HUG!

I went to an all-boys school for 12 years of my, so far, short 21-year old life. Going to college culture-shocked me in so many ways, not the least of which was having girls as close everyday, non-romantic friends. Saying hi through non-verbal ways used to mean fist bumps, high fives, a punch in the shoulder, and sometimes even a short hug. Now it means tighter hugs, heads on my shoulder and so many more variations of hand touches. But even after four years in college, I can honestly say that I've still never fully felt comfortable with the beso.

I guess there can be sex differences when it comes to how males and females communicate through touch, and when and how they use them. Touch is after all a rich medium for social communication and therefore, that can express anything from status differences, messages such as gratitude and sympathy, as well as emotions. Given its role in our social lives, it's therefore likely that it IS indeed gendered.

In a study conducted by Hertenstein and Keltner (2010), they analyzed 212 undergraduate students. The experiment's unit of analysis was dyadic (which I found really interesting), an emotion encoder-emotion decoder dyad. The procedure consisted of the encoder carrying out a randomized emotion (among these - Disgust, Fear, Envy, Embarrassment, Sadness, Pride, Love, Gratitude, Happiness, Anger, Sympathy) through touch on a part of the bare arm of the decoder (who was across a black curtain), whose task it is to guess the emotion and the sex of the encoder. It was found that anger was more readily communicated through the curtain if a male comprised any of the members of the dyad, sympathy was more readily communicated if there's a female, and the dyad with both females were the only ones able to communicate happiness. The other emotions were statistically significant. 

The author hypothesized the reason for this using evolutionary psychology and engendered social roles- males being the protectorate and territorial, and females being the more care-taking and emotional.

So does this mean that guys are more socially inept at encoding and decoding emotion? It must really suck to be us if that's the case- to mostly perceive and relate non-verbal touch with an emotion as negative as anger for most of the time. But I guess that's the reason there are [verbal and] other non-verbal cues to read from, it would be interesting to find an integrated and comprehensive study of communication and emotion perception using non-verbal cues. The best way I guess for us guys (and girls)  to master the art of proper and accurate encoding and decoding is to interact with people, go out and experience life. :)

Hertenstein, M. & Keltner, D. (2010).Gender and the Communication of Emotion Via Touch. Sex Roles, 64(1-2), 70–80.


Photo sources: 
http://www.spanishdict.com
http://notworkappropriate.blogspot.com

Tell Me, Did You Sail Across the Sun?

I am an adventurer - I don't mind the risk. I like taking the initial first step to a different world, a gradual introduction to the unfamiliar, feeling the high of satisfaction, taking the leap of faith... but then there's always the fall of rejection in the end, so far at least. I guess that's problem in adventure stories, somebody's storyline has to be cut short in order for one of the characters to continue moving on. OUCH.

Pain, both the physical and the emotional type, has always been a given when it comes to life and actually living life. It becomes even more unbearable the more you reach out and expect and feel, because with all that investment into your own emotional pool it becomes much easier to drown the moment the dam breaks. Reaching for the stars will give you a much more painful and definitely longer fall. At least you have time to think about where and when it went all wrong, eh?

So why don't we just sing about it then?

Because according to Mitchell, MacDonald and Knussen's study, music [and art] can actually help in managing pain perception (2008). The researchers allowed the participants to bring their own music to the study. They left their participants' dominant hand in a bowl of 32 degrees Centigrade of water and was left there until the discomfort became unbearable. 5 minutes was allotted as the maximum time for the experiment. They were then asked for self-reports using different scales (VAS, PRI, perceived control and anxiety).

The researchers found out that music listening was found to decrease anxiety as compared with the silence condition. It also significantly increases tolerance and perceived control over the painful stimulus and to decrease the perceived pain intensity [as compared with the silence condition].

A possible explanation for this is something we took up in one of our past lessons - attention. It may be that an external distracting stimuli can take over a big part of our limited attentional capacity which leaves less of  our mental facilities in the perception of pain. I guess there must be something with music and our associative memories with them that puts a hold on our dealing with pain as we are reminded of an experience, a feeling, etc.

So here I am right now, listening to music hoping to drown out my own feelings of distress and anxiety for the coming week. Too many exams and too little time. Move the exam, sir?

Mitchell, L., MacDonald, R. & Knussen, C. (2008). An Investigation of the Effects of Music and Art on Pain Perception. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 2(3), 162-170.


Photo sources:
http://kaufmantoldmesettheworldonfire.wordpress.com

Eeny Meeny Miney... GO!

I have been a Commonwealth kid and a Katipunan kid for most of my 21 years of life and so you can say that I've had a lot of experience when it comes to navigating through the changes in the signages and lightings and traffic schemes (as per every semeseter in school it seemed). Commonwealth used to be a four-lane highway that used traffic lights for every intersection and barely readable signs dotting the sides of the road. Fast forward 8 years into the future and it is now a [under construction] 6-lane mega highway with signs posted everywhere, more street lamps, no more traffic lights and plenty of u-turns. Katipunan underwent the same transformation in those same 8 years; and in those same 8 years, all the traffic lights in the Metro seems to have magically appeared in Makati and Fort Bonifacio.

Change can be good, that I agree with, but only if properly researched and directed.

In a 2001 study by Bullough et al, they tried to determine whether the luminance of traffic signals at night can cause visual discomfort. They based their stimuli on the standard presribed luminancies of the following: red=5000 cd/m2; yellow=23,100 cd/m2; green=10,000 cd/m2. They simulated an observer directly looking at an experimental traffic signal from two distances. They then collected the observers' ratings of discomfort. They found that afterimages (of varied colors per subject) were more common in higher luminancies, that color identification was nearly spot on during nighttime (since all of the participants passed the Ishihara tests and were further tested to be normal), that distance and visual discomfort are related and that green and yellow signals were more likely to cause visual discomfort, and that the recommendations are to make the standards dimmer than they should.

In other traffic-related studies, they focused on how color-blind people have certain problems when it comes to noticing traffic signals. From the different designs for example of LED lgihts, the green-tinted lens was better for the color-blind (because clear ones appear brighter than they should) but the clear lens was better for the non-color-blind (Starr et al, 2004). With the use of interviews and correspondence, the most common problem was recognizing between the red and amber signals (Whillans et al, 1983). Having poor visibility during the night as well as being tired (wherein they find color blindness a problem) also pose some difficulties.

Though granted through the years, many changes have been made. Like the warning flashing signals, and the change in standard wavelengths of red so that it appears more orange and green being more blue, and the use of shapes in certain signages; this topic is still important and must be given more time.

It's especially important for us here in the Philippines wherein the signs and signals offer no help even for those not afflicted with color blindness- with signs barely even seen or understood or even visible.

Bullough, J, Boyce, P, Bierman, A, Hunter, C, Conway, K, Nakata, A, Figueiro, M. (2001). Trafific Signal Luminance and Visual Discomfort at Night.. Transportation Research Record, Vol. 1754, p. 42-47.

Starr, R., Sandberg, W., & Guan, Y. (2004). Does color blindness affect the perception of green LED signal indications?. ITE Journal, 74(8), 32-38. 

Whillans, M. G. (1983). Colour-blind drivers' perception of traffic signals.. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 128(10), 1187-1189. 


Photo sources: 
www.skyscrapercity.com
charlestonteaparty.org

"Bang, Bang, KABOOM!"... 5 More Minutes Mom!

The Philippines has become the top leader in the region when it comes to gaming. According to the 2009 statistics coming from the IDC (International Data Corporation), the Philippines would have produced an estimated 7.9 million online gamers by the of that year alone. This number greatly overshadowed the estimates for the other countries in Southeast Asia: Indonesia, 1.08 million; Singapore, 1.47 million; Thailand, 2.88 million; Vietnam, 4.07 million; and Malaysia, 6.11 million. This may seem like bad news to some concerned individuals - especially the mommies, the teachers and the boss people of the country; but there may actually be a silver lining.  

Boys around the country rejoice! The next time your doting mothers or jealous girlfriends (or boyfriends) ask you to stop playing video games and demand that you start paying more attention, you can now proudly cite how video games can actually help you in doing just that.

In a 2010 study by Matthew W.G. Dye and Daphne Bavelier, they tested a [pre-dominantly male; to reflect the bias that gamers are mostly male] group of children (aged 7-17 yrs old) and a [pre-dominantly male] group of adults (aged 18-22 yrs old) on three aspects of visual attention namely, (A; Spatial) the ability to distribute visual attention across the field to search for a target, (B; Temporal) the time required for attention to recover from being directed towards a target, and (C; Object-based) the number of objects to which attention can be simultaneously allocated. The researchers used UFOV, AB and MOT tasks respectively to measure these aspects of attention. The participants were afterwards interviewed to determine their [action] video game playing habits. They looked specifically at the patricipants' frequency of video game playing in the 12 months prior to being tested- how often they played and how long they typically played for every session. 

Initial analysis revealed that there was no improvement with age on the UFOV task suggesting an already stable visual seach skills by the time they the children have entered elementary school. In the attentional blink task (AB), the scores were seen to follow a diminishing asymptote to the middle school years. For the MOT (multiply tracking object) task, age brings improvement in visually following objects. Using these considerations, they focused then focused on comparing video game players and non-video players on the the spatial, temporal and object-based aspects of visual attention.

They found that video- game players scored significantly higher on all three tasks which meant: they required less time for the stimulus to be present to attend to a stimulus in a scene littered with distractors, they had improved peripheral visual attentive performance without a cost to central visual performance, they recovered faster than non-video game players, and they could visually track more objects. 

Well, the results honestly caught me by surprise. Although I consider myself a gamer, I've always been one of those people (together with the mommies, the teachers and the boss people of the country) who firmly believe that too much video games is bad. I guess what we can take away from this is that although it may have somewhat improved effect on our visual capacity, there are still other studies that indicate how action video games lead to increased aggressiveness and poorer academic performance. I guess it's all about how we look at things, just a matter of perspective.

Dye, M., & Bavelier, D. (2010). Differential development of visual attention skills in school-age children. Visual Research, 50, 452-459.  


Photo sources:
memegenerator.net
roosterteeth.com