Not Oh Cee but the Meticulous SHE

Meticulous- adj. showing great attention to detail; very careful and precise. 

In my first year in college, excitement is the thing that I feel when I left home in the province and rent a space in an apartment. I feel the bliss brought by independence and having thoughts of going on an adventure with new buddies and friendly freshie roommates. That time, I am still used to have someone who will fix my own cabinet or fix my own bed, to have someone that would arrange personal stuffs that I use which makes me really disorganized. Thus, to have new meticulous rummie is somehow troublesome but actually, it's really challenging.    My new roommate would always tell me everyday about arranging the room and cleaning it, of small bubbles and the few strand of hairs that were left from the bathroom after I take a bath especially when Im already late in class, of where should I hang my towel. It was annoying and somehow I feel being bullied because she's five years older than me. Such annoyance could be because at home, I was not used to be told my mom how to clean my room with so much organization because it was my father who takes this role. He's the one who often reviews our cleaning work, he easily see anything that is not good for His meticulous eyes but is already okay for me. Apparently, I was not used to have a female authority to tell me my cleaning ways. But looking between the contrast between I, my roommate and my father, do women and women are really different in terms of looking into details?

A study conducted by Cognitive psychologist Dr Lorenza Colzato of Leiden University with her colleagues Toronto showed that women's attention are significantly different than men's as an effect of high levels of the hormone estrogen among women during their menstrual cycle (2011). Women were keen into details and highly meticulous when estrogen is at work. In their research, men and women carry out an inhibition task of which their participants view a short film and immediately after it appears a stimulus on the edge of their field of vision, every time in a different spot it is being presented and they have to react as quickly as possible to that. The reaction time normally increases as the interval between the film and the stimulus lengthens. This is due to the fact that the visual attention system gives priority to new locations over old ones, and the return of attention to the old location is inhibited. The men performed the task with the same time intervals however, the women did it during the three different phases of their menstrual cycle. The results showed that during the luteal phase which is after ovulation and in the menstrual phase, the women performed the same way as men but highly differed during the follicular phase, the first half of menstrual cycle which is characterized by a higher level of estrogen. 

This is the reason why women are really meticulous to the point that we label them as having Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. They don't just the thing but the details of the thing that's why it is a no surprise for women to really notice a single hair on the floor of a well-arranged and cleaned room. It is no surprise that some of the mothers see any unpleasant crease in our dress when we go out most especially when the estrogen are up. Everything is magnified and there's no such thing as negligible for women during their follicular phase.

Thus, maybe those times that I was consistently told by my roommate about every single detail to fix in the room is the time right after her period. Well, for my father, maybe He's just meticulous. 

Source:

I'm not Obsessive-Compulsive I'm super meticulous. [Online Image]. Retrieved August 28, 2012 from http://www.superiorsilkscreen.com/t-shirts/327-i-m-not-obsessive-compulsive-i-m-super-meticulous.html

Leiden University (2011). Is attention in females different?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 28, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2011/12/111214094659.htm

Colors can talk, too

Synesthesia--

a condition by which a stimulus can be perceived to be dipped into a melting pot of sensory triggers.

Or, as more formally defined by Eagleman and Goodale (in press), it is a "perceptual phenomenon in which stimuli can trigger experiences in non-stimulated sensory dimensions" (p.1). 

Basically, the stimulus not only plugs into its respective sense receptor (e.g. color and vision), but also triggers other senses (e.g. color and taste). 

There are several types of synesthesia (after all, there are a number of ways to mix and match our different sense receptors), but according to Eagleman and Goodale (in press), color synesthesia accounts for up to 95% of reported synesthesia experiences. I guess the color-related synesthete experiences are also better known because they are easier or more believably expressed in media. It might be because we can 'see' what they see thus making it more accessible and popular. 

I first encountered this term when I read A Mango-Shaped Space by Wendy Mass back in junior high. It's about a girl named Mia Winchell, who is a synesthete. The opening pages set up her dilemma--her unusual perception of colors had caused her to be labeled as a freak. Below are Mia's first thoughts when she found out that not everyone could see the colors like she did.  

How was this possible? Was everyone playing a trick on me? Of course numbers had colors. Were they also going to tell me that letters and sounds didn't have colors? That letter a wasn't yellow like a faded sunflower and screeching chalk didn't make red jagged lines in the air? (Mass, 2003, p. 3)

Even though she was labeled a freak, I seriously wanted to have synesthesia after reading that book. 

Please don't take drugs to simulate a synesthetic experience!!!!

