The McGurk effect

A phenomenon that occurs when a speech sound does not match the shape of the lips producing it, as when the sound corresponding to the usual pronunciation of the word gay is dubbed on to a video image of a person uttering the word bay, causing the listener to hear a word intermediate between the two (day).

The effect shows that the visual channel conveys important information not just to deaf people but also to listeners with normal hearing. For those with minor hearing loss, speech reading can be a very valuable way to maximize the hearing they still do have. Also, this reveals more about why watching the mouth is so important in intense language learning.

The phenomenon is named after the Scottish psychologist Harry McGurk (1936-98) who co-authored the first article on it, entitled 'Hearing Lips and Seeing Voices' in the journal Nature in 1976.

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Learned Helplessness and Depression

One cognitive account of depression is the Learned Helplessness Theory (Seligman, 1975). It argues, that depression occurs when people expect that bad events will occur and that there is nothing they can do to prevent them, or cope with them.

Learned Helplessness Theory emerged through Martin Seligman's work with laboratory dogs. He designed an experiment which consisted of three individual dogs, all restrained by harnesses. Dog group (a) was the control group, receiving no electric shock. Dog groups (b) were paired up. One dog in a pair was administered with a mild electric shock and at any time the dog could cease the electric shock by stepping their paw upon a lever. Dog group (c) were too paired up, however one of the dogs was a wired up to a dog in group b and the shocks they received were in congruence with that of group (b). The idea of this was that the group (c) dog would receive a shock that was erratic in timing, unavoidable and inescapable. The tests resulted in groups (a) and (b) recovering quite promptly from the experience. As predicted however, group (c) dogs were left meek and subdued; portraying symptoms similar to those of clinical depression and thus conforming to Seligman’s predictions: that helplessness can be learned. 

Learned helplessness results from being trained to be locked into a system. It can involve a state of apathy or passive behaviour induced by negative conditioning. People may believe that their personal 'defects' will render them helpless to avoid negative events in the future, and their sense of hopelessness places them at significantly greater risk for depression.

Although Seligman theorized that learned helplessness and depression had similar origins, the theory was widely criticized and he has since revised his ideas in his 'Explanatory Style'. This proposes that depression is linked to how we attribute causalities of certain events in our life or traits of our existence (i.e. whether we attribute events to internal, stable or global aspects) (Yen, 1998). Therefore, it is interesting to ask whether learned helplessness is in fact a cause of depression or a correlated side effect of becoming depressed.

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"Life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist, but the optimist weathers them better" ~ Martin Seligman

Your Football Team

"A guy can change anything. His face, his home, his family, his girlfriend, his religion, his God. But there’s one thing he can’t change. He can’t change his passion."

 

~ Pablo Sandoval - El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret In Their Eyes).

 

Definitely one of the best crime films I've ever seen. A 2009 movie, it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards.

The above quote tied in with the criminals love for his local football team, and the words ring so true. But football fans in general seem to have this idea that they couldn't have supported any other team. And I would include myself in that too. The thoughts of supporting anyone other than Manchester United just seems ridiculous. Frightening in fact.

Now unless you come from a household with a father, mother or older siblings who supported a certain team, yes you're probably going to be influenced by them and moulded by that environment. But it's a myth to think that you couldn't have supported any other team. It was just what you were exposed to in that time of your life. At that particular moment that set the tone for the future. The ups and downs. Downs mainly if you're currently supporting Louis Van Gaal and his "philosophy".

However once the choice is pinned down, especially at a young age, it's set for life. There is no going back. And the slagging of other fans and calling them fickle or 'typical', you could have been one of those fans yourself if the path was different. I mean if you supported that rival team, would you suddenly be ascribed with these features for choosing to support them?

 

No obviously. But we all assume so.
I do it regularly. And it's just a very strange thing.

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I'll see you when I get my new glasses...

Have a look.

 

The Explanation: 

 

Inattentional blindness, a phenomenon known as "the failure to notice an unexpected stimulus that is in one’s field of vision when other attention-demanding tasks are being performed." This phenomenon is classified as a psychological attentional error - and you'll be relieved to know -  not the result of visionary deficits. The main reason for this lack of attention is the overload of stimuli surrounding us; in order to be able to focus on the intended things, we learn to disregard many others and be unaware of the unattended stimuli. There have been a large number of experiments demonstrating that this phenomenon has a significant effect on people’s perception...and now this one with you.

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"What we see depends mainly on what we look for." ~ John Lubbock

The Mozart Effect

Named after the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791), this finding, first reported in the journal Nature in 1993 (pdf here) , said that listening to compositions by Mozart increases scores on tests of spatial ability for a short while.



In the original experiment, college students were given various tests after experiencing each of the following for ten minutes; listening to Mozart's sonata for two pianos in D major K488, listening to a relaxation tape, or silence. Performance on the paper-folding subtest of the Stanford-Binet intelligence scale was significantly better after listening to Mozart than after the other two treatments, but the effect dissipated after about 15 minutes, and other non-spatial tasks were unaffected.

 

The finding has been contested by other researchers and has been widely misinterpreted to imply that listening to Mozart, or just classical music in general, increases one's intelligence.

 

Several independent research studies have shown that children who receive extensive training in musical performance achieve significantly higher average scores on tests of spatial ability, but that long-term consequence is not the Mozart effect.