attention? (Or Pixie Dust and Moonbeams)

[Tom Givon]

RE: The New/Cosmides/Tooby paper:

It is, of course, comforting to have someone find so much hilarity in 
someone else's attempt to be serious (and, concomitantly, to be taken 
seriously, something  I suspect we all strive for, consciously or not). 
Still, before we tar a whole research program(me), and many interesting 
results, with the tainted brush of one study, perhaps we ought to be a 
bit more charitable. The best summary I know of the research program(me) 
of Ev.Psych. is Dave Geary's book "Origin of Mind". It is a coherent, 
indeed admirable summary of an investigation begun by Darwin in "The 
Descent of Man", which basically takes it for granted that if the body 
has evolved under adaptive selection, and if the brain has likewise, 
then the mind, behavior, and--God forbid--culture, probably have too. 
This doesn't mean that every practitioner in every study along this 
program(me) is infallible. Every far-reaching research program(me) is, 
almost by definition, open to multiple abuses of simplification and 
over-generalization. We are all prone to this, if we do non-trivial work.

One could perhaps also say something about the logic of the experimental 
paradigm that Steve finds most offensive--or risible. The logic of NOT 
priming experimental subjects with purposive context in this type of 
experiment has to do with expectations of automaticity, habituation, 
innateness or "ingrained old adaptation". It is not difficult, as Steve 
observes, to prime responses by giving the subjects purposive contexts. 
But some contexts are more (much more) prevalent than others, and over 
time they tend to lead to habituation, automaticity & genetic coding 
(re. Joan Bybee's work on frequency effects). Such  highly-frequent 
contexts lead to setting up a default/markedness organization of 
experiential categories, and processing. So if one deliberately does NOT 
prime the subject with a purposive context, but rather seeks their 
un-primed responses, chances are--so the logic goes--that if the results 
are  coherent and statistically not attributed to chance, they reflect 
some pre-set (innate, marked, default) biases that are the result of 
repeated PAST--evolutionary past--frequency priming. I see nothing 
inherently wrong with this logic. It can be abused, and the 
interpretation/explanation of the result may on occasion be funny, a 
just-so narrative. But the logic springs from a coherent research 
program(me). Frequency effects over one's lifetime lead to automaticity. 
Frequency effects over  multiple generations lead to 
adaptive-selective-genetic evolution.

Cheers,  TG

============


Salinas17 at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 4/7/09 1:22:29 PM, keithjohnson at berkeley.edu writes:
> <<The data have to be evaluated on their merits - otherwise we're 
> evaluating research on 
> the basis of the outcome not on the validity of the process.
> So, I look forward to reading the Cosmides, Tooby & New paper.>>
>
> Keith - You SHOULD look forward to reading the paper.  It is one of 
> the funniest parodies of a scientific paper you can find outside of 
> the Journal of Irreproducible Results.  Either that or it is a stark 
> reminder of how close "evolutionary psychology" has come to being the 
> study of pixies, moondbeams and extrasensory perception.  I prefer to 
> see the paper as just an elaborate inside joke.
>
> There sure are lots of guffaws throughout, but the laughably twisted 
> logic that Tom seems to be addressing has to do with the use of the 
> term "semantic" to describe the different kind of objects that 
> appeared in photographs that were showed to subjects in the experiment.
>
> Why the authors choose to use the word "semantic" isn't clear.  But 
> the "five semantic categories" they give are "two animate (people and 
> animals)" and "three inanimate... [plants; moveable/
> manipulable artifacts designed for interaction with human hands/body 
> (e.g., stapler, wheelbarrow); fixed artifacts construable as 
> topographical landmarks (e.g., windmill, house)."
>
> Tom's objection I suspect, is to the reason given in the paper for 
> this Sesame Street-style scheme: "These categories were chosen because 
> converging evidence from neuropsychology and cognitive development 
> suggests each is associated with a functionally distinct neural 
> substrate..." citing two papers by Alphonso Caramazza from 1998 and 2000.
>
> Of course, the article's title tells us how the authors are using 
> these "semantic" categories: "Category-specific attention for animals 
> reflect ancestral priorities, not expertise."  But it doesn't tell us 
> why they used the word "semantic" as opposed to something like 
> "object-type" or "objects shaped like animals or humans."
>
> It is one thing to suggest that the brain stores language according to 
> lexical categories, as Caramazza did. But it's quite another to say 
> that we're paying extra attention to something we look at not because 
> of what it looks like, but because it falls into a word group. 
>
> Remember that this attention is supposed to be "not goal directed" - 
> so you're not looking for Elmo.  In this experiment, you're supposedly 
> not looking for anything.  But what you're paying attention to is 
> determined by word categories like "animate" or "human", not by the 
> fact you've just been shown, say, a blonde in a bikini.
>
> As I think Tom pointed out, it would really take some straight-faced 
> explaining to account for how "language-less" animals are so adroit at 
> the fundamentally same recognition task.
>
> But, because the authors of this paper were obviously being funny, 
> they were looking for some absurd and humorous "neurological" way the 
> human shape would grab more immediate attention than a stapler or a 
> wheelbarrow.  Since they couldn't find research for a neurological 
> pre-set for the human shape, they dug up some old research on the 
> storage of words in the brain according to meaning categories. And 
> then they say that's also why we innately pay attention to certain 
> things, because of word categories like "animate" or "inanimate".  
> Now, that's comedy.
>
> But that's not the really funny thing about this paper.  What's really 
> funny is some great convoluted logic.  For example, we're told that 
> the reason evolution favored us this pre-wired attention to "animals" 
> is because:
>
> "Not only were animals (human and non-human) vital features of the 
> visual environment, but they change their status far more frequently 
> than plants, artifacts, or features of the terrain. Animals can change 
> their minds, behavior, trajectory, or location in a fraction of a 
> second, making their frequent reinspection as indispensable as their 
> initial detection."
>
> Well, of course, one might suggest that an efficient way to spot 
> something that moves is by paying attention to movement.  (A cat's 
> incredible response time in reaction to motion is exactly that -- a 
> triggering in the optic organ that by-passes normal neural processing.)
>
> But the authors are not bothered by their own reasoning.  True, 
> "animate" objects tend to be animated, but motion is not what's 
> catching our attention here.
>
> And, in the spirit of Mel Brooks, the authors have made sure that this 
> has to be right by using an experimental technique called Change 
> Detection, where "viewers are asked to spot the difference between two 
> rapidly alternating [STILL PHOTOGRAPHS] that are identical except for 
> a change to one object."
>
> Hilarously, they discount motion by using STILL photographs of cars in 
> this phase of the experiment -- because cars move right?  Now, that's 
> funny.
>
> Why not use video instead of stills?  Because still photographs show 
> motion just fine, we are told. 
>
> I'll give the authors the benefit of the doubt.  They don't think we 
> are idiots.  They are just being comedians.
>
> The best part are the photographs themselves.  We see a small figure 
> of a human in a forest or by a resort harbor. This change is circled.  
> We are told the objects are in "natural situations."  Overwhelmingly 
> the photos are filled with "inanimate" objects.  Inanimate objects 
> added to the inanimate objects don't do as well as human images added 
> to the inanimate objects. Wow, what a surprise!
>
> Of course, we see lots of vague human shapes added to a forest scene 
> or river scenes or travel scenes. But, with one exception, we don't 
> see is a series of photos of something like someone holding a 
> Christmas tree on a crowded subway platform.   So the human form 
> always wins out over the wheelbarrow, the stapler and the silo.
>
> Of course, it's common knowledge that good artists, graphic designers, 
> photographers, film editors know how to drive attention where they 
> want it.  Each of these photos could have been re-designed to produce 
> eaxctly the opposite result.  Luckily, the choice of photos is so 
> obviously biased that we might think that the researchers were 
> clumsily trying to fix the result - if we didn't already know they 
> were trying to be funny.
>
> And here's another punch line.  How do you know that the attention you 
> are seeing isn't goal-directed?  How do you know that the subjects 
> aren't already looking to spot fellow humans in the photograhs?  The 
> answer is simple.  The subjects have no ulterior interests because 
> they weren't given any.  To qoute the article: "they are not given any 
> task-specific goal that would direct their attention to some kinds of 
> objects over others. Thus, the CD paradigm can be used to investigate 
> how attention is deployed in the absence of a voluntary goal-directed 
> search."
>
> Thus is a human who has spent most of his waking life interacting with 
> other humans is wiped clean of any "goals" when looking at a photo 
> that might include other humans, and his "ancestral priorities" are 
> stripped bare.  Just because we showed him a photo without telling him 
> what to look for. 
>
> Evolutionary psychology has generated much incredibly funny research, 
> with the help of the NAS and numerous institutions listed in the 
> article and elsewhere.  Together this effort has done much to satisfy 
> our national need for humor.  In fact, sometimes when I read this 
> stuff, I laugh so hard, I could cry.
>
>
> Regards,
> Steve Long
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> **************
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