The Psych Student

"Some questions can't be answered by Google" by Mykl Roventine

“For humans, this desire to search is not just about fulfilling our physical needs. (Washington State University neuroscientist Jaak) Panksepp says that humans can get just as excited about abstract rewards as tangible ones,” writes Emily Yoffe for Slate. In her essay discussing how the brain is wired for Google, Twitter, and texting… “And why that’s dangerous.”

I’ll get to that last bit of editorializing in a little bit.

“He says that when we get thrilled about the world of ideas, about making intellectual connections” she writes, “about divining meaning, it is the seeking circuits that are firing.” Read the rest of this entry »

The very method that Peter J. Allens published his paper, in its entirety online under a Creative Commons license, is as substantial to the report as the content itself. Rip, mix, burn … sue … ad infinitum: The effects of deterrence vs. voluntary cooperation on non–commercial online copyright infringing behaviour was published last year, but is well worth the read for people interested in how online living is changing our behavior. It should be required reading for entertainment industry executives and the legal goons they sic on internet sharers and sheds light into how the likes of Pirate Bay can garner so much wide-spread support. It’s further proof to me of a new emerging persona – the online persona – in each of us, which can be far different from the one we display in our everyday face-to-face dealings.

“This paper illustrates how an understanding of the psychology of deterrence, fairness, trust and legitimacy can be used to begin to make sense of the copyright infringing behaviours that, as a consequence of Web 2.0, are becoming increasingly mainstream to an ever increasing proportion of our community. It argues that compliance with copyright regulations is more effectively achieved through efforts focussed on encouraging voluntary deference and cooperation, than by attempting to induce it with threats of punishment that, as a growing body of case and research examples demonstrates, simply does not work.”

Read it here

Rip, mix, burn … sue … ad infinitum: The effects of deterrence vs voluntary cooperation on non-commercial online copyright infringing behaviour

Allen, Peter. “Rip, mix, burn … sue … ad infinitum: The effects of deterrence vs voluntary cooperation on non-commercial online copyright infringing behaviour” First Monday [Online], Volume 13 Number 9 (24 August 2008)

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Peter James Allen; Curtin University of Technology; Australia (2008). Rip, mix, burn … sue … ad infinitum: The effects of deterrence vs voluntary cooperation on non-commercial online copyright infringing behaviour First Monday, 13 (9) Other: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2073

How well do people remember a made up account?

A lot of people like the idea that faking an illness should have the karmic result of having to eventually suffer the real deal. There’s a sort of “boy who cried wolf” ethic that permeates our cultural sense of justice. But just because we think something is deserved, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will actually happen to the guilty party.

Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily has reported on new studies regarding faked amnesia. Apparently, “focal retrograde amnesia” is a common defense in murder trials.  The article says amnesia is claimed by defendendents in 45 percent of murders (I believe this has to be U.S. murder cases and not global, and it would be good to see a citation on that statistic somehwere.)  “Psychologists know that this sort of amnesia is actually quite rare,” Munger writes, “so it’s very likely that most, if not all of these defendants are faking amnesia.” Read the rest of this entry »

The website Neuro Philosophy features an article on Confabulatory hypermnesia, or severe false memory syndrome : Neurophilosophy.

In the journal Cortex, researchers describe the case of a patient with severe memory loss who has a tendency to invent detailed and perfectly plausible false memories (confabulations) in response to questions to which most people would answer “I don’t know”, such as the one above. They have named this unusual condition confabulatory hypermnesia, and believe that theirs is the first study to document it.

Also an interesting read at the same site: The woman who can’t forget

Photo by MeLa de Gypsie

According to this article at Wired.com, the illusionist David Copperfield (not to be confused with the Dickens character) can’t pull over on people with schizophrenia, as they “are undeterred by implausibility.”¹

Using the In the “hollow mask illusion” test (in which a sculpture of a concave face appears to be a normal face), healthy participants, even if they are aware of the illusion, remain optically tricked by it. Schizophrenics, in contrast, see “hollow face for what it is. About seven out of 1000 Americans suffer from the disease, which is characterized by hallucinations, delusions, and poor planning. Some psychologists believe this dissociation from reality may result from an imbalance between bottom-up and top-down processing — a hypothesis ripe for testing using the hollow mask illusion.”

The article also says that drunk or high people are also able to perceive the concave reality of the mask as well, which tends to cause one to see a potential connection between Schizophrenia and substance abuse, which has been asserted by more and more scientists.

Diagnosis of alcohol use disorders in schizophrenia – Drake
Alcohol Use and Abuse in Schizophrenia: A Prospective … – Drake
Prevalence of alcohol and drug abuse in schizophrenic … – Soyka