Recent research has examined the relationship between marijuana use and schizophrenia. Does marijuana act as a precipitating stress that could trigger a psychotic episode in someone vulnerable to the disorder? The CBC program The Nature of Things addressed this possibility in a recent episode called The Downside of High - watch it online here. As you will see in the program, the rate of schizophrenia is four times higher in adolescents who smoke pot before age 16 than in the general population. Schizophrenia in the general population occurs in about 1 in 100 people – the rate is twice as high in regular pot smokers. For references and more information regarding the program, see the episode’s website.

The results showed that teenage boys who ate fish more than once per week at age 15 scored higher on verbal and visuospatial intelligence three years later than boys who ate fish less often. This finding was stable across low and high education groups.

Why fish?

Fish contains both omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids (specifically, docosahexaenoic acid and arachidonic acid). Omega-3 fatty acid is particularly significant. It cannot be synthesized by the human body, and must be obtained through our diet. It acts on the brain directly, and its presence during development is important for cognitive function. Deficits in omega-3 levels have been associated with risk for depression and schizophrenia, and with reduced cognitive function in several age groups. According to the American Heart Association omega-3 fatty acid supplements significantly reduce the numbers of deaths, heart attacks and strokes in patients with cardiovascular disease, and they are frequently suggested for people suffering from a wide array of inflammatory diseases such as arthritis, acne, diabetes and so on.

Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids have been part of the human diet throughout our evolutionary history. The ratio of omega-3:6 was likely about 1:1 for much of our evolutionary history; at present, the ratio in the North American diet is more like 1:10. Restoring the balance is easy; it requires consumption of more fish, especially fatty fish such as salmon, and other foods such as flax oil and walnuts.

In 1995 Medvec, Madey and Gilovich explored the notion that bronze medalists are actually happier than silver medallists in a study published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. They argued that, while silver medalists have done objectively better than third-place finishers, they compare themselves to gold medalists, while those winning the bronze medal compare themselves to those in 4th place.  Medvec, Madey and Gilovich analysed the facial emotions displayed by silver and bronze medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics. As predicted they found that the bronze medalists looked a lot happier than the silver medallists in the immediate aftermath of learning how they had placed; the effect was still evident, though less pronounced, on the medal podium later.

This tendency for those who have done objectively better, to feel worse, is an example of counterfactual thinking – when thoughts of what might have been influence our emotional reactions. Medvec et al also asked bronze and silver Empire State Game medalists about their thoughts after winning their medals – as expected the silver medalists reported more thoughts of almost doing better, than the bronze medalists did.

To read the full article see Medvec, V., Madey, S., & Gilovich, T. (1995). When less is more: Counterfactual thinking and satisfaction among Olympic medalists. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(4), 603-610, available here.

What sensation and perception topic does this video illustrate?

How about this one – which way is the dancer turning? If you concentrate you can make her change direction.

And this?

Here’s the definition from Environment Canada:

“Probability forecasts are a subjective numerical estimate that any point in your forecast area will get measurable precipitation during the forecast period. For example, a 40% probability of rain today means there are 4 chances in 10 of you getting wet today.”

In other words, if you looked at 10 days with similar weather conditions, on 4 of those days there would be some precipitation somewhere in that area. Or, 40% of the time when we have weather conditions like these – it rains. The PoP is based on the occurrence of precipitation on days with similar weather conditions. This means that Environment Canada collects weather statistics and then uses them to predict the probability of precipitation on a given day with a given set of conditions based on the records. Hmm – still not sure about bringing your umbrella?

Back to Environment Canada:

“Probability forecasts cannot be used to predict when, where or how much precipitation will occur. For example, a 60% probability of snow today does not mean that it will snow during 60% of the day. However, the probability figure does mean that there is a 60% chance of a measurable amount of snow falling at that location.”

So the probability of precipitation  is not going to tell you what’s happening where you are – it covers a broad geographic are. If you want to know the probability of getting soaked in North Van, your weather area is Vancouver – observations are made at YVR. Anyone on the North Shore knows how reliable that’s going to be. It’s also not going to tell you how much rain to expect.

Back to Environment Canada for the last word:

“Probability forecasts are more than a novelty or an interesting variation on existing forecasts. They have considerable practical value and should allow many people to make better decisions about weather sensitive activities.

To see how probability of precipitation may be used in making decisions, consider a contractor who has to decide whether or not to pour some concrete for a job. Suppose the probability of precipitation is 40%. The contractor has to calculate the costs of re-doing the job if it rains and, if he/she goes ahead, the expectation is that the risk is 40% of that cost. Compare this to the costs of delaying the job until the next day. If the costs of delay is less than the risk of going ahead, the best decision would be to delay. If, however, the risk is less than the cost of delaying, then it is worthwhile to go ahead.”

OK. Say the job costs $500. So the risk of doing the job with a PoP of 40% is .40 X $500 = $200. The cost of delaying could be zero if the contractor has other work, or more if not.

Don’t forget your umbrella today!

For more on the neuroscience on the effects of music check out Dan Levitin’s book, This is your brain on music.

In the meantime, you might be preparing to celebrate New Year’s Eve in a few days. December 31 is also the next full moon – will this convergence of events cause you to act strangely? Will you feel the urge to howl as you sing Auld Lang Syne? To learn the answer to this and other psychological questions check out Michael Britt’s latest podcast at the psych files on 50 Great Myths in Popular Psychology. the psych files are always full of humour and information – enjoy!

100+ Google Tricks That Will Save You Time in School

Enjoy!

An inspection of the Dining Services website at LU was revealing: it offered students a chance to win a 6-piece KFC Hot Wings or 1/2 a wrap for completing their online survey. The Faculty Dining Menus for Dec. 9 offered an assortment of high fat choices as well as the salad bar and steamed vegetables including  BBQ Pork Chops, Fried Pollock, and Cheese Tortillina Alfredo. While the menu for the campus community does admittedly contain some healthy-sounding choices like ready-made salads, they appear to be buried in the hamburgers, Philly Cheesesteaks, ultimate Cheeseburgers; Carolina Pulled Chicken or Pork, Beef Brisket and creamy coleslaw; and fried chicken on offer at their retail food outlets.

The prevalence of overweight and obesity has climbed sharply and steadily in the USA, Canada and elsewhere in recent years. In the US, one-third of adults  are obese with a BMI over 30, and about another third are overweight. The numbers are evn higher for African Americans (Lincoln University is an African-American school).

If you want to calculate your own BMI, go here.

Does this mean we should stop expecting psychology undergraduates to master APA style? I don’t think so – learning APA style should improve all aspects of your writing. APA style provides concrete advice on clarity, structure, and organization of writing. It helps the writer to understand how to integrate other sources effectively and without plagiarism. Once learned, it removes the onus off the writer to make stylistic decisions like how to format citations and references, thereby freeing him or her to focus on content.

A final excellent resource on APA style this week is The OWL at Purdue University.

Carr goes on to suggest that the kind of quick scanning for information we do when searching and reading on the Internet is actually changing the way we process information neurologically. He points to anecdotal reports from himself and others who no longer feel able to sit and read, to concentrate, to lose themselves, or become immersed for lengthy periods of time. Carr fears that these abilities, if not exercised, will be lost.

So much of what we need and want now exists on the net: writing, reading, calendar-keeping, journalling, entertainment, communicating, networking, buying, selling, sex, gambling . . . . and more. Carr argues that we use our computers to do all of these things all of the time – simultaneously. This division of attention, focus, and concentration, he believes, is reshaping us neurologically. It’s creating brains that are perfectly designed for twitter.

Wether or not Carr’s fear are well-founded will be addressed by cognitive scientists.  Let’s hope they have the attention span to find out the answers.

RULES

• There are 5 houses in 5 different colours.
• In each house lives a person with a different nationality.
• These 5 owners drink a certain beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar and keep a certain pet.
• No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar or drink the same drink.

Your task is to determine WHO KEEPS FISH?

What you know already:

1. The Brit lives in a red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is on the left of the white house.
5. The green house owner drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the house right in the centre drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house, on the extreme left.
10. The man who smokes Blend lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blend has a neighbour who drinks water.

WHO KEEPS FISH?

When you’re ready to check your answer look here.

Prosopagnosia is an impairment in the ability to recognize faces. This can be acquired, as in the case of brain injury or disease, or genetic, developing in childhood. The inability is specific to facial recognition – the ability to recognize other objects is reasonably unimpaired. There is also evidence that the ability is further specialized to involve human faces only – some individuals with prosopagnosia can still recognize non-human animal faces. This suggests that there is a specific neural mechanism that specializes in facial recognition. The area of the brain called the fusiform gyrus appears to be responsible. People with prosopagnosia have to rely on other cues like hair, clothing, gait and so on in order to recognize people.

Normally, people are very adept at recognizing the features in human faces (not surprising given the importance of faces in our evolutionary history) and but only if they are right-side-up. Take a look at what happens when the face is upside-down!

Click on it and then choose where you want the content delivered to. The easiest way is to use an RSS Reader – these collect updated info from everything you have subscribed to and then deliver it to you. There are readers that work with your Internet browser, like FeedDemon 3.0 for Windows, Safari, and Firefox. There are also online readers like Google Reader, My Yahoo!, Bloglines, Pageflakes, and Netvibes. All of them do basically the same thing, although their appearances are different – check out a couple to see what format you prefer.

Once you have your Reader set up, start adding feeds from your favourite sites. You will only get content as it is updated – nothing new = no update. You don’t need to check the original website.

You can also have content delivered to your email if you prefer. Whatever method you choose, using a feed reader is a good time management technique – instead of visiting every web site separately, let the content come to you. I used RSS to deliver photos from Flickr to this blog.

Feeds are also available where you might not expect – you can subscribe to a Google search for something and then receive new hits as they appear online, using Google alerts. iTunes offers thousands of audio and video podcasts – each with its own feed.

If you have your own blog or website, you can publish your own RSS feed that lets people subscribe to your site and get content as you update it. This blog is written using WordPress which automatically generates an RSS feed.

If this is where you are what are you going to do?

CapilanoU offers services to support learners. If you want something online, a great place to start is Study Guides and Strategies .

I highly recommend watching this – and checking out the rest of the psych files. And if you have another idea for a mnemonic, post it here!

When results are correlational, generally the researchers obtained two “scores” – sometimes two from the same person (such as height and weight), and sometimes two from 2 different people such as husband’s height and wife’s height. They would obtain the scores from a sample – a large group of people. Everyone in the study provides the same scores, and the correlations are calculated for pairs of scores.

In an experiment, look for different groups of people doing different things. There is always an experimental group (also called the experimental condition) and this group is “testing” the variable that the experimenter thinks will cause an effect. In a drug study, this is the group who gets the medication. The experimental group has to be compared against a control group – this group does NOT take the medication in a drug study – they get a placebo instead. In an experiment the experimental condition scores will be compared to the control group scores.

One final word about correlations. The examples we have been looking at this week are concerned with two variables that show a linear relationship – for example, as scores on one variable go one way (e.g., hours of studying), scores on another variable go either the same way (e.g., GPA) or the other way (e.g., errors on exam questions).

There are relationships between variables that are non-linear. Consider the classic upside-down U-shaped relationship between physiological arousal and performance, showing that a medium level of arousal is best for performance, while extremes in either direction (total boredom/apathy in one direction and panic in the other) impair the ability to get the job done:

Photo: Hans-Petter Fjeld (CC-BY-SA)

In a remarkable display of statistical improbability, researchers have shown that a salmon was able to indicate what emotion an individual portrayed in a photo must have been experiencing. The salmon, which was “not alive at the time of scanning” was subjected to fMRI imaging. This procedure scans the brain in cubic units called voxels. It detects activation in the voxels. The trouble is, there are tens of thousands of voxels, so some of them will “light up” by chance; think of it as statistical noise. Normally, researchers use statistical corrections for these false positive results. In this study, the statistical noise of these false positives made it appear that the dead salmon was actually thinking about the photographs.

Who said science was boring?