wanted to investigate the questions, with pigeons. Did he introduce them to the works of Picasso? Or Rembrandt? Romero Britto? No. He used art created by children.
Figure 1: Your kid's newest art critic.
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Watanabe, S. (2009) Pigeons can discriminate “good” and “bad” paintings by children. Animal Cognition, 13(1), 75-85. DOI: 10.1007/s10071-009-0246-8
- April 21, 2010
- 07:30 AM
- 1,240 views
Intelligence, Cancer, and Eyjafjallajökull
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
This seems to have become unofficial volcano week, here at ScienceBlogs. If you haven't been following the coverage of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption at Erik Klemetti's Eruptions blog, you should consider doing so. Also, Dr. Isis has a post on how the eruption has fouled up all nuclear imaging plans at her place of research, and Ethan explains how volcanic lightening works.
Our benevolent overlords have further commented: "Eyjafjallajökull's ill temper has been an unexpected object lesson in the complexity and interconnectedness of our environment, technology, and social networks." To that I say: yes! But what about cognition and intelligence?
You say: what do cognition and intelligence have to do with the volcano? I say: everything. Kind of. Let's start at the beginning. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Susan Claire Edwards,, Wieslaw Jedrychowski,, Maria Butscher,, David Camann,, Agnieszka Kieltyka,, Elzbieta Mroz,, Elzbieta Flak,, Zhigang Li,, Shuang Wang,, Virginia Rauh,.... (2010) Prenatal Exposure to Airborne Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons and Children’s Intelligence at Age 5 in a Prospective Cohort Study in Poland. Environmental Health Perspectives. info:/10.1289/ehp.0901070
Skupińska K, Misiewicz I, & Kasprzycka-Guttman T. (2004) Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons: physicochemical properties, environmental appearance and impact on living organisms. Acta poloniae pharmaceutica, 61(3), 233-40. PMID: 15481250
- August 27, 2010
- 12:00 PM
- 1,240 views
Silver Spoon Hyenas: Maternal Social Status Affects Male Reproductive Success
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Figure 1: A mother hyena with her cubs.
Early developmental experiences can have significant implications for the growth, behavior, survival, and reproductive success of an individual. In many species, one of the most important factors that affects an individual's early development is the maternal environment. However, mothers not only provide an environment for their offspring, but also half of their genes, making it difficult to separate the effects of nature and nurture when investigating developmental outcomes in the offspring. Moreover, because male mammals usually disperse from the social groups into which they were born, it is difficult to determine how the maternal environment might influence the reproductive success of sons.
In species with marked sexual dimorphism, such as the red deer (Cervus elaphus), male fitness is related to overall body size and fighting ability. In this case, it is somewhat obvious that a mother of high social status who is able to provide her sons with more resources will result in larger, stronger males. However, in species with less sexual dimorphism, in which male reproductive success is not determined on the basis of body size or fighting ability, it is not clear whether the social status of the mother provides any real benefit to the son, in terms of his future reproductive success. The spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) is one such species.
The spotted hyena is a large carnivorous species that lives in "highly structured, female-dominated social groups called clans," in which access to resources is determined on the basis of social status. For that reason, females of high status have higher reproductive value and success than low-status females. In these clans, females generally spend their lives in the group into which they were born, which daughters acquiring a position in the dominance hierarchy close to and below that of their mother. They retain their social status into adulthood, as long as they retain the support of a close female relative. By contrast, male offspring typically leave the clan into which they were born after some time, and immigrate into another clan. However, they do not bring their social status with them. Instead, they must start at the bottom of the social ladder, and as higher-ranking males emigrate to other clans, or die, their social status can increase.
While female reproductive success is ultimately based on the social status of the mother, male reproductive success is dependent on how well the males conform to the preferences of the females. Indeed, females have complete control over who gets to mate with them.
Given the particular features of the social structure of these hyenas, the mechanism by which maternal social status affects the reproductive status of the daughters is quite clear. However, what is less clear is whether the social status of the mother can affect the reproductive status of her sons, especially since his privileged status does not transfer with him to his new clan upon emigration. Previous research of juvenile hyenas raised by adoptive mothers found no evidence of direct maternal genetic effects on the social rank of adopted offspring at adulthood. If a hyena was adopted by a high-ranking mother, he or she retained the high status of the mother irrespective of genetics. Thus, direct genetic effects were ruled out, and the researchers turned to environmental mechanisms.
