Listening to WBUR's Here and Now promo a couple of weeks ago had me perking up at the mention of a story about Botox being an anti-depressant of sorts...
Seems that limiting the range of facial expressions that the forehead is able to produce means that there are corresponding changes of experienced (i.e., felt) emotions as well.
In other words, "freezing your face" makes you feel fine... ?
There is something to this -- thinking of mirror neurons and the mind-body connection.
At the same time, I really want to see quantified experimental studies.
I will say that my "theory of mind" of Botoxed faces is that emotional empathy and creative thought seems to be limited....
But mainly, the body can influence the mind.
Read more here.
Showing posts with label affect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label affect. Show all posts
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Monday, August 22, 2011
Is returning to the sensory "short-circuiting evolution"?
In an op-ed piece for the NY Times on August 8, 2011, Diane Ackerman reports on a recently reported study in the Journal of Consumer Relations by Dan King and Chris Janiszewski called "Affect-Gating," which will appear in the Journal of Consumer Research in December, 2011.
A JSTOR press release summarizes their findings: "Animal instincts: Why do unhappy consumers prefer tactile sensations?"
(link to press release published online June 7, 2011 here)
[Note -- the article has yet to appear]
Apparently, when we feel bad, we want the comforts of touch and looking around at the wide, wide, scary world has less appeal.
Well, no duh.
Not only does most personal experience confirm this, but a combination of cognitive research about emotion and behavior and standard psychological studies do too. (Antonio D'Amasio and Harry Harlow's baby monkeys may come to mind here.) The study authors link primed visual sensory systems with emotional confidence and tactile priming with negative emotive states.
In other words, "I'm writing a paper and I want my binkie!" (Seriously, this blog was typed while a paper was due... at least the sensation of typing was soothing...)
But, of course, modern marketing, along with behavioral economics, has taken using the results of such research in a new direction.
Thus King and Janiszewski correlate their mammalian research to consumer behavior -- a product's sensory attributes need to feel just right to the buyer, and that depends on how the shopper feels.
(Ok, how do they know how Consumer Goldilocks is feeling when she's shopping? What if her shoes are pinching? How would the store try to control for emotional state? What about other cultures, when gaze is conditioned differently? Just wondering...)
As Ackerman explains, making comfort foods and other consumer materials just right is terribly important in order to increase sales.
This also makes sense.
Ackerman's connection to evolution and how humans override it, however, isn't terribly well-made. If she's trying to score a point in the ongoing nature vs. nuture debate, or the mind-body controversy, or the intellectual vs. capitalist games, it went past me. She seems to be saying that we are at the mercy of our bodies, emotionally and physically. Hmmm.
Well, this may explain why I -- and other academics -- want to eat nonstop when writing research papers...
Potato chip anyone?
Originating article:
Evolution’s Gold Standard
By DIANE ACKERMAN
Published: August 8, 2011
"Why we humans seem to want for little but are craving nonstop."
A JSTOR press release summarizes their findings: "Animal instincts: Why do unhappy consumers prefer tactile sensations?"
(link to press release published online June 7, 2011 here)
[Note -- the article has yet to appear]
Apparently, when we feel bad, we want the comforts of touch and looking around at the wide, wide, scary world has less appeal.
Well, no duh.
Not only does most personal experience confirm this, but a combination of cognitive research about emotion and behavior and standard psychological studies do too. (Antonio D'Amasio and Harry Harlow's baby monkeys may come to mind here.) The study authors link primed visual sensory systems with emotional confidence and tactile priming with negative emotive states.
In other words, "I'm writing a paper and I want my binkie!" (Seriously, this blog was typed while a paper was due... at least the sensation of typing was soothing...)
But, of course, modern marketing, along with behavioral economics, has taken using the results of such research in a new direction.
Thus King and Janiszewski correlate their mammalian research to consumer behavior -- a product's sensory attributes need to feel just right to the buyer, and that depends on how the shopper feels.
(Ok, how do they know how Consumer Goldilocks is feeling when she's shopping? What if her shoes are pinching? How would the store try to control for emotional state? What about other cultures, when gaze is conditioned differently? Just wondering...)
