Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Marathon Memory

What significant event happened on October 17th 1989?

Well, If you’re a San Franciscan you might say a 7.1 earthquake in the Oakland-S.F. area, which is the correct answer.

What if someone asked you what happened in your life on August 12th 1978?  Could you remember?

Now take that a step further, what if it was something as simple as you bought a new pair of shoes that you wore 2 months later to a friend’s birthday party.

This may sound extreme but believe it or not some people including actress Marilu Henner can actually remember every day of their life.  60 minutes has reported that new research is tackling the idea that human “superior autobiographical subjects” have the capability to remember every event in their life starting from an early age.

Dr. James McGaugh, a professor of neurobiology at the University of California Irvine, and a renowned expert on memory, is the first to discover and study Hyperthymesia.  He says that this type of memory is new to science.  McGaugh and his research team have had to devise their own tests, like the one on public events.

They are also using MRI scans of the subjects to see if they can find obvious differences in the structure of the brains of “superior autobiographical subjects” and normal subjects.  The evidence is pointing to the fact that McGaugh’s subjects have a larger temporal lobe.  The temporal lobe is the part of the brain neurobiologists think has to do with storing new memories.

The researchers are also pursuing other avenues for answers to this fascinating ability such as DNA testing (genetic differences) and handedness testing, since all three men in the subject pool are left handed.

When researcher and neuroscientist Dr. Larry Cahill was asked what percentage of the time his five (six, at the time of this article,  including Henner) “superior autobiographical subject” were correct he said, “I would say over 99% of the time, if not 100 percent of the time, if they tell you something and you can check it, they’re right.  I’ve almost given up looking now, because ok, they’re right,” he replied.

Cahill goes on to state that he does not see these subjects as savants or autistic variants, he purports, “They’re not people who have an extraordinary ability, but can’t tie their shoe… [there is] this remarkable ability in a person who is otherwise pretty darn normal.”

The study’s applications of such abilities are quite extraordinary.  Perhaps, this type of research could benefit Alzheimer patients as well as other memory disorders.

Emotional Honeybees?

Insects might have feelings according to an article in Wired Science.    Honeybees especially are now being looked as pessimists.

The ability to display and recognize emotions is a cognitive trait that has been limited, until now, to higher animals such as dogs, horses and humans.

Newcastle researchers, Melissa Bateson and Jeri Wright wrote in their study that the findings “suggest that honeybees could be regarded as exhibiting emotions.”

Their experiments were designed to show whether animals are, like humans, capable of experiencing cognitive states in which ambiguous information is interpreted negatively.

“Invertebrates like bees aren’t typically thought of as having human-like emotions,” said Bateson,  “Way, way back, we share a common ancestor. The basic physiology of the brain has been retained over evolutionary time. There are basic similarities [between honeybees and vertebrate neurological traits].”

The study has some interesting findings and Bateson goes on to note, “It would be interesting to know if pesticides were altering their cognition, creating states similar to depression.”

Believability in Sender Demeanor

New research, conducted by Human Communication Research , suggests that sender demeanor may be the most influential source of variation in deception detection judgments.

Sender Demeanor is the difference in the believability of a message sent by a “sender”, which is independent of the actual honesty of the message.

In this study, published in Human Communication Research, Volume 37, Number 3, July 2011, sender demeanor induction explained as much as 98% of the variance in detection [of deception] accuracy.

Does the person not the message have a greater impact on what one believes?

Three additional studies investigated the behavior profiles of believable senders.  The results suggest a strong impact of sender effects in deception detection.

Do you think that it is too early in the research stage to say that a sender’s believability is the most influential source of variation in deception detection?