​GRUNT:  The Curious Science of Humans at War
Author:  Mary Roach
ISBN:  978-0-393-24544-8
 
APA Style Citation:
Roach, M (2016). GRUNT:  The Curious Science of Humans at War.  New York, New York.  W.W. Norton and Company, Inc.

Book Description
Mary Roach has added to her prodigious collection of publications with her latest venture into the world of military science.  Roach approaches her first book on the military with a unique and humorous twist as she does with all of her projects.  She delves into the jobs of those conducting scientific research for the military, some fighting dysentery, others investigating shark repellent and even a captain at the army medical research lab who has injected himself with snake venom to test the possibility of building immunity to it.  Perhaps the most interesting is Ernest Crocker who develops foul smelling odors to drive enemies from their hiding spaces.  Roach puts a public face on the often-unsung heroes who work behind the scenes to protect the lives of those on the front lines.   
 
Roach meets up with Annette La Fleur who designs flame resistant uniforms for snipers.  Because snipers may spend hours lying on the ground, the current suits have zippers on the side to make them more accessible and comfortable.  The coated backing La Fleur used, keeps moisture from seeping through and the pockets have been placed onto the sleeves for easier access. Annette LaFleur is designing uniforms that work for the people using them and she takes feedback, which she then incorporates into future designs, much like human factors psychologists design products that work effectively for those using the products.  In addition to the snipers suits, she has designed mittens with one glove like finger to accommodate firing a weapon effectively in very cold weather, of a concealable armor vest, a far cry for the swim suits she designed at the start of her fashion career, but in both form follows function.  While the American military has yet to create bomb proof underwear as their British counterparts, they have found that spider silk is naturally breathable but unlike cotton it has a strength to density ratio better than that of steel and if exposed to an explosive device, this silks will not fragment and leave bits and pieces in the wound that often gather bacteria and cause infection. 
 
Helicopter pilots are regularly exposed to sounds over a 100 decibels (a Blackhawk helicopter 106 decibels).  85 decibels is the point at which the human ear can be exposed to sounds without experiencing any hearing loss, but beyond this, the sounds become exponentially more damaging.  If solider experience significant hearing loss because of this or other exposure to loud noises, they may place both themselves and the others in their unit in danger.  To fix this, one might recommend that the military hand out millions of ear plugs each year, but these will muddle the external sounds and soldiers need to hear in order to be safe.  Hearing poses a real threat while in the field, if soldiers on a patrol are too close together they risk becoming a target for the enemy, if they are too far apart; they risk not being able to communicate with one another.  50 to 60% of information about one’s current situation comes from the hearing, so this is essential in combat situations.  Roach tries out the military’s current solution to this called TCAPS (Tactical Communication and Protective System).  Incoming noises are analyzed and quiet ones are amplified while loud ones are reproduced more quietly.  TCAPS also has radio capability but these are not in general use because they are expensive to produce and soldiers are concerned that they will simply be given more equipment to carry around that is often broken and useless.  Those in special operations are more likely to experience hearing loss because of the time they spend around explosive and artillery.
 
Stuart Segal runs Stu Sewall productions, which is set up to train military personal for combat situations.  This means creating situations as similar as possible to the real situation. Roach attends training on a day in which Segall has created a simulation of an attack in an Afghan village.  The scene includes a market, mud bricks buildings (it had goats but Segall got tired of feeding them each day).  Those in the role-play have silicone prostheses that include bone fragments and will even bleed to lend to the credibility of the situation.  Ironically, the company that creates these limbs is called “missing something”.  Segall and others scream at trainees during the simulation to ensure that this situation seems real.  The sympathetic nervous system of the trainees is in fight or flight mode and they must learn to operate under these conditions in order to be certain that they perform well in an actual combat situation.  It is extremely stressful for the trainees but this ultimately makes for a better functioning military.
 
Roach also visits the nuclear submarine Tennessee, those who work on submarine are chronically sleep deprived because submarine work generally divides a 24 hour day into six hour shifts, sailors work two of these, have one for free time and another for sleep, at least one hour of shift is done while the body feels it should be sleeping. During the six hours of sleep, sailors may be woken for a drill or for to man their post for someone boarding or if they are going to the surface. Those who are sleep deprived operate as if they were under the influence of intoxicating drugs and gradual sleep deprivation such as six hours over a period of two weeks can be as cognitively dangerous as those who had been awake for 48-hours straight.  Staying awake for 24 hours straight can reduce cognitive activity by as much as 25%.   The military has looked for ways to allow soldiers to stay awake for long periods without experiencing the deleterious effects. Nathanial Kleitman spent thirty-two days in Kentucky’s Mammoth caves to determine how circadian rhythms would be impacted by a lack of sleep and wake cycles. The caves had no signals for light and dark much like life on a submarine.  The military has tried three separate shifts as a way of dealing with sleep deprivation and cutting the work time for individuals but this became isolating because sailors did not see their friends on others shifts and the limited space on the ship used for meals and social activities needed to be open constantly for meal to accommodate the multiple shifts.  The military is now working on developing goggles that emit melatonin suppressing light waves to fool one into thinking it is day time and help with staying awake when one’s body believes we should be sleeping. Even traditional boot camps schedules interfere with circadian rhythms because for the young recruits lights out at 10:00 and waking at 4:00 counters the production of melatonin, which aids sleep and is produced later in younger individuals.
Roach approaches this book as she does all of her books, with interesting stories and amusing anecdotes backed by strong scientific research.  She celebrates these individuals who support the men and women on the front line and contribute to saving lives as much as those who are in the trenches.
 
Other Related Resources
Mary Roach introduces Grunt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfrGhatevvs
 
Mary Roach quizzing people on military jargon
http://maryroach.net/videos.html
 
Live Science:  Question and answer session with author Mary Roach about Grunt
http://www.livescience.com/54987-grunt-military-science-mary-roach-interview.html
 
Wire Magazine:  Crotch Explosions, severed heads, and pee cups:  Yep it’s Mary Roach on the Science of War
http://www.livescience.com/54987-grunt-military-science-mary-roach-interview.html
 
Mary Roach:  Science Friday
http://www.sciencefriday.com/person/mary-roach-2/
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
William Dement
Nathanial Kleitman
Adrenaline
Circadian dysrhythmia
Circadian rhythm
Conformity
Conduction hearing loss
Cortical
CT scan
Dark adaptation
Dissociation
Electroocullograph
Fight-or-flight response
Glucose
Melatonin
Motor skill
Phantom limb syndrome
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Prefrontal cortex
REM sleep
Sleep deprivation
Spinal nerve
Stage 1 sleep
Sympathetic nervous system

Reflex
Author:  Steven Gould
ISBN:  978-0812578546

APA Style Citation
Gould, S. (2005).  Reflex. New York, New York:  A Tor Book.

Blog Contributor: Joseph Swope, PhD
Institution: Northwest High School
Germantown, Maryland
Website:  http://swopepsych.com/
Email: joeswope3@gmail.com

​Book Description
In Gould’s novel, the character David Rice can teleport to anywhere at anytime. He does not know how or why but with barely a thought he can simply “jump” from one place to another, as long as he has been to that destination before.  David lives a quiet, prosocial life off the grid with Millie, his clinical psychologist wife.  He “jumps” all over the world helping famine relief efforts, our government’s humanitarian efforts, and even the local homeless population.
 
Of course not, everyone would use such an ability for altruism and social justice.  A well-funded paramilitary organization with possible ties to our government kidnaps David.  How do you contain someone who can teleport? You condition him to return reflexively to a certain spot.  Through masterfully insidious training methods, David learns the only safe place is the “box” his captors have designed for him.  Against his will, he finds himself gradually being molded by the conditioning regimen. 
 
With certain aspects of our government not acknowledging that David exists and other aspects competing for his abilities, Millie’s only ally is a homeless woman who was a witness to David’s abduction.
 
Note: This book is the sequel to the book, Jumper that was made into a movie. This book stands head and should above its prequel, in terms of both the quality of the writing and the depth of the story.
 
Other Related Resources

Psychological Figures and Concepts
Acquisition
Antipsychotic Medication
Aversive Conditioning
Avoidance Learning
Chaining
Classical Conditioning
Clinical Psychology
Conditioned Response
Conditioned Stimulus
Continuous Reinforcement
Differential Reinforcement
Negative Punishment
Negative Reinforcement
Neutral Stimulus
Positive Punishment
Positive Reinforcement
Shaping
Sleep Deprivation
Successive Approximation
Tardive Dyskinesia
Unconditioned Stimulus
Unconditioned Response
 
 

Ambler Warning
Author:  Robert Ludlum
ISBN:  978-0312990695
  
APA Style Citation
Ludlum, R. (2006).  Ambler Warning. New York, New York:  St. Martin’s Paperbacks.

​Blog Contributor: Joseph Swope, PhD
Institution: Northwest High School
Germantown, Maryland
Website:  http://swopepsych.com/
Email:  joeswope3@gmail.com

Book Description
This is a fiction book that explores and uses many of the concepts in a psychology class to hook the reader.  Imagine Paul Ekman and Jason Bourne combined into one super spy.
People are communicating machines.  More than any other trait it is our ability to communicate that defines us.  While language is critical, what about the other messages, signals, and signs that help us read each other?  Paul Ekman has spent his career showing us that our facial muscles are hardwired to our emotional processing modules of our brain.  Most people have some ability to read the expressions and thus the emotions of others.  What if there was a person who was so good at it, so intuitive, he could read others’ intentions before they consciously knew what they themselves were going to do?
 
Hal Ambler wakes up in a psychiatric hospital designed for former clandestine agents who are deemed too unstable to walk free with government secrets.  Worse than the restraints and forced medications is the fact that he has no memory of himself or why he is trapped.
Using his gifts at reading peoples’ expressions, body language, and voice cues, Hal Ambler begins to unlock not only the cause of his confinement but also the reason for his amnesia.  With each question answered more spring up until he doubts his name, his recently uncovered memories, and even his very sense of self.  Did his amnesia come from a past event or was it forced upon him by those who don’t trust him?  For a man who can read others effortlessly, having no knowledge of himself is torture in and of itself.
 
Note: While this was ghost written and probably not the best book with Ludlum’s name on it if you want a great read that might also hook your students, this book is fun.
 
Note: This book does not explicitly teach psychology to the reader. Still, for students who want to see what might be possible by applying concepts in their textbook, this book could be the hook that draws the into the curriculum.

Other Related Resources
http://www.paulekman.com/micro-expression-training/
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Loftus
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Paul Ekman
Brain Washing
Amnesia
Bottom-Up Processing
Deduction
Display Rules
Duchenne Smile
Emotional Control
Implanted Memory
Intuition
Involuntary Committal
Micro Expression
Mirror Neuron
Neuroleptic
Psychiatric Hospital
Retrograde Amnesia
Somatic Nervous System
Stockholm Syndrome
Top-Down Processing

​The Invisible Gorilla:  And Others Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
Author(s):  Christopher Chabis and Daniel Simons
ISBN:  978-0307-459-664
 
APA Style Citation
Chabis and Simons (2010).  The Invisible Gorilla:  And Others Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us.  New York:  Crown. 

​Book Description
The authors of The Invisible Gorilla created the now infamous selective attention task in which observers are asked to keep track of how many times a basketball team passes a ball between the members.  While observers are focused on watching and counting, a gorilla walks into scene, bangs on his chest and walks out.  Due to the phenomenon of inattentional blindness, many people miss the gorilla because they selectively attending to the basketball passes and they cannot effectively focus on both at the same time.  When the tasks are over, most people are confident about the number of passes that occurred, without realizing they have entirely missed the gorilla.  The Invisible Gorilla investigates everyday illusions that lead to incorrect conclusions or decisions.
 
Attention:  People generally cannot split attention effectively.  The more tasks in which a person is engaged, the worse they perform on each task.  Dichotic listening studies in which an individual is asked to monitor two different conversations simultaneously, and recall details about each one illustrates the difficulties of divided attention.  The participant can focus on one conversation or the other but performs poorly at recalling details from both conversations.  More recent research has found no benefit to driving with a hands-free device because even though one is not holding the phone attention is still divided between talking and driving, and one of the tasks will inevitably experience a reduction in performance.  TSA agents often miss illegal items because their attention is excessively divided as they attempt to search simultaneously for a wide array of objects because they cannot attend to all of the possibilities perhaps they would be better served to focus on a few very dangerous items rather than 3 ounces of shampoo.
 
Memory:  Think of a memory you have about a significant event in your life.  You may be recalling when you first saw your spouse on your wedding day or when you received your diploma on your graduation day.  These flashbulb memories are vivid and clear but are likely not as accurate as we may believe.  Hilary Clinton claimed to recall landing in Bosnia under direct fire, but video footage of that trip showed a small child greeting her with flowers upon her arrival which was anything but dangerous.  More recently, news anchor Brain Williams had a similar false recollection of being in a helicopter which took on enemy fire once again the memory was proved incorrect by others accounts.  While these memories likely seemed to be quite real to Clinton and Williams and they were not purposely (likely) lying, what they believed had occurred was quite different from what had occurred.   In a now well-known case of mistaken identity, Ronald Cotton was found guilty and sent to prison based solely on the testimony of his accuser who was certain that she was identifying the person who raped her.  DNA evidence would later exonerate Cotton, much to the initial confusion of his accuser who was certain that she had identified the proper individual the first time.  Gary Wells a professor at Iowa State University, who warns people about those who confidently report out their experiences, works with police departments to let them know the dangers and fallibility of eyewitness testimony to reduce the likelihood that the wrong person is accused of a crime.
 
Confidence:  Regardless of how confident one is about a decision or recollection, confidence does not make one’s memories or decisions any more accurate that those that are made with some hesitation.  Doctors often make recommendations to patients about medication or surgery based on their experience in the field which at first makes good sense as the patient often has little knowledge themselves of medical case studies.  Doctors, however, will see maladies which they have not seen previously or have seen only in a few instances.  Regardless of their relatively low level of knowledge with these cases, doctors will likely still make a recommendation to the patient with a high degree of confidence when they should qualify a recommendation by telling the patient that this is the first or one of the only cases of this sort they have seen.  Clearly, this can be dangerous because patients are making decisions that may involve life or death based on their physician’s recommendation. 
When chess players who competed on a national circuit were asked about their current rankings, most believed that they had been ranked too low.  Chess rankings are based on the results of all of the games an individual has played, so, in reality, the competitors are ranked accurately.  A follow-up study one year later was conducted to determine if the ranking of these individuals had increased as the players believed they should. In almost every case the rankings remained virtually the same and the confidence that the chess players had in their improved ranking was not warranted.  We tend to do this to protect our self-esteem; the self-serving bias occurs when we take credit for our success and blame others for our failures.  When something goes well, it is likely that we will attribute this to our outstanding skill, but when something goes wrong, we are likely to attribute it to a mistake.  When asked a question about their competency, 75% of American men claimed they were more competent than the average person while 57% of American women claimed the same.  This tendency toward self-serving bias is not uniquely American, 70% of Canadians claimed to be more competent than average. 
 
Knowledge:  We tend to overestimate what we know. Those who speak first often become leaders not because they are correct more often than others but simply because they have spoken up first.  A dominant personality is more likely to come off to others as confident, and others will follow.  This leads the individual to believe that people are following them because they are right.
It is possible to become more accurate in estimations of our abilities. As people become more competent in a particular area, they become more accurate estimators of their abilities. If someone was a highly ranked tennis player, they should be aware of what they do well and what they are still working on when playing a match.  They should be able to fairly accurately estimate their level of play, but this ability would not transfer to how they would perform in a game of badminton even though the individual often believes this to be true.
Cause:  Correlation does not prove causation; random acts often do not seem random.  If one flips a coin and receives heads ten times running, they might be inclined to believe that the next toss will be tails.  Each event is completely separate from the next, so each coin toss essentially has a 50% chance of winding up heads.  In the gambler’s fallacy, if red comes up on a roulette wheel seven times in a row, gamblers are more likely to place their next wagers on black thinking that it must be “due”, but like a coin toss, each spin of the roulette wheel is completely separate from the prior spin and the past results have no bearing on the current spin of the wheel.
 
Knowing about these illusions may be the first step to overcoming the dangers in decision-making they present.  Be wary of your intuitions, mental systems work well, but the complexity of modern society exceeds the capacity of one’s intuition.  Watch for gorillas in your midst and be more cautious about your memories, confidence that you know more about a topic than you do, or jumping to causal explanations for correlational events.  Mindful reflection and decision-making may lead to a more accurate view of the world around you and result in better outcomes.
 
Other Related Resources
 
Book website: Outstanding website including videos on change blindness and selective attention as well as Ted talks and less well known tests of selective attention
http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html
 
The Invisible Gorilla Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtKt8YF7dgQ
 
Continuity problems in movies which most people miss
http://www.moviemistakes.com/best/continuity
 
The Moonwalking Bear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4
 
But Did You See the Gorilla?  The Problem with Inattentional Blindness:  Smithsonian Magazine
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/science-nature/but-did-you-see-the-gorilla-the-problem-with-inattentional-blindness-17339778/
 
Bet You Didn’t Notice (NPR podcast)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126977945
 
Ted Talk:  Seeing the world as it Isn’t (Daniel Simons)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Il_D3Xt9W0
 
Disillusionment:  American Scientist
http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/disillusionment
 
Picking Cotton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2oDRfj0vME
Brain Games:  National Geographic:  Are you a good multitasker?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkBa5oHXgsE
 
Hilary Clinton error in recalling landing in Bosnia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BfNqhV5hg4
 
Brian Williams error recalling being “under fire”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/television/2015/02/brian_william_s_false_memories_of_rpg_fire_in_iraq_will_nbc_hold_its_anchor.html
 
Article on the Invisible Gorilla
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323514404578651980718947350
 
Video on the Invisible Gorilla
Video clip of gorilla CT scan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBbRNy60RAM
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Elizabeth Loftus
Herbert Simon
Gary Wells
Causation
Confirmation Bias
Correlation
Eyewitness Memory
Flashbulb Memory
Gambler’s Fallacy
Hindsight Bias
Human Genome Project
Inattentional Blindness
Multitasking
Overconfidence
Selective Attention
Self-Serving Bias
Sensory Memory
Signal Detection Theory
 
 

​A Tour of the Senses:  How Your Brain Interprets the World
Author:  John M. Henshaw
ISBN: 13:  978-1-4214-0436-3
 
APA Style Citation
Henshaw, John M. (2014). A Tour of the Senses:  How Your Brain Interprets the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

​​Book Description
Often, one of the most difficult units in an introductory psychology course is sensation and perception.  A Tour of the Senses provides an excellent source of supplemental materials to accompany this portion of the psychology curriculum.  This highly engaging book offers detailed explanations of difficult concepts, interesting stories, current and historical research, and simple classroom appropriate demonstrations for each of the senses. The author, John M. Henshaw is a department chair and professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Tulsa.  Because A Tour of the Senses is written by an engineering professor, it provides excellent insight into the field of human factors psychology.  The book is divided into three main parts:  Stimulus, Sensation, and Perception and covers all of the various senses in exceptional detail. 
 
Stimulus
The section on stimuli is divided into electromagnetic stimuli, chemical stimuli, mechanical stimuli, and the overall science of sensation.  In each of these sections, the author provides explanations of the various types of stimuli that reach our sensory receptors.  There are also many interesting accounts of how stimuli are received and perceived differently by other species as well as remarkable cases of humans using senses typically associated with other organisms.  The wide range of animal senses, which differ from human senses in both type and range of ability is examined in the book.  Detailed accounts of the unique abilities of certain organisms such as echolocating bats, ultraviolet radiation sensing honeybees, and snakes that can detect heat waves would all be interesting topics for discussion at the beginning of the sensation unit.  The most unusual animal sense discussed is that of the narwhal, a type of whale with a long, slender, conical shaped tusk reaching up to 9 feet in length.  Although there have been many theories throughout history as to the purpose of this unique appendage (icebreaking, fishing, weapon), the actual answer is even more bizarre.  The tusk is, in fact, the left front tooth of the animal.  The tusk tooth, which is covered with nerve endings, is a sense organ likely capable of detecting changes in the saltiness, temperature changes and pressure changes in the water.  
The opening section details the remarkable story of Ben Underwood, a blind young man who taught himself to see using echolocation.  There are many short videos on Ben’s case available online (see additional resources). There are also exceptional descriptions of difficult concepts such as additive and subtractive color mixing and the just noticeable difference.  An interesting aspect of this section is the detailed attention the author gives to the stimuli responsible for senses such as olfaction, gustation, vestibular, proprioception, which unlike vision and audition are often not given much attention in introductory psychology textbooks. 
 
Sensation
The large section on sensation focuses on how the different sensory organs in humans and other animals have evolved to take in information from the environment.  The process of transduction for each of the sense is discussed in detail, including how the information travels from the sense organs as an electrical signal to various areas of the brain responsible for perception.  The vision section provides a simple demo for illustrating the limited range of the fovea that each student could do individually.  Students should place a quarter over the words on a page so that they can read the lettering above George Washington’s head.  Have students focus on the quarter and without moving their eyes attempt to read the words on either side of the coin.  Typically, it is difficult to identify more than a word or two on either side of the coin due to the limited range of foveal vision.  Although they will be aware of words, they will not be able to read them if they are truly focusing on the quarter. 
 
The importance of visual acuity in relationship to professional athletics is discussed, highlighting how much this sense is responsible for success at the highest levels.  In golf, where athletes can enjoy a much longer career span, declines in vision often lead to the end of a career.  Many top golfers such as Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh have had laser eye surgery to increase their visual acuity to twenty-fifteen or better to improve their putting ability.  In other sports such as baseball, tennis, and football exceptional vision is often one of the aspects that separate the best in the sport from others. In recent years, more and more top athletes have begun incorporating eye exercises to train the muscles that control eye movement. 
 
The chemical senses are explored in great detail and also include various disorders related to problems with smell and taste.  The taste section includes demos and detailed information about supertasters, sensory interaction, and the history of the search for an effective sugar substitute. Anosmia or the complete absence of smell is likely present in 2 million Americans.  The loss of smell that occurs as part of the aging process is called Presbyosmia.  Some individuals experience an overly sensitive sense of smell (hyperosmia) and others with parosmia sense as unpleasant what many others perceive to be pleasing scents.  The use of dogs and other animals whose sense of smell is greater than humans is explored in terms of how animals have been successfully trained to find explosives, bodies, and drugs. Dogs have been trained to complete “dog-scent lineups” which may be used in court.
 
The book refers to audition, touch, pain, temperature, balance, and bodily awareness (kinesthesis) as mechanical senses because these are generally activated by the energy of motion or kinetic energy.  Audition, on the other hand, involves the transduction of vibrating (motion) air molecules, balance and body position are connected to the movement of the head and body, and the sense of touch typically involves the movement of one surface over another.  The most detailed section relates to hearing, and the book examines the structure of the inner ear from an engineering perspective.  There are also excellent explanations for various types of hearing loss and solutions designed to assist individuals with these disabilities.  As in other areas of the book, examples of animals with exceptional sensory abilities are examined to find ways to engineer artificial senses for human use. Research regarding touch and pressure sensation has led to advances in robotics including surgical applications.
The vestibular sense is especially quick at interpreting the position of the head.  If you shake your head from side to side while reading this text, you are still easily able to focus on the words and read the material due to what is called the vestibular-ocular reflex.  The vestibular-ocular reflex is a sophisticated coordination between the vestibular sense and the muscles that position the eyes.  If you keep your head and eyes stationary and move the book from side to side, however, you will not be able to read the text as well. Just as there are hearing and vision tests given by doctors, there are also tests for the vestibular sense.  Doctors examine patients for balance related problems by using the “rapid head impulse test” explained in the book.  One of the most interesting sections is how sensory illusions can impact pilots.  As a result of these common illusions, pilots must trust their instruments because their perception has been disrupted by errors in vestibular perception.  Problems with proprioception are rare but also possible. Without proprioception, no movement can ever be automatic, and even simple actions such as sitting up, walking, or holding a cup become incredibly difficult.
 
Perception
The final section of the book details how perception occurs in the brain including various examples of perception problems due to problems in the brain as opposed to problems in sensory organs.  There are methods for enhancing or replacing human sense organs and sending information directly to the brain.  One of the first perceptual issues discussed is the problem with recognizing faces. Some people are exceptionally good at remembering faces, and other have little or no ability in this area.  Those who are very skilled at facial recognition are sometimes referred to as super-recognizers.   On the lower end of the curve is a condition called prosopagnosia or “face blindness” in which individuals have difficulty recognizing faces including friends, family, or even their own face.  Prosopagnosia may be present from birth or acquired as a result of damage to the area of the brain that specializes in facial recognition. Individuals with face blindness may need to use the less sensitive object recognition systems in the brain.  Face blindness is estimated to impact approximately 2% of the population with more than 6 million individuals experiencing dramatic impairment.  Also, some individuals suffer from an even less well-understood condition called phonagnosia, which is essentially the sound equivalent of face blindness.  For example, these individuals can identify general features of a voice on the phone (e.g. gender, age, pitch, accent) and can understand what is being said, but do not recognize the person who is speaking even if it is a close friend or family member.  Phonagnosia involves a perceptual problem specifically related to damage in the areas of the brain responsible for processing voice recognition of familiar people.

The author provides a detailed section differentiating between bottom-up and top-down processing including several examples and demonstrations.  Bottom-up processing occurs when the brain takes unfiltered signals received from sensory receptors and breaks them down into individual packets of information. Top-down processing, on the other hand, involves the process by which the brain applies meaning to the information it receives by using background knowledge and experience to interpret the information.  A part of top-down processing involves filling in missing pieces of information to create complete perceptions, which is referred to as perceptual completion.  There are also auditory examples of perceptual completion.
 
A Tour of the Senses is a fun, easy to read book that provides a great deal of background information on the area of sensation and perception. As an engineer, the author describes the human sensory perception system but also discusses exceptional sensory abilities in other animals and the technology involved in enhancing human sensory capabilities.  The book is an engaging combination of personal examples, unique stories, research, and practical applications for sensation and perception research. 
 
Other Related Resources
Video documentary about Ben Underwood, a blind teenager who taught himself to see using echolocation
Warning:  A few times during the video Ben Underwood is filmed inserting his glass eyes, which may be startling for some students. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiBeLoB6CKE
 
Testmybrain.org - Are You a Super Recognizer? Determine if you are exceptionally talented at recognizing faces. 
http://www.testmybrain.org/SupersRecruitment.html
 
Rippin’ the Rainbow a New One - NPR Radiolab podcast about color perception in humans and other animals.  The program answers the question of exactly what dogs can see in terms of color.
http://www.radiolab.org/story/211178-rip-rainbow/
 
Why Food Tastes Different on Planes - BBC article about why airplane food tastes different which is an excellent example of sensory interaction. 
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150112-why-in-flight-food-tastes-weird
 
The following links are to a two part 60 Minutes episode on face blindness. 
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-blindness-when-everyone-is-a-stranger-20-03-2012/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8cXus7SNQY
  
World Science Fair Presentation on Face Blindness:  Creation of a bell curve in the audience with ten images.  Images used, however, include many celebrities many students do not know (e.g. Fred Astaire, John F. Kennedy Jr., Audrey Hepburn).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s6kQdyyxOE
 
Faceblind.org – Harvard website which provides detailed information on Prosopagnosia including several tests of face blindness.
http://www.faceblind.org/
 
Pride and a Daily Marathon –Video about Ian Waterman who suffers from a rare neurological problem that involves a complete loss of his kinesthetic sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNX_3OPVQTs
 
King of Fruits –Videos related to the Durian fruit, which is considered a delicacy in parts of Southeast Asia but is seen as repulsive by Western tastes. http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/malaysia_durian
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQj-hFfmYkQ
 
Absolute Threshold, Difference Threshold (JND), Weber’s Law https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVhiezByMSU
 
My Stroke of Insight - TED talk by Jill Bolte Taylor based on her book My Stroke of Insight referenced by the author in the section on neural plasticity.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight?language=en
 
The Science of Scent – TED talk by biophysicist Luca Turin referenced in the book. He is the subject of Chandler Burr's book The Emperor of Scent. He is currently working on developing an artificial nose.
https://www.ted.com/talks/luca_turin_on_the_science_of_scent

Video – Oliver Sacks on Face Blindness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5bvnXYIQG8
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Pierre Paul Broca
Charles Darwin
Rene Descartes
Sigmund Freud
Joseph Francis Gall
Sir Francis Galton
Hermann von Helmholtz
William James
Carl Wernicke
Agnosia (Prosopagnosia, Phonagnosia)
Broca’s area
Cochlear implant
Color <ixing (Additive and Subtractive Color Mixing)
Color Blindness
Critical Period
CT, fMRI, MRI, PET
Echolocation
Facial Recognition
Genome
Gustation
Hearing
Just Noticeable Difference (JND)
Macular Degeneration
Myopia
Neural Plasticity
Olfaction
Pain
Parkinson’s Disease
Perception (Bottom-Up v. Top-Down)
Pheromones
Photoreceptors (Rods and Cones)
Presbyopia and Presbyosmia
Proprioception
Psychophysics
Supertaster
Synesthesia
Transduction
VestibularSsense
Visual Cortex
Wernicke’s Area

Gulp:  Adventures in the Alimentary Canal
Author(s):  Mary Roach
ISBN Number:  978-0393081572

APA Style Citation
Roach, M. (2013). Gulp: Adventures on the alimentary canal. New York: W.W. Norton & Company

Book Description
Mary Roach in her usual amusing style approaches the topic of digestion from beginning to end.  She starts by explaining the strong interaction between smell and taste.  She meets with Sue Langstaff, an olfactory expert who can break down the smells of anything from beer to wine to olive oil.  Roach herself however does not fare so well even after training as she attempts to rate different olive oils, but acknowledges the connection between smell and taste.  Visiting a Dutch lab, the book discusses how saliva inside of the body is viewed as normal to digestion, but outside of the body is considered vile and disgusting.  The study of saliva leads to a discussion of digestive enzymes.  In Pavlovian type studies, researchers measure the amount of saliva generated which is then caught by what is known as the “Lashley cup”.  

Roach explains that most people eat only about 30 different foods and that cultural traditions regarding what we eat are passed down from parents to children.  However, if people experienced a wider variety of foods over an extended period, they came to enjoy novel foods more and more (mere exposure effect).  Roach quotes Kurt Lewin, “People eat what they eat, rather than what they like”. She describes situations such as poverty, war, or simple scarcity that caused people to try different foods such as seafood guano (manure).  Another curious digestive, but not time saving technique is that of 'Fletcherism' in which an individual chews each bit of their food until it liquefies.  Horace Fletcher proposed that a man could get by on two-thirds of their required caloric intake by using this system.   Other researchers have found little evidence to substantiate this technique and the act of continual chewing turns out to be rather irritating to both watch and conduct.  

The story of Alexis St. Martin recounts the historic study of digestion in which after St. Martin is shot in the stomach his surgeon William Beaumont leaves a window in which to view St. Martin’s digestion.  All form of trials are described, including one in which Beaumont hangs a piece of meat from a string to determine how long the stomach would take to decompose the meat.  In another case of digestive oddity, Tom Little an Irish laborer is described.  Mr. Little as a child had eaten hot soup that fused the sides of his esophagus together.  In order to actually enjoy his meals, he placed some food into his mouth, spat it out and then placed the remainder into the opening surgeons had made in his stomach, proving that taste not just nourishment is a vital part of enjoying one’s meals.  

Roach cites instances of individual’s eating ridiculous amounts of food such as Ben Monson who ate sixty-five Mexican tortillas in one sitting.  Competitive eaters it turns out practice ignoring their gag reflex to eat more food that thought possible and stretch their stomachs during their “training” binges.  Most commonly these eating binges involve drinking copious amounts of water.  
As Roach nears the end of the digestive process, she addresses the question of the capacity of one’s rectum.  She interviews doctors who have studied the capacity of what the typical individual can hold based on work with inflated balloons.  In a chapter entitled “Up Theirs:  The Alimentary Canal as a Criminal Accomplice," Roach visits a prison to find that the doctor’s ideas regarding this capacity have been far exceeded by prisoners who have smuggled goods into prison.  While these “goods” are usually drugs and cigarettes,  she features one individual known as “Office Max” who in a single attempt to smuggle goods into the prison brought in two boxes of staples, a pencil sharpener, sharpener blades and three jumbo binder rings before being caught.  Like the competitive eaters, these individuals train to be able to hold as much as possible in one trip, resisting the urge to release the goods.  The journey from start to finish is a strange one, but Roach keeps it entertaining throughout. If you have not read anything by Mary Roach be sure to also check out her classic books including Bonk (a scientific study of sex research) and Stiff (a summary of cadaver’s contributions to science).  

Other Related Resources
Website for the book Gulp
http://www.maryroach.net/gulp.html
Quiz on Gulp
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/gulp-the-quiz/?_r=0
Interview with the author of Gulp
http://www.npr.org/2013/04/01/175381702/in-digestion-mary-roach-explains-what-happens-to-the-food-we-eat

Psychological Figures and Concepts
Kurt Lewin
Tom Little
Alexis St. Martin
Digestion
Hunger motivation
Mere exposure effect
Olfaction
Sensory interaction

That’s Disgusting:  Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion
Author(s):  Rachel Herz
ISBN: 978-0393344165

APA Style Citation
Herz, R. (2013). That's disgusting: unraveling the mysteries of repulsion. New York: W.W. Norton & Co..

 

Book Description
For instructors of Psychology, this is a great addition to  the Sensation/Perception unit as well as a wonderful example of cross-cultural research regarding differences in disgust based on culturally learned experiences (Canada is considering placing a $850 fine on nose-pickers).  This book is also quite applicable for the Motivation/Emotion unit as it relates to hunger motivation and of course the emotion of disgust.  The book opens with a discussion about different food preferences in different cultures.  Herz cites cookbooks, which many Americans might find too vile too eat such as A Bug Cookbook, Creepy Crawly Cuisine and the Gourmet to Edible Insects to name a few.  This chapter also addresses competitive eating and how those participating keep from getting ill (by training and gradually increasing the amount their stomachs can hold).  Herz describes an American exchange student in South America who is invited to participate in the honor of drinking ‘chicha’ in which her hosts chew corn flour and spit it into a milk jug that is buried until fermented and then passed around for each person to ‘enjoy’.  Herz discusses the vast cultural variations related to taste preferences and those food items that we may deem “disgusting”. Herz describes how supertasters might be more inclined to disgust than non-tasters because they are more sensitive to the ingredients they taste.  Herz addresses the unexpectedly clean things that most people find disgusting (toilet seats and public restrooms) and those that are the dirtiest (cell phones and computers).  She recommends considering eating lunch in the public restroom rather than at your desk near all of the bacteria laden electronic devices we touch each day.  Herz addresses how those with Huntington’s disease may not be able to detect disgust in others.  In addition, those with OCD are not very good at detecting disgust in others because their experiences of what they find disgusting are often quite different from what others find disgusting therefore others are not a good reference point for what THEY will find disgusting.  Psychopaths score low on the ability to empathize with others but may be able to sense people’s disgust because they have seen this emotion extended towards them more often than others.  She goes on to discuss diseases we find disgusting and why disgust might provide an evolutionary advantage in these circumstances (keeping us disease free).  This book might not be to best recommendation for high school students as she spends some time discussing disgust in sexual behavior.  She also describes crimes that we find disgusting such as cannibalism and how the disgust factor may impact the severity of sentencing of criminals.

Other Related Resources
Disgust test
BBC Science:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/disgust/
Psychology Today article:  http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-look-dont-touch/201401/disgust-has-us-in-its-grip

Psychological Figures and Concepts
Charles Darwin:  The Expression of the Emotions in Man and AnimalsPaul Ekman
Wallace Friesen
Paul Rozin
Anterior insula 
Empathy
Perceptual sets
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Supertasters/non-tasters
Systematic desensitization