As Ackerman explains, making comfort foods and other consumer materials just right is terribly important in order to increase sales.
This also makes sense.
Ackerman's connection to evolution and how humans override it, however, isn't terribly well-made. If she's trying to score a point in the ongoing nature vs. nuture debate, or the mind-body controversy, or the intellectual vs. capitalist games, it went past me. She seems to be saying that we are at the mercy of our bodies, emotionally and physically. Hmmm.
Well, this may explain why I -- and other academics -- want to eat nonstop when writing research papers...
Potato chip anyone?
Originating article:
Evolution’s Gold Standard
By DIANE ACKERMAN
Published: August 8, 2011
"Why we humans seem to want for little but are craving nonstop."
Sunday, March 2, 2008
All Work and No Play -- Thoughts about Developing Brains...
Sometimes being a teacher, even one with no children of her own (or, perhaps, at least 30 of her own per year!), leads me to think about child-rearing and school-based education, and a comparison of the two and of how things used to be....
Add to this, waking up to NPR and hearing stories on two successive Thursdays about brain-based research about emotional and cognitive development, after reading about said topics for two courses, makes me wonder how to fit it all together. My "fit" would be how we define the activity of learning and how we construct the school experience based on that belief.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=76838288
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514
Well, in the HT100 project I'm working on, there's something to be said about physical activity and its benefits for helping people think better. In the NPR stories linked to this entry, there's something to be said about playing (aka, "goofing off") that helps social and emotional development. So, playing is a good thing. Playing with others--as these stories show (look at the cites of the research!)--is even better. As the stories demonstrate, play can lead to development, even of self-regulation.
I wonder about the conclusions posited in the second story (from this past Thursday, Feb. 28), however. Modelling of process, even affective process, is helpful for the learner. But isn't being instructed by your teacher (being guided through a questionnaire about what you will do while playing) the antithesis of "free play"? It smacks of overdirection and, seriously, I wonder if this use of executive cortex will have some emotional burnout effects later in life. This executive cortex training is eerily reminiscient of what many Boomer parents do when overscheduling their children. I have worked with some of these kids. "Go and play by yourself" is hardly an option in their world, because they're too busy "excelling." To these children, what they've learned to do in school is to find to right answers to they can get good jobs--and they're can be screaming emotional messes when they can't get the knowledge necessary to excel in the commodified educational system. You know who these kids are--they demand to know "Will that be on the test?!"
(Yes, I told you I had opinions...).
School should include play-- running around recess and in-classroom playtime. This would be the opposite of "studying" for standardized tests. The rest of the day should include play and not school.* This does not exclude learning, however.
Some of the most important learning that occurs in the school years is social. Socialization is vital because these children will ultimately live, work, compete with, and love their peer group. (That's peer group, not parents as best friends.) That means knowing how to interact and figure out how to interact with others one's own age and process information by oneself. It means getting hit on the head by Allejandro when you call him bad names. It means learning to share your toys with Keisha. It means letting Carrie get her hair brushed for a change. It means jumping bikes off of ramps, hopscotch and jumprope, and wandering around aimlessly. Later on it means working in a quality circle or living in a democracy. Play is where children practice skills for cognition and for affect that will make them good species members later in life.
Closer to home, it means that running around the Southern Illinois countryside with five other kids, chasing Luna moths and hunting for snipe, was a valuable childhood experience, and I couldn't agree more...
*Depending on the age. Homework can be valuable practice for thinking skills if it is an authentic activity (see Grant Wiggins for more info in this area!)
http://www.grantwiggins.org/
[working on adding tags--will revise...]
Add to this, waking up to NPR and hearing stories on two successive Thursdays about brain-based research about emotional and cognitive development, after reading about said topics for two courses, makes me wonder how to fit it all together. My "fit" would be how we define the activity of learning and how we construct the school experience based on that belief.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=76838288
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514
Well, in the HT100 project I'm working on, there's something to be said about physical activity and its benefits for helping people think better. In the NPR stories linked to this entry, there's something to be said about playing (aka, "goofing off") that helps social and emotional development. So, playing is a good thing. Playing with others--as these stories show (look at the cites of the research!)--is even better. As the stories demonstrate, play can lead to development, even of self-regulation.
