128 posts · 135,729 views
I'm a fourth year doctoral student in the Developmental Psychology program at the University of Southern California. I do research on the way that the environment interacts with biology in producing innate or learned behavior.
The Thoughtful Animal
120 posts
Child's Play
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- August 17, 2010
- 10:00 AM
- 445 views
What is Dyscalculia? How Does it Develop?
by Jason Goldman in Child's Play
Nearly everyone has heard of developmental dyslexia – a learning disorder characterized by poor reading skills despite otherwise sufficient schooling – but have you heard of developmental dyscalculia? Many people have not. Here is part 2 in a week-long series on this lesser-known learning disorder. (See part one, and a companion post on comparative numerical [...]... Read more »
Shalev, R., Manor, O., Kerem, B., Ayali, M., Badichi, N., Friedlander, Y., & Gross-Tsur, V. (2001) Developmental Dyscalculia Is a Familial Learning Disability. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 34(1), 59-65. DOI: 10.1177/002221940103400105
Shalev, R., & Gross-Tzur, V. (2001) Developmental dyscalculia. Pediatric Neurology, 24(5), 337-342. DOI: 10.1016/S0887-8994(00)00258-7
Shalev, R., Auerbach, J., Manor, O., & Gross-Tsur, V. (2000) Developmental dyscalculia: prevalence and prognosis. European Child , 9(S2). DOI: 10.1007/s007870070009
- August 16, 2010
- 09:30 AM
- 467 views
Developmental Origins of Numerical Cognition
by Jason Goldman in Child's Play
Nearly everyone has heard of developmental dyslexia – a learning disorder characterized by poor reading skills despite otherwise sufficient schooling – but have you heard of developmental dyscalculia? Many people have not. Today begins a week-long series on this lesser-known learning disorder. First, we’ll consider some potentially innate mechanisms of numerical cognition that give rise [...]... Read more »
Xu, F. (2000) Large number discrimination in 6-month-old infants. Cognition, 74(1). DOI: 10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00066-9
Starkey, P., & Cooper, R. (1980) Perception of numbers by human infants. Science, 210(4473), 1033-1035. DOI: 10.1126/science.7434014
Lipton JS, & Spelke ES. (2003) Origins of number sense. Large-number discrimination in human infants. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 14(5), 396-401. PMID: 12930467
Geary DC. (1995) Reflections of evolution and culture in children's cognition. Implications for mathematical development and instruction. The American psychologist, 50(1), 24-37. PMID: 7872578
- August 16, 2010
- 08:04 AM
- 1,131 views
Did Dogs Gain Their Social Intelligence By Accident?
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
I will be reposting some dog-related posts from the archives in the coming few weeks as I prepare for the course I'm teaching this semester on dog cognition. Please let me know if you find something inaccurate or unclear.
Domesticated dogs seem to have an uncanny ability to understand human communicative gestures (see here). If you point to something the dog zeroes in on the object or location you're pointing to (whether it's a toy, or food, or to get his in-need-of-a-bath butt off your damn be........ Read more »
Hare, B., Plyusnina, I., Ignacio, N., Schepina, O., Stepika, A., Wrangham, R., & Trut, L. (2005) Social Cognitive Evolution in Captive Foxes Is a Correlated By-Product of Experimental Domestication. Current Biology, 15(3), 226-230. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2005.01.040
- August 12, 2010
- 07:43 AM
- 818 views
Social Cognition in Polar Bears
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
In most zoos and animal parks, polar bears (ursus maritimus) attract such a disproportionate amount of attention that they are referred to in the industry as "charismatic megafauna," or in other words, "really cool animals." Perhaps it is because it is especially rare for the average zoo-goer to happen upon a polar bear in the wild, or because they live in such an inhospitable environment. Perhaps it's just because polar bears are so damn cute.
Maybe we should just blame Coca-Cola.
Whatever........ Read more »
Renner, M., & Kelly, A. (2006) Behavioral Decisions for Managing Social Distance and Aggression in Captive Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus). Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 9(3), 233-239. DOI: 10.1207/s15327604jaws0903_5
- August 11, 2010
- 01:58 PM
- 754 views
Is The Child The Father of the Man?
by Jason Goldman in Child's Play
One of the fundamental themes (and a continuing debate) in developmental psychology concerns the continuity or discontinuity of temperament and personality from infancy through the rest of a child’s life and into adulthood. Some researchers believe that they have found evidence for the continuity of relatively stable personality traits through development. Despite the clear importance [...]... Read more »
Schwartz, C. (2003) Inhibited and Uninhibited Infants "Grown Up": Adult Amygdalar Response to Novelty. Science, 300(5627), 1952-1953. DOI: 10.1126/science.1083703
Caspi, A. (2000) The child is father of the man: Personality continuities from childhood to adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(1), 158-172. DOI: 10.1037//0022-3514.78.1.158
- August 10, 2010
- 09:15 AM
- 536 views
Eat Yer Spinach! …and other tales from Bangkok
by Jason Goldman in Child's Play
As was pointed out this past weekend, even Cookie Monster readily admits that fruits and vegetables (especially eggplant, for Dr. Cookie) are important components of any healthy diet. Yet children and adults routinely consume far fewer servings of fruits and vegetables than are recommended. Recent data from Thailand suggests that preschoolers and school-age children eat [...]... Read more »
SIRIKULCHAYANONTA, C., IEDSEE, K., SHUAYTONG, P., & SRISORRACHATR, S. (2010) Using food experience, multimedia and role models for promoting fruit and vegetable consumption in Bangkok kindergarten children. Nutrition , 67(2), 97-101. DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-0080.2010.01426.x
- August 6, 2010
- 05:27 AM
- 376 views
Don’t Bite: Does Self Control Determine Class?
by Jason Goldman in Child's Play
Just to be clear, we’ll be talking here about class, folk psychology, and my high school math teacher. But as ever, I’ve buried the lead. Now for some recap, before we get on to the good stuff – In the last post, we found that the behavior exhibited in the classic cookie task is more [...]... Read more »
Hurtado N, Marchman VA, & Fernald A. (2008) Does input influence uptake? Links between maternal talk, processing speed and vocabulary size in Spanish-learning children. Developmental science, 11(6), 313-9. PMID: 19046145
Marchman VA, & Fernald A. (2008) Speed of word recognition and vocabulary knowledge in infancy predict cognitive and language outcomes in later childhood. Developmental science, 11(3). PMID: 18466367
Hoff, E. (2003) The Specificity of Environmental Influence: Socioeconomic Status Affects Early Vocabulary Development Via Maternal Speech. Child Development, 74(5), 1368-1378. DOI: 10.1111/1467-8624.00612
Huttenlocher, J., Haight, W., Bryk, A., Seltzer, M., & et al, . (1991) Early vocabulary growth: Relation to language input and gender. Developmental Psychology, 27(2), 236-248. DOI: 10.1037//0012-1649.27.2.236
Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. (1989) Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244(4907), 933-938. DOI: 10.1126/science.2658056
- August 4, 2010
- 09:25 PM
- 381 views
Don’t Bite: The Defenestration of Cookie
by Jason Goldman in Child's Play
III. Whither the Cookie Task? WARNING: What you are about to read may contain graphic statistical content. Side effects may include: contagious yawning, inappropriate arousal, and / or spontaneous combustion, depending on how you like your math cooked… darling. Psychologists often think about the cookie task as a test of cognitive control, and in keeping [...]... Read more »
Eigsti, I., Zayas, V., Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., Ayduk, O., Dadlani, M., Davidson, M., Aber, J., & Casey, B. (2006) Predicting Cognitive Control From Preschool to Late Adolescence and Young Adulthood. Psychological Science, 17(6), 478-484. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01732.x
Peake PK, Mischel W, & Hebl M. (2002) Strategic attention deployment for delay of gratification in working and waiting situations. Developmental psychology, 38(2), 313-26. PMID: 11881765
Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. (1989) Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244(4907), 933-938. DOI: 10.1126/science.2658056
- August 2, 2010
- 03:15 PM
- 793 views
Monday Pets: How Anteaters Decide
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
"But wait," you say. "Anteaters aren't pets!" Well, I didn't think so either. But Salvador Dali had a pet anteater. And that's good enough for me.
Figure 1: Salvador Dali taking his pet anteater for a stroll. (Source)
The Giant Anteater, Myrmecophaga tridactyla, only eats ants and termites, making it a myrmecophage. (Hey, Alex Wild, now I get what Myrmecos means!) In 1984, a researcher named Kent Redford was interested in the foraging behaviors of the giant anteater, and the relationship betw........ Read more »
KENT H. REDFORD. (1985) Feeding and food preference in captive and wild Giant anteaters (Myrmecophaga tridactyla). Journal of Zoology, 559-572. info:/
- July 26, 2010
- 10:00 AM
- 1,102 views
A horse is a horse, of course of course
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
In general, the ability to attribute attention to others seems important: it allows an animal to notice the presence of other individuals (whether conspecifics, prey, or predators) as well as important locations or events by following the body orientation or eyegaze of others. We've spent a lot of time here at The Thoughtful Animal thinking about how domestication has allowed dogs to occupy a unique niche in the social lives of humans. They readily understand human communication cues such as eye........ Read more »
Proops, L., & McComb, K. (2009) Attributing attention: the use of human-given cues by domestic horses (Equus caballus). Animal Cognition, 13(2), 197-205. DOI: 10.1007/s10071-009-0257-5
- July 14, 2010
- 07:45 AM
- 754 views
Yawn! Yawn! Yawn! Yawn! Yawn! Contagious Yawn!
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
It's been a pretty long stressful week around here, and not just because of Pepsipocalypse and the resulting fallout. But, well, I'm back, and I have an awesome paper to tell you about. When I saw it I just KNEW it had to be blogged.
Mythbuster Adam Savage sets the yawning in motion in Mythbusters attempts to start a yawning epidemic across the globe
Did watching that video make you yawn? Chances are it did, and you can thank contagious yawning for it. What is contagious yawning? Contagious y........ Read more »
Joly-Mascheroni, R., Senju, A., & Shepherd, A. (2008) Dogs catch human yawns. Biology Letters, 4(5), 446-448. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0333
- June 21, 2010
- 08:30 AM
- 1,131 views
Monday Pets: Caring For Babies and Pets
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Happy Father's Day, everyone!
I spent a lot of time today thinking back to why I started blogging in the first place, while I was at my parents house doing the other-than-science things that I love to do: playing with the dog, cooking, gardening. I realized that I've not done enough of that stuff lately.
I've only been seriously doing the blog thing (in the current format) since January, and I've now been here at Scienceblogs around two months, so it was time to reflect. The transition from ........ Read more »
Sherman, G., Haidt, J., & Coan, J. (2009) Viewing cute images increases behavioral carefulness. Emotion, 9(2), 282-286. DOI: 10.1037/a0014904
- June 18, 2010
- 07:49 AM
- 982 views
A Cup for your Pup: Friday Weird Science Companion Post
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Once upon a Thursday night, blog bff Scicurious asked a particular blogger named Jason if he had access to a paper titled, Contraceptive efficacy of polyester-induced azoospermia in normal men. "I certainly hope so," he said. And so he logged in to his university's library proxy website, and searched for the paper.
She said, "PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me you have access to this article" and then "it's about ball sacks I MUST HAVE IT." As it happens, he did have institutional access. So Jason do........ Read more »
Shafik A. (1993) Effect of different types of textile fabric on spermatogenesis: an experimental study. Urological research, 21(5), 367-70. PMID: 8279095
- June 16, 2010
- 07:45 AM
- 1,043 views
How Specific Are The Social Skills of Dogs?
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Dogs are particularly good at tasks that involve communicating or cooperating with humans, which has led some researchers to speculate that they are really good at solving social tasks, more generally. For example, dogs can figure out where a human's attention is, are really good at picking up on eye-gaze and finger pointing cues, distinguish among different individual humans (by contrast, humans are really bad at distinguishing among different individual monkeys, for example), and at least in o........ Read more »
Wobber, V., & Hare, B. (2009) Testing the social dog hypothesis: Are dogs also more skilled than chimpanzees in non-communicative social tasks?. Behavioural Processes, 81(3), 423-428. DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2009.04.003
- June 14, 2010
- 02:37 PM
- 783 views
BlogCast: How Useful is Self-Report?
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
If you're a regular reader of Peter and Travis's blog, Obesity Panacea, you may have heard one of their semi-regular blogcasts. Well, since Peter is traveling the world (read about it here), Travis asked me to join him for a blogcast. While discussing topics that we could discuss, a sent a few links and papers his way, and he was like "ugh, self-report." And I was like, "dude, self-report makes the world go around."
Okay, so the conversation may not have gone exactly like that, but the outcome........ Read more »
Schwarz, N. (1999) Self-reports: How the questions shape the answers. American Psychologist, 54(2), 93-105. DOI: 10.1037//0003-066X.54.2.93
- June 14, 2010
- 07:37 AM
- 1,211 views
Monday Pets: The Russian Fox Study
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
I've decided I want to cover some recent research on social cognition in domesticated dogs. But first, we need some background. So here's a repost from the old blog.
Today I want to tell you about one of my most favorite studies, ever, of animals. Are you ready? It's a FIFTY YEAR LONG longitudinal study of captive silver foxes in Russia. Gather around, pour yourself a cup of your favorite beverage, get comfortable, and enjoy storytime.
In 1948, Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev lost his job at t........ Read more »
Belyaev, DK. (1969) Domestication of animals. Science, 5(1), 47-52. info:/
Trut, L. (1999) Early Canid Domestication: The Farm-Fox Experiment. American Scientist, 87(2), 160. DOI: 10.1511/1999.2.160
- June 11, 2010
- 08:26 AM
- 1,160 views
A Bonobo in the Hand or Two Chimps in the Bush?
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Bonobo Week continues! I'm donating whatever proceeds I receive from my blogging shenanigans for the entire month of June to help the bonobos at Lola Ya Bonobo.
Imagine that you're wandering in the desert and you come across two magic lamps. One lamp grants three wishes. It's your standard sort of magic lamp with a genie in it. (No wishing for extra wishes, of course.) The second magic lamp is, well, a moody magic lamp. It's inconsistent. Sometimes it grants one wish, and sometimes it grants se........ Read more »
Heilbronner, S., Rosati, A., Stevens, J., Hare, B., & Hauser, M. (2008) A fruit in the hand or two in the bush? Divergent risk preferences in chimpanzees and bonobos. Biology Letters, 4(3), 246-249. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0081
- June 9, 2010
- 08:30 AM
- 1,263 views
Bonobos Share Their Food
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Bonobo Week continues! I'm donating whatever proceeds I receive from my blogging shenanigans for the entire month of June to help the bonobos at Lola Ya Bonobo.
Primate researchers used to think that only humans voluntarily share their own food with others. At the time, it was a reasonable conclusion to make, since lots of studies indicated that chimps don't. But that was before anyone checked to see if bonobos were willing to share their food with others.
Read the rest of this post... | Read........ Read more »
Hare, B., & Kwetuenda, S. (2010) Bonobos voluntarily share their own food with others. Current Biology, 20(5). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.12.038
- June 4, 2010
- 07:54 AM
- 902 views
Just How Bad Is Porn, Anyway?
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
This morning I was going through new blog posts and whatnot in Google Reader when I came across this interesting little morsel:
On June 12, 2010, a bunch of people are going to gather in Boston to discuss how pornography exploits women, breeds hatred, turns men into monsters and generally destroys lives and civilizations...
I cruised on over to the conference's main website. It says:
Our second national conference will once again bring together activists, researchers, survivors, parents, and ........ Read more »
Hald, G., & Malamuth, N. (2007) Self-Perceived Effects of Pornography Consumption. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 37(4), 614-625. DOI: 10.1007/s10508-007-9212-1
Štulhofer, A., Buško, V., & Landripet, I. (2008) Pornography, Sexual Socialization, and Satisfaction Among Young Men. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39(1), 168-178. DOI: 10.1007/s10508-008-9387-0
Malamuth NM, Addison T, & Koss M. (2000) Pornography and sexual aggression: are there reliable effects and can we understand them?. Annual review of sex research, 26-91. PMID: 11351835
- June 1, 2010
- 07:42 AM
- 1,330 views
Polygamous Males Have Larger...Hippocampi!
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
It should not come as a surprise to the regular reader of this blog that a lot can be learned about animal cognition by simply observing animal behavior. But can observing animal behavior lead the observer to make inferences about brain anatomy? Can observing animal behavior tell us something about the evolution of the brain?
Figure 1: Like the raccoon says.
Let's say you have two very very closely related species. You might even call them congeneric, because they are from the same taxonomic ........ Read more »
Jacobs, L. (1990) Evolution of Spatial Cognition: Sex-Specific Patterns of Spatial Behavior Predict Hippocampal Size. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 87(16), 6349-6352. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.87.16.6349
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