Information “overload” and the 24-hour News Channels

So it’s politics season. With less than 6 weeks left until the election, more people (hopefully) start paying attention to the news. Most likely, they get their news from CNN or Fox, the 24-hour cable channels. They seem like a good idea - constant information that can be accessed at any time. There is no more having to stay up until 10 PM to get the news.

Leave it to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert (in an Entertainment Weekly interview) to discuss the human factors of this information overload (emphasis mine):

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You guys regularly make a mockery of the 24-hour news networks. Do you see anything good about the format?

[snip]


STEPHEN COLBERT: There’s not more news now than there was when we were kids. There’s the same amount from when it was just Cronkite. And the easiest way to fill it is to have someone’s opinion on it. Then you have an opposite opinion, and then you have a mishmash of fact and opinion, and you leave it the least informed you can possibly be.

STEWART: We’ve got three financial networks on all day. The bottom falls out of the credit market, and they were all running around. On CNBC I saw a guy talking to eight people in [eight different onscreen] boxes, and they were all like, ”I don’t know!” It’d be like if Hurricane Ike hit, and you put on the Weather Channel, and they were yelling, ”I don’t know what the f— is going on! I’m getting wet and it’s windy and I don’t know why and it’s making me sad! Maybe the president could come down and put up some sort of windscreen?” By being on 24 hours a day, you begin to not be able to tell what’s salient anymore.

Not being able to tell what’s salient anymore. Amongst all the e-mail and blogs and 24-hour cable news chatter, we can’t tell what’s salient anymore. Googling the term “information overload” gets around 2 million hits, and it’s the new buzzword used to describe the phenomenon of people who can’t manage their e-mail, websites, or other information sources. This is new - within the past decade for most people - and they just can’t cope with it.

The computer scientists’ answer is, of course, technology based. Build better software that can help you condense the information. Better spam filters, RSS feeds to bring information to you, and the list goes on. Yes, the problem of information overload was created by software, so software should adapt. But what about the human? Information isn’t going away; people need to adapt to and learn how to manage this information.

Clay Shirky, a web 2.0 guru, recently gave a wonderful talk on information filtering called “It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure.” Think about that: it’s not information overload, but a failure of information filtering. People need to learn to better filter the information coming into their brains and decide how best to act on the most relevant stuff.

This gets into the heart of psychology: how do brains pay attention? How can we teach adults to use that knowledge in the real world, and how do we give children the skills to cope with it later? In fact, are the youth of today better equipped to handle all this information? What makes them so? Coping mechanisms? A different brain organization? This all falls into a research area that needs more effort: the psychology of information management. It’ll be huge.

fMRI scans convict woman of murder in India

Scientists have long tried to build the ultimate lie detector using brain imaging and brain recording techniques. Some research has been able to use EEG waves to detect when you’re about to make an error in a basic button-pressing task using an ERP component named the Error-Related Negativity. More recently, brain activation patterns have been used to predict whether a participant will perform one mathematical operation or another (Haynes, et al., 2007).

Neuroscience, however, has not progressed far enough to accurately read someone’s mind as to whether they are lying or telling the truth. However, one Indian researcher has used his neuroscience methodology in a murder case in India, and evidence gained from his brain scans were one of the cornerstones of the guilty verdict and life sentence of the defendant.

From the article:

For years, scientists have peered into the brain and sought to identify deception. They have shot infrared beams through liars’ heads, placed them in giant magnetic resonance imaging machines and used scanners to track their eyeballs. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has plowed money into brain-based lie detection in the hope of producing more fruitful counterterrorism investigations.

The technologies, generally regarded as promising but unproved, have yet to be widely accepted as evidence — except in India, where in recent years judges have begun to admit brain scans. But it was only in June, in a murder case in Pune, in Maharashtra State, that a judge explicitly cited a scan as proof that the suspect’s brain held “experiential knowledge” about the crime that only the killer could possess, sentencing her to life in prison.

This leads to huge ethical implications about the use of this technology. Worse yet, this methodology hasn’t even been reviewed by his peers in neuroscience, so no questions have been raised about how valid this technique is at all, let alone whether it should be used as a primary determination of guilt. Questions such as these have prompted the formation of the Neuroethics Society, a group of concerned neuroscientists who hope to set policy and explore issues with reading someone’s mind.

Hopefully this would never hold up in a U.S. Court, but I’m waiting for it to show up in an episode of Law & Order.

Comparing Game Systems: Wireless Controllers

Wireless controllers are the best thing to happen to video game consoles since the invention of the Compact Disc (sorry, SNES). No more tripping over wires or having wires that are just too short for you to sit on the couch. Now, you just have to pair the controller with the console, and you’re set.

This process has slight variations across consoles, but one feature I found interesting was how the different wireless controllers indicated which Player they were. Back in the days of wired controllers, if a controller was plugged into Port 1, that controller would be Player 1. Today, it’s assigned based on the order each controller is turned on. The interesting differences between video game consoles (Wii, XBox 360, and the PlayStation 3) come in how the controller displays this information.

On the Wii controller, it’s shocking simple. There are four lights, arranged left to right. The light that is on indicates what Player number you are, and the leftmost light is Player 1.

On the XBox 360 controller, it’s not quite as easy. There are still four lights, but they’re arranged in a circle. Upper left indicates Player 1, and the order goes clockwise around the circle. Still intuitive, but not as immediately so as with the Wii.

The one neat feature is that this mapping is shown on the console itself, so anyone just looking at the console knows how many controllers are connected. This is not so on the Wii or the PlayStation 3.

Finally, the PlayStation 3. At first glance, you don’t see anything.

Then you tilt it up, and you see, similar to the Wii, a row of 4 lights.

Except that, from this angle, Player 1 is the rightmost light and Player 4 is the leftmost. This arrangement only makes sense when you’re looking at the controller from a different perspective.

And who in the world looks at their controller from this angle? Not cool, Sony.

Winner? WII! With the XBox 360 close behind.

Exquisite New York Times piece on teaching evolution

The New York Times ran an article (website link, PDF version) this past Sunday profiling a Florida teacher grappling with the new science curriculum standards he helped create. Florida now requires teaching evolution as part of the biology curriculum.

The article illustrates how tough it is to teach evolution. Even teachers who strongly believe in evolution can’t just teach their students that “Evolution is science and the Bible is not.” All teachers must do what they can to have their students understand the material. This is harder than it sounds, as those students who are very religious may not only choose not to believe in evolution but also choose not to learn anything about it.

The teacher who is profiled in the article (David Campbell of Orange Park, FL) believes in evolution and truly cares that his students at least bring an open mind to the subject. As someone who has taught several classes, his story is inspiring. The content of my classes (cognitive psychology and introductory psychology) is certainly not as controversial as biology class is, but both classes do touch on evolution. I always wonder if anyone is rolling their eyes at me when I talk about it.

But Mr. Campbell truly epitomizes what teaching should be all about: even if students don’t believe in something, the goal is to get them to open their minds and try to understand it. Students should critically think about the material and integrate it into how they see the world.

That kind of thinking about teaching is music to my ears.

“Faith is not based on science,” Mr. Campbell said. “And science is not based on faith. I don’t expect you to ‘believe’ the scientific explanation of evolution that we’re going to talk about over the next few weeks.”
“But I do,” he added, “expect you to understand it.”

Summer doldrums

August always is a slow time for research; everyone is on vacation and preparing for the upcoming semester. The summer doldrums have also slowed me down, which explains the lack of posting.

Nonetheless, I did get a nice surprise today: I found out that the journal Cognition posted a preprint of the article I have in press with them. I’ve already blogged about this research in a previous post, but now the article is available in its final form for everyone to see.

You can download a copy here.