Generally Thinking

Month: January 2010

  • Differential Susceptibility – Are some brains more plastic than others?

    Ever heard of the idea that for some illnesses and disorders to develop, you need to have an inherited risk factor plus environmental stress? It’s known commonly as the diathesis-stress model (diathesis basically means predisposition), and it’s a common explanation for a large range of phenomena, from schizophrenia to serial murder. Both diathesis and stress need to be present for the illness to arise.

    This has been the prevailing view for some time, but a few researchers, such as Jay Belsky and Michael Pluess of Birkbeck university, are now making a slightly different case. They don’t say that the diathesis-stress model is incorrect, rather, that it is incomplete.

    They have noted multiple instances in the existing research base in which the diathesis side of the model – for example the function of genes, or phenotypic characteristics – would be better explained as what they call ‘plasticity factors’, as opposed to ‘vulnerability factors’.

    Is the diathesis-stress model incomplete?

    Let’s look at the current viewpoint in a little more detail. Typically, certain people are thought to possess particular gene variants which make them more likely to develop a psychological condition, for example depression, when a certain conditions occur in their life. So, someone with a different allele (different versions of the same gene are known as ‘alleles’) could go through the same experiences, and not come out the other side depressed.

    The new point of view would say that rather than having a risk for certain illnesses, these people may actually have a brain that is more responsive to the environment generally. If they did not go through a stressful period, but instead a supportive, nurturing one, they would be more likely to develop beneficial psychological characteristics – and again, people who had different versions of the gene could go through the same experiences and not come out the other side as well off.

    This model is called ‘differential susceptibility’; people differ in their susceptibility to environmental influence. The implication is that some brains are more plastic than others, and are therefore more susceptible to both positive and negative effects of supportive and unsupportive environments.

    Vulnerability or Plasticity?

    Over the years a number of studies on temperament in children have been published which appeared to supported the diathesis-stress model. They generally show that differences in parenting style predict differences in self-control, externalising problems, and other aspects of difficult temperament. But the limitation of these studies is that they did not test for whether these same children would be more likely to receive benefits from different parenting styles. In other words, these studies were not designed to tell the difference between vulnerability and plasticity – only to detect vulnerability.

    temperament
    Chill out…

    A number of other studies, however, have been designed in a way that gets around this problem, and many have supported the idea of general plasticity. To give an example, one study found that teenage boys with difficult temperament were the least likely to externalise problems after 6 months with sensitive, non-controlling mothers; but they were also the most likely to externalise problems after 6 months with insensitive, controlling mothers. Furthering the support for the theory, this pattern was not found in the teenagers who did not have a difficult temperament. (2)

    Another study, this time with an experimental design, looked at mothers who were thought to be at risk of developing insecure children due to their own difficulties. These mothers were given an intervention in the form of a video feedback exercise, which successfully improved their parenting skills. Was the intervention successful in building a more secure attachment style from the infants? Yes it was, but only for those who had a high level of negative reactivity prior to the intervention. (3)

    Genetic Markers of Differential Susceptibility

    differential_susceptibility

    We’ve looked at a few studies which might demonstrate the effects of differential susceptibility in the ‘real world’. There is also some evidence looking into the effects of genes, and again Belsky and Pluess (1) argue that because previous research had been led by the diathesis-stress model, findings which might support differential susceptibility have tended to go overlooked.

    If anything I’ve said up to now has been familiar to you, you might have heard of the 5-HTTLPR gene. It has had attention in the media and popular books (eg., The How of Happiness) for being the ‘depression gene’, in that people who have a specific variant of this gene, the so called ‘short allele’, are more susceptible to depression.

    A number of studies have supported this finding, but there have been some results which suggest the pattern may not be so clear as yet. One study found, as predicted, that young adults with two short alleles had the most severe symptoms of depression when they had experienced problematic childhoods. However, when short allele children had experienced a supportive childhood, they actually showed the fewest symptoms of depression later in life. (4)

    A warm and fuzzy conclusion?

    Although the recent evidence for individual differences in plasticity is quite compelling, the authors are very tentative and cautious in their papers, which I suppose is necessary when you’re proposing something new. You don’t want to scare anyone off. So they are keen to point out that the evidence is not quite solid as yet, and there is more work to be done.

    This line of work is only beginning, and there are many unknowns. Much the same as in priming research, the evidence of the effect is running a little ahead of the understanding of the mechanisms involved, and researchers are unclear on whether differential susceptibility stems mostly from ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’, or on the breadth of the phenomena that it applies to. Having said that, the idea that that the people most susceptible to negative symptoms and experiences might be the people most susceptible to positive symptoms and experiences, is quite a cheerful thought.

    References:

    (1) Belsky, J., & Pluess, M. (2009). Beyond diathesis stress: Differential susceptibility to environmental influences. Psychological Bulletin, 135(6), 885-908

    (2) van Aken, C., Junger, M., Verhoeven, M., van Aken, M., & Dekovi?, M. (2007). The interactive effects of temperament and maternal parenting on toddlers’ externalizing behaviours. Infant and Child Development, 16(5), 553-572.

    (3) Klein Velderman, M., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M., Juffer, F., & van IJzendoorn, M. (2006). Effects of attachment-based interventions on maternal sensitivity and infant attachment: Differential susceptibility of highly reactive infants. Journal of Family Psychology, 20(2), 266-274.

    (4) Taylor, S., Way, B., Welch, W., Hilmert, C., Lehman, B., & Eisenberger, N. (2006). Early Family Environment, Current Adversity, the Serotonin Transporter Promoter Polymorphism, and Depressive Symptomatology. Biological Psychiatry, 60(7), 671-676.

  • Between work and leisure – Escaping The Grey Zone

    A friend sent me an interesting text message the other day. He asked: “What’s your biggest time-waster?” I replied with only three mysterious words: “The Grey Zone”. In case you’re wondering, he said his biggest time-waster is figuring out what my cryptic texts mean.

    What is The Grey Zone?

    The Grey Zone is limbo. You’re somewhere in between relaxing fully, and actually being productive. You are sat in your work place, sort of doing little jobs that aren’t really important in between checking emails, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever. Or you’re watching a TV program but you bring a book to read as you watch it. This is The Grey Zone. You’re not making efficient or useful progress, and you’re not switching off completely and getting the benefits of leisure time either. After a while in the grey zone, you will feel guilty for not getting anything done but also tired as you have not been fully relaxing.

    It’s very easy to fall into the grey zone with tasks that have no clearly defined start and finish points. Studying is one big example, so is working on a blog or website. Yes, you know when your exam or essay deadline is, but you don’t have a schedule to do x at y time on z day. Without a start and finish point, it’s easy to spend hours or even days in the grey zone. You’ll eventually feel too overloaded with work to justify taking any time off (at least not without feeling guilty), so you feel compelled to sit at your desk “working”, but at the same time you don’t have the motivation to tackle any mentally demanding tasks. So you settle on some task that is necessary, and is helpful in some small degree, but isn’t what you would choose to do if your motivation was higher.

    The problem with the grey zone is that it’s easy to rationalise that you have spent this time working. You probably believe quite strongly that the more time you put into a task, the more you get done: the ‘results by volume’ approach. If I’ve spent 6 hours ‘working’, I must have done lots of work. The flaw in the logic is that not every hour’s work is made equal. Here’s an illustration, using an arbitrary points system. Say an hour of focused work is 10 points of productivity, an hour in the grey zone is 3 points of productivity, and an hour of leisure is 0 points of productivity.

