It's later in the day, and I've done some work-- I did the factor analysis for my final psychometric test and, lo and behold, each item loads neatly onto one factor only. So things worked out in the end, after a few more hours of tinkering and toil. Now that's out of the way, I can concentrate on writing out a rationale for my thesis project, which Dr Barrett wants me to send his way sometime this week. I figure I'll write as much as I can today, but I'll stop before it gets to be about 5 o'clock, so I have time to clean house and get ready to meet Jana for our Hallowe'en night party of 2. I am going to find some Bailey's, of course-- my most-loved choice of alcoholic beverage-- and I suppose some orange or pumpkin liquer or flavoring syrup, if I can find it, for a good Hallowe'en touch.
So, here is part two of this morning's post: The Hallowe'en Party.
We left off with me arriving in one piece back at the university after a wild trip home from my hike. I grabbed my bag from the boot (the trunk, for Yanks), and checked my phone to discover Jana had left me 4 text messages and had called twice.
Thanks, Jana.
She knew I would be hiking, but she did not realize that it would take all day, apparently. I called her back and it seemed I had arrived home just in time to keep Jana's head from exploding, and she hurriedly made up some explanation as to why I must meet her at her house as soon as possible.
Thus, I obliged-- I raced home, combed out my hair, threw all my muddy/nettly/grassy things into the laundry hamper, donned a flowery dress, old-fashioned hat and black nylons, and did my makeup all in less than .01 seconds. I stuffed a cheesey bap into the hole in my face and clopped on down to Jana's house. When she opened the door, Hermione greeted me, with perfectly frizzy hair which had taken all day to achieve. Sonja was made up like a cat, with ears and painted nose/whiskers, a tail, and a leopard-print scarf. Jana had expertly crafted the costume, sans scarf, and I guessed correctly that Sonja was Crookshanks. Very cute! I dressed myself in Jana's Victorian jacket, and she had some accompanying shoes that looked the part, but left my feet with mounds of blisters.
We all trouped down to the university for the party. The student center has recently been refurbished, and we emerged into a shiny new club I had never seen before. It was beautifully decorated for the occasion, with cobwebs, spiders, grinning pumpkins and ghouls all around the walls. There was a green glow coming from an impressive lighting display in the ceiling, and fog was intermittently blasted onto the dance floor. There were two bars: one upstairs and one downstairs. The upstairs area was mostly a square balcony overlooking the dance floor on all sides. Tables lined the balcony, and countertops/barstools were situated right where you could look down into the action.
Loud, pleasant indie music thumped in the speakers, and Jana, Sonja, and I enjoyed a drink before we joined the dancers. It was great fun, but jump ahead a couple hours into the thing and you have lots of people becoming unnecessarily drunk. We kept having to push people off of us, and finally, when the floor got so crowed we couldn't even move anymore, we decided to call it a night, and an excellent night at that.
I am really happy we were able to join the fun, especially since we didn't get to go to Oxford this week. And it hasn't ended yet-- I'm looking forward to drinks, candy, and trick-or-treaters at Jana's place tonight!
Well, that's all for now-- gotta get cracking on that rationale for a couple of hours.
Ta!
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Hiking in the Peak District-- Axe Edge
I usually like to take my time in the morning to get ready for the day, but it seems to be more so now than ever. This week I got up every day about 3 hours before I had to be anywhere-- not to run, or do any other sort of productive morning activity, but just to poke about, munch slowly on some breakfast, drink some tea, read my book. If I can mess with my hair a little bit, try on a couple different outfits, and check my e-mail before I go out, I'm pretty relaxed the rest of the day.
Yesterday I woke up at the dark hour of 6AM. My first thought was I don't have a Victorian coat, and my second thought was Oh, but I'd rather be a sheep today. Let me backtrack...
While walking home from university on Friday, I stopped by a hospice shop on Queens Road to see if they had any materials for a Halloween (or as they write it here, Hallowe'en) costume. I figured, since I didn't have time to make a wand and buy a whole school-girl outfit like Jana did to be a Harry Potter character, I'd either go as Carmen Sandiego or a Victorian lady, depending on the hat I could find. Jana has this awesome red trenchcoat that could go either way, and I had the rest of the materials, myself. I ended up finding this great old-fashioned hat with a big purple bow and a fishnet veil that draped over my face nicely, so I ended up going Victorian lady.
On the way home from my purchase, I ran into Annie, one of the officers of the Hiking Club.
"Hi Reshanne," she said to me, "Dressing up tomorrow for the hike?"
Here I produced the purple hat for her to see. "I'm going as a Victorian lady," said I.
"Great, so I'm not going to be the only one in fancy dress," she replied (Hallowe'en costumes are all called fancy dress, by the way, not just Victorian lady costumes). "I'm going as Poison Ivy," she added.
"Poison Ivy!"
"Yeah," she said, "I have some ivy in my garden, so that's half the costume right there."
We parted ways, and I was considerably more excited to see how this would turn out, and amused at the prospect of a group of us hikers all dressed ridiculously and tromping through the rolling hills of the English countryside.
Unfortunately, Jana could not deliver her coat to me that night, so I quickly accounted for the pieces of my wardrobe that could form some kind of plan B as far as costumes go. Well, I had Jana's obnoxious, fleecy white hoodie... a pair of equally obnoxious, fleecy white slippers... and the idea struck. I would go as the infinitely more practical sheep for the next day's hike. What was I thinking, even considering going in a dress, when I could go in a very warm getup and still look crazy?
The next morning, (here we are again at 6AM) I pieced together my costume-- two pairs of black leggings (to battle the elements, if any should come to fight), a black turtleneck t-shirt, Jana's hoodie, my fuzzy socks, and a pair of bargain hiking shoes (10 pounds!). I gathered my equipment in a backpack (a fleece thermal, a waterproof jacket, a packed lunch and some money for the post-hike pub) and ate a carb-loaded breakfast (not in preparation for the hike, but because I'm addicted to carbs). I made a quick run to the co-op to see if they had any animal costumes-- I considered making myself a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing if I could find a tail or a rubber snout or something, but all they had were witch hats and fangs. I hastily added a pink bow around my neck (made from a clean shoelace) and went to the university to meet up with the others.
I was the first person there, aside from a girl I hadn't seen on the last hike. Her name is Rudo and she's from Zimbabwe, in the same way I'm from Seattle-- as in, she's lived in England for the last six years, but she considers Zimbabwe to be her home. She told me all about country life on a farm in Africa-- how it is warm every day, how her family grew all their own crops and raised their own chickens for fresh eggs and meat. She said Zimbabwe is a peaceful country that used to be troubled by economic and agricultural imbalance (one year, people would have money but no luck with crops, and the next they'd have crops but suddenly the dollar-- they use US currency-- would go down and they'd have no money), but recently it has steadied out. She told me her dad stayed behind in Zimbabwe to tend to the farm while she, her mother, and her sister moved to England. She wants to go back some day, but right now she is focused on getting her undergraduate degree so she can go on to medical school and become a traveling doctor-- to achieve the double-bonus of helping humanity and seeing the world. This girl is so cool!
The rest of the hikers had rambled in by this time: there was a familiar crowd, which included the Chinese students, the quiet guy who is into Firefly, the girl from Brunei (I think I called her 'the girl from the tropics who has monkeys living in her backyard', last time), and the club officers. Annie's Poison Ivy outfit was great-- she wore a bright red wig and was draped in real ivy. Someone dressed up in a cloak (which ended up tracking loads of mud on our journey, but looked like something straight out of Lord of the Ring when the wind caused it to billow out behind him atop a grassy hill), and someone else painted themselves with army camouflage. Oh yeah, and Clint Eastwood was there. He quoted some lines from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and twirled his plastic guns occassionally.
The hike was amazing. The scenery was breathtaking. We tromped for 8 miles in just the way I'd hoped we would; up and down craggy hills and dangerous rocky paths, over brooks, through marshes-- we followed a footpath for a while before veering off into the expansive wilderness, feeling like real outdoorsmen (at least I did). We got to the point where the spongey hills with their long grasses encased us on all sides, completely cut off from civilization. This, my friends, is Axe Edge-- from the highest point in the area, you can look out over small towns and sweet, jagged hills, that looks something like this (not my picture). Note the sweet jagged hill in the background.
About halfway through, I had to pee, and there wasn't a toilet for another 5 miles, so I asked the group to turn their backs while I bounded down a hill and out of sight to do my business. It was amazing, as I squatted there with my brother sheep, and I thanked god I brought a papertowel with me. Racing back up, I shouted something like, "God that was liberating," while someone else shouted back, "Did you wash your hands?"
The rest of the hike was so zen and wonderful, with the wind whipping over the grassland, chatting casually with my fellow free spirits. The pub was also very nice, and I had a pint of chips, which was a beer mug full of crisp, hot potato wedges mmm mm. Then we all shared some Hallowe'en cupcakes, scrumptiously baked by Annie, and we made it home by 8PM.
The only thing not-so-great about the experience was the transportation, considerably worse on the trip back. On the way there, I rode in the minibus, which was fine until we all steamed up the windows, which were sealed shut, and the air became stale and putrid for the last half hour (it took about an hour and a half to get there). I was feeling slightly nauseous in the back of the bus as we weaved over hills and bounced over bridges in that closed space, and I figured I would just ride with one of the volunteer drivers on the way home. Um-- big mistake.
The volunteer driver I found myself with was one Assan from London-- not a very pleasant person in the first place, and if I had to guess I'd say his accent was as close to ghetto as you can get in this country (I couldn't really understand him). He drove about 90MPH most of the time, but got up to 130MPH-- yes, you read correctly-- not 130 kilometers, but miles per hour. I didn't get the feeling I was going to die that day, but I did my fair share of bullying and shouting and threatening to try to make the kid slow down. (I found out later that he's a freshman, which explains his complete idiocy and delusions that he is safe to drive at that speed because he "has never been in a car accident". Considering you can't get your license here until you're 18, I guessed he had been driving for little over a year, anyway, and to put it lightly, I felt he was a complete waste of a brain, if he even had one. When Assan stopped to get gas, Amish, who accompanied me on this wild ride, apologized profusely and vowed never to let this maniac drive for a hiking expedition again... which didn't comfort me much until we were back at the university and safely out of the steel trap.
Okay, but aside from that, I had an amazing time.
Stay tuned for part two of my Saturday: the Hallowe'en Party.
Ta!
Yesterday I woke up at the dark hour of 6AM. My first thought was I don't have a Victorian coat, and my second thought was Oh, but I'd rather be a sheep today. Let me backtrack...
While walking home from university on Friday, I stopped by a hospice shop on Queens Road to see if they had any materials for a Halloween (or as they write it here, Hallowe'en) costume. I figured, since I didn't have time to make a wand and buy a whole school-girl outfit like Jana did to be a Harry Potter character, I'd either go as Carmen Sandiego or a Victorian lady, depending on the hat I could find. Jana has this awesome red trenchcoat that could go either way, and I had the rest of the materials, myself. I ended up finding this great old-fashioned hat with a big purple bow and a fishnet veil that draped over my face nicely, so I ended up going Victorian lady.
On the way home from my purchase, I ran into Annie, one of the officers of the Hiking Club.
"Hi Reshanne," she said to me, "Dressing up tomorrow for the hike?"
Here I produced the purple hat for her to see. "I'm going as a Victorian lady," said I.
"Great, so I'm not going to be the only one in fancy dress," she replied (Hallowe'en costumes are all called fancy dress, by the way, not just Victorian lady costumes). "I'm going as Poison Ivy," she added.
"Poison Ivy!"
"Yeah," she said, "I have some ivy in my garden, so that's half the costume right there."
We parted ways, and I was considerably more excited to see how this would turn out, and amused at the prospect of a group of us hikers all dressed ridiculously and tromping through the rolling hills of the English countryside.
Unfortunately, Jana could not deliver her coat to me that night, so I quickly accounted for the pieces of my wardrobe that could form some kind of plan B as far as costumes go. Well, I had Jana's obnoxious, fleecy white hoodie... a pair of equally obnoxious, fleecy white slippers... and the idea struck. I would go as the infinitely more practical sheep for the next day's hike. What was I thinking, even considering going in a dress, when I could go in a very warm getup and still look crazy?
The next morning, (here we are again at 6AM) I pieced together my costume-- two pairs of black leggings (to battle the elements, if any should come to fight), a black turtleneck t-shirt, Jana's hoodie, my fuzzy socks, and a pair of bargain hiking shoes (10 pounds!). I gathered my equipment in a backpack (a fleece thermal, a waterproof jacket, a packed lunch and some money for the post-hike pub) and ate a carb-loaded breakfast (not in preparation for the hike, but because I'm addicted to carbs). I made a quick run to the co-op to see if they had any animal costumes-- I considered making myself a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing if I could find a tail or a rubber snout or something, but all they had were witch hats and fangs. I hastily added a pink bow around my neck (made from a clean shoelace) and went to the university to meet up with the others.
I was the first person there, aside from a girl I hadn't seen on the last hike. Her name is Rudo and she's from Zimbabwe, in the same way I'm from Seattle-- as in, she's lived in England for the last six years, but she considers Zimbabwe to be her home. She told me all about country life on a farm in Africa-- how it is warm every day, how her family grew all their own crops and raised their own chickens for fresh eggs and meat. She said Zimbabwe is a peaceful country that used to be troubled by economic and agricultural imbalance (one year, people would have money but no luck with crops, and the next they'd have crops but suddenly the dollar-- they use US currency-- would go down and they'd have no money), but recently it has steadied out. She told me her dad stayed behind in Zimbabwe to tend to the farm while she, her mother, and her sister moved to England. She wants to go back some day, but right now she is focused on getting her undergraduate degree so she can go on to medical school and become a traveling doctor-- to achieve the double-bonus of helping humanity and seeing the world. This girl is so cool!
The rest of the hikers had rambled in by this time: there was a familiar crowd, which included the Chinese students, the quiet guy who is into Firefly, the girl from Brunei (I think I called her 'the girl from the tropics who has monkeys living in her backyard', last time), and the club officers. Annie's Poison Ivy outfit was great-- she wore a bright red wig and was draped in real ivy. Someone dressed up in a cloak (which ended up tracking loads of mud on our journey, but looked like something straight out of Lord of the Ring when the wind caused it to billow out behind him atop a grassy hill), and someone else painted themselves with army camouflage. Oh yeah, and Clint Eastwood was there. He quoted some lines from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and twirled his plastic guns occassionally.
The hike was amazing. The scenery was breathtaking. We tromped for 8 miles in just the way I'd hoped we would; up and down craggy hills and dangerous rocky paths, over brooks, through marshes-- we followed a footpath for a while before veering off into the expansive wilderness, feeling like real outdoorsmen (at least I did). We got to the point where the spongey hills with their long grasses encased us on all sides, completely cut off from civilization. This, my friends, is Axe Edge-- from the highest point in the area, you can look out over small towns and sweet, jagged hills, that looks something like this (not my picture). Note the sweet jagged hill in the background.
About halfway through, I had to pee, and there wasn't a toilet for another 5 miles, so I asked the group to turn their backs while I bounded down a hill and out of sight to do my business. It was amazing, as I squatted there with my brother sheep, and I thanked god I brought a papertowel with me. Racing back up, I shouted something like, "God that was liberating," while someone else shouted back, "Did you wash your hands?"
The rest of the hike was so zen and wonderful, with the wind whipping over the grassland, chatting casually with my fellow free spirits. The pub was also very nice, and I had a pint of chips, which was a beer mug full of crisp, hot potato wedges mmm mm. Then we all shared some Hallowe'en cupcakes, scrumptiously baked by Annie, and we made it home by 8PM.
The only thing not-so-great about the experience was the transportation, considerably worse on the trip back. On the way there, I rode in the minibus, which was fine until we all steamed up the windows, which were sealed shut, and the air became stale and putrid for the last half hour (it took about an hour and a half to get there). I was feeling slightly nauseous in the back of the bus as we weaved over hills and bounced over bridges in that closed space, and I figured I would just ride with one of the volunteer drivers on the way home. Um-- big mistake.
The volunteer driver I found myself with was one Assan from London-- not a very pleasant person in the first place, and if I had to guess I'd say his accent was as close to ghetto as you can get in this country (I couldn't really understand him). He drove about 90MPH most of the time, but got up to 130MPH-- yes, you read correctly-- not 130 kilometers, but miles per hour. I didn't get the feeling I was going to die that day, but I did my fair share of bullying and shouting and threatening to try to make the kid slow down. (I found out later that he's a freshman, which explains his complete idiocy and delusions that he is safe to drive at that speed because he "has never been in a car accident". Considering you can't get your license here until you're 18, I guessed he had been driving for little over a year, anyway, and to put it lightly, I felt he was a complete waste of a brain, if he even had one. When Assan stopped to get gas, Amish, who accompanied me on this wild ride, apologized profusely and vowed never to let this maniac drive for a hiking expedition again... which didn't comfort me much until we were back at the university and safely out of the steel trap.
Okay, but aside from that, I had an amazing time.
Stay tuned for part two of my Saturday: the Hallowe'en Party.
Ta!
Monday, October 25, 2010
Just a thought
Looking at the length of the post I just made, I realized if I wrote as much for my course as I did for my blog, I'd be halfway done with my thesis by now.
PS-- hacked one more article off! Yippee!
PS-- hacked one more article off! Yippee!
Drinking tea til I puke
I've found that I have no restraint. None whatsoever. I am to the point where I am so addicted to tea that I thank god I drink the no-calorie, caffeine-free kind, which has a very short list of ill effects that include stained teeth and having to pee a lot.
I literally spent eight hours yesterday doing factor analysis on a junkload of data I had to bregrudgingly collect due to course requirements. It was that nasty, nasty survey data I told you about-- I know all data has some measure of subjectivity, but the unreliability of a survey(I don't care if it comes out to be statistically reliable, it is not really reliable) causes me a great deal of frustration. First of all, who's to say these snot-nosed undergrads aren't just clicking random answers just to get their experiment credit? (Filling out a survey shouldn't even merit experiment credit, seeing as survey research is not experimental!)
Maybe you would understand my lack of humor for this type of research if you understood that factor analysis shouldn't take eight hours. It shouldn't take one hour. With perfect data (perfect meaning a ridicuolously huge sample size, say 1000, everyone answering honestly and to the best of their abilities) it takes about 15 minutes. Numbers go in, statistics come out. East peazy lemon squeezy. However, here at the University of Leicester, just like everything else in England, PARSIMONY is a virtue, and that includes putting a limit on a seemingly arbitrary number of participation credit available to researchers... WHY are we limited? There is NO LIMIT to the number of undergrads who will participate in research. NO LIMIT on how many studies each undergrad may participate in. WHAT THE HELL-- why can't I have more than 30 participants in my gorram study? This is insanity, not to mention completely POINTLESS when survey research thrives on NUMBERS.
And I didn't even want to do survey research in the FIRST PLACE.
Okay, end of rant. But seriously, eight hours. Including at least one or two more hours today.
What.
Ever.
In the meantime, I ran my first batch of subjects for my reading study today. Everything went really smoothly, so I set up timeslots for the rest of the week, and all the data for that should be collected by the end of next week.
Also, I have been writing up a summary of all the articles I've found that relate to induced neglect, or more specifically, a phenomenon called 'attentional blink' where people will ignore -- for a span of about 300 milliseconds -- a stimulus in the right visual field if it was preceded by a stimulus in the left visual field. This window of 300ms is pretty large considering people are usually darn quick on the uptake... think of it in terms of that fun online reaction time test you've all done where you wait until a little dot flashes up on the screen and you slam your hand down as hard and fast as you can on your keyboard so you can prove to your friends you're faster than they are (then a screaming ghost pops out you scream like a girl.) Anyway-- if you waited 300ms to click the mouse, or hit the spacebar, or whatever, a message would appear on the screen that says something along the lines of, "Were you in a coma?" So yeah, 300ms is a long time for this task as well. Anyway-- I've taken such a long time with stupid factor analysis, that the really important task of writing up this summary for my adviser is taking way longer than I said it would take (but not longer than the arbitrary deadline, which is Wednesday(ish), and I will definitely have it done by then-- Wednesday, not ish.)
This summary is important, of course, because it relates to my thesis-- the mondo project-- The Big Kahuna.
Okay, so I bet you all want me to stop talking psychology. So let me get out of the zone, step away from the computer for a second to take a green tea-pee (see above), then I will tell you all about my lovely Sunday afternoon, my only playtime of the week, but definitely worth it.
...Aaaand 40 minutes later, I'm writing to you again. Why the wait, you ask? Well, just as I was getting up from the computer, my MagicJack rang and who happened to be on the other line but one Matthew, ancient surname Jur-ans. There is a fellow who understands that even though I am thousands of miles away, I am still just as accessible as ever, by phone. I'm not kidding you. If I didn't think strangers would find this blog and call me, I would post my number right now. It is, in fact, a local Ohio number, so you can call me any time for FREE! Oh, the magic... the magic, of MagicJack. (If you would like to join in on the magic, just e-mail me and I will send you a reply with my number.)
Since Matt called, he was graced with the knowledge of what I'm going to write next:
It all started at noon yesterday, when Jana, her German roommate Sonja (who lives in BAVARIA where Neuschwannstein Castle is basically in her BACKYARD) and I went to have some pie at a Leicester pie shop called Urban Pie. Pie, pie pie. Well, there is good news and bad news about Urban Pie: the bad news is, England doesn't know how to make a berry pie. The good news is, they make THE BEST of any other kind of pie. Cheesey pies, lamb and rosemary, chicken and asparagus, steak and kidney, minced beef and potato, stilton, cottage, etc etc-- they have so many choices-- my favorite of the two I have tried so far is the vegetable pie; a creamy, flaky pot pie bursting with peas, carrots, broccoli, sweetcorn, and loads of other stuff all piled together and wrapped in delicious, perfect crust and stamped with an edible Urban Pie logo. Comfort food, my friends. Sonja opted for the sizzling wild mushroom and asparagus pie, and drizzled it with gravy to die for. Jana, as per her weirdo nature, sulked over the absence of sweet pies and had a pre-packaged muffin.
Sonja, who had never tried pie before of any kind, found it delightful.
Next, we browsed the modern shops of Highcross Mall. There's a fancy bookstore that has replaced Borders here, called Waterstone-- a sleek, easily-navigable powerhouse chain, whose coffee supplier is Costa Coffee, and they have almost nonexistent bargain and toy sections, as expected of a proper bookstore. Books range from around 5.99-8.99 for paperbacks, no real massmarket section to be found, and 10.99-12.99 for hardcovers. Not too shabby. Some of the largest scifi hardcovers go up to about 17.99 but they go down again very quickly. Books come out in paperback much quicker here, and there are many new releases you can find in paperback here that will only be available in hardcover for at least another year in the states.
We browsed clothing stores and shoe shops. I found a casual pair of autumn boots that could also be worn on the dry days of winter. I also found myself a waterproof jacket and accompanying thermal sweater for a bargain total of 35 pounds, for the Hiking Society. The other day, I found hiking shoes for TEN POUNDS. What a deal for the casual fell-walker.
It was turning out to be such a great day that I decided I was going to make the family (a.k.a. Jana and her roommates) some good old-fashioned American pancakes. So I found a simple recipe online, gathered the ingredients from the next-door grocery store, and soon had the kitchen filling with good smells. The maple syrup alone cost almost as much as the rest of the ingredients combined, but boy was it worth it. Can't have pancakes without maple syrup. When I brought all my materials to the cashier, she asked me, "Are you Canadian?" The answer to that is yes-- when I am in pancake mode, I am Canadian.
There were a few things I thought might set off the taste or the overall quality of the pancakes-- such as the fact that we didn't have a mixing bowl (I used a large pyrex-esque measuring cup that barely housed my batter); the stove used an old-fashioned gas burner, thus I feared only a ring of the batter would actually turn into pancake, or they would cook unevenly; and the eggs were warm (they don't chill them in the grocery store here). But despite all that, the pancakes turned out perfect. Better than perfect-- spectacular. I hate to gloat (actually, I love to gloat), but I made better-than-perfect pancakes. They were better-than-perfectly golden, fluffy, moist and buttery. We sprinkled blueberries and banana slices over them and drizzled maple syrup over the whole thing, and I made enough for everyone to have a good stack and feel cozy and satisfied afterwards. Pancakes. A palate-pleaser.
So yesterday was heavenly, after a week of non-stop busywork and a wasted Saturday of factor analysis. I am going to go to sleep soon, cos I have to wake up bright and early to administer some nonsense (literally) to unsuspecting subjects. That will go until about 1PM, I'll eat my lunch at home as I did today, and then it's back to that article summary for my adviser. Three articles left to go. Maybe I'll hack one more off tonight before I go to bed, for good measure. The evening is wasted if you close your eyes before midnight, right?
I literally spent eight hours yesterday doing factor analysis on a junkload of data I had to bregrudgingly collect due to course requirements. It was that nasty, nasty survey data I told you about-- I know all data has some measure of subjectivity, but the unreliability of a survey(I don't care if it comes out to be statistically reliable, it is not really reliable) causes me a great deal of frustration. First of all, who's to say these snot-nosed undergrads aren't just clicking random answers just to get their experiment credit? (Filling out a survey shouldn't even merit experiment credit, seeing as survey research is not experimental!)
Maybe you would understand my lack of humor for this type of research if you understood that factor analysis shouldn't take eight hours. It shouldn't take one hour. With perfect data (perfect meaning a ridicuolously huge sample size, say 1000, everyone answering honestly and to the best of their abilities) it takes about 15 minutes. Numbers go in, statistics come out. East peazy lemon squeezy. However, here at the University of Leicester, just like everything else in England, PARSIMONY is a virtue, and that includes putting a limit on a seemingly arbitrary number of participation credit available to researchers... WHY are we limited? There is NO LIMIT to the number of undergrads who will participate in research. NO LIMIT on how many studies each undergrad may participate in. WHAT THE HELL-- why can't I have more than 30 participants in my gorram study? This is insanity, not to mention completely POINTLESS when survey research thrives on NUMBERS.
And I didn't even want to do survey research in the FIRST PLACE.
Okay, end of rant. But seriously, eight hours. Including at least one or two more hours today.
What.
Ever.
In the meantime, I ran my first batch of subjects for my reading study today. Everything went really smoothly, so I set up timeslots for the rest of the week, and all the data for that should be collected by the end of next week.
Also, I have been writing up a summary of all the articles I've found that relate to induced neglect, or more specifically, a phenomenon called 'attentional blink' where people will ignore -- for a span of about 300 milliseconds -- a stimulus in the right visual field if it was preceded by a stimulus in the left visual field. This window of 300ms is pretty large considering people are usually darn quick on the uptake... think of it in terms of that fun online reaction time test you've all done where you wait until a little dot flashes up on the screen and you slam your hand down as hard and fast as you can on your keyboard so you can prove to your friends you're faster than they are (then a screaming ghost pops out you scream like a girl.) Anyway-- if you waited 300ms to click the mouse, or hit the spacebar, or whatever, a message would appear on the screen that says something along the lines of, "Were you in a coma?" So yeah, 300ms is a long time for this task as well. Anyway-- I've taken such a long time with stupid factor analysis, that the really important task of writing up this summary for my adviser is taking way longer than I said it would take (but not longer than the arbitrary deadline, which is Wednesday(ish), and I will definitely have it done by then-- Wednesday, not ish.)
This summary is important, of course, because it relates to my thesis-- the mondo project-- The Big Kahuna.
Okay, so I bet you all want me to stop talking psychology. So let me get out of the zone, step away from the computer for a second to take a green tea-pee (see above), then I will tell you all about my lovely Sunday afternoon, my only playtime of the week, but definitely worth it.
...Aaaand 40 minutes later, I'm writing to you again. Why the wait, you ask? Well, just as I was getting up from the computer, my MagicJack rang and who happened to be on the other line but one Matthew, ancient surname Jur-ans. There is a fellow who understands that even though I am thousands of miles away, I am still just as accessible as ever, by phone. I'm not kidding you. If I didn't think strangers would find this blog and call me, I would post my number right now. It is, in fact, a local Ohio number, so you can call me any time for FREE! Oh, the magic... the magic, of MagicJack. (If you would like to join in on the magic, just e-mail me and I will send you a reply with my number.)
Since Matt called, he was graced with the knowledge of what I'm going to write next:
It all started at noon yesterday, when Jana, her German roommate Sonja (who lives in BAVARIA where Neuschwannstein Castle is basically in her BACKYARD) and I went to have some pie at a Leicester pie shop called Urban Pie. Pie, pie pie. Well, there is good news and bad news about Urban Pie: the bad news is, England doesn't know how to make a berry pie. The good news is, they make THE BEST of any other kind of pie. Cheesey pies, lamb and rosemary, chicken and asparagus, steak and kidney, minced beef and potato, stilton, cottage, etc etc-- they have so many choices-- my favorite of the two I have tried so far is the vegetable pie; a creamy, flaky pot pie bursting with peas, carrots, broccoli, sweetcorn, and loads of other stuff all piled together and wrapped in delicious, perfect crust and stamped with an edible Urban Pie logo. Comfort food, my friends. Sonja opted for the sizzling wild mushroom and asparagus pie, and drizzled it with gravy to die for. Jana, as per her weirdo nature, sulked over the absence of sweet pies and had a pre-packaged muffin.
Sonja, who had never tried pie before of any kind, found it delightful.
Next, we browsed the modern shops of Highcross Mall. There's a fancy bookstore that has replaced Borders here, called Waterstone-- a sleek, easily-navigable powerhouse chain, whose coffee supplier is Costa Coffee, and they have almost nonexistent bargain and toy sections, as expected of a proper bookstore. Books range from around 5.99-8.99 for paperbacks, no real massmarket section to be found, and 10.99-12.99 for hardcovers. Not too shabby. Some of the largest scifi hardcovers go up to about 17.99 but they go down again very quickly. Books come out in paperback much quicker here, and there are many new releases you can find in paperback here that will only be available in hardcover for at least another year in the states.
We browsed clothing stores and shoe shops. I found a casual pair of autumn boots that could also be worn on the dry days of winter. I also found myself a waterproof jacket and accompanying thermal sweater for a bargain total of 35 pounds, for the Hiking Society. The other day, I found hiking shoes for TEN POUNDS. What a deal for the casual fell-walker.
It was turning out to be such a great day that I decided I was going to make the family (a.k.a. Jana and her roommates) some good old-fashioned American pancakes. So I found a simple recipe online, gathered the ingredients from the next-door grocery store, and soon had the kitchen filling with good smells. The maple syrup alone cost almost as much as the rest of the ingredients combined, but boy was it worth it. Can't have pancakes without maple syrup. When I brought all my materials to the cashier, she asked me, "Are you Canadian?" The answer to that is yes-- when I am in pancake mode, I am Canadian.
There were a few things I thought might set off the taste or the overall quality of the pancakes-- such as the fact that we didn't have a mixing bowl (I used a large pyrex-esque measuring cup that barely housed my batter); the stove used an old-fashioned gas burner, thus I feared only a ring of the batter would actually turn into pancake, or they would cook unevenly; and the eggs were warm (they don't chill them in the grocery store here). But despite all that, the pancakes turned out perfect. Better than perfect-- spectacular. I hate to gloat (actually, I love to gloat), but I made better-than-perfect pancakes. They were better-than-perfectly golden, fluffy, moist and buttery. We sprinkled blueberries and banana slices over them and drizzled maple syrup over the whole thing, and I made enough for everyone to have a good stack and feel cozy and satisfied afterwards. Pancakes. A palate-pleaser.
So yesterday was heavenly, after a week of non-stop busywork and a wasted Saturday of factor analysis. I am going to go to sleep soon, cos I have to wake up bright and early to administer some nonsense (literally) to unsuspecting subjects. That will go until about 1PM, I'll eat my lunch at home as I did today, and then it's back to that article summary for my adviser. Three articles left to go. Maybe I'll hack one more off tonight before I go to bed, for good measure. The evening is wasted if you close your eyes before midnight, right?
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Psychology, of course!
It's been a while since I've written a post about my psychological research endeavors, so I thought I'd give a little update before I get back to work. First of all, I will soon be running two studies at once, neither of them to do with my thesis project. Why is that, you ask? Well, let me tell you...
Last Thursday, on the only day I have class (as you know), I was getting to know my course mates. We were doing a bit of group work but had a few minutes to kill after our brainstorm, and I was telling them about my experience in patient research, on the subject of aphasia. I got to saying how I wish I'd had time to do more with the study, since I graduated before I could do a 'part II' I had formulated, and I never got around to doing anything over the summer (hard to find subjects, I had already graduated... etc.) Well, one of the girls in my group gave me an idea; she said, simply, 'Why not do part II here?' I was taken aback... why had this never crossed my mind? I mean, why not continue the thing here!?
So I got really excited and e-mailed a lecturer whose specialty was language psychology, particularly reading, and who happened to have some neuropsychology experience... and who also happened to be the course administrator-- just my luck! I met with him and discussed what I had already done, and told him my plan for the follow-up study, and after all this talking he just shrugged and said, 'Go for it'-- that's what I like to hear!
I'm sure you would all like to hear about the research I've planned, so here goes: part one of the research involved a case study of a patient with aphasia, which is a disorder that affects all aspects of language-- reading, writing, speaking. Someone with aphasia might mush a lot of words together to form nonsensical sentences: 'I don't dog what I know have you like?' They might also add a few nonwords to the mix: 'Don't pass pashers on toward him.' What I wanted to accomplish from the case study was to determine the different types of errors the patient would make when reading lists of single words, versus reading passages (a.k.a., natural reading.) Surprisingly, very few studies of aphasia have done research on passage-reading, and I don't know why-- maybe because the disorder is worse in some patients and it is much too difficult to read single words, let alone paragraphs.
My patient had the degenerative version of aphasia, but she was still pretty early on in the disorder, and so could still read passages fairly well. What we found was that there were, in fact, significant differences in the types and amount of errors the patient made, which could indicate that different mechanisms may be involved in single word reading and paragraph reading, and once you think about it, it's obvious-- more long-term processes are used for paragraph reading, and you must have a more complex method of comprehension to string the sentences together to form a coherent whole. (We also tested her on her sentence-reading ability, but there were no significant differences found there.)
So I gave my patient a bunch of passages to read, and I had all this data, including recordings of the patient's speech, and answers to multiple-choice questions I gave to her to test her comprehension. Some of the details of the passages were inconclusive-- how could we assess her comprehension of the multiple-choice test, for example, when we had nothing to compare it to? Well, here's where part II comes into play...
Now, I like to mess with people. Normal people, that is. And I've already told you I'm going to try to induce neglect in normal people by overloading their attention. Well, I'm going to induce aphasia in normal people, too. This is how it's done: I've studied the audio recordings of the patient's paragraph reading, and transcribed her words phonetically. For example, when given the sentence, 'The island of Ireland is often called the Emerald Isle,' she said, 'The islands of Eyelid as often ask the Eirmol Is.' Did you understand that second sentence? Would you be able to understand a whole paragraph of that? What I did, was I wrote out all the passages 'as dictated by JPS' (the patient), and now I will give them to normal people to read. Then they'll have to answer questions about each passage. Then I'll see if their grades are worse than the patient's. If normal people score worse, then we'd know the patient was able to comprehend parts of the passages that she was unable to pronounce. If normal people score better, then we'd know the patient made comprehension errors on top of pronunciation errors. Either way, we learn something interessant.
So, that is what I'm going to do, hopefully next week. A follow-up to a study I never thought I'd revisit. Probably around the same time, I will administer my psychometric test of imaginativeness (something I had to write up for class... definitely not my choice, to do a personality test.) Psychometric testing is just a fancy way of saying 'survey', and people just have to read a list of items: 'I have a vivid imagination'; 'I tend to daydream'; 'I was afraid of the dark as a child'; and then indicate the extent to which they agree with each statement using a range from 'Strongly Disagree' to 'Strongly Agree'. Survey research. Qualitative research. Which can then be quantified in SPSS. But nonetheless, not the most accurate kind of study, which is why I'm not too fond of it. I guess it will be a new experience, and I will learn something about another type of experimental research, I suppose. And I get to create my own psychometric test. And the word psychometric is just really cool.
Last Thursday, on the only day I have class (as you know), I was getting to know my course mates. We were doing a bit of group work but had a few minutes to kill after our brainstorm, and I was telling them about my experience in patient research, on the subject of aphasia. I got to saying how I wish I'd had time to do more with the study, since I graduated before I could do a 'part II' I had formulated, and I never got around to doing anything over the summer (hard to find subjects, I had already graduated... etc.) Well, one of the girls in my group gave me an idea; she said, simply, 'Why not do part II here?' I was taken aback... why had this never crossed my mind? I mean, why not continue the thing here!?
So I got really excited and e-mailed a lecturer whose specialty was language psychology, particularly reading, and who happened to have some neuropsychology experience... and who also happened to be the course administrator-- just my luck! I met with him and discussed what I had already done, and told him my plan for the follow-up study, and after all this talking he just shrugged and said, 'Go for it'-- that's what I like to hear!
I'm sure you would all like to hear about the research I've planned, so here goes: part one of the research involved a case study of a patient with aphasia, which is a disorder that affects all aspects of language-- reading, writing, speaking. Someone with aphasia might mush a lot of words together to form nonsensical sentences: 'I don't dog what I know have you like?' They might also add a few nonwords to the mix: 'Don't pass pashers on toward him.' What I wanted to accomplish from the case study was to determine the different types of errors the patient would make when reading lists of single words, versus reading passages (a.k.a., natural reading.) Surprisingly, very few studies of aphasia have done research on passage-reading, and I don't know why-- maybe because the disorder is worse in some patients and it is much too difficult to read single words, let alone paragraphs.
My patient had the degenerative version of aphasia, but she was still pretty early on in the disorder, and so could still read passages fairly well. What we found was that there were, in fact, significant differences in the types and amount of errors the patient made, which could indicate that different mechanisms may be involved in single word reading and paragraph reading, and once you think about it, it's obvious-- more long-term processes are used for paragraph reading, and you must have a more complex method of comprehension to string the sentences together to form a coherent whole. (We also tested her on her sentence-reading ability, but there were no significant differences found there.)
So I gave my patient a bunch of passages to read, and I had all this data, including recordings of the patient's speech, and answers to multiple-choice questions I gave to her to test her comprehension. Some of the details of the passages were inconclusive-- how could we assess her comprehension of the multiple-choice test, for example, when we had nothing to compare it to? Well, here's where part II comes into play...
Now, I like to mess with people. Normal people, that is. And I've already told you I'm going to try to induce neglect in normal people by overloading their attention. Well, I'm going to induce aphasia in normal people, too. This is how it's done: I've studied the audio recordings of the patient's paragraph reading, and transcribed her words phonetically. For example, when given the sentence, 'The island of Ireland is often called the Emerald Isle,' she said, 'The islands of Eyelid as often ask the Eirmol Is.' Did you understand that second sentence? Would you be able to understand a whole paragraph of that? What I did, was I wrote out all the passages 'as dictated by JPS' (the patient), and now I will give them to normal people to read. Then they'll have to answer questions about each passage. Then I'll see if their grades are worse than the patient's. If normal people score worse, then we'd know the patient was able to comprehend parts of the passages that she was unable to pronounce. If normal people score better, then we'd know the patient made comprehension errors on top of pronunciation errors. Either way, we learn something interessant.
So, that is what I'm going to do, hopefully next week. A follow-up to a study I never thought I'd revisit. Probably around the same time, I will administer my psychometric test of imaginativeness (something I had to write up for class... definitely not my choice, to do a personality test.) Psychometric testing is just a fancy way of saying 'survey', and people just have to read a list of items: 'I have a vivid imagination'; 'I tend to daydream'; 'I was afraid of the dark as a child'; and then indicate the extent to which they agree with each statement using a range from 'Strongly Disagree' to 'Strongly Agree'. Survey research. Qualitative research. Which can then be quantified in SPSS. But nonetheless, not the most accurate kind of study, which is why I'm not too fond of it. I guess it will be a new experience, and I will learn something about another type of experimental research, I suppose. And I get to create my own psychometric test. And the word psychometric is just really cool.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Hiking at Bradgate Park
Well, I guess I'll start off by saying I should probably buy some hiking shoes and a waterproof jacket. What I have as of now was sufficient for a pleasant experience yesterday, but I could imagine how horrible it would have been if there had been a torrential downpour. Mud all the way up to my knees... soaked through my winter coat to the skin... fortunately this was not the case, and Bradgate Park was a great adventure.
Oh, you would like to know about the Hiking Society's first outing, would you? Well, let me go into a few descriptives. We met at the university at 10am; quite late in the morning, but there was frost in the shady areas of the grass, nevertheless. It took us a good hour to assemble, pass some cakes around that the club president had so thoughtfully baked for us, and trek down to the Haymarket Bus Station in the city center. On the way to our ride, I met a conglomerate of British and international students.
There was a shy Spanish couple who I bonded with over our shared love for sushi. There was a trio of English freshers who had all done their A-levels at the same place (that's advanced high school after the age of 16, yanks), and the dominant female among them was a talkative, camera-happy tae-kwon-do expert with an American father and plenty of stories about her exciting summer in Minnesota. On the bus, I discovered that the token man of the trio was an astrophysics major, and I might have become overly excited by this fact, but he seemed to have a Brian Poston-esque zen that never wavered throughout our travels.
We arrived on the outskirts of the park, a typical English suburban sprawl which consisted of spacious brick housing, well-groomed yards, and hilly neighborhood roads speckled with bus stops and quiet pubs. Hopped a couple of fences and zigzagged across cow fields to arrive at the boundless landscape of the 'park.'
Yes, let me tell you the definition of an English park; it is miles of rolling, mossy hills, spotted with trees and livestock, usually situated around some central landmark. The landmark at this park happened to be a mysterious tower (nobody seemed to know its significance, not even the club officers), and it was simply labeled 'Old John Tower' on the map. It looked like a single stone castle tower, flanked by an archway and the disintegrating peices of a crumbling wall. It was really cool though, and it was located on the highest point of the park, so you could look out on the surrounding farmland in all directions.
On the way to the tower I met a friendly couple of Chinese students; the girl was a freshman who had arrived in England 8 months previously to improve her English, which was not impeccable, but modestly good. Her family is moving to Canada soon, because she said it is important to the success of the Chinese to learn English, and she already has some family over there. The other Chinese student was a guy, a Masters student, but quite a bit older than your typical MS because he had been a teacher in China for a few years after he did his undergrad. The subject he'd taught was English, which explained his absolute fluency even though he had never been to an English-speaking country before this. For most of the rest of the journey I accompanied these two, along with a Pakistani 2nd year who did not understand the concept of pie.
Yes, you read correctly. For some reason I got on the subject of pie, and said something along the lines of, 'I love pie,' to which he responded, 'What is pie? What do you put in pie? When Jerry hits Tom in the face with pie, what is that colorful stuff in the middle?'
I was in absolute shock, so of course I had to promise him that I would introduce him to berry pie one day. It should be easy to follow through on that, since he added me as a friend on facebook, and now we will be able to chat. About pie. All the time.
On the way back from the park, we stopped at a cozy pub and I chatted it up with the Brits about alcohol abuse, hangovers, and thus it came to the inevitable story of the effects of consuming nutmeg tea, to the astonishment and amusement of them all. One of the officers of the club asked me how many nutmegs it took me to poison myself, after which he said he would use that information and try his luck. I warned him it would not be good. I informed him that it would be a good way to induce untimely death. He insisted he would double the quantity I used and see for himself. I don't know whether he was joking or not.
This guy was called Amish-- not horse-and-buggy Amish, but the Indian name Amish, the 'a' pronounced like the 'a' in 'ham', rhymes with... ham-ish. He is originally from London, a third-year student in the school of management; most importantly, a hobby-runner who lives practically next-door to me and who has agreed to be my running partner at the ridiculously-early hour of 7AM, at Victoria Park, tomorrow. I'll tell you how it goes.
All-in-all, I got a few numbers (to contact various people about pie, authentic Chinese food, and running), and had a very good time with the Hiking Society yesterday.
Our next hike will be the day before Halloween, and we are encouraged to dress up.
...And on Halloween day, Jana and I will go to Oxford in costume and perhaps take some Harry Potter tours... it's going to be great!
Oh, you would like to know about the Hiking Society's first outing, would you? Well, let me go into a few descriptives. We met at the university at 10am; quite late in the morning, but there was frost in the shady areas of the grass, nevertheless. It took us a good hour to assemble, pass some cakes around that the club president had so thoughtfully baked for us, and trek down to the Haymarket Bus Station in the city center. On the way to our ride, I met a conglomerate of British and international students.
There was a shy Spanish couple who I bonded with over our shared love for sushi. There was a trio of English freshers who had all done their A-levels at the same place (that's advanced high school after the age of 16, yanks), and the dominant female among them was a talkative, camera-happy tae-kwon-do expert with an American father and plenty of stories about her exciting summer in Minnesota. On the bus, I discovered that the token man of the trio was an astrophysics major, and I might have become overly excited by this fact, but he seemed to have a Brian Poston-esque zen that never wavered throughout our travels.
We arrived on the outskirts of the park, a typical English suburban sprawl which consisted of spacious brick housing, well-groomed yards, and hilly neighborhood roads speckled with bus stops and quiet pubs. Hopped a couple of fences and zigzagged across cow fields to arrive at the boundless landscape of the 'park.'
Yes, let me tell you the definition of an English park; it is miles of rolling, mossy hills, spotted with trees and livestock, usually situated around some central landmark. The landmark at this park happened to be a mysterious tower (nobody seemed to know its significance, not even the club officers), and it was simply labeled 'Old John Tower' on the map. It looked like a single stone castle tower, flanked by an archway and the disintegrating peices of a crumbling wall. It was really cool though, and it was located on the highest point of the park, so you could look out on the surrounding farmland in all directions.
On the way to the tower I met a friendly couple of Chinese students; the girl was a freshman who had arrived in England 8 months previously to improve her English, which was not impeccable, but modestly good. Her family is moving to Canada soon, because she said it is important to the success of the Chinese to learn English, and she already has some family over there. The other Chinese student was a guy, a Masters student, but quite a bit older than your typical MS because he had been a teacher in China for a few years after he did his undergrad. The subject he'd taught was English, which explained his absolute fluency even though he had never been to an English-speaking country before this. For most of the rest of the journey I accompanied these two, along with a Pakistani 2nd year who did not understand the concept of pie.
Yes, you read correctly. For some reason I got on the subject of pie, and said something along the lines of, 'I love pie,' to which he responded, 'What is pie? What do you put in pie? When Jerry hits Tom in the face with pie, what is that colorful stuff in the middle?'
I was in absolute shock, so of course I had to promise him that I would introduce him to berry pie one day. It should be easy to follow through on that, since he added me as a friend on facebook, and now we will be able to chat. About pie. All the time.
On the way back from the park, we stopped at a cozy pub and I chatted it up with the Brits about alcohol abuse, hangovers, and thus it came to the inevitable story of the effects of consuming nutmeg tea, to the astonishment and amusement of them all. One of the officers of the club asked me how many nutmegs it took me to poison myself, after which he said he would use that information and try his luck. I warned him it would not be good. I informed him that it would be a good way to induce untimely death. He insisted he would double the quantity I used and see for himself. I don't know whether he was joking or not.
This guy was called Amish-- not horse-and-buggy Amish, but the Indian name Amish, the 'a' pronounced like the 'a' in 'ham', rhymes with... ham-ish. He is originally from London, a third-year student in the school of management; most importantly, a hobby-runner who lives practically next-door to me and who has agreed to be my running partner at the ridiculously-early hour of 7AM, at Victoria Park, tomorrow. I'll tell you how it goes.
All-in-all, I got a few numbers (to contact various people about pie, authentic Chinese food, and running), and had a very good time with the Hiking Society yesterday.
Our next hike will be the day before Halloween, and we are encouraged to dress up.
...And on Halloween day, Jana and I will go to Oxford in costume and perhaps take some Harry Potter tours... it's going to be great!
Thursday, October 14, 2010
The Big Question Pt.II
Well, I had a meeting with the adviser and you'll never guess where he thought I should go with the study: exactly where I had wanted to go in the first place! So what I wrote in the last post is not complete scrap, but the question is going to switch back to,
--which at first he said was not good enough to build on, but now I guess he's changed his mind. But I don't think of all my hours of library research as a waste of time-- now, I've learned a hell of a lot about neglect, and it's given me a topic for the literature review I am being asked to write. The literature review is supposed to be on a subject similar to the thesis topic, but not exactly (they don't want us to use all the same sources).
So I explained in the last post how there are so many dissociations between neglect patients across different modalities (visuospatial, motor, tactile, auditory)-- well, I can research the different tasks that have been used to find neglect in those different modalities, and compare them to see which of those hinder or enhance performance in the neglected field. I can also look at the neurological bases for those patients who show dissociations.
So you see, it wasn't a total loss, but I wish the adviser had just given me the go-ahead with my idea in the first place. Oh well, at least I have a solid theoretical approach now, and the adviser has a good idea about how to induce neglect in normals, having found some literature where scientists have done similar things. However, once they have induced neglect, most studies just leave it at that, and they haven't tried to manipulate the targets the subjects are given, which is what I am going to do.
Relevance.
If we are able to induce neglect in normal subjects, will they show the same
pattern of neglect as patients?
--which at first he said was not good enough to build on, but now I guess he's changed his mind. But I don't think of all my hours of library research as a waste of time-- now, I've learned a hell of a lot about neglect, and it's given me a topic for the literature review I am being asked to write. The literature review is supposed to be on a subject similar to the thesis topic, but not exactly (they don't want us to use all the same sources).
So I explained in the last post how there are so many dissociations between neglect patients across different modalities (visuospatial, motor, tactile, auditory)-- well, I can research the different tasks that have been used to find neglect in those different modalities, and compare them to see which of those hinder or enhance performance in the neglected field. I can also look at the neurological bases for those patients who show dissociations.
So you see, it wasn't a total loss, but I wish the adviser had just given me the go-ahead with my idea in the first place. Oh well, at least I have a solid theoretical approach now, and the adviser has a good idea about how to induce neglect in normals, having found some literature where scientists have done similar things. However, once they have induced neglect, most studies just leave it at that, and they haven't tried to manipulate the targets the subjects are given, which is what I am going to do.
Relevance.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
The Big Question
I have refined 'the big question,' and I officially have a theoretical point to my study! It is of course, different from what I've posted earlier, though it builds on the material, and here it is:
I'm finding problems where research has shown both patterns and dissociations when studying parts of the visuomotor system, or other systems, as they relate to neglect (looking exclusively at either motor or visual performance, looking at other modalities (auditory, etc), looking at problems in exogenous (reflexive) vs endogenous (voluntary) orienting)-- but studies seem to show different results sometimes (some studies find that patients neglect mental images of visual space-- an example of a deficit in the visual system without motor influences, while others don't.) However, this might be because many of the studies have such a small sample size, comparing 2 or 3 neglect patients; also, while the areas of their lesions overlap, there is still a lot of individual diversity from patient to patient. But when looking for auditory or tactile neglect in patients, none is found, and this is pretty consistent over many studies. What if neglect might be due to a more general disability in visual and motor interaction, as in, the fact that the two systems are interacting is over-loading attention and causing neglect?
BIG QUESTION: So, if we induce neglect in normals (which we could do using TMS or behavioral training as I've described before), or even just give students a reaction time (RT) task, would they make more mistakes or show greater RTs if visual and motor systems are interacting, compared to whether we use single-modality tests (i.e., exclusively visual or exclusively motor)?
Eureka! Now, I just have to go through the literature and refine this idea, and get it ready to package up sweetly for my appointment with the adviser tomorrow at 4:30.
Boom!
Saturday, October 9, 2010
The Feel of England
It has been two weeks and three days since I left the United States for England. I feel like I have been living here for a month, though—which is not good or bad, just a strange perception. It seems that when a lot of changes occur all at once, your brain wants to stretch the memories of those events over a more typical course, probably so you don’t go ballistic with the sudden increase in information and stimulation.
As the study abroad coordinator so wisely put it two years ago, “Leicester is not Kent, Ohio.” For some reason, the emphasis with which she said the words stuck with me. Leicester is not Kent, Ohio. She said that about two months before I was to leave the country, and the image of another world popped into my head the second the phrase was voiced. Well, it’s true. Leicester is another world; actually, it’s more like another dimension, like in The Golden Compass. Everything is kind of the same, but the one book you read in America is not the same book you will read in England!-- (as so many of you know, having read of the famous changes to Harry Potter.)
Everything has an air of antiquity about it. Buildings have the feel of having been carved into the earth. Houses are brick. They have chimneys and a real need for those dancing sweeps, especially when the wind blows and ash falls down the flue and scatters all over the living room floor.
Standard to students is the three-tiered, fold-out dryer stand upon which damp clothes are laid for two or three days. Want instant dryer action? Only if you have precious pounds to waste. And the only thing bigger in England than in America is the electrical outlets. Each one has a button next-by that turns the current on or off, to save on electricity. Floor vent heating is almost unheard of. Radiators are the heaters of England. You can go to the Homebase and buy sleek, shiny silver radiators for your posh abode if you can afford it.
Twenty-four hour time is used in all clocks and mobile phones, but if you ask the time, you will always hear the twelve-hour version. They measure weight, distance, and speed in a mishmash of metric and English systems, and they claim anyone younger than middle age has been taught the metric system since elementary school.
There is a produce shop and a greenhouse on every corner. Small hardware stores and local bakeries still exist. The city center is home to the largest covered market in England, where they sell amazingly cheap fresh fruits and veggies, as well as scarves and clothing, handbags and pillows. Across from the chic glass façade of Highcross Shopping Centre is an ancient, crumbling Roman wall. Richard III spent his last night here. Geoffrey Chaucer was married here. The Romans built a walkway here, called New Walk, which is the fastest route to the city center from the university. Next to Dominos is a gothic church. Across from that are about fifteen curry restaurants, which makes sense because Leicester has a significant Indian population. They play loud Indian rap music from tiny cars and popularized Bollywood movies in cinemas all over England.
Queue is a popular word here. The world is smaller but there are no less people. Places are a little bit more crowded than in the suburbs of Cleveland, and you must learn to wait your turn.
There is so much that is good about England. When Jana was locked out of her house on day one, she stopped a local woman to ask if she knew where the door to the alleyway was, and three people overheard and began to hunt with us for it. When we were unsuccessful, this woman offered to let us use her mobile phone, and asked if we wanted help carrying our bags to my house. Where in the US most people would brush you off with an, “I don’t know,” here, people will genuinely offer their assistance, free of charge.
There is the bad, too—door-to-door salesmen are not uncommon, and junk mail on your stoop is not illegal. Ads for the ‘pizza, kebab and burger’ joint down the street, ads for hair stylists and acupuncturists, hypnotherapists and student deals, all come pouring through the mail slot and are left for you to find in a big pile at the end of the day.
The fashion here is much more prominent than in the midwestern US; less jeans and more tights and boots, and scarves and layers and jewelry. Fashion being everywhere, it is also more accessible and affordable. The Brits take pride in their clothing. Several downtown boutiques will sell a shirt for three-hundred pounds, but right across from that you will find off-brand items of the same style for fifteen. It is easy to find good combinations of clothing when all of the clothing is good. Hairstyles are important, too. Everyone has a modern cut, many with excellent dye jobs to boot. Student discounts are advertised at the stylist next door. Looking perfectly modish is a must—tanning, however, is not necessary.
Alcohol is featured more noticeably here; it is legal to carry open bottles in the streets, and freshmen who have just turned the drinking age of eighteen are not scarce with bottles of wine in their clutches, tottering on their high heels from an eventful night at the club. Shops close early, but bars (especially clubs) are open late, sometimes until five in the morning. The party scene is large, but mostly for the benefit of the undergraduates.
Right now, at a quarter ‘til eleven at night, I can hear the raucous chanting of far-off party-goers having a good time. I live in a good location: not too far from campus, far enough from the younger crowd. I used to wonder if my street was safe, but that was before the nighttime strolls during which I ran into more than one policeman patrolling by foot or bicycle. Help is not far off if ever needed, and thanks to a certain Clarendon Park officer, we have our screaming eggs; which, though not as effective as the illegal pepper-spray or pocket-knife, should do the trick to alert the authorities in an emergency. The Brits, by the way, think Americans are laughably over-equipped with their knives and mace.
Ten minutes to the hour and it is time for me to get ready for bed. I feel I must set myself some boundaries as far as studying goes, so I will take the approach of the professors and resist going into the library for study this weekend. Of course, I may work on a theory or two from home, and I do have a modest amount of reading already stocked on my new 2gb flash drive, ready to be downloaded onto my internet-free computer. If you are reading this now, I have probably uploaded this blog entry from my switchblade (my slang term for the flash drive, which slides in and out of its case like so) at Jana's house.
So now, I will turn off the light with a yank of the cord, and snuggle down into my winter duvet.
Overuse of the word brilliant here, by the way, is not always off the mark.
Goodnight, everybody! And welcome to England!
As the study abroad coordinator so wisely put it two years ago, “Leicester is not Kent, Ohio.” For some reason, the emphasis with which she said the words stuck with me. Leicester is not Kent, Ohio. She said that about two months before I was to leave the country, and the image of another world popped into my head the second the phrase was voiced. Well, it’s true. Leicester is another world; actually, it’s more like another dimension, like in The Golden Compass. Everything is kind of the same, but the one book you read in America is not the same book you will read in England!-- (as so many of you know, having read of the famous changes to Harry Potter.)
Everything has an air of antiquity about it. Buildings have the feel of having been carved into the earth. Houses are brick. They have chimneys and a real need for those dancing sweeps, especially when the wind blows and ash falls down the flue and scatters all over the living room floor.
Standard to students is the three-tiered, fold-out dryer stand upon which damp clothes are laid for two or three days. Want instant dryer action? Only if you have precious pounds to waste. And the only thing bigger in England than in America is the electrical outlets. Each one has a button next-by that turns the current on or off, to save on electricity. Floor vent heating is almost unheard of. Radiators are the heaters of England. You can go to the Homebase and buy sleek, shiny silver radiators for your posh abode if you can afford it.
Twenty-four hour time is used in all clocks and mobile phones, but if you ask the time, you will always hear the twelve-hour version. They measure weight, distance, and speed in a mishmash of metric and English systems, and they claim anyone younger than middle age has been taught the metric system since elementary school.
There is a produce shop and a greenhouse on every corner. Small hardware stores and local bakeries still exist. The city center is home to the largest covered market in England, where they sell amazingly cheap fresh fruits and veggies, as well as scarves and clothing, handbags and pillows. Across from the chic glass façade of Highcross Shopping Centre is an ancient, crumbling Roman wall. Richard III spent his last night here. Geoffrey Chaucer was married here. The Romans built a walkway here, called New Walk, which is the fastest route to the city center from the university. Next to Dominos is a gothic church. Across from that are about fifteen curry restaurants, which makes sense because Leicester has a significant Indian population. They play loud Indian rap music from tiny cars and popularized Bollywood movies in cinemas all over England.
Queue is a popular word here. The world is smaller but there are no less people. Places are a little bit more crowded than in the suburbs of Cleveland, and you must learn to wait your turn.
There is so much that is good about England. When Jana was locked out of her house on day one, she stopped a local woman to ask if she knew where the door to the alleyway was, and three people overheard and began to hunt with us for it. When we were unsuccessful, this woman offered to let us use her mobile phone, and asked if we wanted help carrying our bags to my house. Where in the US most people would brush you off with an, “I don’t know,” here, people will genuinely offer their assistance, free of charge.
There is the bad, too—door-to-door salesmen are not uncommon, and junk mail on your stoop is not illegal. Ads for the ‘pizza, kebab and burger’ joint down the street, ads for hair stylists and acupuncturists, hypnotherapists and student deals, all come pouring through the mail slot and are left for you to find in a big pile at the end of the day.
The fashion here is much more prominent than in the midwestern US; less jeans and more tights and boots, and scarves and layers and jewelry. Fashion being everywhere, it is also more accessible and affordable. The Brits take pride in their clothing. Several downtown boutiques will sell a shirt for three-hundred pounds, but right across from that you will find off-brand items of the same style for fifteen. It is easy to find good combinations of clothing when all of the clothing is good. Hairstyles are important, too. Everyone has a modern cut, many with excellent dye jobs to boot. Student discounts are advertised at the stylist next door. Looking perfectly modish is a must—tanning, however, is not necessary.
Alcohol is featured more noticeably here; it is legal to carry open bottles in the streets, and freshmen who have just turned the drinking age of eighteen are not scarce with bottles of wine in their clutches, tottering on their high heels from an eventful night at the club. Shops close early, but bars (especially clubs) are open late, sometimes until five in the morning. The party scene is large, but mostly for the benefit of the undergraduates.
Right now, at a quarter ‘til eleven at night, I can hear the raucous chanting of far-off party-goers having a good time. I live in a good location: not too far from campus, far enough from the younger crowd. I used to wonder if my street was safe, but that was before the nighttime strolls during which I ran into more than one policeman patrolling by foot or bicycle. Help is not far off if ever needed, and thanks to a certain Clarendon Park officer, we have our screaming eggs; which, though not as effective as the illegal pepper-spray or pocket-knife, should do the trick to alert the authorities in an emergency. The Brits, by the way, think Americans are laughably over-equipped with their knives and mace.
Ten minutes to the hour and it is time for me to get ready for bed. I feel I must set myself some boundaries as far as studying goes, so I will take the approach of the professors and resist going into the library for study this weekend. Of course, I may work on a theory or two from home, and I do have a modest amount of reading already stocked on my new 2gb flash drive, ready to be downloaded onto my internet-free computer. If you are reading this now, I have probably uploaded this blog entry from my switchblade (my slang term for the flash drive, which slides in and out of its case like so) at Jana's house.
So now, I will turn off the light with a yank of the cord, and snuggle down into my winter duvet.
Overuse of the word brilliant here, by the way, is not always off the mark.
Goodnight, everybody! And welcome to England!
Friday, October 8, 2010
This year is going to be amazing!
So I had my introduction to the course yesterday. There is so much to do already, but I have so many ideas, I can get right to work!
Firstly, there are only 12 students on my course (there was about a 25% acceptance rate if you were wondering, so it is a lot more competitive than any undergraduate program, but definitely nowhere close to the competitiveness of a PhD program, which is about a 3-5% acceptance rate). We seem to get along nicely as small courses tend to do. As usual, over the duration of the briefing, I seemed to be the least timid in asking questions. While the mood of the majority tended to be slightly confused and fearful throughout, I realized I had a distinct advantage having contacted potential advisers before the course started, and I do seem to be quite a bit more on top of things than the others.
The professor who runs the course will do the majority of the teaching, which will be only one day per week, leaving us to concentrate on our independent studies. The design of the course is very very practical, something I not only appreciate but am totally excited by! The prof said not to think of the course as a typical Masters program, getting those As, etc, but more like a helpful trajectory toward publication. Actually, the classes are all geared toward shaping our interests, reading a LOT, and ultimately writing two mondo papers: the dissertation (of course), and a literature review based on related materials. The prof expects us to publish both. So, we'll see how that pans out! Very excited.
Our tasks for this week (until we meet again) are as follows: come up with an idea for a psychometric test (to be used on guinea pig undergrads toward the middle of the semester), come up with a few topics for the literature review (to be written by the end of the semester), and choose a topic for the thesis. These things I have already done, so I feel really on the ball here. The prof wants to meet with me on Monday, probably to discuss my ideas, but he said he liked the way everything looks from my end and commended my organization (he he).
Oh, so you want to know the status of 'the big question' from the last post? I have been tirelessly trying to work it out through hours and hours of grueling (but definitely fun lol) scholarly research, and I think I'm on to something. The adviser asked me to find a gap in the research, something that is missing. Well, here is what I found:
When people study the effects of neglect, whether it be for covert vs overt attention, exogenous vs endogenous orienting, frames of references, object-oriented vs spatial-oriented attention or what have you (you don't need to know what these are to keep reading)-- all of this research has a certain amount of variance... some say it's because of testing strategies, etc... I say, small sample sizes and individual error-- when 10 people have neglect, there could be 10 different brain regions affected. And it's very hard to find people with neglect, so an entire sample could consist of two people. So how are those comparable? Not directly comparable, at any rate. In using normal subjects, and administering TMS (a stimulation machine that can confuse the normal brain into thinking certain parts of it have been 'knocked out'), you can have a more directly controlled comparison. Also, using behavioral measures, such as presenting a cue predominantly on one side of space for a long period of time, might also induce neglect, for a short period of time, in much less spread-out brain regions than actual neglect. So the proposition of using normals to induce neglect, rather than patients with actual neglect, might have its advantages after all. And not many studies have done something like this. As far as I know, none!
So that might be something to point out. I have e-mailed the adviser twice now with different ideas and he did not think those were 'big question'. Maybe this is it? It might still be too soon to tell. I didn't come into this program with a huge reading base on the subject... I probably could have prepared sooner, but oh well. I am optimistic that multiple hours per day in a library can bring me up to speed fairly quickly though, and all the other first-year MSc students are in the same boat, if not a slightly less-buoyant boat if I do say so myself, since I got the impression I was already at an advantage... I want to be the best-- do you blame me? I might have delusions of grandeur, but at least that does something to boost my confidence and enthusiam. Boy am I enthusiastic! And there's nothing like an enthusiastic idiot bound to spring at every obstacle until he pounds it down with his psycho-energy. That is the enthusiastic idiot btw.
On another note, I just received word that my student loans have been processed, and I will get all the money in my bank account within 5-10 working days-- yippee-hooray! I already have £800 available, so I am good to go for the rest of the month solely on those funds. Well, it took long enough- but everything is finally coming together. I just feel bad for this other American (yes, there is one other) on my course, who just arrived on Saturday and is living in a hotel. Why didn't she reserve a room beforehand? Why didn't she do the International Student Welcome Program? Nobody knows. At least I don't. But I do feel bad for all the trials she must go through over the next couple of weeks, on top of her studies. I told her about the university's private acommodations for postgraduates and away I went.
The weather is supposed to be nice for the marathon on Sunday, by the way! Yes, I am still running in that derned thing, half-marathon 13.1 miles. Wish me luck, everybody!
Oh, and by the way-- I am ashamed at all of you who are not e-mailing me at darogasrainydaae@gmail.com! I don't want to think that this is like a second-life, here. If I was all by myself I'd have offed myself by now, so you all know. So I am going to name names here-- Laura!!! Matt!! Give me a shout, preferably something short since I receive the e-mails on my phone, even if it's just 'Hi how's your day going' or 'Work stunk today' or whatever. Ha ha. Love you guys.
Boy, I'm hungry... and cold, deep in the throes of the psycho ward-- I mean, department. I got my security ID today and was like WTF this thing stinks. Jana got this fancy ID badge with swipe-access and lanyard included, I got some hastily-thrown-together cut-and-paste-lamination job fit for a high school project someone didn't try very hard on. My picture is cut all jagged, and it's not even straight. I don't get swipe access, so I got trapped in a stairwell cos everything is so SECURE in this damn building, so I had to use the fire escape which thankfully did NOT make an alarm go off, at least not that I know of.
Jeez.
Oh, reflectively, I noticed something today on my run. Two years ago, while studying at Leicester last time, I took a picture of the tops of hundreds of brown-red houses from the top of the hill the university sits. I wasn't thinking anything of it, I just thought the rows and rows of chimneys looked cool. Now guess where I live? Ha ha, you guessed it! In one of those houses. I noticed this while running past the exact location from which I took the original picture. Funny to think I took a picture of my house from afar, years before I dreamed I might live in it?
Peace. :)
Firstly, there are only 12 students on my course (there was about a 25% acceptance rate if you were wondering, so it is a lot more competitive than any undergraduate program, but definitely nowhere close to the competitiveness of a PhD program, which is about a 3-5% acceptance rate). We seem to get along nicely as small courses tend to do. As usual, over the duration of the briefing, I seemed to be the least timid in asking questions. While the mood of the majority tended to be slightly confused and fearful throughout, I realized I had a distinct advantage having contacted potential advisers before the course started, and I do seem to be quite a bit more on top of things than the others.
The professor who runs the course will do the majority of the teaching, which will be only one day per week, leaving us to concentrate on our independent studies. The design of the course is very very practical, something I not only appreciate but am totally excited by! The prof said not to think of the course as a typical Masters program, getting those As, etc, but more like a helpful trajectory toward publication. Actually, the classes are all geared toward shaping our interests, reading a LOT, and ultimately writing two mondo papers: the dissertation (of course), and a literature review based on related materials. The prof expects us to publish both. So, we'll see how that pans out! Very excited.
Our tasks for this week (until we meet again) are as follows: come up with an idea for a psychometric test (to be used on guinea pig undergrads toward the middle of the semester), come up with a few topics for the literature review (to be written by the end of the semester), and choose a topic for the thesis. These things I have already done, so I feel really on the ball here. The prof wants to meet with me on Monday, probably to discuss my ideas, but he said he liked the way everything looks from my end and commended my organization (he he).
Oh, so you want to know the status of 'the big question' from the last post? I have been tirelessly trying to work it out through hours and hours of grueling (but definitely fun lol) scholarly research, and I think I'm on to something. The adviser asked me to find a gap in the research, something that is missing. Well, here is what I found:
When people study the effects of neglect, whether it be for covert vs overt attention, exogenous vs endogenous orienting, frames of references, object-oriented vs spatial-oriented attention or what have you (you don't need to know what these are to keep reading)-- all of this research has a certain amount of variance... some say it's because of testing strategies, etc... I say, small sample sizes and individual error-- when 10 people have neglect, there could be 10 different brain regions affected. And it's very hard to find people with neglect, so an entire sample could consist of two people. So how are those comparable? Not directly comparable, at any rate. In using normal subjects, and administering TMS (a stimulation machine that can confuse the normal brain into thinking certain parts of it have been 'knocked out'), you can have a more directly controlled comparison. Also, using behavioral measures, such as presenting a cue predominantly on one side of space for a long period of time, might also induce neglect, for a short period of time, in much less spread-out brain regions than actual neglect. So the proposition of using normals to induce neglect, rather than patients with actual neglect, might have its advantages after all. And not many studies have done something like this. As far as I know, none!
So that might be something to point out. I have e-mailed the adviser twice now with different ideas and he did not think those were 'big question'. Maybe this is it? It might still be too soon to tell. I didn't come into this program with a huge reading base on the subject... I probably could have prepared sooner, but oh well. I am optimistic that multiple hours per day in a library can bring me up to speed fairly quickly though, and all the other first-year MSc students are in the same boat, if not a slightly less-buoyant boat if I do say so myself, since I got the impression I was already at an advantage... I want to be the best-- do you blame me? I might have delusions of grandeur, but at least that does something to boost my confidence and enthusiam. Boy am I enthusiastic! And there's nothing like an enthusiastic idiot bound to spring at every obstacle until he pounds it down with his psycho-energy. That is the enthusiastic idiot btw.
On another note, I just received word that my student loans have been processed, and I will get all the money in my bank account within 5-10 working days-- yippee-hooray! I already have £800 available, so I am good to go for the rest of the month solely on those funds. Well, it took long enough- but everything is finally coming together. I just feel bad for this other American (yes, there is one other) on my course, who just arrived on Saturday and is living in a hotel. Why didn't she reserve a room beforehand? Why didn't she do the International Student Welcome Program? Nobody knows. At least I don't. But I do feel bad for all the trials she must go through over the next couple of weeks, on top of her studies. I told her about the university's private acommodations for postgraduates and away I went.
The weather is supposed to be nice for the marathon on Sunday, by the way! Yes, I am still running in that derned thing, half-marathon 13.1 miles. Wish me luck, everybody!
Oh, and by the way-- I am ashamed at all of you who are not e-mailing me at darogasrainydaae@gmail.com! I don't want to think that this is like a second-life, here. If I was all by myself I'd have offed myself by now, so you all know. So I am going to name names here-- Laura!!! Matt!! Give me a shout, preferably something short since I receive the e-mails on my phone, even if it's just 'Hi how's your day going' or 'Work stunk today' or whatever. Ha ha. Love you guys.
Boy, I'm hungry... and cold, deep in the throes of the psycho ward-- I mean, department. I got my security ID today and was like WTF this thing stinks. Jana got this fancy ID badge with swipe-access and lanyard included, I got some hastily-thrown-together cut-and-paste-lamination job fit for a high school project someone didn't try very hard on. My picture is cut all jagged, and it's not even straight. I don't get swipe access, so I got trapped in a stairwell cos everything is so SECURE in this damn building, so I had to use the fire escape which thankfully did NOT make an alarm go off, at least not that I know of.
Jeez.
Oh, reflectively, I noticed something today on my run. Two years ago, while studying at Leicester last time, I took a picture of the tops of hundreds of brown-red houses from the top of the hill the university sits. I wasn't thinking anything of it, I just thought the rows and rows of chimneys looked cool. Now guess where I live? Ha ha, you guessed it! In one of those houses. I noticed this while running past the exact location from which I took the original picture. Funny to think I took a picture of my house from afar, years before I dreamed I might live in it?
Peace. :)
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Psychology
Since this is what is on my mind, this is the topic I will be writing about today.
So yesterday, I had a meeting with a professor (actually, a lecturer- here, not all university teachers are called professors- that is a term used only for full professors. They do not have assistant or associate professors, but rather lecturers and readers, and junior and senior levels of both of those.) So the meeting lasted about an hour, during which we discussed project ideas and preparations that must be made depending on what I want to do for the rest of my life.
First of all, this lecturer gave me a very good tip about research in England. He said that many universities in the UK will hire RAs with masters degrees, and the standard is to allow them to take on a PhD course either during or after their RA work. This would a) give me excellent research experience after the degree and b) free PhD! So I'm really glad he brought that to my attention. Apparently the best way to look for RA work is to send informal e-mails to uni teachers who conduct research in your area of interest, close to the end of the masters program (obviously, so that you have more experience under your belt than the average BA.)
Second of all, during our talk, he told me I have a lot of very good ideas but my one problem (and I knew this coming in), is that I spend so much time coming up with fun studies, that I forget to come up with some practical reason for doing it-- in other words, I know what I want to do, but I haven't bothered to find out why I should do it. So that is my task for the week-- to come up with the research question to supplement my study.
The project is going to be great, by the way; it is everything I wanted it to be, going in. It will be on neglect, which is a neurological disorder where, after a person has a stroke, they are unable to pay attention to one half of space (usually the left). So if they were given a task where they had to draw a flower, they might draw half a flower. If someone points out the other half of the flower to the neglect patient, though, the patient will be able to copy it fully, suggesting that this disorder is of attention, not vision.
I wanted to do a project where I could 'induce' neglect in normal subjects by bogging their attention in some way. Wish granted! The lecturer suggested inducing neglect by attentional-overload-- giving subjects a busy scene to pick through. My idea was to present pictures for very short periods of time. Wish granted! Now, listen-- I came up with this project all on my own, and I am determined to do the majority of it myself, including learning how to program the visual computer tasks from scratch. This would involve coming into the lab on off-days to learn a program called MATLAB, which the lecturer said would be a valuable asset to my CV.
Once I learn how to use MATLAB, I will be able to design a picture task, where subjects will be asked to look at the center of a screen, and a picture of an animal (or something) will appear in either the right or left visual field. They will be asked to name several of these pictures, which will appear predominantly on one side of space to bias the attention of the subject. After a slew of animals (say) on the left, a single picture will appear in the center of the screen for a few milliseconds. This single picture will have something strange about it on either the right or left side; I suggested missing or upside-down numbers on a clockface. Then the subject will be asked if they saw anything wrong with the picture, which, if they have been used to looking at the left side of space, they may not catch on if the wacky clock numbers are on the right. Thus, induced neglect.
Part 2 of this study would manipulate attention in more ways that simply induced neglect. The lecturer suggested this part of the study after I told him I really liked a certain 'rotating barbell' experiment. This experiment involved neglect patients, where they were asked to copy a picture of a barbell that was shown on a computer screen. Obviously, they could only draw the right half of it. But, if patients were asked to look at the barbell as it revolved 180 degrees, the patient could follow the right half of the barbell until it had rotated into the left half of the screen, after which they could still draw that half of the barbell, even though it was now on the neglected side.
This phenomenon is explained by an interaction between dorsal and ventral streams, and spatial coordinate frameworks; now, you all know what spatial coordinate frames are, even if you don't realize it. It's just a fancy term for how we categorize visual information: one frame of reference is for objects on our body (egocentric, personal space), another is for objects around our body (egocentric, peripersonal space), and another is for objects that are far away (in allocentric, or extrapersonal space). Spatial coordinate planes can be in the left or ride side of space, high or low, etc. See, you all know what those are. And depending on where objects are, we will attend to them differently.
As for dorsal and ventral streams, these are also easy to explain: the dorsal stream is a pathway in the brain (that goes through the top half of the brain, thus 'dorsal' like the fin) that processes action, motion, or object location-- the 'where' pathway. The ventral stream is a pathway through the lower portion of the brain that processes object identification-- the 'what' pathway. I don't think it's really quite as simply as that, actually-- these pathways are more interconnected than some might think-- it's quite controversial. But this is the explanation for now, and perhaps we will learn something more about the nature of these pathways through my study!
Okay, so now you know about spatial coordinate frames and the dorsal and ventral pathways, we can get back to my study. Remember I told you about presenting lots of pictures on one side of space, then presenting a final wacko picture in the center of the screen? What the lecturer wants to do, is move the final wacko picture into different spatial coordinate frames. So the picture would first appear in the center of the screen, but then it might jump or slide to another side of space, (or grow or shrink?), after which subjects would be asked again whether there was something weird about that picture. In moving objects around the screen, and depending on whether or not subjects are able to perceive differences, we have utilized both the dorsal and ventral streams. Depending on peoples' responses to the pictures, we might be able to learn more about the interaction of the dorsal/ventral streams, and the dominance of certain spatial frames.
All right, not too complicated? Except now I can get back to the problem of finding a problem. Or, I guess, a question. What is the question we are asking here? Where is the gap in the literature, where my study will nicely slide? The answer, which is the question, is not yet answered, and that is where I will leave you for now. I must be off to find my question, which could take a billion hours, but I will find it-ho! I will find it!
Peace!
So yesterday, I had a meeting with a professor (actually, a lecturer- here, not all university teachers are called professors- that is a term used only for full professors. They do not have assistant or associate professors, but rather lecturers and readers, and junior and senior levels of both of those.) So the meeting lasted about an hour, during which we discussed project ideas and preparations that must be made depending on what I want to do for the rest of my life.
First of all, this lecturer gave me a very good tip about research in England. He said that many universities in the UK will hire RAs with masters degrees, and the standard is to allow them to take on a PhD course either during or after their RA work. This would a) give me excellent research experience after the degree and b) free PhD! So I'm really glad he brought that to my attention. Apparently the best way to look for RA work is to send informal e-mails to uni teachers who conduct research in your area of interest, close to the end of the masters program (obviously, so that you have more experience under your belt than the average BA.)
Second of all, during our talk, he told me I have a lot of very good ideas but my one problem (and I knew this coming in), is that I spend so much time coming up with fun studies, that I forget to come up with some practical reason for doing it-- in other words, I know what I want to do, but I haven't bothered to find out why I should do it. So that is my task for the week-- to come up with the research question to supplement my study.
The project is going to be great, by the way; it is everything I wanted it to be, going in. It will be on neglect, which is a neurological disorder where, after a person has a stroke, they are unable to pay attention to one half of space (usually the left). So if they were given a task where they had to draw a flower, they might draw half a flower. If someone points out the other half of the flower to the neglect patient, though, the patient will be able to copy it fully, suggesting that this disorder is of attention, not vision.
I wanted to do a project where I could 'induce' neglect in normal subjects by bogging their attention in some way. Wish granted! The lecturer suggested inducing neglect by attentional-overload-- giving subjects a busy scene to pick through. My idea was to present pictures for very short periods of time. Wish granted! Now, listen-- I came up with this project all on my own, and I am determined to do the majority of it myself, including learning how to program the visual computer tasks from scratch. This would involve coming into the lab on off-days to learn a program called MATLAB, which the lecturer said would be a valuable asset to my CV.
Once I learn how to use MATLAB, I will be able to design a picture task, where subjects will be asked to look at the center of a screen, and a picture of an animal (or something) will appear in either the right or left visual field. They will be asked to name several of these pictures, which will appear predominantly on one side of space to bias the attention of the subject. After a slew of animals (say) on the left, a single picture will appear in the center of the screen for a few milliseconds. This single picture will have something strange about it on either the right or left side; I suggested missing or upside-down numbers on a clockface. Then the subject will be asked if they saw anything wrong with the picture, which, if they have been used to looking at the left side of space, they may not catch on if the wacky clock numbers are on the right. Thus, induced neglect.
Part 2 of this study would manipulate attention in more ways that simply induced neglect. The lecturer suggested this part of the study after I told him I really liked a certain 'rotating barbell' experiment. This experiment involved neglect patients, where they were asked to copy a picture of a barbell that was shown on a computer screen. Obviously, they could only draw the right half of it. But, if patients were asked to look at the barbell as it revolved 180 degrees, the patient could follow the right half of the barbell until it had rotated into the left half of the screen, after which they could still draw that half of the barbell, even though it was now on the neglected side.
This phenomenon is explained by an interaction between dorsal and ventral streams, and spatial coordinate frameworks; now, you all know what spatial coordinate frames are, even if you don't realize it. It's just a fancy term for how we categorize visual information: one frame of reference is for objects on our body (egocentric, personal space), another is for objects around our body (egocentric, peripersonal space), and another is for objects that are far away (in allocentric, or extrapersonal space). Spatial coordinate planes can be in the left or ride side of space, high or low, etc. See, you all know what those are. And depending on where objects are, we will attend to them differently.
As for dorsal and ventral streams, these are also easy to explain: the dorsal stream is a pathway in the brain (that goes through the top half of the brain, thus 'dorsal' like the fin) that processes action, motion, or object location-- the 'where' pathway. The ventral stream is a pathway through the lower portion of the brain that processes object identification-- the 'what' pathway. I don't think it's really quite as simply as that, actually-- these pathways are more interconnected than some might think-- it's quite controversial. But this is the explanation for now, and perhaps we will learn something more about the nature of these pathways through my study!
Okay, so now you know about spatial coordinate frames and the dorsal and ventral pathways, we can get back to my study. Remember I told you about presenting lots of pictures on one side of space, then presenting a final wacko picture in the center of the screen? What the lecturer wants to do, is move the final wacko picture into different spatial coordinate frames. So the picture would first appear in the center of the screen, but then it might jump or slide to another side of space, (or grow or shrink?), after which subjects would be asked again whether there was something weird about that picture. In moving objects around the screen, and depending on whether or not subjects are able to perceive differences, we have utilized both the dorsal and ventral streams. Depending on peoples' responses to the pictures, we might be able to learn more about the interaction of the dorsal/ventral streams, and the dominance of certain spatial frames.
All right, not too complicated? Except now I can get back to the problem of finding a problem. Or, I guess, a question. What is the question we are asking here? Where is the gap in the literature, where my study will nicely slide? The answer, which is the question, is not yet answered, and that is where I will leave you for now. I must be off to find my question, which could take a billion hours, but I will find it-ho! I will find it!
Peace!
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