I wonder about the conclusions posited in the second story (from this past Thursday, Feb. 28), however. Modelling of process, even affective process, is helpful for the learner. But isn't being instructed by your teacher (being guided through a questionnaire about what you will do while playing) the antithesis of "free play"? It smacks of overdirection and, seriously, I wonder if this use of executive cortex will have some emotional burnout effects later in life. This executive cortex training is eerily reminiscient of what many Boomer parents do when overscheduling their children. I have worked with some of these kids. "Go and play by yourself" is hardly an option in their world, because they're too busy "excelling." To these children, what they've learned to do in school is to find to right answers to they can get good jobs--and they're can be screaming emotional messes when they can't get the knowledge necessary to excel in the commodified educational system. You know who these kids are--they demand to know "Will that be on the test?!"
(Yes, I told you I had opinions...).
School should include play-- running around recess and in-classroom playtime. This would be the opposite of "studying" for standardized tests. The rest of the day should include play and not school.* This does not exclude learning, however.
Some of the most important learning that occurs in the school years is social. Socialization is vital because these children will ultimately live, work, compete with, and love their peer group. (That's peer group, not parents as best friends.) That means knowing how to interact and figure out how to interact with others one's own age and process information by oneself. It means getting hit on the head by Allejandro when you call him bad names. It means learning to share your toys with Keisha. It means letting Carrie get her hair brushed for a change. It means jumping bikes off of ramps, hopscotch and jumprope, and wandering around aimlessly. Later on it means working in a quality circle or living in a democracy. Play is where children practice skills for cognition and for affect that will make them good species members later in life.
Closer to home, it means that running around the Southern Illinois countryside with five other kids, chasing Luna moths and hunting for snipe, was a valuable childhood experience, and I couldn't agree more...
*Depending on the age. Homework can be valuable practice for thinking skills if it is an authentic activity (see Grant Wiggins for more info in this area!)
http://www.grantwiggins.org/
[working on adding tags--will revise...]
Friday, February 8, 2008
First Blog--The Dog Ate My Homework!
Seriously, it's true; although I should entitle this post "The dog ate my T560 notes!"
Sasha, the dog, is a two-year-old German Shepard/Malamute(best guess)/Collie(best guess) mix. A shelter puppy, whom we adopted last April, she has issues about food and separation anxiety. Given that she was a stray, this makes sense. Also, her behavior indicates rough treatment by her first family. So clearly environment has had an effect on her development. But, as the UDL Handbook notes in chapter 2, some critters are just more sensitive to begin with. (Ok, the supporting research is on primates, which are pretty close to humans, so I'm a little leery of citing this for a canine, but as the DNA has a lot of match between species, the comparison seems to hold...) So genes are a factor here as well. Managing the affect of the dog is a major chore, especially now that we (husband and I) are back in class with the new semester, with a new schedule.
So, yes, three days ago she seriously chewed my notes.
Today she munched on a set of student recommendation envelopes and busted into the kibble container. We're now waiting for the inevitable result...
Sasha, the dog, is a two-year-old German Shepard/Malamute(best guess)/Collie(best guess) mix. A shelter puppy, whom we adopted last April, she has issues about food and separation anxiety. Given that she was a stray, this makes sense. Also, her behavior indicates rough treatment by her first family. So clearly environment has had an effect on her development. But, as the UDL Handbook notes in chapter 2, some critters are just more sensitive to begin with. (Ok, the supporting research is on primates, which are pretty close to humans, so I'm a little leery of citing this for a canine, but as the DNA has a lot of match between species, the comparison seems to hold...) So genes are a factor here as well. Managing the affect of the dog is a major chore, especially now that we (husband and I) are back in class with the new semester, with a new schedule.
So, yes, three days ago she seriously chewed my notes.
Today she munched on a set of student recommendation envelopes and busted into the kibble container. We're now waiting for the inevitable result...
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