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January 29, 2005
Meaning in Experimental Contexts
I'm reading an article today by John Bransford and Kathleen Nitsch -- cognitive scientists -- which details the ways in which subjects in linguistic experiments understand sentences they are asked to process, and how this differs from the ways in which we understand sentences in everyday life.
The article relates strongly to the subject of transfer of knowledge, which I find fascinating. In reading this article I have been able to transfer it to various subjects, which I find satisfying in a metacognitivey kind of way. I feel my brain is pretty limber, probably because of all the creative writing I've done (metaphors are strongly implicated in successful transfer), and pride myself on the fact that I have transferred the implications of this article to two very disparate subjects.
First of all, this article will provide excellent fodder for an ongoing argument I've been having with a colleague about whether there is such thing as universally "good" structure in media (the medium in question generally being video games, though I expect that if I pushed her she'd make the same claim about writing). She seems to be arguing that one can judge how good a game is independent of the subject matter of the game and one's own preferences and social references. I would argue that whether a game (or story, or poem, or TV show, or song) is good or not can only be judged based on the game(etc)'s own terms, and in light of one's own references.
A central thesis of the Bransford and Nitsch article is that the minimal unit for understanding comprehension is not an input (sentence, word, what have you), but rather an input and its context (they call it a "situation.") There are very simple examples to demonstrate this. My advisor, Chuck, demonstrated this point to us last semester by pointing out that you don't know how to pronounce the word "content," or what it means, without context.
Similarly, you can't judge a game to be "good" without understanding its context. You can't judge how "good" a game is if you don't know whether it's aimed at entertaining an eighteen-year-old guy, keeping an elderly woman occupied, or educating a six-year-old girl. Certainly, we could probably begin to say things like "a side-scroller with sloppy controls is worse than a side-scroller with good accuracy," "an RPG with a lot of treadmilling is bad," or "an educational game for toddlers with a menu interface is going to be ineffective." But in these cases we're still considering game play within a context: that of genre. An educational game, for example, might have reasons for treadmilling, while an RPG generally requires the use of menus.
The other way in which I expect to use this article has to do with one of my major preoccupations, namely driving more nails into the coffin of media effects research. The evidence that Bransford and Nitsch call on to demonstrate the ways in which understanding in and out of the experimental context differ is striking.
Witness an example they bring up late in the game. Along with McCarrell, the researchers performed an experiment in which a friend (E) walked into the office of one of their colleagues (C) and said, "Bill has a red car":
He [the colleague] looked very surprised, paused for about three seconds, and finally exclaimed "What the hell are you talking about?" After a hasty debriefing session C laughed and told E what had gone on in his head. First, C thought that E was talking about a person named Bill that C knew. Then C realized E could not in all probability know that person; and besides, Bill would never buy a red car. Then C thought that E may have mixed up the name and really meant to say J (a mutual friend of C and E). The [sic] C knew that J had ordered a new car, but he was surprised that it was red and that it had arrived so soon. The [sic?!] C also entertained a few additional hypotheses -- all within about three seconds of time. After that he gave up, thereupon uttering "What the hell are you talking about?"
The authors go on to note that "subjects in [an] experimental situation seemed perfectly comfortable with their shallow understanding of the Bill sentence. The information they received was sufficient given their cognitive-perceptual situation at the time."
What can this tell us about a research tradition whose roots lie in experiments where children watch violent television in a lab, and are then put in situations which suggest the violence they just saw? I am thinking particularly of Bandura's classic Bobo doll experiment, here. Are children more likely to view violence superficially in a lab setting? How does that change how they react? What does the lab setting itself tell them about how they should interpret violent content? How much more nuanced a picture might we get by speaking with television viewers outside of the experimental context before we bring them into the lab, perhaps building subsequent experimental designs on what we learned?
Posted by me at 2:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 27, 2005
My Courageous Battle With Wheat Gluten
So the results are in: the doctors tell me I may have celiac disease, which means I'm sensitive to wheat gluten. I'm on the high end of having a mild sensitivity. I know this because "they have a test for it now," as the RN I saw at Columbia Med Services told me.
Wait, wait. Back that sh!t up. "They have a test for it now." As in, until recently there was no simple test for wheat gluten sensitivity. The RN told me this when I asked why so many more people appear to be wheat gluten intolerant than when I was a kid.
As in, more people are sick now because we have the means to diagnose and treat them? Mmmmm. Sounds familiar.
(Speaking of which, if you're looking to put money on a horse in the Next Invented Pervasive Psychological Syndrome Derby, my money's on Insomnia, with AmBien up, and the racing syndicate backing it: Sanofi-Synthelabo. I say this because as a proofreader two summers back I saw the legwork Sanofi was putting into identifying the reasons doctors would prescribe anti-insomnia drugs for their patients. Plus, an article I recently read (dammit, don't have the cite) suggested that insomnia was set to become the next depression...)
So needless to say, I'm more than a little disheartened; over the course of the day I've sunk into a pretty deep funk. Aside from being vegetarian, I am generally not one to refrain from eating whatever the hell I want. Good food makes me happy; life is depressing enough without having to eat food which drags on the soul. La vie est dure sans confiture, as an elderly French gentleman said to me once. It's why I've always been suspicious of vegans; they suck the joy out of everything. ("Cookies? Sure, shall we use the recipe with the carob and oat milk, or just stick with moistened gypsum and rat turds? Nobody will notice the difference.")
The nurse assured me that the nutritionist on the Columbia is very good at coaching people about how to eat around these issues. This is really depressing, I told him.
It's sad, isn't it? said the student accompanying him today, who'd just gotten an earful about my problems with bloating and flatulence.
No, you don't understand, I told them. I love bread. Sylvie and I used to be called the White Bread Sisters, because that was all we'd eat. I am seriously picky about my bread. I like CRUST. I won't eat Pepperidge Farm, much less the joyless bricks of spelt and quinoa they sell at the co-op.
The student pulled a sad face at me. It's kind of like saying goodbye to your teddy bear, isn't it? she said. I agreed.
It was a catchy line. I stood mulling it, staring at a motivational poster behind the receptionist ("ATTITUDE/We cannot direct the wind/but we can adjust our sails") as she scheduled me an appointment with the nutritionist.
By the time I'd walked halfway across campus I'd digested the line enough to realize it stood out not because it rang true, but because it was completely outrageous. "Saying goodbye to your teddy bear"? She seemed to feel I was kissing off a comfort food. Look, we're talking about the motherfucking STAFF of LIFE, here! It's not chocolate or booze! I'm not just giving the shit up for Lent!
Why are so many people sensitive to wheat gluten? An article I just read said it was about one in three hundred of us. With the number of people I know who have been diagnosed as celiac (my father, a classmate, a former boss, friends of friends), I somehow seem to know more than my share. You better be damn sure I'll be writing an article about this come summertime. I am getting to the bottom of this. And you bet your boots that I will sue the everloving shit out of Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland if it turns out genetically modified wheat is involved in the rise in celiac cases. Do you hear that, motherfuckers? Watch your bloated corporate backsides -- I am COMING FOR YOU.
Posted by me at 11:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack