Great Podcast about Memory

Got to talking last night to a fellow player in one of my favorite games.  Turns out that he's finishing his PhD in Neuroscience.  We pretty much nerded everyone else out of the chatroom discussing things like how children recover from brain trauma and such.

Anyway, he shared the following link with me: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Rat

Great podcast.  It explains the process of memory in a way laymen can grasp, while adding a few really mind-blowing discoveries that have happened in the past decade.  Of course, if you've been keeping up on the field, you probably already know it.  But if you haven't really been keeping up in the past 8 years, there will be at least one but you've might have missed out on.

You don't have time for a 22 minute podcast?  Here are the main points:

• Memories are stored in proteins.
• Certain drugs can stop those proteins from forming during the process of memory-making.
• When we remember events, we are actually reliving them, which causes them to be altered every time we remember them.
• The less you call up a memory, the more accurate it is.
• If we are given one of those drugs at the time we are remembering the memory, we lose that memory and only that memory.
• Inactive memories are not affected by these drugs.

These discoveries are already being used in different ways to help PTSD sufferers.

The Demon of Reactive Formation

Reactive formation - defending against an impulse by actively expressing the opposite impulse.

Yeah. That thing. The thing that makes us do stupid things in an effort to avoid doing something that we feel is undesirable. Also referred as over-compensation - not to be confused with normal compensation, where we focus on our strengths to make up for our weaknesses.

An example of normal compensation - when I took my studio art classes in college, I took longer to make individual artwork because I have impaired short-term motor memory. I can achieve techniques, but it takes longer for me to do them than my much younger and more dexterous classmates, or my more experienced friends.  I was able to compensate for this by my ability to visualize and come up with ideas faster.  So while my classmates were still trying to decide what they were going to create, I had already chosen from several roughly sketched concept drawings what I was going to do.  And by the time they had decided what they were going to make, I was already hard at work on my project.  My design teacher mentioned that he sort of had to teach me in reverse of his other students, because I had the ideas and understood the concepts of design, but I didn't have the manual expertise of the rest of his students.

Of course there are less healthy examples of compensation.  Like when someone uses their success in their career to excuse their lack of social skills. Or makes pronouncements of fact when they lack of knowledge in an area outside of their expertise.  Such are the things that "appeal to authority" logical fallacies are made of.

But back to reactive formation.  This can be used in a healthy way - like when you are dealing with someone difficult, who can't help it (or even if they can), and you respond by being extremely sweet and helpful to them, when you would love nothing more than to slap them upside the head and tell them to stop being an idiot.  Many people owe their lack of injuries and possibly their very lives to the fact that several of their fellow humans use this psychological defense mechanism.

Now to the point of this little blog post.  I just realized this week that I have pretty much done something rather ignorant and foolish because a personal reactive formation pattern.  It's not impossible to correct, just difficult and requiring some planning and vacation time.  You see, I am a daughter of a hypochondriac.  In fairness to my mother, she did has several legitimate health issues, but she prefer her own diagnoses to the doctors'.  My mother constantly poured over medical books to find illnesses she could claim to have.  When I was 12 years old, it was discovered that I had a curved spine.  My mother decided that I had sclerosis and made an appointment with our family physician, an osteopath named Dr. Bishon.  Good so far.  Then Mom decided that in the days before the appointment, we needed to go to the mall and look for clothes that would work with a back brace. We went to like six different clothes stores and two or three fabric stores over the course of two days.  At first I was very nonchalant about the whole thing.  I knew my mother's flair for the over-dramatic and just accepted my ordeal with all of the reluctant grace a preteen could manage.  However, I had a friend at school who did wear a back brace.  Her name was Victoria and I think that even without the back brace, she would have had an air of gentle formality to her.  While we were browsing the racks (we didn't buy any clothes or patterns during those two days), I had to occasionally point out that some of the clothes Mom was thinking of putting me in would not work if I had a brace like Victoria's. After all those hours of listening to my mother's dire predictions of my future, my calm because eroded.  Even though I had no problem with the idea of the brace - I had great respect for Victoria, after all - I succumbed to my mother's paranoia.

I was terrified when we went to that appointment that Monday morning.  After doing the normal vital signs checking stuff, Dr. Bishon's nurse had my back x-rayed.  Then we sat in the examination room, while my mother continued her narrative on how all of this was going to rule my life, up to and including having a family of my own.  After what felt like an eternity to me (though it was maybe 20 minutes), Dr. Bishon came in, talked to me a little about how I sat when I read books, and then had me lie on my left side.  He then pushed my shoulder forward and pulled my hip back.  There was a cracking noise and when he had me stand in front of a mirror, I could see that I was standing straight again.  He explained that I wasn't suffering from sclerosis; I was suffering from reading books, while sitting in bad posture in our sofa chair for long periods of time.  He made me promise to use better posture when I got into a really good book, and then sent me on my way with a huge smile on his face.

Back in our car, I was absolutely furious with my mother and told her to never, ever do that to me again.  It might be worth noting that she had completely forgotten the incident by her 60's, but then maybe not.  For me, however, the event is deeply carved into my psyche as something to be vigilant against experiencing again.  I "compensated" by going through medical books like my mother, but instead of having the intent of proving to myself that I had this or that condition, I approached it from the direction of disproving that I had serious conditions.  I was very much in this mindset when I first started noticing signs of Celiac's disease in my late 20's.  And I very successfully convinced myself that I didn't have enough of the symptoms for long enough periods to have the disease - despite the fact that nowhere in the description I was reading did it say that you had to have these symptoms continually.

So, when my sister brought up the possibility that I may have a problem with gluten, I really didn't believe her.  More precisely, I didn't want to believe her.  However, I do love her and recognized that she was really worried about me, so without bothering to re-research Celiac's disease, I figured it wouldn't hurt me to go gluten-free for a little while to make her feel better.  I didn't have health insurance at the time, but to be honest, even if I had, I probably wouldn't have mentioned it to a doctor because I had spent so many years convincing myself I didn't have the condition.  I did do just enough reading to realize that I would have some bloating and headaches when I did go back to eating gluten, but I was okay with that - it didn't really sound much different to what happens when I re-introduce beans into my diet after a long period of not eating them.  It was a massive shock to me when several hours after I ate that one little piece of garlic bread, I was curled up in the fetal position feeling as if my bowels were trying to tear me apart.

Still, I wasn't quite ready to accept the possibility of Celiac's disease.  But I began to revise my feelings on the matter when friends started to bring studies to my attention about gluten intolerance and Celiac's.  In one of the more publicized studies of gluten intolerance, I read the description of the self-reported symptoms and realized that not one of them included explosive diarrhea or wishing for death because of severe cramps that lasted several hours.  Then this month, a friend of mine was hospitalized multiple time, while the doctors tried to figure out what was wrong with her.  I looked up several of the conditions they were trying to rule out on the Mayo Clinic's website, and a little voice told me that I really should look up Celiac's disease again and at least see about getting myself tested for it, so I could get a professional diagnosis as to whether I had it or not.  The first thing that struck me was the fact that in the two decades since I first read the symptoms of Celiac's disease, I had exhibited many more than I had remembered.

The second thing that struck me was that to be successfully tested for it, I need to be eating gluten for about a week before I'm tested - with the warning that you shouldn't go on a gluten-free diet before being tested first.  In short, I've screwed myself with my own denial.  However, it is still possible to be tested.  I will need to discuss it with a doctor before I eat gluten for the test, and I will need to take a week of vacation so I won't have to worry about missing work because I can't leave the bathroom.  So, probably sometime next February I will get myself actually tested.  And if it's negative, I might ask if there's a better way to get used to eating gluten again.  I really miss cake donuts and KFC.

Qualitative and Quantitative research - ISO Audits

It occurred to me after my last post that many people might not know the difference between qualitative and quantitative research. In a nutshell:

Quantitative Research - research where the results are all distilled down to numeric quantities. It is usually recommended during the latter phases of a research project. Questions such as "how many people follow the procedure manual while doing this task?"; "how often is this store robbed?"; or "what is the percentage of improvement in depressed people while taking this medication versus a placebo?" are things answered through quantitative research.

Qualitative Research - is research where the results consist of words, descriptions, and images. It is usually recommended during earlier phases of research projects. Questions such as "what procedures are being used in production?"; "who is responsible for security?"; and "what are the side effects of this medication?" require qualitative answers.


The ISO compliance audit is a qualitative research process. Things like percent of damage returns or wasted man-hours are secondary concerns. What is important are things like:

Do the procedures documented in the process manuals accurately depict what is being used on the floor? Some companies create procedures that have little to no resemblance on how the worker actually does the job. Sometimes it's because the workers just don't care, but other times it is because the documented procedure is not adequate, whether it's out of date, an efficiency problem, or safety issue. It's hard to improve something if you aren't documenting what works and what doesn't.

How are data measured, recorded and analyzed? This is something you should ask yourself whenever you read a research document. All the number gathering in the world is meaningless if the numbers are not handled correctly.

Areas of responsibility and accountability. It's not enough to say "Yes, someone is accountable for this." An ISO auditor has to find out who is the person. Is it the QA manager or the production manager? Is it the financial department or procurement?

Feedback flows. How does the company get customer feedback? How can employees give feedback?

And so forth... The ISO system is developed to help companies not only prove their ability to produced quality products, but also put in place processes that help companies improve their performance and stay competitive in changing markets. It is qualitative in nature because you can't compare diverse companies through the use of quantitative data. It's been tried and it was ineffective. However, that's not to say that there is not a quantitative element in ISO certification. You still need a way to track how effective procedures are and what areas need the most work on.

Good researchers start with indepth qualitative research and then do the quantitative research. Anything else is not good research.

The Importance of Qualitative Research

For five years I worked as a Quality Assurance Technician/Specialist for a major corporation, before I took time off to be a stay at home mom. Most of my work revolved around routine quantitative tests and research at the national QA lab. However, I had the opportunity to work on some investigative research during that time. One nice thing about doing internal research for a major corporation is that you don't really have the option to put a spin on your test results. There is always an external bottom line that you are accountable to. While in the academic and sales world, some researchers can talk circles around their results and still retain their positions, in the quality assurance world, if your research is faulty, it shows in the product and in the accounting. Faulty quality research costs a company money and can get you fired.

During my time in the QA field, I learned several things about research. First off, it's extremely easy to end up measuring the wrong thing. I cannot emphasis that point enough. During my first year, I was the technician for a new engineer, and he and I found this out firsthand. We even had a strong disagreement over one test on this matter. I noticed that there was something weird going on with my test results and brought it to his attention. He wanted to wave it away, because my results were confirming his hypothesis. If there is one thing I hate doing, it's fudging data. So I told him flat out that it may prove his hypothesis, but as a technician, I was not going to stand by the results. He finally told me that I could repeat the test. I'm sure he was expecting me to back down because he knew I hated doing that particular test, especially for the number of repetition he was asking for. Instead I agreed and then after clarifying that I would be doing the test the same way as I had the first time, I asked if I could switch the order of the samples. He agreed and the next set of results showed that I was right. To the engineer's credit, he then accepted that he was mistaken, listened to my observations, and figured out what actually was going on - and was able to confirm it. A few years later, he borrowed me back from the manager I was then working with, because he had a $5 million bizarre problem to solve and he wanted a technician who would tell him if things were looking screwy.

Between those times I worked for that one engineer, I worked for a manager who had been a university professor at an engineering school before working for the company. I was given the task to compare two types of color measuring machines. (Since, to the best of my knowledge, no one reading this blog is in the flexible packaging field, I'll dispense with the technical names.) The newer one was developed for the auto industry and we needed to see if it could meet our needs. Before I could even begin to compare the two machines, I had to do a search of the literature before I could even have an idea what I was actually testing. I also talked to our R&D packaging scientist and the manufacturer's representatives. I even resorted to going through my mother's old books on painting with color, which provided me with a lot more on the subject than I originally expected.

In short, under the direction of my manager, I did qualitative research before I started anything quantitative. That's because it's the qualitative research that shows you what you should be measuring. Most people don't understand that. When I took the research methods class for my masters, I really had to bite my tongue not to go into an impassioned rant over the necessity of qualitative research as a precursor of decent quantitative research. The R&D scientist I worked with for the color project was brillant and a good deal of his brillance came from the fact that he did his qualitative research before he launched his quantitative research. In the quality assurance world, measuring the wrong thing costs money and jobs. There's no time for weak research based on "well, this sounds like this might be the cause." You need to have solid reasons for your choices before you can even start your tests and in the corporate world, those choices are challenged more stringently than what I've seen so far in the academic world. Of course, this may not be the case on the doctorate level. I hope that is the case when I go back to school for my doctorate, because through my quality assurance training I have developed an obsession with doing thorough background research before I develop a test procedure. This is the reason my capstone is basically a literary review, because I would rather do a thorough literary review than a half-thought out series of qualitative tests.

Actually, I'm not sure I can even bring myself to do testing before doing a literary review. You see, my last job with this company was manufacturing defects coordinator. I was transferred to a plant to help them reduce their packaging defects. The plant management was convinced that the suppliers were sending them inferior flexible packaging. I spent the first few months testing roll stock to confirm that this plant was getting the same quality of packaging that all the others were. The plant manager didn't take that very well and I was told that I had six months to find out what the problem was or my job would be eliminated. For the first two or three months, management kept giving me things they wanted me to test for them as possible causes for their high defect rate. Out of pure preservation, I began to study other possible contributing factors. I used my connections with the national lab to talk to the engineers who trained the trainers who taught the packaging machine operators how to do their jobs. These were also the same guys who followed up on the quality of the machine maintenance people. They assured me that the trainers and the plant maintenance people where I was at were top notched. I talked with the trainers in the plant and made friends with the maintenance guys. It was obvious from their dedication and knowledge that they were, indeed doing their part. It was also obvious through the observed quality of their work, which they gladly let me examine.

I knew we were all missing something, but I couldn't figure out what it was while doing all the tests to make management feel better. So, I took a stand and reminded them that they brought me there because I was a specialist and if they were going to make me accountable for this, then they needed to let me do the job I was brought in for. Again, the plant manager was not impressed, but I figured I was doomed anyway with the way things were going, so I stood my ground. He said he wanted me to do line audits. In the past, I had been doing warehouse audits because no one wanted me to interrupt their production flow. I told him that I would do it on the grounds that I created my own audit criteria. To make everyone happy, I put in every common packing flaw that could be seen by a non-destructive inspection. However, well aware that I still had no idea what the real problem was, I made sure I made a space on my audit forms for comments - just in case I stumbled across a clue or two.

Then I started my line inspections. I hadn't even finished my first bag inspection, when the packaging machine operator came up to me and asked in a surly voice if he was going to see my results right away or was he going to have to wait until his manager yelled at him about them. Dumbfounded, I said, "You don't get my reports?" After he confirmed that was the case, I asked him if he wanted me to make him a copy and bring it back to the line as soon as I finished with everyone. He agreed. During this time, a light went off in my head, as I reviewed the stories I knew about how my dad and maternal grandfather managed their employees. The packaging machine operators weren't getting enough feedback. And if they weren't getting enough feedback, then chances were, based on the first guy's comments, they weren't getting any positive feedback at all. So, in my "comment box" I mentioned specifically what was right about the bags I auditted.

I asked every machine operator if they wanted my reports directly from me. All of them said yes. I instituted what I called my positive feedback program. Sometimes, before I even started checking for flaws, I would write down what looked good on the bag. After a week of this, the machince operators started looking forward to my audits and asked for my opinion on some of their issues. During the third week, I came across a perfect bag. I asked the machine operator if I could display it in the lunchroom with his name attached to it. That bag was followed by others from other machine operators. Three months from the start of my audits and positive feedback, the manufacturing defects numbers had dropped 70%.

It wasn't the quantitative studies that found the issue. It was the qualitative investigation that did the job. The quantitative studies only backed it up. International Organization for Standardization has proceedures it dictates for those companies wishing to be ISO certified. I've actually taken classes on ISO certification a few years back and I can assure you that their quality standards take into account the qualitative aspects of processes too. I'm tempted to pull out my books and give examples, but I think I'll save that discussion for another post.

Subliminal stimuli processing

About a month ago, a friend of mine in the psychology profession, who is a fan of Derren Brown, had me watch this video:



It is an interesting experiment and a very well done one. I like the fact that they included two subjects who were internal controls. I think that it would be a very good idea to repeat the experiment for a larger population, with controls who hadn't even laid eyes on the CD they sent out. Another example of subliminal priming is Derren Brown influences two gentlemen who work in the US advertising industry. Even advertising professionals can be influenced. This video includes the explanation of how he did it. You might want to check out the UK version too.


Another interesting study is the Duke University Subliminal Ad Experiment:



Research=> Automatic Effects of Brand Exposure on Motivated Behavior: How Apple Makes You “Think Different”

This article first examines whether brand exposure elicits automatic behavioral effects as does exposure to social primes. Results support the translation of these effects: participants primed with Apple logos behave more creatively than IBM primed and controls; Disney-primed participants behave more honestly than E!-primed participants and controls. Second, this article investigates the hypothesis that exposure to goal-relevant brands (i.e., those that represent a positively valenced characteristic) elicits behavior that is goal directed in nature. Three experiments demonstrate that the primed behavior showed typical goal-directed qualities, including increased performance postdelay, decreased performance postprogress, and moderation by motivation.