Using data from a fourteen year study of all members of eight hyena clans resident in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, a group of researchers from Germany and the UK tested whether maternal social status influenced a number of factors: (1) the growth rate of the suns during infancy and early childhood, (2) their likelihood of immigration into the optimal clan in terms of potential reproductive success, (3) their age at first reproduction, and (4) the duration of residency in the new clan after immigration. They also investigated whether females preferred to mate with sons of high-ranking mothers. Their overall finding was that maternal social status did significantly contribute to the reproductive success of sons. But how?
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Höner, O., Wachter, B., Hofer, H., Wilhelm, K., Thierer, D., Trillmich, F., Burke, T., & East, M. (2010) The fitness of dispersing spotted hyaena sons is influenced by maternal social status. Nature Communications, 1(5), 1-7. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1059
- June 1, 2010
- 07:42 AM
- 1,212 views
Polygamous Males Have Larger...Hippocampi!
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
It should not come as a surprise to the regular reader of this blog that a lot can be learned about animal cognition by simply observing animal behavior. But can observing animal behavior lead the observer to make inferences about brain anatomy? Can observing animal behavior tell us something about the evolution of the brain?
Figure 1: Like the raccoon says.
Let's say you have two very very closely related species. You might even call them congeneric, because they are from the same taxonomic genus. In most ways, these two species are very similar, but they differ behaviorally in some very big ways. Might those behavioral differences predict neurobiological differences?
Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Jacobs, L. (1990) Evolution of Spatial Cognition: Sex-Specific Patterns of Spatial Behavior Predict Hippocampal Size. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 87(16), 6349-6352. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.87.16.6349
- February 25, 2010
- 03:24 PM
- 1,202 views
Social Cognition in Dogs, or How did Fido get so smart?
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Figure 1: Dogs are pretty intelligent.
Domesticated dogs seem to have an uncanny ability to understand human communicative gestures. If you point to something the dog zeroes in on the object or location you’re pointing to (whether it’s a toy, or food, or to get his in-need-of-a-bath butt off your damn bed and back onto his [...]... Read more »
Hare, B., Plyusnina, I., Ignacio, N., Schepina, O., Stepika, A., Wrangham, R., & Trut, L. (2005) Social Cognitive Evolution in Captive Foxes Is a Correlated By-Product of Experimental Domestication. Current Biology, 15(3), 226-230. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2005.01.040
- May 27, 2010
- 08:25 AM
- 1,185 views
Your Brain on Fast Food
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Some kids more readily recognize Ronald McDonald than the President of the United States of America. Sad, right?
Check out this exchange, from the 2004 movie Super Size Me:
Morgan Spurlock: [to kids] I'm gonna show you some pictures and I want you to tell me who they are.
Children: OK.
Morgan Spurlock: [Showing a picture of George Washington] Who's that?
Child: George Washington?
Morgan Spurlock: Good. Who was he?
Children: He was the 4th president. He freed the slaves. He could never tell a lie.
Morgan Spurlock: [Shows picture that you can't see] Who's that?
Child: George W. Bush?
Morgan Spurlock: No. That's a good guess though.
[Shows picture and its a picture of Jesus]
Morgan Spurlock: Who is this?
[Shows a picture of Wendy]
Child: Wendy!
Morgan Spurlock: Nice!
Morgan Spurlock: Who's that?
[Shows picture of Ronald MacDonald]
Child: MacDonald, Ronald MacDonald.
Child: MacDonald!
Morgan Spurlock: What does he do?
Child: He helps people at the cash register.
Child: He works at MacDonald's. I love the pancakes and sausage!
Child: He brings everyone of his friends to McDonald's for a Happy Meal
Morgan Spurlock: Where have you seen him?
Child: On television, on the commercials.
Child: He's the character that made McDonald's, and he does a lot of funny stuff on TV.
Figure 1: I recognize all of these but Mr. Gatti's. Anyone know what this is? They must not have it in California.
You're probably not surprised that we readily recognize symbols of the fast food that is so ubiquitous in our society. But would you believe that even a brief subliminal delivery of those symbols can actually affect the your behavior, even when it comes to things having nothing at all to do with eating or food?
