Disqus - Friends of factoryjoe

Re: Social interactions promote cognitive functions

bmevans — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:37:24 -0000

I absolutely agree, Sanjay. That would be a really interesting study, and one that I really maybe ought to do! I would imagine that the people you interact with matter too: old, old friends vs. complete strangers; superiors vs. subordinates; people you converse with daily vs. people you converse with rarely (who are all nevertheless "friends").

The other question I'd like to explore is what "cognitive tasks" such interactions might facilitate. In Ybarra et al.'s study, the topic discussed in the social condition had nothing to do with the tasks they later performed. At the same time, the tasks they later performed were not very ecologically-valid. Does the effect hold when your task is writing a paper, preparing a presentation, performing data analyses, programming, etc?

Almost too many factors to do a real experimental study on...

Re: Social interactions promote cognitive functions

bmevans — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:28:53 -0000

There's a lot still to be studied about how people make use of online social spaces to for question-answering or problem solving. I'm hoping to explore some of them in my dissertation, though, so stay tuned!

Your book sounds interesting---especially the part about the value of small talk for relationships. In my current study, I'm looking at how people solve a problem using their social network, and most people have this little "social dance" at the beginning and end of their conversation. I find it really interesting because the question being asked is often pretty basic, like: "are you good at math?" And I'm seeing this between people who haven't spoken in a long time as well as with people who have spoken recently.

Re: What does getting smarter really mean?

bmevans — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 16:15:33 -0000

Being objective is definitely hard, whether you are an active participant of the thing you study or not. There are some things you can only experience from participating yourself, though. And after that, I try to consider the behavior I observe from many different perspectives (and academic theories)...

In other words, yes, it's hard, but it's better than the alternative, I think!

(Do you want to participate in a study?)

Re: That Bird Can Dance!

bmevans — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:51:14 -0000

That's a great question! I do not know the answer, but I can imagine that it would be a complicated mix of culture and personality traits. But as the researchers commented in the article, (really) not much is known about how the human mind responds to music yet! Either we need more birds or more techno dancers to answer this question ;)