Thread by @suzyjstyles

I’m co-teaching Cognitive Psych for the first time in *years*. What with growing recognition of WEIRD+ biases in psych, it didn’t seem right to just teach the studies in the textbook without some broader context… so here’s where we started last week 1/

We’re studying in Singapore, so it is super important that our students know the research they are reading about might not align with their own experiences or certain aspects of their cognitive processing

To give a #ConcreteExample, I like to start with an example from medicine, where the majority of research into pain relief was initiated in animal models where only MALE MICE were tested (because 🙄 ‘hormones’)…

Turns out that the experience of pain is regulated by TWO completely separate pathways, and one pathway is dominant in the presence of female sex hormones… This persistent bias means current pain meds were designed to handle a male-specific type of pain!

So this will be our ‘framing perspective’ for the semester. Here is the data that has been previously described - but maybe it doesn’t describe everyone.

Now when we look at data like Rosch’s prototype model of category structure, we can look at the data from US in the 1970s, but we can also talk concretely about how ROBIN is not the birdie at bird where we are!

And our class project will be a semi-systematic review designed to find gaps in the existing literature, and propose a replication that would help find out about the generalisability of a Cog psych finding!

I’m so excited for our class to be a little bit less focussed on The Facts (TM) and a little more open to individual differences and diversity science!

gah! typos! *birdiest bird

thread continues here:

https://twitter.com/suzyjstyles/status/1505113748490842114

UPDATE: The perspective is paying off! Yesterday’s lecture topic (as per the syllabus) was Mental Imagery. Seemed a bit peculiar to spend a whole week talking about theories of the visuo-spatial nature of imagery when afantasia exists… so…

What’s afantasia? Oh it’s when people are asked to imagine something, like ‘a beach’ or ‘a green square’, and most people describe their experience as being quite like looking at the thing (even if not entirely the same)…

…but for some people there’s no image at all - that’s afantasia!
One of the most interesting things is that most people who *have* mental imagery don’t know afantasia exists, and most people who *have* afantasia don’t know that other people actually have images in their head!

So before we went into decades of research into the spatial/non-spatial theories of mental imagery, mental rotation, and the benefits of imagery for paired associate learning, we did a little afantasia / aphantasia test!

So I made a wee @padlet with an old Reddit post about image intensity, and everybody used 💜 to indicate what best represents their percept for an imagined ‘red star’
1. no image
2. faint/unstable
3. outline
4. shape no colour
5. not very vivid
6. vivid
>6. more elaborate

And even though I knew what to expect, it was still stunning for me (a person with visual imagery) to discover we have six people taking the class synchronously who have no visual images!!!
Here they are discovering that ‘minds eye’ metaphors are not just metaphors for others 🥰

So now when we contrast historic Theories about imagery, I am able to lecture dynamically to two groups of students - for people WITH mental imagery, the Quasi-pictorial view makes sense (the idea that mental imagery has visuospatial content)…

… and for people WITHOUT mental imagery the Propositional account is more meaningful (thoughts don’t need visual or spatial information to include content, so perhaps there isn’t really a visual component).

And when we get into effects on memory and learning, we can look at the research that we do have evidence for (yellow) and the research that HAS NOT YET BEEN DONE (orange)!

And I LOVE to be able to say this to my students:
If you don’t see yourself in these data… If your way of experiencing the world isn’t in the textbook…
If your’re not reflected in the participants of the research you read…

…then science NEEDS YOU!

🤦🏻‍♀️typos abound *you’re

FOOTNOTES!
Just to clarify - science need ppl who are currently underrepresented not simply as the *subjects* of research designed by WEIRD+ scholars, with all of the WEIRD+ things they believe are interesting to study…
(as this can be a way of further entrenching bias)

👉🏻 Rather, science needs underrepresented and non-WEIRD scholars to bring their perspectives to the design and direction of research that is relevant to them!

For example, in their @Einstein_Berlin award nominated proposal, @PeersDanielle, Lindsay Eales, Kristen Snoddon and @AubrechtKatie proposed co-creation of scientific research with disabled communities, so their life experiences and world views are part of the research agenda 🔥

👉🏻Science needs to TRAIN AND RETAIN top talent with a broad range of human experiences…

As an example, following his @Einstein_Berlin nominated proposal on developing resource infrastructure for African scientists, @psforscher has written recently on the need for more funding for capacity building outside of the Western contexts

springernature.com/gp/researchers…