Mia's synesthesia is what is called a grapheme-color synesthesia wherein words and numbers are associated with colors and these color perceptions are called photisms according to Flournoy (1893, as cited by Hupé, Bordier, & Dojat, 2011). 

According to previous studies and neuroimaging, when synesthetes see colors, the same area in the brain for color perception of non-synesthetes lights up. However, a study on 10 synesthetes by Hupé, Bordier, & Dojat (2011) has found that colors arising from a synesthetic experience do not light up this color area of the brain cortex that perceiving "real" colors does. The researchers give caution though, not to discount potential commonality between synesthetic colors and real colors that may be due to individual differences of the synesthetes or to the limited capability of the measuring instruments that are available.

So, does that mean that synesthetic colors cannot be the same as real colors? 

Well, not really. 

Weiss, Kalckert, and Fink conducted a study back in 2008 to test whether colors might trigger grapheme perception in grapheme-color synesthetes. After a careful selection process of words, the researchers asked the synesthetes to color the capital letters of the common high and low frequency words as well as other 'distractor letters' to closely match their respective synesthetic colors. They also colored each letter of the alphabet in the same manner. Each color-letter pair was then confirmed by the participant to be accurate.

In the task, a word fragment was presented which could either be completed by a letter for a high frequency word or that of a low frequency word. When the block for the missing letter was colored for the low frequency letter, synesthetes reported low-frequency words more than the high-frequency words, which would be expected if color was irrelevant. (This is the case of the non-synesthete control group).   

This study shows that the triggers for a synesthetic experience might be interchanged, emphasizing 'bidirectionality'. Of course, because the study was limited to a small sample of grapheme-color synesthetes, generalizability could be an issue. 

Nevertheless, isn't it interesting how colors could possibly talk? Imagine a synesthete going up to a painting and literally reading it (if by any chance it is coherent).

"Bright Picture" by Wassily Kandinsky (1913)

Overheard Cell-phone Conversations Annoy and Reduce Attention

Titbits of one-sided cell-phone conversations are ubiquitous in our everyday lives. Whether we like it or not, we overhear these talks while riding public vehicles, walking around the campus, or randomly eating on restaurants and malls. I, personally, frequently overhear my parents’ cell-phone conversations even if I’m in my room, and it just leaves me quite frustrated since I can’t study well and/or concentrate on facebook-ing.

Thankfully, I discovered I’m not alone since a study by Emberson et al. (2010) shows that it’s normal for people to get irritated and out of focus when they hear nearby cell-phone conversations. In their experiment, they had recorded “halfalogue” – one-sided dialogue which is the same as overhearing half of the cell-phone conversations – in female college women.

They gathered participants and let them hear these recordings while instructing them to do tasks that require attention such as tracking a moving dot using a computer mouse. Another treatment was formed, wherein participants did the same concentration task, but they were exposed on hearing both sides of the cell-phone conversations.

True enough, the researchers found that the participants performed worse on their task when they were overhearing the halfalogues. However, it is interesting how there is no decreased performance when they were overhearing both sides of the cell-phone conversations.

This led the researchers to conclude that the brain ignores predictable things while paying more attention to things that are unpredictable. In this case, our brain finds it predictable when both sides of the conversation are audible, which leads to non-disruption of attention in doing tasks. On the other hand, hearing the unpredictable halfalogues always put us on our toes since we always try to guess what they are talking about or what will be the next thing they will say.

This is in rapport with the findings of Sutter (2011) where he exposed the public to staged conversations while they were waiting on a bus station or travelling on a train. In one treatment, only one end of the cell-phone conversations is heard (halfalogue), while the other treatment enables people to overhear face-to-face conversations. Indeed, mobile phone conversations are found to be more noticeable, intrusive, and annoying than face-to-face conversations.

Moreover, it should be noted that these halfalogue not only affect our attention when doing certain tasks, but also our focus in doing mundane activities. Older adults are actually found to have difficulty crossing the road and are less likely to complete their crossing when exposed to overhearing cell-phone conversations compared when they are listening to music or undistracted (Neider et al., 2011). Even analyzing traffic patterns and making decisions when to cross are affected.

These studies really have astounding implications on me, because ever since I’ve encountered this, I try to be more sensitive when I’m talking at my cell-phone in a public area. I try to modulate the volume of my voice since people really hear, not because they eavesdrop or pay attention, but because it is an unconscious cognitive mechanism for us to be forced to listen.

References:

Cell-phone Booth [Online Image]. Retrieved August 25, 2012, from http://blog.thefoundationstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/cell-phone-booth.jpg

Brave [Online Image]. Retrieved August 25, 2012, from http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6963ecigx1r6aoq4o1_500.gif

Emberson, L., Lupyan, G., Goldstein, M., & Spivery, M. (2010). Overheard cell-phone conversations when less speech is more distracting. Psychological Science, 21(10), 1383-1388. doi:10.1177/0956797610382126

Neider, N., Gaspar, J., McCarley, J., Crowell, J., Karczmarski, H., & Kramer, A. (2011). Walking and talking: Dual-task effects on street crossing behavior in older adults. Psychology and Aging, 26(2), 260-268. Retrieved August 25, 2012, from Ebsco database.  

Mason, R. (2011). Overheard [Online Image]. Retrieved August 25, 2012, from http://www.atrandomcomics.com/1257%20-%20Restaurant%20Conversation.jpg

Sutter, N. (2011). Examining the intrusiveness and impressions of public mobile phone conversations. Unpublished paper presented at Student Symposium, Indiana. Retrieved from http://cardinalscholar.bsu.edu/bitstream/123456789/194978/1/SutterN_2011-3_BODY.pdf

Summer is here! ....Aaaaaand it's gone

Have you ever noticed that time goes by faster now than before? One day you were 15, freshly graduated from your care-free days at high school then the next moment you realize you're having a crisis on which jobs you can take before your parents kick you out from their houses effectively cutting your free internet connection (you better start searching for the nearest McDonald's - no, you can't afford Starbucks). 

DonCha Dare Not Think Chocolates

            Imagine yourself being stressed out after taking a mind-boggling exam and the only thing that pops out to your mind as one way of saving yourself is eating your favorite chocolate but oops! You are on a chocolate fasting! At that time, we do everything for us not to think of chocolate or encounter anything related to chocolates. However, for chocoholics on diet, it is very difficult or should we say, suicidal. We avoid thinking about chocolates so that we might be successful not to take even a bite. But have you realized that the more you avoid thinking of yourself eating chocolate, the more you crave for it, the more you think of ways to get some for yourself, the more you think also of counter arguments that would make you break your chocolate fasting for the moment?

            A recent study by Erskine & Georgiou, (2010) about thought suppression showed that there is a greater tendency for an action to occur if the thought of doing it is suppressed. Participants were randomly grouped into three where in the first group told to suppress thoughts of chocolates, the second group was told to think of chocolates and the third was told to think of anything they wished for. Without knowing that the amount of chocolate consumed was rated, they were told to rate two brands of chocolate on several taste characteristics. Surprisingly, the group who was told to suppress thoughts of chocolates were the ones who significantly consumed more than those who were thinking of chocolates.

           Such could be the big reason why people who avoid thinking of chocolates are the ones who have the strongest craving for it.

            This might be because of the occurrence of rebound effect of which unanticipated conflict arise when a particular thought, behavior or desire is suppressed. Rebound effect happens because striving vigorously to divert thoughts from chocolate make the desire dissipate but after a period of time, however, this desire or craving returns, stronger than was the craving experienced before the thought of eating was suppressed (Wenzlaff & Bates, 2000 as cited in Moss, 2008).

            To resolve this, it is better to entertain thoughts of eating chocolate and asking yourself for the reason of your desire for it. For many times, when we respond to these thoughts, we often decrease the tendency of doing such. There would no conflict inside of you that is usually solved by finally getting a bar of chocolate. Thus, in your next chocolate diet, you will be more successful if you imagine chocolates.

Sources:

Erskine, J.A. & Georgiu, G.J. (2010). Effects of thought suppression on eating behaviour in restrained and non-restrained eaters. Appetite, 54(3), 499-503. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20152872

Moss, S. (2008). Ironic rebound effect. Psychlopedia: Everything Psychology. Retrieved August 12, 2012, from www.psych-it.com.au/Psychlopedia/article.asp?id=133

Why the last piece of chocolate tastes best

Have you ever wondered why the last piece of cake, the last slice of pizza, or the last bite in a hamburger tastes especially delicious? Nope, there’s no magic involved since no ingredient is secretly added. Just the fact that it is the last makes it really special.

In a taste perception experiment by O’Brien and Ellsworth (2012) published in the Psychological Science, they recruited 52 students from University of Michigan to evaluate new flavors of Hershey’s Kisses. Each participant was randomly given five chocolates with different flavors: milk, dark, creme, caramel, and almond.

The participants were randomly assigned into two conditions. One treatment is where an experimenter would tell them “Here is your next chocolate” after every turn up to the last chocolate. On the other condition, the experimenter still said the same thing after every turn, but before giving the fifth chocolate, he would say “Here is your last chocolate”.

As they had predicted, it was found that the participants rated the 5th chocolate (irrespective of flavor) more delicious when they have been told that it was the last, as compared to when it’s just another chocolate they would taste. They have also found that the overall eating experience was more enjoyable when the last chocolate was made salient.

What makes it more intriguing is that it is just a mock “ending” since the participants could still eat chocolates even after the experiment. Just the fact that they were made aware that they would be eating the last chocolate in the series makes the 5th chocolate extra-special, showing our biases in end experiences.

Ersner-Hershfield et al. (2008) even show how senior students always have mixed emotions whenever they are reminded of graduation day as compared to those who are not expecting to graduate. Also, they found that people perceive a meaningful location to be more beautiful when they were told that they would see it for the final time.  Indeed, temporal knowledge not only affects taste perception, but also poignancy felt by people while perceiving situations or places.

This is really interesting because the current research suggests, aside from adding up to a plethora of evidence that highlight how we give value to the “lasts”, that not only do we give importance on the significant experiences that end, but on mundane things (i.e. eating chocolates) as well.

 

This struck me as having a lot of astounding implications. Our unconscious bias to endings may give a favorable but undeserved treatment to the last student who presented a report, the last performer we watched, or the last applicant for a job. Being able to anticipate the last should also come hand-in-hand with the awareness that there is such a thing as a positivity bias for these endings.

So the next time you open a pack of chocolates, study for an exam, or just have lunch with a friend, why don’t you savor it by thinking every day as if it is your last?

References:

O’Brien, E. & Ellsworth, P. (2012). Saving the Last for Best: A Positivity Bias for End Experiences. Psychological Science, 23(2), 163-165. Retrieved from http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/eob/files/obrienellsworth2012.pdf       

Ersner-Hershfield, H., Mikels, J., Sullivan, S., & Carstensen, L. (2008). Poignancy: Mixed Emotional Experience in the Face of Meaningful Endings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(1), 158-167. Retrieved from http://people.stern.nyu.edu/hhershfi/resources/Research/Journal-of-Personality-and-Social-Psychology-2008-Ersner-Hershfield.pdf 

Tuscany chocolate [Photograph]. (2008). Retrieved August 12, 2012, from http://www.wayfaring.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/tuscany_chocolates3.jpg   

         

Amortentia

And --

body odor and rubber?

No, not unless that's how Ron Weasley smells like. 

According to the results of a study by Demattè, Österbauer, and Spence (2007), olfactory cues play a role in judging facial attractiveness, particularly unpleasant odors.

They designed an experiment wherein female participants had to rate the attractiveness of a male face presented on a computer monitor while simultaneously being exposed to one of four odors--clean air, male fragrance, body odor, and rubber. Each of the 16 participants was exposed to the three types of odors, pleasant-male fragrance, neutral-clean air, and unpleasant-rubber or body odor. 

Their results indicate that participants rated the attractiveness of a face significantly less when exposed to an unpleasant odor as opposed to a pleasant or neutral odor. Furthermore, no difference was found in the attractiveness rating when they were exposed to a neutral or pleasant scent. Neither did it matter if the odor was "body relevant", that is, rubber and body odor had the same effect.  

But wait... 

Isn't body odor a manifestation of pheromones which trigger sexual attraction? 

Well, that depends on whether or not we have a vomeronasal organ or VNO, which is responsible for the detection of pheromones.

Some say it's there but it's too small, others say it still works, and the rest say that there isn't one at all. From an evolutionary perspective, it has become obsolete for us humans, we lack the brain parts, and if a scientist happens to find a VNO region, it's simply a vestige. (Thank you, Mr. F. Bryant Furlow, for summing up a rather lengthy debate.)  

Hold that deodorant though!

In an article about body odor and attraction, Dr. Jessica Payne summarized a study conducted back in 2005 by Martins, Preti, Crabtree, Runyan, Vainius, and Wysocki. Their results indicate that body odors affect attraction and that there are different body odors for each gender. Participants were made to bathe with odorless products as well as abstain from strong smelling spices and keep cotton wedges between their arm puts for ...

NINE DAYS! 

They were then asked to rate the pleasantness of the odors captured in those cotton wedges. It turns out that  heterosexual men, heterosexual women, homosexual men, and homosexual women all had different emitted odors and odor preferences. 

So what happened to the study by Demattè, Österbauer, and Spence?

Why did body odor cause a lower rating of attractiveness?

It might be that the body odor they exposed their participants too was really too foul and unpleasant, or their participants weren't exposed to the right gender's body odor.

Too bad for Jean-Baptiste Grenouille though, he didn't smell like rubber or B.O. and one drop of his final perfume made him irresistible to all...

genders.