Body Talk

Anyone remember reading Amelia Bedelia books when you were young?  Amelia Bedelia was a maid who wore crazy hats and took things literally - throwing a tent away after being asked to pitch it, putting clothes on the chicken she was asked to dress, and decorating the curtains she was asked to draw. Funny stuff to a 6-year old.

Amelia Bedelia did not understood that conversations are not supposed to be taken literally. We all make extensive use of metaphors in speech - we can think of talking about our troubles weighing us down, or feeling like we are on cloud nine; of someone who has a cold heart, or who warms our soul; of feeling puffed up with pride, or in the case of unwelcome events, very small.  As we get older, we understand that these are symbolic in nature.  However, as it turns out, we may not have left all that literalism behind with our youth. 

A series of recent studies suggest that many of our abstract cognitions may be interpreted literally.  In other words, our bodies may in some cases mirror and reflect our abstract thoughts.  Many of us still hold to the concept of mind-body dualism; the idea there is something unique and special and separate about our minds versus our bodies.  This series of clever studies suggest that this dichotomy is even more false than it is generally acknowledged to be. 

"Researchers at the University of Aberdeen found that when people were asked to engage in a bit of mental time travel, and to recall past events or imagine future ones, participants’ bodies subliminally acted out the metaphors embedded in how we commonly conceptualized the flow of time. As they thought about years gone by, participants leaned slightly backward, while in fantasizing about the future, they listed to the fore. "

In a similar fashion, other studies in this newly emerging field of embodied cognition suggest that we might find people friendlier when we are holding a warm drink, or might be more likely to use handiwipes when we're reminded of the wrongs we have committed, and think heavier textbooks contain more vital information.  

“How we process information is related not just to our brains but to our entire body,” said Nils B. Jostmann of the University of Amsterdam. “We use every system available to us to come to a conclusion and make sense of what’s going on.”

These physical accompaniments to the metaphors in language suggest that we think, not just with our heads, but also with our bodies.   They also suggest a number of fascinating areas for future research.  It remains to be seen whether the effects found in the laboratory translate into an influence in the real world.  There are also implications with respect to cross-cultural differences.  Would cultures with different metaphors show different  physical correlates?  In Chinese, the past is thought of as being in front of you, and the future behind you.  Would Chinese subjects lean in the opposite direction to American samples?  And last, and perhaps more importantly - can we influence people's thoughts by influencing their bodies?

The ever increasing pace of the world.

The New York Times just printed an interesting article on the ways in which technology - and the ever increasing pace of change that comes concordant with that - might be affecting our children.  This is interesting in and of itself.  We might wonder how our children's malleable young minds are shaped by the cacophony of media they are exposed to, how their understanding of the world might shift as they inhabit more and more time in electronic and online activities, and how the absence of many of the influences of the past might shape their development. Already we see some differences - younger generations expect information immediately, seem to have less privacy concerns and are better at multitasking than older adults.  These changes may not be all good.  For example, the increase in multitasking could potentially have negative effects on the ability to focus on materials for longer periods of time - such as is needed in schooling.

But there's another issue that has to do more with the increasing pace of change rather than the actual experiences themselves.  We'll be talking about research methods tomorrow, and we'll be discussing types of studies that utilize what are called "developmental designs".  I know you'll be excited to learn about won't really have a choice but to listen to me talk about cross-sectional, longitudinal and sequential designs.  All three of these are ways of looking at change over time.  Cross-sectional designs focus on looking at a group of people of slightly different ages at one point in time, with the implicit assumption often being that by looking at the differently aged people, you can figure out what changes in development due to the effects of age. Longitudinal designs focus on a single group of people over time with the implicit assumption often being that that particular group of people should be illustrative of how development generally occurs in people outside of your specific study sample.  We'll talk about why these assumptions are not always correct, but for now I will just note that sequential designs are an attempt to pin down the actual differences between age effects, cohort effects and time of measurement effects by basically combining longitudinal and cross-sectional designs.

But what happens when change gets really fast?

Researchers are exploring this notion too. They theorize that the ever-accelerating pace of technological change may be minting a series of mini-generation gaps, with each group of children uniquely influenced by the tech tools available in their formative stages of development.

“People two, three or four years apart are having completely different experiences with technology,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project. “College students scratch their heads at what their high school siblings are doing, and they scratch their heads at their younger siblings. It has sped up generational differences.”

 Already, we have to be careful in research to attend to which of our findings are driven by actual developmental change and not by cohort.  What happens when cohorts shrink in size?