Crows Recognize People? Dogs Recognize Cars?

I have a fondness for field research. John Marzluff of the University of Washington and his colleagues observed that the crows they had trapped previously in order to band them for identification seemed to be harder to catch later.

So, they decided to test that hypothesis by conducting a field experiment. Three researchers, Marzluff and two students, then wore a caveman mask and trapped and released seven crows. Later, whenever one of the three wore the map on campus, the crows scolded them severely.

However, whenever they walked on campus wearing another mask (a Dick Cheney mask), the crows ignored the wearers. This, of course, was the control condition.

It seems, thus, that crows recognize people who catch and handle them and remember them later. Other researchers, too, have seen similar behaviors in crows and related birds. See a New York Times article for more information.

Informally, I have conducted similar exercises. I like to watch my dogs when I pull up in a rental car. Invariably, they bark at me viciously from behind the living room windows. They stop barking after I exit the rental car and start to walk toward the front door. Also, I have often sat outside in the afternoon while the dogs walk around in the front yard. I watch carefully for cars while I wait. I don't want to explain to my children why their dogs were run over. Interestingly, when I see my wife a block away and go to protect the dogs, they hear her van approaching and start to run in its direction (something they do not do for other vehicles).

So, it seems that dogs and birds can recognize and remember things about us.

Genes and Child Development

Newsweek recently published an article featuring some of the latest research in developmental psychology. Interestingly, specific gene loci may be responsible for many of the behavioral differences seen in children.

Temperament, for example, has a strong genetic link with associated behavioral consequences. Children with easy temperaments are less likely to pay attention to their parents and to listen to them. Fussy children, on the other hand, are more likely to pay close attention to their environment (including their parents) and are, thus, more likely to learn from experience.

The article discusses genetic variations other than the mellow/fussy baby. The gene FADS2, for example, raises IQ scores for babies who have been breast fed. However, the "C" variant of the gene, possessed by about 10% of babies, does not lead to a similar rise in IQ scores. Another gene, MAOA, comes in "sluggish" and "active" forms. The sluggish version of that gene seemingly protects victims of abuse from later risky behavior because memories of the trauma are damped by that version of the gene. The active version, unfortunately, rekindles the traumatic memories and may lead the victim into alcohol or drug abuse as a coping mechanism. Another gene, DRD4, has been linked to a variety of behaviors from increasing coping behavior in children and increased sexuality.

The implications this line of research are varied. For one thing, it multiplies the amount of individual variation previously suspected. For another, it causes researchers and practitioners to look more closely for genetic causes for behavior. Finally, it makes the entire behavioral picture much more complicated than previously thought.

Coffee Research

I never drank much coffee before entering graduate school at LSU in Baton Rouge. Early in my first year I noticed two coffee urns at the end of the cafeteria line marked "Light" and "Dark." I turned to Pete Spiliotis, my predecessor in Don Hoffeld's lab, and asked the difference. He explained that dark was short for dark roasted or french roasted coffee, and that I should try a cup. I did and I was hooked.

By the time I left LSU for Milwaukee five years later, I was a Community Dark Roast coffee addict. So much of an addict that I had to order coffee by the case from Baton Rouge. In Milwaukee, I created a few coffee addicts including David Blackwelder, one of the grad students. One day he came into work complaining that he'd been awake all night. Seems he'd been drinking strong brewed dark roast into the wee hours. When I moved to Magnolia, Arkansas in 1980, I noticed that the local groceries stocked Community Dark Roast. I guess because we were only twenty miles from the Louisiana line. Since then, I have switched to Community's New Orleans blend. It adds chickory to the grounds.

Every year, the local schools hold their Red Ribbon week urging students not to do drugs. Alas, I cannot wear that red ribbon. I drink coffee for the kick. I tried going cold turkey a couple of years ago. That lasted about a week or less. It was my students who insisted that I start drinking again. They could not stand my coffee-free self, it seemed.

So, it was not passing interest that called me to read a recent New York Times article about coffee research titled, "Sorting out coffee's contradictions" by Jane E. Brody. She nicely summarizes coffee's myths and health benefits.

Among the myths are: coffee is not a diuretic, does not cause heart disease, hypertension, cancer, bone loss, or weight loss. Among the health benefits are: enhanced mood, performance, alertness, decreased reaction time, fat burning (instead of carbohydrates), lowered risk of Parkinson's and Type 2 Diabetes.

Whew, I guess I'll have another cup.

Summer Research Ideas

Another research method class has come and gone. I thought I'd share their research ideas:

• Is shyness more common in males or females?
• An interpretation of Rap: What we see is what you get
• Wet vs. Dry: Opinions about liquor in Conway, Arkansas
• PTSD: More common after combat or peace keeping missions
• What makes a woman stay with her abuser?
• Reasons why Facebook users accept friend's requests from strangers
• Sports drinks and physical endurance
• Noise effects on concentration and response time of college students
• Teenage female marijuana use as a gateway to other drugs
• Parenting: Do you parent differently from how you were parented?
• Postpartum depression in married vs. single mothers
• Witnessing domestic abuse as a child: Are such men more abusive to their spouses
• Links between childhood abuse and adult domestic violence

This class did an exceptional job in presenting their research plans recently. Congratulations.

Elizabeth Loftus

This is additional material from the "cutting room floor." Originally, we thought of including examples of extremely successful scientists as a way of wrapping up chapter 1, Science. Here is our short biography of one such successful psychologist, Elizabeth Loftus.

Elizabeth Loftus currently holds joint faculty appointments. She is distinguished professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California-Irvine and is affiliate professor of psychology and law at the University of Washington. Loftus received her BA from UCLA in 1966 and her PhD from Stanford in 1970. She began her academic career at New School University in 1970. From 1973 till the present she has worked at the psychology department at the University of Washington. In 1984, she began to serve as a law professor there too. In 2002, she was named distinguished professor at the University of California- Irvine as well (where she spends most of her time). Loftus is the author of 18 books and more than 250 articles. She has served on many editorial boards and as officer of several professional associations including the presidency of the American Psychological Society. She has also served as an expert witness on human memory in hundreds of legal cases.

At age 14, Loftus lost her mother to a drowning accident. To this day she believes that event marks a profound division in her life. Ever since that day, Loftus has seen herself as an agent for helping others. As an undergraduate at UCLA, she excelled at both math and psychology. Like Robert Sternberg, she attended Stanford and studied psychology. She married Geoffrey Loftus in graduate school. After graduating, he went to work at the University of Washington and she followed a year later (turning down an assistant professorship at Harvard to do so). Their marriage lasted 23 years, “...an accomplishment...” according to Loftus, given her work ethic. They are still friendly. Loftus fell into her first major research topic, eyewitness memory, because she wanted her research to have practical applications, and it has.

Early in her academic career (around 1972), Loftus was studying memory using pictures as stimuli. After a conversation with a man who had been convicted of killing someone in self–defense she began to use films of accidents as experimental stimuli. What she found surprised her. The participants who viewed the films gave her different answers depending on how she phrased the questions she asked them. The relationship between leading questions and eyewitness memory became her first major research project. She found that leading questions influenced eyewitness memory and that a large percentage of eyewitnesses (in her lab) insisted they had seen something that, in fact, they had never seen. They had, however, heard that thing mentioned while being questioned in an intentionally leading manner. For example, nearly 20% of participants claimed to have seen a barn in one of her films. In reality, there was no barn and only those who had been earlier asked a leading question about the non-existent barn claimed to have seen it. In 1999, the United States Department of Justice published guidelines on gathering eyewitness testimony in criminal investigations that stemmed directly from Loftus’ research. Those recommendations call for law–enforcement personnel to avoid the use of leading questions and to place only one suspect in a line-up. Loftus’ eyewitness reliability research has been called one of the best examples of how psychological research can affect public policy (Foxhall, 2000).

Later, Loftus began to study the difference between repressed memories and false memories. Repressed memories are true memories that have become unconscious for a time and then re-appear. Repressed memories of child abuse are a common example. However, some memories that appear to be repressed are not true, they are false memories. Although false memories are not true, the person believes them to be true. After observing a link between some therapists and the subsequent revelation of incriminating memories by their patients, Loftus demonstrated that false memories could be induced in a small percentage of individuals (See Chapter 3 for a more complete discussion of this research.). Her research ignited a legal and psychological controversy. Because of the large number of criminal cases based upon repressed memories, Loftus began to testify as an expert witness on human memory at hundreds of trials including those of the Hillside Strangler, O. J. Simpson, Rodney King, the Menendez brothers, and the Oklahoma City bombing. Her success in defending people accused of crimes like murder and child–molestation has created enmity from prosecutors, their witnesses, and even the public. Because of her research, her public appearances often require security personnel to be present. Her work has caused her hardship and grief while also bringing her fame and prestige. Recently, she was named as one of the top 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century (and the top ranked woman) putting her in the company of Freud, Skinner, and Piaget.

Reference

Foxhall, K. (2000). Suddenly, a big impact on criminal justice. Monitor on Psychology, 31 Retrived September 8, 2006 from http://www.apa.org/monitor/jan00/pi4.html

Theory in Biology

One of the early drafts of chapter 1 addressed the issue of theory in biology (a little) more deeply than the final draft of the book:

• "Unfortunately, the nature of biological and social science is such that it is impossible to simply apply physical science’s way of theorizing to them. In biology, the problem is that natural history plays a major role. All life on Earth evolved. It is simply not possible to experiment with living systems as it is with physical systems. In social science, the main problems are consciousness and the sheer number of possible causal variables. Neither biology nor social sciences have discovered any laws similar to those of the physical sciences. Even Darwin’s theory of evolution is basically a historical account coupled with a small handful of causal mechanisms such as common descent, natural selection, sexual selection, and gradualism. In psychology, the search for ideal theories of behavior has been unsuccessful and has led to modifications to ideal theory."

Contrast the passage above to what survived the cutting room floor in the final draft:

• "The success of physical science and its theories has been so spectacular that biologists and social scientists naturally tried to imitate them. However, theories in biological science and social science differ considerably from the ideal theories in physical science. Unfortunately, the nature of biological and social science is such that it is impossible to simply apply physical sciences's way of theorizing. Neither biology nor social science has yet discovered any laws as universal as those of the physical sciences (p. 26-27)."
  

A recent article (free registration required) in TheScientist.com by Eric Smith addresses some of the differences between biological and physical theorizing. Much of the article deals with whether or not evolutionary theory should occupy such a central position in biological theorizing. I'll ignore much of that argument and only cover the more fundamental differences in the two types of theorizing.

Smith gives four ways in which biological theory is different from physical theory. He also points out that none of the following features of biological theory are common in physics. Let's looks at the four features one by one.

1. Contingency: Smith uses contigency in a way similar to replication. He notes that unlike in the physical sciences, it is impossible to repeat the results of evolution by "replaying the tape." In fact, nearly everyone agrees that were the Earth to undergo a replay of the last 5 billion or so years the results would be very different. Those differences, of course, don't come from evolution or its mechanisms. (In fact, evolution itself is a product of our natural history. In any replay, there is no guarantee that evolution itself would again emerge. The smart money, most likely, would be against such a re-emergence.) Instead, the differences in the replay would come from unforeseen and unpredictable events such as meteorite impacts and other catastrophes.

2. Memory: To Smith, memory encompasses the creation of systems that can reliably reproduce the information contained within them. That mechanism, of course, is carried out by RNA and DNA and is quite remarkable in its ability to reproduce the information and to act upon the results of that information. Smith notes just how difficult it is to create memory systems that have survived for millions of years.

3. Control: In control, instructions mostly flow in one direction with incomplete feedback. In biological systems, natural selection functions as one controlling process. Only a few biological designs survive to reproduce themselves. In systems created by humans control is necessary too. However, we have had little luck as yet in constructing control systems able to repair and maintain themselves. In contrast, living systems can repair and maintain themselves while they are alive.

4. Individuality: Evolution and genetics end up creating unique individuals composed of common elements. Our 30,000 genes are shuffled to create individuals who are all different (excepting identical twins). The odds of two individuals sharing the same genetic components are incredibly small, on the order of 1 in 70 trillion. Smith notes that sheer numbers prevent biologists from looking at individuals. Instead, they seek out underlying "regularities" in living systems such as the citric acid cycle.

Biology, thus, has a different set of scientific questions than does physical or social science. One of the most profound of its questions is how life emerged from non-living processes. The nature of biology forces its theorists to adopt different modes of theorizing. Like social scientists, biologists, too, must seek their own ways to create theories and not simply ape the physical sciences.

Constraints to Theory in Social Science

In chapter 1 (page 26) we begin our discussion of theories in science by first describing the ideal theories of physical science. In the text, we characterize those theories as "laws of nature" and show how they seek laws that explain physical phenomena universally. Thus, the Second Law of Thermodynamics or the Law of Gravity work on Earth and everywhere else.

Upon re-reading The Arrow of Time, I noted that Layzer described laws and constraints thusly:

• "Laws and constraints are complementary aspects of the physicist's description of nature. Laws describe the regularities underlying phenomena; they are few in number and each applies over a wide domain. Constraints serve to select from the set of all events governed by a given law the particular phenomenon of interest. The laws define what is possible, the constraints what is actual or relevant. (p. 58-59)"

He lists the constraints as well: they are initial conditions, boundary conditions, and symmetry conditions. Social science theories, too, are governed by the same constraints.

Initial conditions will constrain much of what a social science theory can explain or what interventions can be made to a social system. My colleague, Tommy Milford (a social worker), is especially sensitive to the description and implementation of initial conditions in his work because he realizes how important initial conditions are. Well thought out interventions, for example, may fail if they are applied without regard to initial conditions.

In physical science, boundary conditions may reflect a number of possible solutions, typically associated with different, corresponding differential equations. In social science, however, boundary conditions are more likely to be akin to the natural boundaries we describe in law-oriented theories (p. 28). Law-0riented theories are highly restricted by those naturally-occurring boundaries so that, for example, theories in cognition are not likely to shine much light on the area of personality. Furthermore, theories that attempt to address issues is such disparate areas are likely to be weaker than theories that stick to their knitting within their natural boundary conditions.

The discovery of symmetry in physical science is key to any argument for universality. If phenomenon is symmetrical, then it is true regardless of the observer's point of view. In social science, questions of symmetry revolve (again) around natural boundaries. We speak of gender, culture, class, and race as examples such natural boundaries (or symmetries). Social science data that transcend those boundaries are more universal than data that are not. Often, (think of culture) we are unable to break out of the prison imposed by our asymmetrical view of the world, often leading to tragic results. (Assuming, for example, that American troops would be greeted as liberators.)

To conclude, considering initial conditions, boundary conditions, and symmetry conditions is important in social science theorizing. The real world often imposes those constraints. Failing to see them or to account for them can lead to deficient theorizing.