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Evidence for Unconscious Math, Language Processing Abilities
the_newsbeagle writes "It's hard to determine what the unconscious brain is doing since, after all, we're not aware of it. But in a neat set of experiments, researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's consciousness lab found evidence that the unconscious brain can parse language and perform simple arithmetic. The researchers flashed colorful patterns at test subjects that took up all their attention and allowed for the subliminal presentation of sentences or equations. In the language processing experiment, researchers found that subjects became consciously aware of a sentence sooner if it was jarring and nonsensical (like, for example, the sentence 'I ironed coffee')."
They made your brain throw an exception
OFC it will come up a few layers
Now spelling for me correlates with awakeness (sleepy => many spelling misteaks [sic, for humor], awake => fewer spellin errors), but math seems to do fine even when I'm tired and barely conscious.
Leave a crossword for half and hour come back and it seems your brain has been in action while you were away - revealing new clues No such faculty seems to assist sudoku - it's harder when you start up again - (YMMV) A basic Math/Language difference? Test material: http://www.guardian.co.uk/crosswords/quick/13265 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/nov/13/sudoku-2343-medium (hope these links link!)
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
Not if you use permanent expresso
rewriting history since 2109
Students who learn piano are often taught to take breaks between practice sessions (or even just 2 half hour sessions per day instead of one single hour session). As a piano teacher myself, I've recently encouraged my own students to take 5 minutes breaks, and even 5-20 second breaks WITHIN a session to allow the subconscious mind to make more sense of a passage or scale etc. Not sure how popular this kind of technique across other teaching disciplines is.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
The sensory-brain system is actually an integrating machine in that it integrates time-variant functions (physical phenomena) into constants.
For example:
Pressure wave > sound of a certain pitch
EM wave in the visible spectrum > color
Heck, even an electric current > taste (We've all stuck a 9V battery on your tongue, right?)
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Next time you're in heavy traffic going 70 mph, try consciously thinking about every move you're making and the move every other vehicle is making or about to make. It will make your head explode.
I know that this really isn't your point, but you touched off a hobby horse of mine.
That's exactly how I drive, if you want to be really safe, it's the only way you can drive.
I'm a paramedic, I routinely drive a 12,000lb (~5,500kg, for those that prefer) vehicle at high rates of speed through maneuvers that are wholly unexpected by a majority of the other drivers on the road, that's the only way I can drive.
I assess every other vehicle on the road, every pedestrian walking along side, and every cardboard box sitting on the curb. I know where they are, how fast they're going, how well they're driving (well, I usually skip that for the boxes.), how likely they are to interfere with my lane space, and as an added bonus, how they're likely to respond to the sight of me in their rear view mirror. From the moment they come into my vision until the moment they leave it, I look at everything no less than once every 5 seconds.
At the same time, I'm also keeping a running evaluation of the degree of urgency I have as it relates to how fast I'm willing to go, how hard I'm willing to accelerate (in any of the three axises available to me), and when and where I have to do what in order to meet those constraints.
That being said, I also drive like that in my personal car (Though I do skip the whole running red lights thing). It's not easy by any means, it requires a great deal of focus, good observation skills and keen geospatial awareness, but it's doable, and it works.
I've driven over half a million miles in ambulances, and probably another half million in my personal car. I've been in two accidents, both of which occurred within a year of getting my license, and both of which I know (as much as you can know such things) that if I could go back and do it again with the skills I have now, I could avoid them. (Oh, and for the record, neither of them were ruled as being my fault at the time.).
Right, sorry.
</soapbox>
I needed a sig so people would know who I am, but I was too drunk to make something witty, so you get this instead.
Shouldn't this read 'subconscious' rather than 'unconscious'? I doubt the students in these trials were hit in the head with baseball bats.
It seems to me that this is not really news. When I was studying Linguistics many, many years ago, it was pointed out to me that we shape entire sentences in our brain before we become aware of them and before we speak the words. This is how we can make unintentional errors when we speak - spoonerisms for example, where the initial sounds of one word are substituted with that of a subsequent word (Wikipedia gives this example: "Three cheers for our queer old dean!" (dear old queen, referring to Queen Victoria)).
Since we are unaware of these errors prior to speaking them, it seems only logical that the subconscious/unconscious mind has the ability to recognize grammatical mistakes, since it has the capacity to formulate them. The human mind seems to be *built* to absorb rules of grammar and vocabulary at a very low level. We learn the rules of whatever language(s) we grow up speaking subconsciously by hearing them applied by those around us. Sure, people correct pronunciation and grammar in the young from time to time but a lot of it is just seemingly absorbed at a young age. After age 8 or so, you need to really study to learn a language in most cases, before that you can learn up to 3 languages at the same time apparently - although usually only if you speak each one to an individual that uses that language exclusively with you.
So this seems interesting but not all that earth shattering to me at least. Although of course this is /. so I didn't RTFA :p
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
actualize green colorless radishes
are you in management?
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
That's why I'm curious to know what the authors mean by 'semantic violation'. I would also be fairly unsurprised to hear that we flag grammatical violations, at least in languages we speak fluently, unconsciously. Being able to flag grammatically perfect, but non-meaningful, sentences would imply unconscious access to grammar and vocabulary, and an unconscious understanding of category errors and the like. Certainly not impossible; but rather more notable than just flagging grammar.
Its not the unconscious mind, it is the subconscious mind. See article starting on page 73 http://www.iamb.net/IJMB/journal/IJMB_Vol_3_1.pdf
I remember when I decided to learn how to juggle over Christmas break. I got a juggling kit for Christmas that included some bean bags and a video, and one of the things they suggested was to practice before you went to bed at night, because they said your mind would work on how to juggle while you were sleeping. Sure enough, the next morning when I tried I found I was able to do a much better job than I did the night before. I don't know if it was due to my unconscious working on it, or if it was the power of suggestion, but there seems to be something to it.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I've always recognized two levels of voice in my head. One that speaks in full words, often in full sentences, and in a lot of cases is mostly like me rehearsing what I'm going to say before I'm saying it, or me talking to myself, but not out loud. It's slow-ish, in that it operates more or less at the pace of speech.
Below that there's also a very vast, very whispery, voice that may not work in words at all - it may be working in impressions or emotions, or simple flags (e.g.: that's not right; that sounds good; let's go that way), though in some cases I think there are words but it's rarely lengthy sentences.
I became aware of these different levels when trying to meditate. I could keep the first voice quiet enough, but that second little flickery one would pop up with "don't think" and then "ack, a thought!" and then "no, more thoughts!" over and over until the first voice came in and said, "Darn it, this isn't working at all, I think I'm going to go play a video game." Years later I think I've concluded that when it comes to meditating if you silence (or focus, with a key word) the first voice, you're just supposed to ignore the second voice because it's sort of always on. I could be wrong, though, because I've never gotten the knack of meditation.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay