Although there has been some empirical research on earworms, songs that become caught and replayed in one’s memory over and over again, there has been surprisingly little empirical research on the more general concept of the musical hook, the most salient moment in a piece of music, or the even more general concept of what may make music ‘catchy’. […]

Every piece of music will have a hook – the catchiest part of the piece, whatever that may be – but some pieces of music clearly have much catchier hooks than others. […]

One study has shown that after only 400 ms, listeners can identify familiar music with a significantly greater frequency than one would expect from chance. […]

We have designed an experiment that we believe will help to quantify the effect of catchiness on musical memory. […] Hooked, as we have named the game, comprises three essential tasks: a recognition task, a verification task, and a prediction task. Each of them responds to a scientific need in what we felt was the most entertaining fashion possible. In this way, we hope to be able recruit the largest number of subjects possible without sacrificing scientific quality.

{ Music Cognition Group | PDF | Download the Game }

Neuman examined three common types of fallacious arguments:

• The false cause fallacy.
• The appeal to the people fallacy.
• The appeal to ignorance fallacy.

An argument using the false cause fallacy […]: I watered my lawn and then it rained. It must have rained because I watered my lawn.

An argument that appeals to the people […]: Most people believe that extraterrestrials exist, so you should too.

An argument that includes an appeal to ignorance […]: We know that Big Foot exists, because no one has been able to prove that it doesn’t.

Neuman’s idea is that the ability to detect fallacious arguments, such as these, is related to skill in drawing inferences from text. In order to test his idea, Neuman measured student’s performance on detection of argument fallacies, deductive logic, and the inference process in reading comprehension.

He found that comprehension was significantly related to spotting fallacies. Performance on the pure deductive logic task was not.

{ Global Cognition | Continue reading }

image { Slater Bradley and Ed Lachman, Production still from Shadow, 2010 }

Damnatio memoriae is the Latin phrase literally meaning “condemnation of memory” in the sense of a judgment that a person must not be remembered. […] The intent was to erase someone from history, a task somewhat easier in ancient times, when documentation was much sparser. […]

Any truly effective damnatio memoriae would not be noticeable to later historians, since, by definition, it would entail the complete and total erasure of the individual in question from the historical record.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

In previous research, acoustic characteristics of the male voice have been shown to signal various aspects of mate quality and threat potential. But the human voice is also a medium of linguistic communication. The present study explores whether physical and vocal indicators of male mate quality and threat potential are linked to effective communicative behaviors such as vowel differentiation and use of more salient phonetic variants of consonants. […]

[T]aller, more masculine men display less clarity in their speech and prefer phonetic variants that may be associated with masculine attributes such as toughness.

{ Human Nature/Springer | Continue reading }

We evaluated the impact of different presentation methods for evaluating how funny jokes are. We found that the same joke was perceived as significantly funnier when told by a robot than when presented only using text.

{ Dr. Hato | PDF }

Ongoing projects: Adding farting to the joking robots.

{ Dr. Hato | Continue reading }

{ Samantha West The Telemarketer Robot Who Swears She’s Not a Robot | more }

This research project focused on the potential spread of bacteria when blowing out candles on a birthday cake. […] We tested whether salivating before blowing out the candles over icing would affect the outcome. To simulate a realistic party atmosphere, this procedure included consuming a slice of fresh pizza prior to blowing on the candles. We determined that a higher level of bacteria was transferred with this procedure than the previous testing. These results led us to conclude that bacteria expelled from the mouth can, in fact, contaminate birthday cakes and other potential food samples.”

{ via Improbable | Continue reading }

photo { Maurizio Di Iorio }

The New York Times has an important article on how Attention Deficit Disorder, often known as ADHD, has been ‘marketed’ alongside sales of stimulant medication to the point where leading ADHD researchers are becoming alarmed at the scale of diagnosis and drug treatment.

It’s worth noting that although article focuses on ADHD, it is really a case study in how psychiatric drug marketing often works.

This is the typical pattern: a disorder is defined and a reliable diagnosis is created. A medication is tested and found to be effective – although studies which show negative effects might never be published.

It is worth noting that the ‘gold standard’ diagnosis usually describes a set of symptoms that are genuinely linked to significant distress or disability.

Then, marketing money aims to ‘raise awareness’ of the condition to both doctors and the public. This may be through explicit drug company adverts, by sponsoring medical training that promotes a particular drug, or by heavily funding select patient advocacy groups that campaign for wider diagnosis and drug treatment.

This implicitly encourages diagnosis to be made away from the ‘gold standard’ assessment – which often involves an expensive and time-consuming structured assessment by specialists.

{ Mind Hacks | Continue reading }

Specifically, they reported that men’s brains had more connectivity within each brain hemisphere, whereas women’s brains had more connectivity across the two hemispheres. Moreover, they stated or implied, in their paper and in statements to the press, that these findings help explain behavioral differences between the sexes, such as that women are intuitive thinkers and good at multi-tasking whereas men are good at sports and map-reading. […]

So, the wiring differences between the sexes aren’t that large. And we don’t really know their functional significance, if any. […]

[L]et’s set this new brain wiring study in the context of previous research. Verma and her team admit that a previous paper looking at the brain wiring of 439 participants failed to find significant differences between the sexes. What about studies on the corpus callosum – the thick bundle of fibres that connects the two brain hemispheres? If women really have more cross-talk across the brain, this is one place where you’d definitely expect them to have more connectivity. And yet a 2012 diffusion tensor paper found “a stronger inter-hemispheric connectivity between the frontal lobes in males than females”. Hmm. Another paper from 2006 found little difference in thickness of the callosum according to sex. Finally a meta-analysis from 2009: “The alleged sex-related corpus callosum size difference is a myth,” it says.

{ Wired | Continue reading }

A small sample of the more credulous media uptake:

“Male and female brains wired differently, scans reveal”, The Guardian 12/2/2013

“Striking differences in brain wiring between men and women”, EarthSky 12/3/2013
“Is Equal Opportunity Threatened By New Findings That Female And Male Brains Are Different?”, Forbes 12/3/2013

”The hardwired difference between male and female brains could explain why men are ‘better at map reading’ and why women are ‘better at remembering a conversation’”, The Independent 12/3/2013

”Sex and Brains: Vive la différence!”, The Economist 12/7/2013

“Differences in How Men and Women Think Are Hard-Wired”, WSJ 12/9/2013
“Brains of women, men are actually wired differently”, New Scientist 12/12/2013
“Gender differences are hard-wired”, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 12/15/2013

Some more thoughtful reactions:

“Study: The Brains of Men and Women Are Different… WIth A Few Major Caveats”, Forbes 12/8/2013
“Do Men And Women Have Different Brains?”, NPR 12/13/2013
“Time to ditch the ‘Venus and Mars’ cliche”, The New Zealand Herald 12/14/2013

{ Language Log | Continue reading }

art { Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Sylvette David in Green Chair, 1954 }

For every 1,000 people who undergo general anesthesia, there will be one or two who are not as unconscious as they seem — people who remember their doctors talking, and who are aware of the surgeon’s knife, even while their bodies remain catatonic and passive. For the unlucky 0.13 percent for whom anesthesia goes awry, there’s not really a good preventive. That’s because successful anesthetization requires complete unconsciousness, and consciousness isn’t something we can measure.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

Bots now ‘account for 61% of web traffic.’

NASA Admits Google Execs Flew Private Jets with Cheap Government Fuel

Today’s young women are the first in modern history to start their careers making nearly as much as men.

Do Animals Have Orgasms?

New Pacemaker is small enough to be delivered through blood vessels into the heart.

Remember Watson, IBM’s Jeopardy champion? What If IBM’s Watson Dethroned Google?

Zero-rupee notes are an Indian anti-corruption gimmick now attracting worldwide interest.

In his performance art piece “Eating People,” Zhu photographs himself cooking and eating a human fetus that he divided into five parts. [Thanks Tim]

Place one fruit on a mirrored pedestal. Take the rest of the day off. [Thanks Tim]

List of films featuring powered exoskeletons, which are also known as powered armor, exoframes, or exosuits.

iArm

Mark Zuckerberg is a success story, having gone from Hollywood sociopath and interview nightmare to mere super-dork. He’s awkward, but much of the alienating superweirdness has been coached away. But Instagram honcho Kevin Systrom is still one bizarre, robotic dude.

{ Valleywag | Continue reading + video }

Features of fictional folk are more extreme than in reality; real folks are boring by comparison. Fictional folks are more expressive, and give off clearer signs about their feelings and intentions. Their motives are simpler and clearer, and their actions are better explained by their motives and local visible context. Who they are now is better predicted by their history. […]

In real life, coincidence happens all the time. But in fiction […] Your readers will refuse to believe it.

{ via overcoming bias | Continue reading }

photo { Mick Haggerty, Mickey Mondrian, 1976 }

The eminent sociologist Erving Goffman suggested that life is a series of performances, in which we are all continually managing the impression we give other people. […]

But recently we have learned that some of our social responses occur even without conscious consideration. […] [L]ab experiments show that when people happen to be holding a hot drink rather than a cold one, they are more likely to trust strangers. Another found that people are much more helpful and generous when they step off a rising escalator than when they step off a descending escalator—in fact, ascending in any fashion seems to trigger nicer behavior. […]

Neuroscientists have found that environmental cues trigger immediate responses in the human brain even before we are aware of them. As you move into a space, the hippocampus, the brain’s memory librarian, is put to work immediately. It compares what you are seeing at any moment to your earlier memories in order to create a mental map of the area, but it also sends messages to the brain’s fear and reward centers. Its neighbor, the hypothalamus, pumps out a hormonal response to those signals even before most of us have decided if a place is safe or dangerous. Places that seem too sterile or too confusing can trigger the release of adrenaline and cortisol, the hormones associated with fear and anxiety. Places that seem familiar, navigable, and that trigger good memories, are more likely to activate hits of feel-good  serotonin, as well as the hormone that rewards and promotes feelings of interpersonal trust: oxytocin.

{ The Atlantic | Continue reading }

photo { Dennis Stock }

In 1780, Immanuel Kant wrote that “sexual love makes of the loved person an Object of appetite.” And after that appetite is sated? The loved one, Kant explained, “is cast aside as one casts away a lemon which has been sucked dry.”

Many contemporary feminists agree that sexual desire, particularly when elicited by pornographic images, can lead to “objectification.” The objectifier (typically a man) thinks of the target of his desire (typically a woman) as a mere thing, lacking autonomy, individuality and subjective experience.

This idea has some laboratory support. Studies have found that viewing people’s bodies, as opposed to their faces, makes us judge those people as less intelligent, less ambitious, less competent and less likable. One neuroimaging experiment found that, for men, viewing pictures of sexualized women induced lowered activity in brain regions associated with thinking about other people’s minds.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

Taylor argues that this view of the self forces on us the obligation to “live up to our originality.” Artists become high priests of this new religion, paradoxically modeling modes of individual inimitability.

But nothing has done more to substantiate this aspiration than consumerism. It has aspired to manifest the fathomless depths within as an endless plentitude of goods to acquire to express the self and limit it at the same time.

{ Rob Horning | Continue reading }

installation view { Cai Guo-Qiang, Heritage, 2013 | GOMA, Brisbane, Australia | + photos }

The U.S. government lobotomized about 2,000 veterans.

Police in Germany have developed a smartphone application that can identify neo-Nazi lyrics and racist words in rock songs.

The male shaving sector has slowed down in both the US and Europe this year, and that’s at least in part due to the rising popularity of stubble.

Canada Post is phasing out door-to-door delivery of regular mail to urban residents and increasing the cost of stamps.

After touching men’s underwear, women take bigger risks and seek more rewards.

Our IQs Are Climbing, But We’re Not Getting Smarter

Why Do We Age? A 46-Species Comparison

Sixty-four percent of the 875 respondents said they had experienced “intimidation, threats, or abuse” in the office or in the field. Most of the abuse was perpetrated by the journalists’ bosses, superiors, and co-workers.

How Robots Will Transform Human Intimacy Robots are smartish seeming machines that will soon be able to perform complicated but mundane tasks, such as driving and helping the elderly to get dressed.

New research investigates whether the dog park is stressful, and what dogs do there.

The more we share in social media, the more clearly we define the negative space where the ineffable self resides.

The story of the new hundred-dollar bill — still made by hand with ancient tools.

Plastic bottles solve Nigeria’s housing problem. The structure has the added advantage of being fire proof, bullet proof and earthquake resistant.

25 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods in America.

In the early 80s Keith Haring created hundreds of drawings in the New York subway system.

You know what the problem is? Paying by CC is always faster then paying by phone.

NYC Taxi Drivers 2014 Beefcake Calendar

Here is today.

Unalaska, Alaska.

My new HERMES BIRKIN bag. [via TNI_levamisole]

Lionel Stitchie.

What if the universe had no beginning, and time stretched back infinitely without a big bang to start things off? That’s one possible consequence of an idea called “rainbow gravity,” so-named because it posits that gravity’s effects on spacetime are felt differently by different wavelengths of light, aka different colors in the rainbow. […]

“It’s a model that I do not believe has anything to do with reality,” says Sabine Hossenfelder of the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics.

{ Scientific American | Continue reading }

American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life… […] The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players. […]

By the end of 2008, according to one document, the British spy agency, known as GCHQ, had set up its “first operational deployment into Second Life” and had helped the police in London in cracking down on a crime ring that had moved into virtual worlds to sell stolen credit card information. […]

Even before the American government began spying in virtual worlds, the Pentagon had identified the potential intelligence value of video games. The Pentagon’s Special Operations Command in 2006 and 2007 worked with several foreign companies — including an obscure digital media business based in Prague — to build games that could be downloaded to mobile phones, according to people involved in the effort. They said the games, which were not identified as creations of the Pentagon, were then used as vehicles for intelligence agencies to collect information about the users.

{ ProPublica | Continue reading }

related { A Single Exposure to the American Flag Shifts Support Toward Republicanism up to 8 Months Later }

Antidepressants are often considered to be mere placebos despite the fact that meta-analyses are able to rank them. It follows that it should also be possible to rank different placebos, which are all made of sucrose. To explore this issue, which is rather more epistemological than clinical, we designed an unusual meta-analysis to investigate whether the effects of placebo in one situation are different from the effects of placebo in another situation.

{ BMC Medecine | Continue reading }

photo { Maurizio Di Iorio }