Make sure your seatbelts are fastened, this is going to be a wild ride. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Zhong CB, & Devoe SE. (2010) You are how you eat: fast food and impatience. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 21(5), 619-22. PMID: 20483836
- November 5, 2010
- 11:00 AM
- 1,180 views
What Is Psychopathology? Examining the Changing Status of ADHD
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Despite the fact that my research lies at the intersection between cognitive, comparative, and developmental psychology, I am also quite interested in the evolution of our understanding of psychopathology. The ultimate goal of the study of psychopathology is to ground such disorders in brain and body. But our understanding of some pathologies are simply not there yet (though some of our therapeutic interventions still prove effective even if we don't quite understand the etiology of a given disease or disorder). The main conflict in the field that characterizes the study of psychopathology is regarding the nature of psychopathology itself. Do psychological disorders reflect disease states superimposed onto otherwise healthy individuals? Or are psychological disorders wrapped up in personality and fundamental to the organization of a person? And to what extent does culture determine the extent to which we pathologize certain behaviors?
Complicated questions indeed. Consider the case of ADHD as a case study in the evolution of psychopathology.
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Barkley, R. (2002) International Consensus Statement On ADHD. Journal of the American Academy of Child , 41(12), 1389. DOI: 10.1097/00004583-200212000-00001
Barkley RA, Fischer M, Smallish L, & Fletcher K. (2002) The persistence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder into young adulthood as a function of reporting source and definition of disorder. Journal of abnormal psychology, 111(2), 279-89. PMID: 12003449
- February 24, 2011
- 09:30 AM
- 1,178 views
PsychBytes: First Names, Vegetables, and Baseball
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
PsychBytes is an experiment: three recent findings in psychology, each explained in three paragraphs or less. Generally, these are papers that I wouldn't have otherwise covered in this blog. Please share your thoughts on this model in the comments. What works, and what doesn't? Would you like more PsychBytes in the future?
What's In A Name?
People who settle down and build a life in the frontier tend to be more individualistic, even if they started out with more interdependent values. Some features of the frontier life that would be attractive to an independent person are low population density, fewer social connections, and fewer social institutions. Indeed, people living in more recently settled regions in the United States more frequently behave in ways consistent with individualistic values, compared with people living in older parts of the country. This includes things like living alone after age 65 rather than moving into a retirement home, self-employment, and the getting divorced. It's possible, however, that the relationship between these individualistic behaviors and frontier life is simply a statistical accident. For example, the rate of divorce could be related to religiosity, which is in turn related to individualism. It would appear as if there was a relationship between divorce and individualistic behaviors, but it would only be due to the shared relationship with religious beliefs.
In order to address this question, Michael Varnum and Shinobu Kitayama of the University of Michigan wondered if uncommon names were more common among children born on a frontier. The way that parents choose names for their children is a well-established indicator of independent values. Varnum and Kitayama note that "naming practices embody important cultural values, and are linked to a host of psychological, social, and economic outcomes." They found that a greater percentage of babies who were born in older parts of the United States, such as New England, were given popular names (for the year the child was born), compared with babies born in newer regions, such as the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains. In fact, the year in which a state was admitted to the United States was negatively correlated with the percentage of infants who were given the most popular boys' and girls' names.
Correlation between a state's inclusion in the US and the giving of top 10 names. Boys above, girls below. Click to enlarge.
And this relationship wasn't unique to the United States. A similar dataset was generated using baby names given in seven provinces in Canada: three eastern provinces which were settled earlier (Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec), and four western provinces which were more recently settled (Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan). As expected, popular names were more common in the older provinces than in the newer provinces. A third dataset using global data further replicated these results: popular names were more common in European countries (Austria, Denmark, England, Hungary, Ireland, Norway, Scotland, Spain, and Sweden) compared with "frontier countries," founded by European immigrants (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States). Baby naming is quite a significant decision for parents. It makes sense, then, that the practice would reflect cultural values.
Varnum ME, & Kitayama S (2011). What's in a Name?: Popular Names Are Less Common on Frontiers. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 22 (2), 176-83 PMID: 21196534
Vegetables for Fun and Profit
How often do you hear parents promising their children dessert upon completion of their vegetables? While this sort of external motivation is very powerful, there is a potential downside: it could undermine intrinsic motivation. In other words, children might simply eat the vegetables to get the reward, and therefore never grow to like the vegetables themselves. This could result in poor eating choices later in childhood and adolescence, when the child is free to make his or her own decisions. The scientific literature on the use of incentives for children's vegetable consumption shows mixed conclusions: some studies show that vegetable intake increases when paired with a reward, and that those increases are maintained when the reward is withdrawn. Other studies find that as soon as the rewards are removed, vegetable intake returns to baseline. Lucy J. Cooke and colleagues from University College London and the University of Sussex attempted to clarify this confusing picture.
