I barely have time to write all the cool science-related stories. So again this year, from December 25th until January 5th, he will be running a special “12 Days of Christmas” series of posts where he will highlight one science story that went wrong in 2023 every day. People watching others wave boxes and tell them what they’re doing.
Christmas Day is the time to open presents and put an end to the anxiety of what you will receive this year, but maybe some of you have already guessed what is probably under the wrapping. yeah. Perhaps by shaking the box strategically to get clues to what’s inside.according to November papers A paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that if someone happens to see you waving a wrapped gift, they will. become able to say What were you trying to learn from those actions by doing so?
“There’s nothing like seeing a child’s eyes light up when they pick up a present and wonder what’s inside.” Co-author Chaz Firestone said: from Johns Hopkins University, where he studies how vision and thought interact. “What our research shows is that the human mind can track the information it wants. Just like shaking a box might tell you what’s inside. you Shake it and you’ll see what they’re trying to figure out. ” The Christmas present is “a perfect illustration of our experiment.”
According to Firestone et al., there is a vast scientific literature dedicated to studying how humans represent and interpret basic movements such as walking, reaching, lifting, eating, chasing, and chasing. . This is an important ability that helps us predict the behavior of others. These are all examples of practical actions with a specific purpose, such as retrieving an object or moving from one location to the next. Other types of actions may be communication-oriented, such as waving, pointing, or adopting an aggressive (or friendly) posture.
The JHU study focused on so-called “cognitive” information-seeking behavior. That means dipping your toes in the bathtub to see if it’s hot, testing the door to see if it’s locked, shaking a wrapped box, etc. This is to collect information about what’s inside. It’s like a child trying to guess whether a wrapped Christmas present contains a Lego brick or a teddy bear. “Epistemic behavior permeates our lives, and so does recognizing it,” the authors write, suggesting that “meandering” campus visitors need directions or It cites the ability to tell that someone rummaging through a shallow drawer is probably looking for keys or similar small objects. .
In the first experiment, we asked 16 players to shake an opaque box. In the first round, the players tried to guess the number of objects in the box (in this case, the US nickel was either 5 or 15). In the second, we tried to infer the shape of a geometric solid (either a sphere or a cube) inside the box. All players earned perfect scores in both rounds. The results were as expected given the simplicity of the task. The videos of these rounds were then published online, and 100 different study participants (the “observers”) watched two videos of the same player and asked which video was from the first “guess the numbers” round. and was asked to decide which one was from his second “guess the number” round. Guess the shape?” Round. Almost all observers guessed correctly.
This was interesting evidence that observers can actually infer the purpose of the shakes (what game players are trying to learn) just by interpreting their movements. But the researchers wondered to what extent observers’ success depended on game players’ success in guessing the number and shape of objects. So they tweaked the box-shaking game to increase player error. This time, videotaped players were first asked to decide whether the box contained 9, 12, or 16 nickels, and then to decide whether the box contained a sphere, cylinder, or cube. I was asked to judge. Out of 18 players, he guessed only 4 correctly. However, the success rate for the 100 new observers who watched the video remained the same.
Firestone et al. They performed three further variations on the basic experiment to refine their results. On each iteration, most of the players perform different shaking motions depending on whether that round involves numbers or shapes, and most of the observers (500 in total) see those shaking motions and You have successfully guessed what you are going to learn. “It’s a very complex process, given all the mental math someone has to do to understand what the other person is trying to learn.” Firestone said.. “But our findings show it’s a no-brainer for people.”
Doi: PNAS, 2023. 10.1073/pnas.2303162120 (About DOI).