INVITATION DESIGNS (English)

Babies embrace punishment earlier than previously thought

Babies as young as eight months old want people who commit or condone antisocial acts to be punished, according to a new study led by a University of British Columbia researcher.

While previous research shows that babies uniformly prefer kind acts, the new study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that eight-month-old infants support negative behavior if it is directed at those with antisocial behavior and dislike those who are nice to bad guys.

"We find that, by eight months, babies have developed nuanced views of reciprocity and can conduct these complex social evaluations much earlier than previously thought," says lead author Prof. Kiley Hamlin, UBC Dept of Psychology.

"This study helps to answer questions that have puzzled evolutionary psychologists for decades," says Hamlin. "Namely, how have we survived as intensely social creatures if our sociability makes us vulnerable to being cheated and exploited? These findings suggest that, from as early as eight months, we watch for people who might put us in danger and prefer to see antisocial behaviour regulated."

For the study, researchers presented six scenarios to 100 babies using animal hand puppets. After watching puppets act negatively or positively towards other characters, the babies were shown puppets either giving or taking toys from these "good" or "bad" puppets. When prompted to choose their favorite characters, babies preferred puppets that punished the bad characters from the original scene compared to those that treated them nicely.

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The researchers also examined how older infants would themselves treat good and bad puppets. They tested 64 babies aged 21 months, who were asked to give a treat to, or take a treat away from one of two puppets – one who had previously helped another puppet, and another who had harmed the other puppet. These older babies physically took treats away from the "bad" puppets, and gave treats to the "good" ones.

Hamlin, who conducted the research with Karen Wynn and Paul Bloom of Yale University's Dept. of Psychology, and Neha Mahajan of Temple University, says the findings provide new insights into the protective mechanisms humans use to choose social alliances, which she says are rooted in self-preservation.

Hamlin says the infant responses may be early forms of the complex behaviors and emotions that get expressed later in life, such as when school children tattle on kids who break the rules, the rush people feel when movie villains get their due, and the phenomenon of people cheering at public executions.

Hamlin says while such tendencies surely have many learned components, the fact that they are present so early in life suggests that they may be based in part on an innate foundation of liking those who give others their "just desserts."

Provided by University of British Columbia

"Babies embrace punishment earlier than previously thought." November 28th, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-babies-embrace-earlier-previously-thought.html

 

Study debunks stereotype that men think about sex all day long

Men may think about sex more often than women, but a new study suggests that men also think about other biological needs, such as eating and sleep, more frequently than women do.

And the research discredits the persistent stereotype that men think about sex every seven seconds, which would amount to more than 8,000 thoughts about sex in 16 waking hours. In the study, the median number of young men's thought about sex stood at almost 19 times per day. Young women in the study reported a median of nearly 10 thoughts about sex per day.

As a group, the men also thought about food almost 18 times per day and slept nearly 11 times per day, compared to women's median number of thoughts about eating and sleep, at nearly 15 times and about 8 1/2 times, respectively.

The college-student participants carried a golf tally counter to track their thoughts about eating, sleep or sex every day for a week. Each student was assigned just one type of thought to record. Before receiving the tally counter, they had completed several questionnaires and were asked to estimate how often they had daily ideas about eating, sleeping and sex.

Overall, a participant's comfort with sexuality was the best predictor for who would have the most frequent daily thoughts about sex.

"If you had to know one thing about a person to best predict how often they would be thinking about sex, you'd be better off knowing their emotional orientation toward sexuality, as opposed to knowing whether they were male or female," said Terri Fisher, professor of psychology at Ohio State University's Mansfield campus and lead author of the study. "Frequency of thinking about sex is related to variables beyond biological sex."

Correcting this stereotype about men's sexual thoughts is essential, Fisher noted.

"It's amazing the way people will spout off these fake statistics that men think about sex nearly constantly and so much more often than women do," she said. "When a man hears a statement like that, he might think there's something wrong with him because he's not spending that much time thinking about sexuality, and when women hear about this, if they spend significant time thinking about sex they might think there's something wrong with them."

The study appears online and is scheduled for publication in the January issue of the Journal of Sex Research.

The study involved 163 female and 120 male college students between 18 and 25 who were enrolled in a psychology research participation program. Of those, 59 were randomly assigned to track thoughts about food, 61 about sleep and 163 about sex. Most students were white and self-identified as heterosexual. The college-student sample compared it to previous research and involved an age group at which gender differences in sexuality are likely at their peak.

Before the thought-tracking began, the participants completed several questionnaires. These included a sexual opinion survey to measure a positive or negative emotional orientation toward sexuality (erotophilia vs. erotophobia); a sociosexual orientation inventory measuring attitudes about sex and tracking sexual behavior and levels of desire; a social desirability scale to measure respondents' tendency to try to appear socially acceptable; and an eating habits questionnaire and sleepiness scale. They also were asked to estimate how many times in an average day that they thought about sleeping, eating and sex.

Researchers then gave each student a tally counter device and told those assigned to the sexual thoughts condition to click the device to maintain a count their of thoughts about sex. They were told to count a thought about any aspect of sex: sexual activity, fantasies and erotic images, sexual memories and any arousing stimuli.

Others were instructed to use the device to record thoughts about eating that included food, hunger, cravings, snacking or cooking, and thoughts about sleep that included dreaming, sleeping, napping, going to bed or needing rest.

The questions about food and sleep were designed to mask the true intent of the study's focus on thoughts about sex, Fisher said. However, the results about these additional thoughts provided important information about differences in thinking among males and females.

"Since we looked at those other types of need-related thoughts, we found that it appears that there's not just a sex difference with regard to thoughts about sex, but also with regard to thoughts about sleep and food," she said. "That's very significant. This suggests males might be having more of these thoughts than women are or they have an easier time identifying the thoughts. It's difficult to know, but what is clear is it's not uniquely sex that they're spending more time thinking about, but other issues related to their biological needs, as well."

And when all those thoughts were considered in the statistical analysis, the difference between men and women in their average number of daily thoughts about sex wasn't considered any larger than the gender differences between thoughts about sleep or thoughts about food.

In raw numbers, male participants recorded between one and 388 daily thoughts about sex, compared to the range of female thoughts about sex between one and 140 times per day.

"For women, that's broader than many would have expected. And there were no women who reported zero thoughts per day. So women are also thinking about sexuality," Fisher said.

The questionnaire data offered some additional clues about the influences on sexual thoughts. When all participants were analyzed together, those measuring the highest in erotophilia – or comfort with their sexuality – were likelier to think more frequently about sex.

But when the analysis considered males and females separately, no single variable – erotophilia score, unrestrictive attitudes about sex or a lack of desire to be socially acceptable – could be defined as a predictor of how often men think about sex.

But for women, the erotophilia score remained a good predictor of more frequent sexual thoughts. On the other hand, women who scored high on the desire to be socially acceptable were more likely to think less frequently about sex.

"People who always give socially desirable responses to questions are perhaps holding back and trying to manage the impression they make on others," Fisher explained. "In this case, we're seeing that women who are more concerned with the impression they're making tend to report fewer sexual thoughts, and that's because thinking about sexuality is not consistent with typical expectations for women."

The participants' estimates about how often they thought each day about eating, sleeping and sex were much lower than the actual number of thoughts they recorded. This suggested to Fisher that previous research in this area – especially on thoughts about sex – was weak because almost all previous studies were based on participants' retrospective estimates about how often they thought about sex.

"There's really no good reason that our society should have believed that men think so much more about sex than women. Even the research done previously doesn't support the stereotype that men are thinking about sex every seven seconds," she said.

Fisher researched with undergraduate Ohio State-Mansfield students Zachary Moore and Mary-Jo Pittenger. Both have since graduated.

Provided by The Ohio State University

"Study debunks stereotype that men think about sex all day long." November 28th, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-debunks-stereotype-men-sex-day.html

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Creative excuses: Original thinkers more likely to cheat

Creative people are more likely to cheat than less creative people, possibly because this talent increases their ability to rationalize their actions, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"Greater creativity helps individuals solve difficult tasks across many domains, but creative sparks may lead individuals to take unethical routes when searching for solutions to problems and tasks," said lead researcher Francesca Gino, PhD, of Harvard University.

Gino and her co-author, Dan Ariely, PhD, of Duke University, conducted five experiments to test their thesis that more creative people would cheat under circumstances where they could justify their bad behaviour. Their research was published online in APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The researchers used recognized psychological tests and measures to gauge research subjects' creativity. They also tested participants' intelligence. Participants received a small sum for showing up in the five experiments. Then, they were presented with tasks or tests where they could be paid more if they cheated. For example, in one experiment, participants took a general knowledge quiz in which they circled their answers on the test paper. Afterwards, the experimenter told them to transfer their answers to "bubble sheets", – but the experimenter told the group she had photocopied the wrong sheet and that the correct answers were lightly marked. The experimenters also told participants they would be paid more for more correct answers, leading them to believe that they could cheat without detection when transferring their answers. However, all the papers had unique identifiers.

The results showed the more creative participants were significantly more likely to cheat and that there was no link between intelligence and dishonesty – i.e., more intelligent but less creative people were not more inclined toward dishonesty.

In another experiment, test subjects were shown drawings with dots on two sides of a diagonal line and asked to indicate whether there were more dots on the left or right sides. In half of the 200 trials, it was virtually impossible to tell whether there were more dots on one side or another. However, participants were told they'd be paid 10 times as much (5 cents vs 0.5 cents) for each time they said there were more dots on the right side. As predicted, the more creative participants were significantly more likely to give the more paid answer.

"Dishonesty and innovation are two of the topics most widely written about in the popular press," the authors wrote. "Yet, the relationship between creativity and dishonest behaviour has not been studied empirically. … The results from the current article indicate that, in fact, creative people who work in environments that promote creative thinking may be the most at risk when they face ethical dilemmas."

The authors concede some critical limitations in their work. Most notably, they created situations in which money tempted participants to cheat. They suggested that future research should investigate whether creativity would lead people to satisfy selfish, short-term goals rather than their higher aspirations when faced with self-control dilemmas, such as eating a slice of cake when trying to lose weight.

More information: "The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest," Francesca Gino, PhD, Harvard Business School, Harvard University, and Dan Ariely, PhD, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, online.

Provided by American Psychological Association

"Creative excuses: Original thinkers more likely to cheat." November 28th, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-creative-thinkers.html

 

Posted by

Robert Karl Stonjek

Reality in the eye of the beholder: A Photoshop reality check

 

You know they couldn't possibly look that good. But what did those models and celebrities look like before all the retouching? How different is the image we see from the original?

Dartmouth Computer Science Professor Hany Farid and Eric Kee, a PhD student at Dartmouth College, are proposing a method to not only answer such questions but also to quantify the changes.

As Farid writes, "Impossibly thin, tall, and wrinkle- and blemish-free models are routinely splashed onto billboards, advertisements, and magazine covers." He says that this is "creating a fantasy of sorts." Going beyond considerations of aesthetics or any dishonesty of photo editors or advertisers, Farid and Kee voice public health concerns.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

 

 (PNAS) on November 28, 2011, they point out that these highly idealized images have been linked to eating disorders and body image dissatisfaction in men, women, and children. The authors note that the American Medical Association has recently adopted a policy to "discourage the altering of photographs in a manner that could promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image."

There have already been repercussions in the United Kingdom. A Reuters news story from July 2011 reports: "Two L'Oreal cosmetics adverts [advertisements] featuring actress Julia Roberts and supermodel Christy Turlington were banned in Britain by the Advertising Standards Agency, following complaints by MP [Member of Parliament] Jo Swinson. Liberal Democrat MP Swinson said the magazine adverts for foundations made by Maybelline and Lancome, both owned by L'Oreal, were misleading because the photos had been digitally altered." On a prior occasion, L'Oreal had been forced to add a disclaimer to another ad.

But Farid and Kee assert that outright bans or simple disclaimers may not be addressing the issue fairly or completely. They are seeking a way to for advertisers to truthfully and accurately characterize the extent to which an image has been altered while allowing the public to make informed judgments. The goal is to create a metric that provides an objective assessment of how much alteration has been made.

The authors propose a rating system that takes into account common practices such as cropping and color adjustment while providing assessment of other kinds of modifications that dramatically change a person's appearance. They consider geometric alterations such as slimming legs, adjusting facial symmetry, and correcting posture, as well as photometric manipulations that might include removing wrinkles, "bags" under the eyes and skin blemishes.

"We start with the before and after digital images from which we automatically estimate the geometric and photometric changes, effectively reverse engineering the manipulations that a photo retoucher has made," Farid says.

In the study, to crosscheck and validate their metric, human observers were asked to compare and rank the differences in hundreds of pairs of before and after retouching images. The results correlated highly with the mathematical metric.

"Such a rating may provide incentive for publishers and models to reduce some of the more extreme forms of digital retouching that are common today," the authors conclude, but they add, "It remains to be seen if this rating can mediate the adverse effects of being inundated with unrealistic body images."

Provided by Dartmouth College

"Reality in the eye of the beholder: A Photoshop reality check." November 28th, 2011. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-reality-eye-photoshop.html

 

Posted by

Robert Karl Stonjek

Lifelong learning that adapts to you

© Shutterstock

Technology enhanced lifelong learning that automatically adapts to the needs of the learner is now in sight thanks to work by EU-funded researchers who have developed an adaptive learning platform that can follow you through school, university, your career and even when you learn a new hobby. The rapidly growing, multi-billion euro e-learning sector is set to get a next-generation booster shot.

The EU-funded 'Generic responsive adaptive personalised learning environment' (GRAPPLE) project created a system that focuses solely on learning support, with the aim of making it easier for people to acquire new knowledge and skills. GRAPPLE also makes the most of the students' time by tailoring courses to their strengths and weaknesses. 

There are huge advantages to this kind of system and it has the potential to dramatically enhance learning in the near future. Imagine a course that is genuinely adapted to the individual, skipping material that has been mastered, and offering remedial courses on those areas where the student is weakest. 

The course could highlight and define terminology for one student but not for another, depending on whether they are already familiar with the topic. Advanced tools for adaptive lifelong learning could one day recommend courses that tie in with a user's previous experience to qualify the student for a recognised diploma or degree. In this way, learners could leverage their experience to the fullest. 

The key phrase is learning, where students direct their education based on their interest and priorities, rather than teacher-centred approaches where students are taken through a linear course regardless of their needs or wants. For this reason, the e-learning industry tends to describe users as learners, or active participants who study at every stage of their life, and not as students per se. 

This is a new departure for 'Learning management systems' (LMS). 'Currently, what an LMS system technically does are things like assignments, tests, grading and access to resources like course material, slides and other information, and it just offers those resources as files to the student. It doesn't really offer any guidance as to how to actually study the material,' explains Professor Paul De Bra, GRAPPLE Project Coordinator from the department of mathematics and computer science at the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven in the Netherlands. The project received from the EU almost EUR 4 million of its total budget of EUR 5.3 million. 

'LMS platforms are great for managing the process of learning and handling administration; right now LMS platforms have not developed any tools to help the actual learning, to make it easier and more productive for students to learn. They support the process but not the learning,' he continues. 

'That's where GRAPPLE comes in because we created an environment where you can click to an adaptive course text that you go through page by page, and it gives you a menu of choices. It can offer recommendations based on your previous experience, it can recommend new topics or suggest that you avoid other topics, and it keeps track of your learning.' 

Prof. De Bra says the platform works as an embedded adaptive learning environment within existing LMS platforms. It is designed to be easily portable from one platform to another, and the code for GRAPPLE is open source, allowing LMS vendors to adapt it to their needs. 

There are multiple ways to complete a GRAPPLE course. The system offers guidance and there are many links that learners can follow on their own initiative. 'It is really complementary to what a LMS offers,' Prof. De Bra emphasises. 

In the GRAPPLE system, learner initiative and curiosity are leveraged to enhance the educational experience. Study becomes much more absorbing when the student can follow their own interests. 

Perhaps the most ambitious goal in GRAPPLE's vision is a system that follows the learners through their life; in school, at work and in their hobbies and pastimes. And it keeps track of acquired skills and knowledge. If a user scored, say, 70 or 80 % on a topic, it will not be recommended in future courses requiring those skills, but if the student scored 50 % or lower, remedial course material might be recommended in the future. 

The EU-funded researchers designed an integrated platform to enable all this functionality. An 'event bus' coordinates all of the platform's back-end activity, except for the single sign-on facility which is handled by a powerful, globally recognised system, called Shibboleth. 

The 'GRAPPLE authoring tool' (GAT) lets e-learning authors create adaptive content and courses. The 'GRAPPLE adaptive learning environment' (GALE) provides the framework for executing courses, while the 'GRAPPLE user model framework' (GUMF) maintains all the information that is known about the learner. 

The system architecture is particularly elegant because it separates the logical functions of learning management, content delivery, content creation, user identity and user modelling. As such, it lends itself to adoption of specific elements in a modular way. For example, Prof. De Bra ponders that future versions of GRAPPLE technology could replace Shibboleth with the adoption of the OpenID standard, which is used in social networks. Many learners have an OpenID already. 

The GRAPPLE architecture also allows for further work to be carried out on individual elements without having to reinvent the entire system. Prof. De Bra offers GAT as an example. He says GAT simplifies authoring, but it is not as easy as it could be. 

'Authors find it really difficult to move from linear course delivery, where the student is taught, to adaptive learning, where users employ self-directed study,' he notes. 'The big issue is deciding the adaptation rules; under what circumstances and in what way is the material adapted?' 

It is a bottleneck in the process, but identifying the bottleneck is a huge advance and Prof. De Bra says that there will be further work on the creation of adaptation rules in other contexts. 

GRAPPLE achieved its objectives and has received positive reviews of its work. The platform was tested in a variety of environments, either as a whole or with individual components. At Trinity College, Dublin, adaptive simulated conversations were used as part of a psychotherapy course, corresponding to the responses of the student. 

In Germany, it was used by project partner Information Multimedia Communication (IMC) to teach job interview skills and self-management skills to office workers. In Eindhoven, the Netherlands, it was used to learn about hypermedia, and also about GRAPPLE itself. Likewise, all GRAPPLE partners used different topics for experiments. In all cases, the students, from different countries and linguistic backgrounds, were very enthusiastic about the platform and course delivery. 

It is a very promising start, but it is just a start and now the work will continue both within individual partner companies and enterprises and in follow-on projects. Ideas from GRAPPLE, and the use of some components are being taken up in new EU research projects, for instance in 'Immersive reflective experience-based adaptive learning' (ImREAL), a EUR 3.22 million EU-funded collaborative project. 

The GRAPPLE platform could not come at a better time for Europe. E-learning is a huge business worth EUR 40 billion worldwide in 2010. The market is growing rapidly at around 20 % a year according to figures by Global Industry Analysts. Europe is trailing the US, but by creating technologies like the GRAPPLE platform the Old World will be able to teach the New World a few tricks. 

More information: http://grapple-project.org/

 

Provided by CORDIS

"Lifelong learning that adapts to you." November 28th, 2011. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-lifelong.html

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Researchers design steady-handed robot for brain surgery

 

Surgeons operate on a patient in July 2011 in Baghdad. Neurosurgeons may one day get help in operating rooms from a robot with movements 10 times steadier than the human hand to perform delicate brain surgeries, the EU said Monday.

Neurosurgeons may one day get help in operating rooms from a robot with movements 10 times steadier than the human hand to perform delicate brain surgeries, the EU said Monday.

The European Commission touted the EU-funded ROBOCAST project as a breakthrough in robotic neurosurgery that could in future help treat tumors, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease and Tourette syndrome.

Developped by British, German, Italian and Israeli researchers, the robotic hand, guided by a surgeon, has 13 types of movement compared to four available to human hands during minimally invasive surgery.

It even has "haptic feedback", or physical cues that allow surgeons to assess tissue and feel the amount of force applied during surgery, the European Commission said in reporting the EU-funded ROBOCAST project.

The robot has only been tested on dummies so far, performing keyhole neurosurgery, in which a probe enters a tiny hole in the skull to manipulate tissue or collect blood and other fluids.

"Robots can reduce surgeon's tremor tenfold, making them especially useful in protecting the delicate and important brain matter," the commission said.

The European Union, marking European Robotics Week, said it was funding a parallel project involving three robots to assist surgeons operating on patients who must stay away during neurosurgery.

The EU's executive Commission has already spent 400 million euros in around 100 robotics projects. Brussels says global demand for robot-related products was worth around 15.5 billion euros in 2010, including 3.0 billion in Europe.

(c) 2011 AFP

"Researchers design steady-handed robot for brain surgery." November 28th, 2011. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-steady-handed-robot-brain-surgery.html

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek