The Winding Path

Jennifer over at Cocktail Party Physics started a meme which she called the great pop-sci book project. I think it’s great; a salute to the many great minds who’ve shared their love of science with us all. PZ Myers has picked it up, as have various other folks.

Jen asks us to;

1. Highlight those you’ve read in full
2. Asterisk those you intend to read
3. Add any additional popular science books you think belong on the list
4. Link back to her

I don’t know if I can follow rule 3. I’d really love to read all of them. And even though I intend to read most I probably won’t get through them all. So I’ll just mark the ones that it’s likely I will read.

1. Micrographia, Robert Hooke
2. The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin
3. Never at Rest, Richard Westfall
4. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
5. Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney
6. The Devil’s Doctor, Philip Ball
7. The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes
8. Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, Dennis Overbye
9. Physics for Entertainment, Yakov Perelman
10. *1-2-3 Infinity, George Gamow
11. The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
12. Warmth Disperses, Time Passes, Hans Christian von Bayer
13. Alice in Quantumland, Robert Gilmore
14. Where Does the Weirdness Go? David Lindley
15. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
16. A Force of Nature, Richard Rhodes
17. *Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne
18. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
19. Universal Foam, Sidney Perkowitz
20. Vermeer’s Camera, Philip Steadman
21. The Code Book, Simon Singh
22. The Elements of Murder, John Emsley
23. *Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer
24. Time’s Arrow, Martin Amis
25. The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, George Johnson
26. Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman
27. *Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
28. The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, Lisa Jardine
29. A Matter of Degrees, Gino Segre
30. The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence Krauss
31. E=mc², David Bodanis
32. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, Charles Seife
33. Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold, Tom Shachtman
34. A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, Janna Levin
35. Warped Passages, Lisa Randall
36. Apollo’s Fire, Michael Sims
37. Flatland, Edward Abbott
38. Fermat’s Last Theorem, Amir Aczel
39. Stiff, Mary Roach
40. Astroturf, M.G. Lord
41. The Periodic Table, Primo Levi
42. Longitude, Dava Sobel
43. The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg
44. The Mummy Congress, Heather Pringle
45. The Accelerating Universe, Mario Livio
46. Math and the Mona Lisa, Bulent Atalay
47. This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin
48. The Executioner’s Current, Richard Moran
49. Krakatoa, Simon Winchester
50. Pythagorus’ Trousers, Margaret Wertheim
51. Neuromancer, William Gibson
52. The Physics of Superheroes, James Kakalios
53. The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump, Sandra Hempel
54. Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, Katrina Firlik
55. Einstein’s Clocks and Poincare’s Maps, Peter Galison
56. *The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
57. *The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
58. *The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
59. An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears
60. Consilience, E.O. Wilson
61. *Wonderful Life, Stephen J. Gould
62. Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard
63. Fire in the Brain, Ronald K. Siegel
64. The Life of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
65. Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris
66. Storm World, Chris Mooney
67. The Carbon Age, Eric Roston
68. The Black Hole Wars, Leonard Susskind
69. Copenhagen, Michael Frayn
70. From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne
71. Gut Symmetries, Jeanette Winterson
72. Chaos, James Gleick
73. Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos
74. The Physics of NASCAR, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky
75. Subtle is the Lord, Abraham Pais
76. Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski
77. Basin and Range, John McPhee
78. Beak of the Finch, Jonathan Weiner
79. Chance and Necessity, Jacques Monod
80. Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation, Olivia Judson
81. Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Sean Carroll
82. *Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, Carl Zimmer
83. Genome, Matt Ridley
84. Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
85. It Ain’t Necessarily So, Richard Lewontin
86. On Growth and Form, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson
87. Phantoms in the Brain, VS Ramachandran
88. The Ancestor’s Tale, Richard Dawkins
89. The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution, Elisabeth

    Lloyd

90. The Eighth Day of Creation, Horace Freeland Judson
91. The Great Devonian Controversy, Martin Rudwick
92. *The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sacks
93. *The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould
94. The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment, Richard Lewontin
95. Time, Love, Memory, Jonathan Weiner
96. Voyaging and The Power of Place, Janet Browne
97. Woman: An Intimate Geography, Natalie Angier

Plus some that I’ve read or want to read which popped up in the comments on PZ’s page or on Jennifer’s page:

98. *The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
99. What Do You Care What Other People Think? - Richard Feynman
100. *The Science of Good and Evil, Michael Shermer
101. *A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness, V.S. Ramachandran
102. *The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker
103. *Consciousness Explained, Daniel Dennett
104. *Collapse, Jared Diamond
105. *”Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me: Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts,” - Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
106. *Broca’s Brain, Carl Sagan
107. *The Third Chimpanze, Jared Diamond
108. *A History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell
109. Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner
110. Dragons of Eden, Carl Sagan
111. The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
112. *Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer
113. *The Moral Animal, Robert Wright

And now some additions including a few more good Psychology books.

114. Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert
115. Descartes’ Error, Antonio Damasio
116. Origins of the Modern Mind, Merlin Donald
117. Momma and the Meaning of Life, Irvin Yalom
118. Flow, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
119. Happiness, Matthieu Ricard

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In these last few posts I’ve been writing about Merlin Donald’s paper on the co-evolution of cognition and culture. The first two thirds of his paper, and so the overview in my last two posts, provide background for the main question the paper tries to address:

What is the cognitive element, missing in primates, that has enabled human beings to master so complex a social life?

Donald suggests that what’s missing may be the ability to mentally handle the vast intricacies humans deal with on a daily basis (and we do so mostly without being aware of it). He says that our current models of cognition focus mainly on short-term processes, and that little is known about the mechanisms for dealing with complex social interactions in the long-term. He points out that studies of neural activity have dealt with what goes on when there’s a reaction to an immediate stimulus, like neurons connected to your eye firing when you see a light flash. This kind of activity only lasts mere seconds at most. Studies have also dealt with short-term or working memory. This type of neural activity is self-maintaining (i.e., it doesn’t need a stimulus to keep it going, like the kind I mentioned just before would), and which can last for many more seconds (or even minutes). Finally, research has looked into long-term memory and found it to be more like an inactive storage, only truly coming into play when awareness is directed towards it, at which point it becomes activity in working memory.

But between the short-term and long-term is where he says we spend most of our mental life, in an

‘‘intermediate time zone”, within which many events and episodes are grasped and understood in terms of their implications for social relationships and future behavior.

He suggests that processing of events within an intermediate time zone could be handled by a “slow process.” This slow process can operate over longer time frames than working memory, though there is some overlap. It’s also active, maintaining control of our thoughts and behaviour while monitoring and withstanding potential interruptions. He argues that this kind of mental activity must take place, since there’s overwhelming evidence that our daily life involves relatively long thought processes. He gives the examples of conversations that last hours, and organised games.

But I wonder if the slow process is really just another way of describing processes that we already have a fair understanding of. Donald says that research into attention has focused on processes that occur from moment to moment, i.e., what happens when we attend to something happening right now. However in my (admittedly limited) understanding, activities such as long conversations and organised games involve continual feedback, which could exist as continually updated activity in working memory. I know that I can easily lose track of a conversation if I “drift off” for a few seconds; in other words there isn’t really an active process keeping track of what’s going on beyond a span of a few minutes.

And yet if I have a long conversation early in the day, even if I don’t think about it for a few more hours, later I find the subject matter of the conversation easier to recall than I otherwise would. For example, if I was talking about a relative I don’t often think about, I’ll be able to recall information about that relative more easily even hours after the conversation. Does this suggest that my memory of that relative exists as ongoing neural activity in a form which lasts longer than working memory supposedly can?

Could the processes of long-term memory consolidation explain the “slow process”? Again, in my limited understanding, long-term memory consolidation is a process which takes place over hours, days, and perhaps weeks. And the results seem to last much longer. Also, the process occurs when first learning something, but also when recalling a specific piece of information. I.e., when I find out the details of a friend’s latest fling I’ll probably think about other flings they’ve had in the past, and the memory of those distant events will be reconsolidated. Could it be that consolidation is the slow process, and that , for example, a conversation I had early in the day is more readily accessible later in the day because of the ongoing process of consolidation?

I’m still learning about these processes so I wouldn’t dare propose any firm conclusions, but it seems that the combination of the processes involved in attention and consolidation of memories may account for

the maintenance of something as complex and subtle as a very slow moving social scenario or mental plan, running in the deep background, enduring for many hours, and influencing a whole succession of actions and changes of strategy.

I’ll continue to scour the available research for answers, but if anyone has any at hand, I’d love to hear them.

Related entries:

• How did our mind and brain evolve?
• How our mind, brain and culture evolved: A proposed theory.

Last time we talked about temperament and attachment, how they emerge or form during early childhood, and how they may influence later development. Today we’ll look at behavioural development alone and in a social context, and the part emotion plays.

B.F. Skinner

When you do something you enjoy, such as watching a good TV show, that enjoyment encourages you to do the same thing again until it becomes a habit. But when one of your shows starts to become boring you might be ok with missing an episode once in a while, then eventually don’t bother to watch it at all. Your friend then tells you to check out a new show that he thinks is great. You have a look and immediately get hooked, however there’s a lot of female nudity in the show and your girlfriend doesn’t approve (loudly and frequently). So you soon stop watching it (but for some reason end up visiting your friend a lot more…)

Later you may notice that you’re watching too much TV instead of being productive, and your girlfriend might notice that too. She suggests you do some gardening and eventually the suggestions turn to nagging. But you don’t like gardening so you end up in front of the TV whenever you can get away with it. To make matters worse some political problems within the TV networks leads to some nasty price hikes and you’re no longer comfortable paying so much just to sit and watch. You decide to take up an old hobby, perhaps playing the piano, and find that you enjoy it so much that you don’t care that you’re missing out on your favourite shows. And your girlfriend’s beautiful singing voice makes it all the more enjoyable.

All of those changes in behaviour have been explained by B.F. Skinner in his theory of behavioural conditioning. If we’re rewarded we’re more likely to repeat the behaviour which came before the reward. Watching TV (behaviour) feels good (reward) so you do it again, and again, and again:

Behaviour + positive reinforcement = greater chance of repeating the behaviour

When a behaviour is no longer rewarded, the chance you’ll repeat it drops. So watching a TV show (behaviour) which is boring (absence of positive reinforcement) leads to no longer watching it:

Behaviour - positive reinforcement = lesser chance of repeating the behaviour

If a behaviour is followed by punishment you’re less likely to keep doing that in the future. Watching a TV show (behaviour) upsets your girlfriend so much that she makes you sleep on the couch (punishment) and suddenly you’re not too keen on watching it again:

Behaviour + punishment = lesser chance of repeating the behaviour

Finally, if a punishment (or just something that makes you feel bad) which follows a behaviour is removed, there’s a greater chance you’ll repeat that behaviour. When your girlfriend stops nagging (removal of punishment) you feel more inclined to do the gardening next time (behaviour):

Behaviour + negative reinforcement = greater chance of repeating the behaviour

But either form of negative conditioning is not all that effective. You still want to watch TV, so while you do what you have to to avoid punishment, you still go ahead and watch TV anyway.

In the end the most effective method of modifying behaviour is a combination of removing the old behaviour’s reward, and replacing it with an alternative behaviour and an associated reward. A big enough price hike makes TV watching not so enjoyable, and having fun playing the piano and listening to your girlfriend sing along ensures you don’t fall back into old habits.

That form of behaviour modification became a therapy technique based on Skinner’s work, and is also the basis for quite a lot of advice on how to change habits (though those giving that advice may not know it).

Find out more about Skinner here

Albert Bandura

Bandura expanded on previous theories of behaviour by incorporating more of what goes on inside our minds than other theorists had done. He came up with a social learning theory based on observational learning or modeling:

1. Attention
   Learning or modeling requires that you pay attention to something. You can’t learn something effectively if you’re not aware of it.
2. Retention
   After you’ve attended to something, you then have to remember it so you can do something with it later.
3. Reproduction
   It’s now later and you can reproduce what you saw if you were paying attention and if you remembered it.
4. Motivation
   But you’ll only reproduce that behaviour if you feel motivated to do so. The motivations are similar to Skinner’s; positive reinforcement to encourage repeat behaviour, or negative reinforcement or punishment to discourage. However one type of motivation which Skinner didn’t mention is called vicarious reinforcement or punishment, which means seeing and recalling the behaviour, and seeing it either rewarded or punished.

That last point is what really made Bandura’s theory stand out from previous ones. It includes all of Skinner’s theory and makes an important addition which lead to a much more complete picture of behaviour. Professor Boeree once again goes into more detail about Bandura and his theories, and he also mentions a fun study which Bandura conducted involving kids beating up an inflatable clown doll.

Emotion

The development of emotions is of great importance to the formation of attachment, as well as to the development of behaviour, particularly were other people are involved. Emotions help infants engage with things around them, but their expression also helps attract the attention of a caregiver. From early years throughout the rest of our lives, emotions also motivate helpful behaviour and social interaction.

A lot of interesting studies have been done on the development of emotion and of our ability to recognise it in others. One such study was done my Donna Mumme and Anne Fernald of Tufts and Standford Universities respectively. The study investigated how 10- and 12-month old infants reacted to the emotion an actress displayed towards novel objects, when the actress was viewed on a TV screen. The researchers found that 12-month olds avoided the object the actress reacted negatively to, but the 10-month olds didn’t. Neither 10- nor 12-month olds changed their behaviour much when the actress reacted positively towards an object. So the study showed that somewhere between 10 and 12 months old, infants start to display the ability to use the emotions other people display to affect their behaviour towards novel objects.

Another study, this one performed by Jackie Gnepp and Debra Hess of Northern Illinois University, investigated how children at various levels of school from first to tenth grade understood how and when displays of emotion should be controlled. The researchers found that there was a steady, strong increase in understanding from first to fifth grade, then not much change between fifth and tenth. There was also a consistent difference in the types of emotional control the children understood. They best understood the appropriate use of speech aimed at socially beneficial ends, such as not embarrassing others, followed by speech aimed at self-protective ends, such as not appearing foolish to others. Next came regulation of facial expression for social benefit, and finally regulation of facial expression for self-protection. So over time we can see how children learn to regulate their own display of emotions, and interpret others’, to allow them to better interact with other people.

Onwards

Many influences shape our behaviour and our emotional state, but the more we learn about how and what and why, the more capable we become of expressing beneficial behaviour and positive emotions. And not only for ourselves, but we can also improve the ways in which we help others develop.

Next up we take a look at intelligence, how it is measured, and how intelligence and thinking develop.

Related entries:

• Introduction to Human Development
• Introduction to Human Development: Psychoanalytic/Psychosocial Perspective
• Introduction to Human Development: Biological Perspective
• Introduction to Human Development: Social-Emotional Perspective - Part 1
• Introduction to Human Development: Cognitive Perspective
• Introduction to Human Development: Socio-cultural Perspective