Tag: NY Times

Linguists discover the best word order for giving directions

Selected coverage: NY Times, Christian Science Monitor, The Telegraph, The Independent, Daily Mail

Good directions start — literally — with the most obvious

To give good directions, it is not enough to say the right things: saying them in the right order is also important, shows a study in Frontiers in Psychology. Sentences that start with a prominent landmark and end with the object of interest work better than sentences where this order is reversed. These results could have direct applications in the fields of artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction.

“Here we show for the first time that people are quicker to find a hard-to-see person in an image when the directions mention a prominent landmark first, as in ‘Next to the horse is the man in red’, rather than last, as in ‘The man in red is next to the horse’,” says Alasdair Clarke from the School of Psychology at the University of Aberdeen, the lead author of the study.

Clarke et al. asked volunteers to focus on a particular human figure within the visually cluttered cartoons of the ‘Where’s Wally?’ children’s books (called ‘Where’s Waldo?’ in the USA and Canada). The volunteers were then instructed to explain, in their own words, how to find that figure quickly — no trivial task, as each cartoon contained hundreds of items. As expected, the volunteers often opted to indicate the position of the human figure relative to a landmark object in the cartoon, such as a building.

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Example of “Where’s Wally?” image used in the experiment

What was surprising, however, was that they tended to use a different word order depending on the visual properties of the landmark. Landmarks that stood out strongly from the background — as measured with imaging software — were statistically likely to be mentioned at the beginning of the sentence, while landmarks that stood out little were typically mentioned at its end. But if the target figure itself stood out strongly, most participants mentioned that first.

In a separate experiment, the researchers show that the most frequently used word order, ‘landmark first-target-second’, is also the most effective: people who heard descriptions with this order needed on average less time to find the human figure in the cartoon than people who heard descriptions with the reverse order.

These results suggest that people who give directions keep a mental record of which objects in an image are easy to see, prefer to use these as landmarks, and treat them differently than harder-to-see objects when planning the word order of descriptions. This strategy helps listeners to find the target quickly.

“Listeners start processing the directions before they’re finished, so it’s good to give them a head start by pointing them towards something they can find quickly, such as a landmark. But if the target your listener is looking for is itself easy to see, then you should just start your directions with that,” concludes co-author Micha Elsner, Assistant Professor at the Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University.

These results could help to develop computer algorithms for automatic direction-giving. “A long-term goal is to build a computer direction-giver that could automatically detect objects of interest in the scene and select the landmarks that would work best for human listeners,” says Clarke.

EurekAlert! PR: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-12/f-ldt120315.php

Study: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01793/full

 

Color of passion: Orange underbellies of female lizards signal fertility

Selected coverage: NY Times

Australian lizards are attracted to females with the brightest orange patches – but preferably not too large – on their underbelly, according to research published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Lake Eyre dragon lizards, Ctenophorus maculosus, are found exclusively in salt deserts in southern Australia, where they feed on dead insects blown onto the salt crust. When females become fertile they develop bright orange patches on their normally pale underbelly and change their behavior towards males: instead of “waving them away” with their forelegs or fleeing, they let the males court them with showy behavior like push-ups and head bobs.

Dr. Devi Stuart-Fox and Jennifer Goode, both of the Zoology Department at the University of Melbourne, Australia, attempted to determine what was more important in driving courtship: the female’s color or the behavior that accompanies different reproductive statuses.

Females at different reproductive stages – fertile, pregnant, or non-receptive – were decorated with paints closely matched to the natural colors of the female lizard. The paints were used to either cover up natural orange patches or apply fake ones. As natural lizard color reflects ultraviolet (UV) light, the researchers used specialized UV-reflecting paints to accurately mimic female coloration. The painted females were then allowed to interact with males and the behavior of both sexes was observed.

Males targeted the orange painted females more frequently than white ones, regardless of the females’ actual reproductive state. They were most attracted to females with small, bright orange patches and tended to avoid those with larger, paler ones. It is thought that bright color is attractive as it indicates peak female fertility. Pregnant females retain their coloration until laying and very large orange spots suggest the female is swollen with eggs and no longer interested in mating.

But male behavior was more strongly determined by the female’s reproductive status. Males also mated more frequently with fertile females than pregnant ones or those outside of the breeding cycle. This is consistent with female behavioral acceptance of courting and mating during this stage. Frustrated males often behaved aggressively – with chases and bites – towards pregnant females.

If males persist with sexually aggressive behavior, pregnant females have a final ace up their sleeves – they flip over onto their backs and display their orange patterning. This position prevents copulation and the bright orange color displayed is believed to have the added benefit of confusing and warding off predatory birds who might catch sight of the vulnerable female lizard.

EurekAlert! PR: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-02/f-cop022414.php

Study: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fevo.2014.00002/full

Why do we enjoy listening to sad music?

Selected coverage: NY Times, BBC, Jerusalem Post, Popular Science, Huffington Post

Sad music might actually evoke positive emotions, reveals a new study by Japanese researchers published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology. The findings help to explain why people enjoy listening to sad music, say Ai Kawakami and colleagues from Tokyo University of the Arts and the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan.

Kawakami and colleagues asked 44 volunteers, including both musicians and non-specialists, to listen to two pieces of sad music and one piece of happy music. Each participant was required to use a set of keywords to rate both their perception of the music and their own emotional state.

The sad pieces of music included Glinka’s “La Séparation” in F minor and Blumenfeld’s Etude “Sur Mer” in G minor. The happy music piece was Granados’s Allegro de Concierto in G major. To control for the “happy” effect of major key, they also played the minor-key pieces in major key, and vice versa.

The researchers explained that sad music evoked contradictory emotions because the participants of the study tended to feel sad music to be more tragic, less romantic, and less blithe than they felt themselves while listening to it.

“In general, sad music induces sadness in listeners, and sadness is regarded as an unpleasant emotion. If sad music actually evokes only unpleasant emotion, we would not listen to it,” the researchers wrote in the study.

“Music that is perceived as sad actually induces romantic emotion as well as sad emotion. And people, regardless of their musical training, experience this ambivalent emotion to listen to the sad music,” added the researchers.

Also, unlike sadness in daily life, sadness experienced through art actually feels pleasant, possibly because the latter does not pose an actual threat to our safety. This could help people to deal with their negative emotions in daily life, concluded the authors.

“Emotion experienced by music has no direct danger or harm unlike the emotion experienced in everyday life. Therefore, we can even enjoy unpleasant emotion such as sadness. If we suffer from unpleasant emotion evoked through daily life, sad music might be helpful to alleviate negative emotion,” they added.

EurekAlert! PR: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-07/f-wdw071113.php

Study: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00311/full