    4 hours productive work = 40 points
    2 hours leisure time = 0 points
    TOTAL = 40 points

    2 hours productive work = 20 points
    4 hours in the grey zone = 12 points
    TOTAL = 32 points

    So more gets done in the first example. But there’s another factor to take into consideration. Even though 4 hours in the grey zone is less productive, it’s still pretty tiring. Without the extra time to relax, you might not be fully rested for tomorrow. Here’s what might happen the next day:

    4 hours productive work = 40 points
    2 hours leisure time = 0 points
    TOTAL = 40 points

    2 hours productive work = 18 points
    4 hours in the grey zone = 10 points
    TOTAL = 28 points

    Of course these figures don’t prove anything; I’m just using them to illustrate my points, which are:

    • The grey zone is easy to fall into without clear start and end points to your work periods (and knowing specifically what to do within these ‘time boxes’)
    • Overall productivity is lower in the grey zone
    • The grey zone drains your motivation to tackle work with focus

    Escaping The Grey Zone

    It’s easy to get into and hard to get out of – unless you know how.

    1) Fixed Scheduling

    This is an idea popularised by Cal Newport. The principle is simple – you set a fixed schedule to study, and once that time is up, you stop working and start your leisure time, however you might choose to spend it. This is a bit scary at first, you might think you need the time too much, but give this a try for a few weeks. You’ll find that you get as much or more done, for two main reasons. Firstly, you’re forced to be more productive in the time that you have, so your overall efficiency will improve. Secondly, you’ll be better rested the next day, and won’t feel the need to float around in the grey zone. But you must stop when your schedule tells you to! Then go relax and recharge for the next day. If you ignore your schedule, you’ll just keep your old pattern; and if your time runs out before you get the work you wanted done, it will remind you that you’ll need to be more focused the next day.

    2) Time Boxing

    I came across this one through Steve Pavlina, many moons ago. Within your fixed schedule, set specific blocks of time out to work on specific tasks. Buy a cheap academic diary for this purpose. For example, say you have a lecture between 2 and 5. Your schedule for that day might be to work in the library from 10-1.45, then go to your class until 5. Your time boxes might be a two hour session between 10-12, and another from 12-1.45. Time boxing is very useful when you can’t break a task down further and it’s now just a matter of putting the time into getting it done. You know you only have to do a certain amount of work, so you don’t feel overwhelmed.

    3) Planning

    Some people prefer to ‘go with the flow’ in terms of when and what they study, but I’m willing to bet that most people couldn’t do better on the fly than they could with a schedule. Therefore, you need to adopt some kind of system. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but you should know exactly what you need to do when you sit down to work. This doesn’t mean “Work on essay.” ‘Work on essay’ is not something to do, it’s a very vague notion. Instead, something like “Download Diener (1995), read and take notes.” Don’t put “Revise for working memory exam,” put “Draw mind maps based on notes on working memory.” It’s best to be as specific as you can so you don’t waste time in the grey zone deciding what to do. Although I accept there are times you cannot be any more specific than “Write essay” – sometimes it’s just time to start writing.

    Remember the key points. The results by volume approach to study makes intuitive sense but it’s not entirely accurate. The quality of the time you put in is also important, and if you’re spending a long time putting minimal effort in, it will produce worse results and more stress than if you spend shorter periods putting lots of effort in. It will be difficult at first – focused studying is a tiring thing to do. After a couple of hours you’ll get hungry as your brain eats up glucose to fuel your efforts. But it is something you get better at over time.

  • Emotional Information

    In the previous article on emotional intelligence we saw how an intelligence is based on the ability to think in abstract ways, and to learn and adapt to an environment. Maybe you’d previously heard about how we have multiple intelligences; IQ, social intelligence, practical intelligence, emotional intelligence, and so on.

    What distinguishes these intelligences from each other is the type of information they process. So verbal-propositional intelligence is about vocabulary, sentence structure, etc., and likewise, emotional intelligence is based on emotional information. I just wanted to clarify what this is exactly, as this was missing from the last post.

    What is emotional information?

    Since Darwin, emotions have been viewed as controlling and signalling our responses to situations – they occur in response to the environment and/or an appraisal of it. They are mostly geared towards things that could have an impact on our chances of surviving and reproducing, and each emotion has it’s own particular role to play in this. So for example, anger comes up when someone transgresses against you, jealousy arises when someone’s flirting with your girlfriend or boyfriend, fear in the face of a potential threat, and so on. The theory goes that each emotion was originally ‘designed’ to solve a particular problem we faced in our evolutionary past, by influencing our response to it. So anger might put people off transgressing against you in the future, jealousy helps to ward people off your mate, and fear helps you stay out of trouble.

    Each emotion has it’s own unique signals, which might be facial expressions, body language, voice tone, and so on. This is what ’emotional information’ is. Facial expressions in particular have been particularly well researched. Expressions have been identified for a number of categories of emotion, and wherever you go in the world, you find that these facial signals always go with the same emotions. For example, you don’t find one culture who furrow their brow and pout when they feel ecstatic – everyone smiles. Even hunter-gatherer societies, with no access to our modern culture, signal emotions using the same facial expressions we do.

    So in a sense, emotional information is a kind of language; although it differs from verbal language because it relates primarily to relationships among people rather than relationships in a more general sense.

  • Positive affirmations don’t work!

    …all of the time. Forgive the title, I’m experimenting with controversial post titles. More on that another day.

    Today the topic is self-help again, and if you’ve read this blog regularly, you’ll know that I take a skeptical attitude towards the self-help industry. A quick inspection of the self-help section of a bookstore will explain why – some of these books are just plain ridiculous.

    As I mentioned in the self-help industry and the self-help book reader’s guide, my main problem with this industry is the fact that the authors feel they have the right to make outrageous claims that they can’t back up with solid evidence. Sometimes they’ll give a few anecdotes of times their advice worked – as if that’s supposed to mean something – but often, all you get is pure unsubstantiated opinion, in-between layers of hyperbole.

    So take positive affirmations, for example. You might think “Do you really need evidence? Isn’t it just so obviously true?” The answers are yes you do really need evidence and, no, it’s not obviously true. Just because something is highly ingrained into our modern parlance doesn’t make it true. How a woman carries her baby during pregnancy does not predict the sex of the child. Walking under a ladder isn’t unlucky. No one ever went blind from, well, you know.

    But sometimes these ideas make such pure, unadulterated, intuitive sense, that you can’t help getting swept along. This theory goes like this: If you want to feel happy with yourself and where you’re going, you have to program your mind to think that way. The way to do this, is through affirmation – you repeat, sometimes in your head, sometimes out loud, a positive statement, over and over again. Eventually, your subconscious mind takes this as truth, and you start to feel the way you’ve been affirming.

    The classic affirmation is “every day in every way I’m getting better and better,” but you could try “I am extremely happy,” “I am loved by everyone,” “I am always confident”, or whatever.

    It makes sense doesn’t it? Say positive things to yourself, feel positive. Keep saying them, keep feeling positive. Sort of a priming effect. So simple. So neat and tidy. And everyone else believes it. Don’t tell me it’s not true!

    Some research in this area says that it isn’t…at least not always. A study last year had two groups of people complete a different task each. One did a free-writing exercise for a few minutes, the other said a positive affirmation (“I am a loveable person”) several times each minute for the same time period. Then, measures of mood and self-esteem were taken.

    positive_affirmation
    They certainly do their affirmations… (Credit)

    What happened? For people with high self-esteem, it worked – the high self-esteem people in the affirmation group did end up in a better mood than the free-writing group. But the people with low self-esteem actually ended up in a *worse* mood than the free-writing control group!

    The suggestion is that saying the positive statements only served to highlight, by contrast, just how poor an opinion the low self-esteem people had of themselves.

    This research is not conclusive, of course. There’s more work to be done to discover the individual differences that make a certain technique work for some and not for others – there may be more things interacting with affirmations than just self-esteem.

    So should you do positive affirmations? This one study says that if you’re already high in self-esteem, this might be a useful mood booster. If you’re not, don’t bother.

    However, as always in science the results only support the findings under the exact conditions under which the study was conducted, and there were a few limitations to this one, for example:

    • Only one affirmation was tested: different affirmations may work for low self-esteem people
    • We are not sure what would happen to low self-esteem people after a longer intervention than 4 minutes (could be better, could be even worse)

    But for me, the key point of all this is that the affirmation tested was lifted directly from a self-help book. The author promoted a one-size fits all solution, which was not found to be the case in this study.

    I’m not trying to promote a negative attitude towards the self-help industry – as fun as that would be. If this study says anything, it just says that it’s unwise to accept something because it seems to ‘make sense.’ Sometimes the truth is a little more complicated.

    Reference:

    Wood, J., Elaine Perunovic, W., & Lee, J. (2009). Positive Self-Statements: Power for Some, Peril for Others. Psychological Science

  • Using a Wiki to organise your notes

    There’s a recent post up at Cal Newport’s blog that’s very interesting. He discusses the study strategy of a man known only as Ricardo. His method is to using a wiki app installed on his iphone to type his notes onto. He then whips out his iPhone whenever he’s got a spare 10-15 minutes, and goes over the notes. The idea is that over long periods of time, these tiny chunks add up to a lot of study without any additional inconvenience.

    I used to do a similar thing with software that converted text files into audio. I would copy and paste journal papers into textpad, convert them to mp3, and listen to them as I travelled around. At one point I had a job which basically entailed walking around London (distributing flyers), and I essentially got paid to listen to papers and my notes. It sounded robotic but you could understand it.

    But using a wiki on-the-go is an excellent idea. If I had an iphone I would do it. However, I do use one for ordinary sitting-at-a-desk type studying. The one I use is called ZuluPad, and I’ve found it to be a really useful tool.

    ZuluPad has two features – writing text, and adding pages. That’s it. When you add a new page to the wiki, you give it a name. Anywhere else that that name appears in the wiki is automatically transformed into a link leading to that page. So, say a few weeks ago I write a page with notes on intrinsic motivation. If today I’m writing notes on the effects of meditation, and I put down some comments about how it links in with intrinsic motivation, I instantly get a link back to my notes on that.

    Compare this to the analogue paper and pen system. If I want to look up related notes in folders or notepads, I can index the notes as well as I want but it still requires getting the right folder or notebook out, going to the contents, checking the page number, flicking to the page. With ZuluPad, I don’t have to do anything I wouldn’t already do. I’m a big fan of simple programs that have zero learning curve, and ZuluPad is exactly that. Oh, and it’s completely free too.

    So give it a go for a while, see if you find it useful. By the way, I highly recommend Cal’s blog too – go and subscribe to it if you haven’t already. You won’t regret it.

    Note: I’m going to add study tips to the blog more regularly now. My aim is to put a post up every Sunday, though I’m not promising I won’t miss one here and there.

  • A guide to emotional intelligence

    You have probably heard the term ‘Emotional Intelligence’ before, probably along with bold claims like “emotional intelligence matters twice as much as IQ” (1), or 80% of success is accounted for my emotional intelligence. But leaving the hype aside for a moment, what exactly is emotional intelligence, and is there any truth to these incredible claims?

    A quick guide to emotional intelligence

    As a field, emotional intelligence is quite a confusing because there are a number of different constructions, each with slightly different definitions. The leading model, and the one with the largest research base, is the Mayer-Salovey model. In this model, emotional intelligence is defined as the capacity to:

    • Accurately perceive emotions
    • Generate emotions so as to assist thought
    • Understand emotions and emotional knowledge
    • Regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth (2)

    In other words, it’s the “cooperative combination of intelligence and emotion” (3). This model also views emotional intelligence as an ability, or set of skills, rather than a trait or a ‘gift’.

    This framework of emotional intelligence does not make the bold claims you might have heard of. These belong to other models, and in fact, researchers using this model actively try to expose these popular but unfounded claims. If you’re reading up on emotional intelligence and come across contentions, then make sure you keep your skeptic’s hat on because you might be reading something that isn’t supported by the research.

    The four branches of emotional intelligence

    The skills and abilities that make up emotional intelligence can be broken into four ‘branches’:

    1) Perception and expression of emotion

    Branch one is the ability to recognise emotion signals in other people, through their facial expressions, bodylanguage and voice; including the ability to detect false emotional expressions. It also involves the ability of a person to express their own emotions through these same channels. An example might be the salesperson, who knows just when the prospect is ready to buy.

    2) Using emotion to aid thought

    This branch reflects a sensitivity to the fact that certain emotions are more suitable for certain types of thinking than others, and the ability to intelligently draw upon this knowledge as required. An example could be the entrepreneur, who knows that good moods help him come up with original ideas, so he boosts his mood somehow before a brainstorming session.

    3) Understanding emotion

    Branch three is the analysis of emotions, an awareness of the trends of emotions, and an understanding of what outcomes usually result from which emotions. It includes the ability to label and distinguish between different emotions, their intensity, and the transitions between different emotions. A high level of skill in this branch reflects a high degree of self-awareness.

    4) Managing emotion

    This represents the ability of an individual to manage their own emotions and the emotions of others, in line with their particular goals, their self-knowledge, and social norms. An example could be the young child who is taught to count to ten when feeling angry, or the sports coach who motivates his team at half time a la Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday.

    The order of the branches represents the extent that the ability is integrated into the rest of a person’s psychology. That probably requires a bit more explanation. If you imagine that you have a set of emotional systems in your brain (which you do), branch one is the most deeply integrated into these ‘hard-wired’ systems, while branch four will be the least integrated into these, and the most open to variation through experience. This fits into other observations, such as the Paul Ekman’s fascinating research, where he demonstrated that tribal cultures with little exposure to outsiders used the same facial expressions to display the same emotions as the rest of the world (branch 1), and the differences between cultures in which emotion is appropriate to display when (branch 4).

    And that, in a nutshell, is it. Hopefully this quick guide to emotional intelligence gave you a more realistic view of what it is, without the hype that usually comes along with it.

    References:

    (1) Goleman, D. (1998). Working with emotional intelligence. NY: Bantam.
    (2) Mayer, J.D., & Salovey, P. (1997). What is emotional intelligence? In P. Salovey & D. Sluyter (Eds.), Emotional development and emotional intelligence: Educational implications (p 3-31). NY: Basic Books.
    (3) Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D.R. (2004). Emotional Intelligence: Theory, Findings and Implications. Psychological Inquiry, 15(3), p197.


    Recommended Reading:

  • Weaknesses of the working memory model

    We’ve recently looked at Baddeley and Hitch’s working memory model, which they first proposed back in 1974 and has been through a few changes since then. For an overview of the working memory model, see this article, and there’s another one looking at the strengths of the model. Here’s a quick look at some of the weaknesses of the model, which mainly revolve around the lack of understanding and depth of the model at present.

    Weaknesses of the working memory model

    1) The components of the model may as yet be too simple, and do not explain the full range of day-to-day phenomena, for example, some things we’re pretty good at remembering, unless someone starts talking to us while were trying to remember it. Is there any information that is not as prone to decay as it is to interference from competing input?

    2) The central executive is poorly understood. Since there are only modest correlations between people on different executive functions, and since some people can lose some executive functions but keep others, it’s highly unlikely that the CE is one unitary construct. Without knowing how the CE is broken down, it’s very difficult to come up with hypotheses to test the model further, and to know how these subsections relate to each other and the other parts of the model. Take verbal rehearsal for example. Does the CE initiate this, monitor it, maintain it? Or is it purely a function of the phonological loop?

    3) Researchers do not yet have a detailed understanding of how the episodic buffer combines information from the other parts of the model, and from long-term memory.

    Recommended Reading: