Being Human

Lakeshore update
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She has advanced degrees in social psychology and Christian spirituality. Her work often intersects psychology with spirituality.

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1 in 3 female secondary school students in Malaysia sexually active: study
Xinhua
... Dr. Chiam, who is now a Human Rights Commission of Malaysia commissioner, was a professor of Social Psychology at the University of Malaya. ...
1 in 3 students had sex, says study made a decade agoAsiaOne

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The second talk in a workshop on "Natural Algorithms", to be held at Princeton on Nov. 2-3, is Jorge Cortés, "Distributed wombling by robotic sensor networks". But you don't need to be able to attend the workshop in order to learn about this fascinating topic, since the author has recently published a version of the same material. The abstract:

This paper proposes a distributed coordination algorithm for robotic sensor networks to detect boundaries that separate areas of abrupt change of spatial phenomena. We consider an aggregate objective function, termed wombliness, that measures the change of the spatial field along the closed polygonal curve defined by the location of the sensors in the environment. We encode the network task as the optimization of the wombliness and characterize the smoothness properties of the objective function. In general, the complexity of the spatial phenomena makes the gradient flow cause self-intersections in the polygonal curve described by the network. Therefore, we design a distributed coordination algorithm that allows for network splitting and merging while guaranteeing the monotonic evolution of wombliness.

The OED has wombling, -long, adv., "with the belly on the ground or along a surface", Obs. rare:

13.. K. Alis. 5658 (Laud MS.) Þe Addres..to-cleueþ wombelyng. c1460 J. RUSSELL Bk. Nurture 451 Lay your cony wombelonge vche side to þe chyne.

However, the OED has so far missed prof. Cortés' use, which is a technical one, going back about 20 years. As explained in J.P. Bocquet-Appel and J.N. Bacro, "Generalized Wombling", Systematic Biology 43(3): 442-448, 1994

The magnitude of the spatial change observed simultaneously on a set of surfaces can be described by a method christened "wombling" by Barbujani et al. (1989) … after Womble (1951).

The references are to G.N. Barbujani et al., "Detecting regions of abrupt change in maps of biological variables", Syst. Zool. 38:376-389, December 1989, and William H. Womble, "Differential systematics", Science 114(2961):315-322, 1951.

As far as I can tell from internal evidence, Barbujani et al. were not aware of the partial coincidence between their coinage and its seven-century-old predecessor:

Below, we extend Womble's concept … Use of the systemic function need not be limited to gene frequencies, but seems applicable to the analysis of any continuous variable, including morphological measurements, frequencies of polygenic and environmentally influenced traits, and even environmental variables. We have adopted the term "wombling" for the procedures detailed below.

As you can guess from their description, there is a linguistic connection here that goes beyond simple lexicography. Already in 1990, Barbujani and Sokal published "Zones of sharp genetic change in Europe are also linguistic boundaries", PNAS 87:1816-1819, 1990:

A newly elaborated method, "Wombling," for detected regions of abrupt change in biological variables was applied to 63 human allele frequencies in Europe. Of the 33 gene-frequency boundaries discovered in this way, 31 are coincident with linguistic boundaries marking contiguous regions of different language families, languages, or dialects. The remaining two boundaries (through Iceland and Greece) separate descendants of different ethnic or geographical provenance but lack modern linguistic correlates.

However, I don't know any examples of papers that use wombling directly to analyze the geographical distribution of linguistic variables. Perhaps a reader can provide one. In Womble's original 1951 paper, he writes:

The subtleties of human culture and the intricate relationships of its elements pose problems for which, as yet, there appears to be no adequate mathematics. However, the quantification of even the grosser variables would permit the development of a systemic function which should better define the spatial and temporal structuring of culture fields and their patterns of interaction than do any of the current culture area and culture sequence classifications.

Dialects show analogies to subspecific phenomena. Like biologic varieties, they are involved in the uneasy dynamic equilibrium of their universes of interaction. In isolation they may "speciate" as distinct languages. This methodology would seem well suited to the ordering of the many variants of dialect geography.

It is not feasible at this time to foresee all possible applications of differential systematics. Essentially, it is a development in logic rather than a specialized technique. Consequently, it may be employed in the ordering of numerous realities exhibiting multiple variations through time and space. However, significant interpretation of differing systemic functions requires that individual attention be given to the processes involved in maintaining similarities and developing differences.

[The 1951 Science paper lists William H. Womble's affiliation as "Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles", but I 've failed to find out anything else about him, including any other publications, with the possible exception of this patent.]

As the Google search suggestions on the right indicate, we generally view Alexander the Great as a Macedonian, and therefore, as the Wikipedia article about him says, a "Greek king".

But according to one of the many contrarian nuggets in Jim O'Donnell's The Ruin of the Roman Empire, this is the wrong way to look at it.

His take:

Alexander the Great, a right-minded man even if he did drink too much (according to the common view), sought to conquer all of Persia and succeeded, but he died too soon, and his conquests were lost. Few people spend much time imagining a middle-aged and successful Alexander, a man lucky enough to live as long as Augustus did, let's say. If we knew that man, we would know him not as a Greek or Macedonian, but as a Persian emperor. That is what he set out to become, and that is how he appeared in much of the territory he crossed. At his death, his armies were turning rapidly Persian in composition and form, and they would have become much more so with the passage of only a little time.

Just as the language of the (Eastern) Roman Empire was Greek for a millennium or so, perhaps if Alexander had lived, there might have been a "Greek" empire whose language was Persian.

Jim continues:

His conquest would have proved what only the Ottomans ever demonstrated–that linking the Aegean basin with Asia Minor and Mesopotamia was possible and, if achieved, could have been a source of great power for the one who accomplished the bravura deed. For Alexander to be Macedonian, from the farthest reaches of territory within Persian ken, was no disqualification: conquering rulers in many societies come from the margins, at least as often as from the center.

Alexander's Persian empire collapsed after his death and fell into pieces. The Seleucid kings who prevailed in the Asian provinces of Alexander's empire, notional partners to the successor kings who took the name Ptolemy in Egypt and the similar Antigonids in the Aegean basin, proved unable to maintain even the traditional Persian pretensions and range, from Syria to Afghanistan, and were for centuries a limited and dwindling force on the world stage. The Seleucids prevailed for scarcely a century before beginning to give way to the Parthians, based in the Iranian uplands, who went on to dominate central Asia until the third century CE. Landlocked, turned in on itself, never seriously expansive in the west, this Parthia was a great success story in its own right, but the central fact of its existence was its geographic focus, far from the Mediterranean. And that is why the Roman empire could exist. It had no serious Persia to deal with.

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Arizona State University
Graduate College names 3 outstanding graduate mentors
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... both while they were enrolled and after they graduated, was one of the things that convinced me to enroll in the social psychology Ph.D. program at ASU ...

How 'Paranormal Activity' became the most profitable movie ever
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Students of social psychology will recognize this approach as not just a good way to gauge viewer interest, but also as a way to influence it. ...

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Fear, Psychology, and American Voting Behavior
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... for Republican representatives--which supports the conventional threat-authoritarianism behavior hypothesis in social psychology and political science. ...

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I've just seen my first genuine piece of psychology graffiti. The picture is from a wall in Universidad de Antioquia and the graffiti is promoting a conference on the application of 'liberation psychology' to preventing violence and helping the victims of violence in Colombia.

The text in Spanish is roughly translated as "We propose a scientific endeavour committed to historical reality and the problems and aspirations of the people" and is a quote from social psychologist and Catholic priest Ignacio Martín-Baró.

Martín-Baró was working in El Salvador during it's bloody civil war and was using social psychology to research the opinions and views of the people and was producing results contrary to the propaganda of the army and government.

He was murdered by the El Salvadorian army in 1989 but he has had a massive influence on psychology and public policy in Latin America.

This in part was due to his strong belief in social psychology as an applied discipline to improve the society and the conditions of the poorest and most deprived.

While liberation psychology itself is typically associated with the left, one of Martín-Baró's legacies is the practice of using social psychology for social improvement, something which is widely accepted in Latin America, regardless of political orientation.

It may seem strange that a conference is being advertised through graffiti, but political graffiti is common on the university campus and ranges from spray painted slogans to huge colourful murals.

If you're interested in learning more about liberation psychology, The Psychologist had a 2004 article discussing both the discipline and Martín-Baró.

Link to The Psychologist article on liberation psychology.

Several readers have recommended Wednesday's Non Sequitur:

Also on Wednesday, I saw the wonderful Shakespeare's Globe  production of Love's Labour's Lost.  Paul Ready was especially hilarious as Don Adriano de Armado, to single out one great performance among many.  Christopher Godwin's portrayal of Holofernes the pedant was another.

I had forgotten the passage where Holofernes complains about Armado's pronunciations. The complaint is not about Armado's Spanish accent, but about his unetymological pronunciations — omitting the 'b' in doubt and debt, and the 'l' in half and calf; leaving out the reflex of 'gh' in neighbor and neigh; inserting (or removing?) [h] in abominable:

He draweth out the thred of his verbositie, finer then the staple of his argument. I abhor such phanaticall phantasims, such insociable and poynt deuise companions, such rackers of ortagriphie, as to speake dout fine, when he should say doubt; det, when he shold pronounce debt; d e b t, not det: he clepeth a Calf, Caufe: halfe, haufe: neighbour vocatur nebour; neigh abreuiated ne: this is abhominable, which he would call abhominable: it insinuateth me of infamie: ne inteligis domine , to make franticke, lunaticke?

The text fails to make it clear whether the alleged flaw is adding or lacking an [h] in abominable, since both Holofernes' own pronunciation and his presentation of Armado's pronunciation are spelled "abhominable" in the text — the version above is from the 1623 First Folio, but the 1598 Quarto is the same in that respect. The issue, according to the OED, is a sort of Renaissance eggcorn:

Forms with medial -h- in post-classical Latin, Middle French, and English arose by a folk etymology < classical Latin ab homine away from man, inhuman, a derivation which has also influenced the semantic development of the word in English and French. Forms with -h- were common in English until the 17th cent., when they began to be criticized by orthographers.

It strikes me that it would be funnier to have Holofernes' correction in this case be an incorrection — but now I can't remember for sure how Godwin performed it.

In any case, this passage is the earliest example of linguistic peeving that I can think of. Can anyone give me an example before 1598?

I dimly recall that there might be something of the sort  in Plautus, but I think it involves making fun of a rustic accent, rather than complaining about forms that reflect an on-going change in the language.  I can't find the passage, anyhow.

[As the many helpful examples in the comments make clear, this is far from the earliest example of linguistic peeving. But so far, it does seem to be the earliest example in which (as is so often the case) all or nearly all of the corrections are incorrect.]

[For some interesting discussion of spellings (and characters, events, and themes) in Love's Labour Lost, see this essay by Eric Sams.]

[Update — the version of the passage above, which I got by cut-and-paste from (I think) this version of the 1623 First Folio, has abhominable in both places, as indicated in this fascimile:

But the 1598 Quarto clearly has abhominable … abbominable:

]

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

ABC Radio National's All in the Mind has an interesting discussion on addiction and free will. I recommend the extended version here.

The New York Times has an excellent personal account of psychosis.

There's an awesome post on a new study about how phantom limbs can contort into impossible configurations at Neurophilosophy.

New York Magazine covers songs used in 'war on terror' torture and musicians' protests over the use of their material.

How do we perceive speech after 150 kisses? Talking Brains covers an interesting conference poster.

BoingBoing reviews a new book on the use of psychedelic drugs throughout history.

There's an in-depth review of 'The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better' in the London Review of Books.

Furious Seasons covers a new study [pdf] in JAMA on how atypical antipsychotics cause massive weight gain in children.

A slide show from Discover Magazine outlines the social factors in obesity or 'how to make your friends fat'.

Scientific American Mind has a short report on a randomised controlled trial on how empathy in doctors reduces the duration of the common cold.

The excellent Neuroskeptic has a careful analysis of recent studies and discussion on the best antidepressant.

NeuroPod has just released it's latest podcast. Direct mp3 link here.

Philosopher Gordon Marino writes an excellent piece on melancholy thinker Søren Kierkegaard and issues of despair, depression and meaning in The New York Times.

Dr Petra has a fantastic sex research Q&A that covers a range of unquestioned or misreported pieces of 'common knowledge' and the evidence from the scientific literature.

The mighty BPS Research Digest discusses a fascinating study where a patient had an unexpected panic attack while being brain scanned, allowing an insight into the neural processes of panic.

Scientific American discusses asexuality, people who simply aren't interested in sex. Another great piece from Jess Berring's regular column.

An intriguing study on whether self-deception is genuinely possible is discussed by PsyBlog.

Language Log discusses the hypothesis that words for mother and father (e.g. mama and papa) are so similar across languages because it's the first sounds children make and parents just assume their children are referring to them. As always, read the comments.

There's a good piece on the neuroscience of obesity over at Dana's excellent online magazine Cerebrum.

The New York Times has a good piece on the role of dopamine in motivation and wanting, dismissing the 'reward system' cliché as old hat. Although it is seemingly unaware that this theory is not new and that the media have been mainly responsible for the gross dopamine = pleasure oversimplification.

Recent studies on the inaccurately named 'brain scan mind reading' approach are discussed by New Scientist.

Cognitive Science Colloquium (CogSci Brown Bag)
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... contributions by researchers from different backgrounds are increasing and comparative cognition is better connected with developmental psychology, ...

Sit up straight to boost your confidence
DVM 360
The results were published in the October issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Students were told they'd be participating in two studies at ...

Sit up straight to boost your confidence
DVM 360
The results were published in the October issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Students were told they'd be participating in two studies at ...

Sit up straight to boost your confidence
DVM 360
The results were published in the October issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Students were told they'd be participating in two studies at ...

Sit up straight to boost your confidence
DVM 360
The results were published in the October issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Students were told they'd be participating in two studies at ...

Sit up straight to boost your confidence
DVM 360
The results were published in the October issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Students were told they'd be participating in two studies at ...

Sit up straight to boost your confidence
DVM 360
The results were published in the October issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Students were told they'd be participating in two studies at ...

Sit up straight to boost your confidence
DVM 360
The results were published in the October issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Students were told they'd be participating in two studies at ...