Over the course of twelve days, children age 4-6 were exposed to a vegetable they didn't like. The children were divided into three intervention conditions and one control condition. In the first intervention condition, vegetables were paired with non-edible rewards such as stickers. The second intervention condition paired social rewards (praise) with vegetables. The third intervention condition included no external reward; could exposure alone could increase liking for a previously disliked vegetable? Finally, the children in the control condition received no vegetables and no rewards.
The kids in all three intervention conditions reported increased liking for their disliked vegetable after twelve days, with no significant differences between the three conditions. The liking was maintained for three months for the two reward conditions, but not for the exposure-only/no-reward condition. Taken together, this experiment suggests that rewarding children for eating their vegetables is not only extremely effective, but lasts a considerable amount of time following withdrawal of the reward. In fact, exposure alone without a reward is actually less effective. Parents: keep that dessert coming!
Cooke LJ, Chambers LC, Añez EV, Croker HA, Boniface D, Yeomans MR, & Wardle J (2011). Eating for Pleasure or Profit: The Effect of Incentives on Children's Enjoyment of Vegetables. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 22 (2), 190-6 PMID: 21191095
Photo: Flickr/woodleywonderworks
How Do We Set Personal Goals?
Why are students who score 89% on an exam more likely to study harder before the subsequent exam, compared with students who score 82%? In both cases, the scores are just one percentage-point below the next grade level: 90% would be an A-, while 83% would be a solid B. And the amount of extra effort necessary to achieve a higher grade for either student is roughly equivalent. Devin Pope and Uri Simonsohn from the schools of business at the Universities of Chicago and Pennsylvania, respectively, think that round numbers serve as "cognitive reference points," which people use when judging their own outcomes. In other words, individuals whose performance is just short of a round number (such as our B+ student) would be more likely to work at improving their performance, compared with people whose performance is just above a round number (such as our B- student). To test this prediction, Pope and Simonsohn collected data from professional baseball players and high school students taking the SAT exam.
The data matched with their predictions. Professional batters were four times more likely to end a season with a .300 batting average than with a .299 average. High school juniors were 10-20% more likely to re-take the SAT in an effort to boost their scores if their initial score ended in "90" (as in 1190 or 1290) than if their initial s... Read more »
Varnum ME, & Kitayama S. (2011) What's in a Name?: Popular Names Are Less Common on Frontiers. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 22(2), 176-83. PMID: 21196534
Cooke LJ, Chambers LC, Añez EV, Croker HA, Boniface D, Yeomans MR, & Wardle J. (2011) Eating for Pleasure or Profit: The Effect of Incentives on Children's Enjoyment of Vegetables. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 22(2), 190-6. PMID: 21191095
Pope D, & Simonsohn U. (2011) Round numbers as goals: evidence from baseball, SAT takers, and the lab. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 22(1), 71-9. PMID: 21148460
- March 7, 2011
- 10:00 AM
- 1,175 views
Defending Your Territory: Is Peeing on the Wall Just for the Dogs?
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Welcome to Territoriality Week! Every day this week, I'll have a post about some aspect of animal or human territoriality. How do animals mark and control their territories? What determines the size or shape of an animal's territory? What can an animal's territory tell us about neuroanatomy? Today, I begin by asking two questions: first, what is the functional purpose of establishing territories? Second, to what extent can we apply findings from research on animal territorial behavior to understanding human territorial behavior?
It seems that everyone becomes an amateur animal behaviorist while walking their dogs. They notice that their dogs tend to pee on - well - just about everything, and infer that Fido is marking his territory. That most people are familiar with at least the basic principles of animal territoriality would suggest that the study of animal territoriality is fairly well established. Indeed, behavioral biologists and ethologists have been interested in animal territoriality since at least the 1920s. The main purpose of animal territoriality, it would appear, is excluding others from certain geographical areas through the use of auditory, visual or olfactory signals or by the threat of aggression. While there are certainly variations, territoriality seems to exist throughout the vertebrate phylum. While many of the early studies of territoriality focused on birds, later researchers investigated territorial behaviors in fish, rodents, reptiles, ungulates (hoofed animals, like cows), and primates. Territories may be held by individuals, by pairs, or by groups. They may be defended against anyone, against only members of the same species, or against only members of the same sex.
Why would territoriality be so widespread in the animal kingdom (at least among vertebrates)?
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Edney, J. (1974) Human territoriality. Psychological Bulletin, 81(12), 959-975. DOI: 10.1037/h0037444
- June 9, 2010
- 08:30 AM
- 1,167 views
Bonobos Share Their Food
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Bonobo Week continues! I'm donating whatever proceeds I receive from my blogging shenanigans for the entire month of June to help the bonobos at Lola Ya Bonobo.
Primate researchers used to think that only humans voluntarily share their own food with others. At the time, it was a reasonable conclusion to make, since lots of studies indicated that chimps don't. But that was before anyone checked to see if bonobos were willing to share their food with others.
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Hare, B., & Kwetuenda, S. (2010) Bonobos voluntarily share their own food with others. Current Biology, 20(5). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.12.038
- December 5, 2010
- 12:02 PM
- 1,143 views
Bilingual Brains: Reading in Hebrew and in English
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
I've got an article that appeared in this week's Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles about recent research from Hadassah University on the neurobiology of bilingual (English-Hebrew) reading.
Is the English-reading brain somehow different from the Hebrew-reading brain? You might not expect any major differences; after all, both languages are alphabetic and are read more or less phonetically by breaking words into their constituent sounds. Compare English and Hebrew to a logographic language like Chinese or Japanese, and the similarity between the alphabetic languages becomes obvious. But new research by Hadassah University researchers Atira Bick and colleagues, published online in October in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, found that despite their similarities, there are some key differences in the way the brain processes English and Hebrew words.
I'm particularly excited about this as its my first in-print article, but also because this is part of my ongoing effort to get science into publications where you wouldn't otherwise expect it (i.e. "push journalism"). It's a particularly tough (but fun) challenge to entice readers into reading an article about science if they're not already seeking it out.
Bick AS, Goelman G, & Frost R (2010). Hebrew Brain vs. English Brain: Language Modulates the Way It Is Processed. Journal of cognitive neuroscience PMID: 20961169 Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Bick AS, Goelman G, & Frost R. (2010) Hebrew Brain vs. English Brain: Language Modulates the Way It Is Processed. Journal of cognitive neuroscience. PMID: 20961169
- February 22, 2011
- 09:30 AM
- 1,122 views
Might Pleistocene Fido Have Been A Fox?
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
There is a small bit of land, only about a square kilometer, that has added a new wrinkle to the story of animal domestication. This bit of land located in Northern Jordan, just southeast of the Sea of Galilee near the banks of the Jordan River, is home to an archaeological site known as 'Uyun al-Hammam. One key feature of this site, excavated in 2005, is a burial ground containing the remains of at least eleven humans in eight different gravesites. The early humans were buried here sometime during the pre-Natufian period, or around 16,500 years ago.
Layout of the 'Uyun al-Hammam site, and an inset map indicating its location. Click to enlarge.
In addition to the human remains, the archaeologists and paleontologists from the Universities of Cambridge and Toronto, led by Lisa A. Maher, uncovered several animal bones from among the grave sites. In grave one, a fox skull was found along with its right humerus, as well as the remains of a gazelle, a deer, and a tortoise. In grave seven, the researchers discovered most of a fox skeleton, a red deer antler, and a fragment of a goat's horn. It's fairly common to find pieces of animal horns or bones sculpted into tools around human settlements, but a complete fox skeleton? This is unusual.
By comparing the fox skull with other fossil canid skulls from the same geographical region, the researchers were able to determine that their's was a red fox (Vulpes vulpes), which was indeed known to be present in that area during the late Pleistocene. It turned out, somewhat surprisingly, that the fox skull and the fox skeleton belong to the very same fox.
But why was the skull and humerus from the fox found in grave one, while a fox skeleton sans-skull and -humerus was all the way over in grave seven?
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Maher LA, Stock JT, Finney S, Heywood JJ, Miracle PT, & Banning EB. (2011) A unique human-fox burial from a pre-natufian cemetery in the levant (jordan). PloS ONE, 6(1). PMID: 21298094
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