What does this mean, besides the fact that humans can be easily manipulated? These experiments, tricks, and studies show that our minds process information on an unconscious level. In fact, it could be argued that some intuitive may come from this subliminal data processing. (Some intuition comes from the capacity to process things in a global manner.) This ability probably wasn't developed as a means to be influenced, though it probably helps with social interaction, but there is some evidence that it can improve our safety. The Gift of Fear written by security expert Gavin de Becker, suggests that the hunches and gut feelings we sometimes get come from picking up on certain cues that our conscious minds miss. It is a very easy and fascinating book to read, despite it's length. I highly recommend The Gift of Fear to anyone interested in personal safety or even just human behavior.

The way I see it, our minds have to regulate some of the processing of stimuli to the subliminal level because if it was all conscious, we'd get overwhelmed. And while this process can have some undesirable results, it does serve some very important functions.

Project Implicit®

While writing the previous post on the fly, I touched on the concept of preconceived notions and it reminded me a bit of Harvard's research on hidden biases:

Project Implicit®
Project Implicit blends basic research and educational outreach in a virtual laboratory at which visitors can examine their own hidden biases. Project Implicit is the product of research by three scientists whose work produced a new approach to understanding of attitudes, biases, and stereotypes.

It really is a fascinating site to visit. Several friends and I have compared our results with each other with interesting results. Not to mention insightful conversations on why we got the results we did. It's been a few years since I've done some of these tests. I might have to go back and try them again.

Tipping Points

A couple of weeks ago, a commenter directed me to Change Therapy, a free online book about marketing "soft skills" like therapy by David P. Diana. I'm a little leary of promoting things from sources I'm not sure of, so my first action after seeing the comment was to email the link to a friend of mine who has been a practicing psychologist for over 40 years. His response was not only positive, but there was the hint that it would do me some good too.

I did enjoy reading the book. Among the gems within it, was a revisitation of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours rule. In a nutshell, 10,000 hours of practice is the tipping point of making one an expert at a skill. Diana extended the rule into an exercise program for one's career.

Yesterday, I visited Positivityratio.com, Dr. Barbara Fredrickson's site. Fredrickson found through her studies that "that experiencing positive emotions in a 3-to-1 ratio with negative ones leads people to a tipping point beyond which they naturally become more resilient to adversity and effortlessly achieve what they once could only imagine." Knowing that negativity is one of my worse inner demons, I've decided to track my positive/negative ratio on her site.

Most of my life, I've been told that it takes 21 days to create a new habit. I've have started several "habits" this way, only to have them get squashed by major life upheavals months later. The thing is I don't want new habits, I want an effective lifestyle where I take better care of myself than I do now. I can't do this by being a "habitist". That's how I developed my toolbox of immediate stress relievers. What I need to do is to become an expert - a master - of personally dealing with stress and depression.

So, how can I apply the 10,000 hour rule here? Well, to make it more manageable, I've decided that I would focus on two things - becoming an "expert" at realistic positiveness and becoming an expert at visual processing. The first is for my health; the second is for a career. If I were to assume that I could apply myself to one of these goals 16 hours a day, then it would take me 625 days or about 22 months to gain expertise. Though that is hardly a realistic expectation, especially since I have health concerns that bring the Spoon Theory into play. If I did an hour a day, it would take me a little over 357 months or close to 30 years to achieve the 10,000 hours by rough estimate. After a few more calculations and based on the fact that I tend to have 5 year cycles in my life, I've decided to make a goal of doing at least 2000 hours of effort to my mastery of these two fields, per year. This means about 5.5 hours a day or 38 hours a week. Luckily for me, I can integrate these tasks in with my other activities, and in fact, I already am to some extent. It might take me a little while to get that going strong, but I suspect that once I do, the 5.5 hour practice will naturally extend itself. And on those days when it's harder, I will remind myself that even if I have been doing it for several months, I still have to reach that 10,000 hours.

Einstein Quotes

“If we trace out what we behold and experience through the language of logic, we are doing science; if we show it in forms whose interrelationships are not accessible to our conscious thought but are intuitively recognized as meaningful, we are doing art. Common to both is the devotion to something beyond the personal, removed from the arbitrary.”

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

"It's not that I'm so smart , it's just that I stay with problems longer.”

“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

"Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance."