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The experiment that I outline in the following paper is designed to shed light on any relationship between information exposure and attentional cognition. |
The past few decades have been so information-filled and information-dependent that they have been appropriately deemed the “Information Age.” This trend can be attributed to increases in the accessibility, interconnectedness, and potency of technology, specifically big data. There are now more than 2.5 quintillion by... |
Empirically testing my hypothesis will contribute to discovering the true nature of attention. Theories of attention are variable, and there is no one widely accepted account. Many theorists agree that attention can be broken down into passive and active states. Exogenous attention is used when our attention is uncons... |
Past studies considering the impact of information exposure on attention have focused on attention-span, which is the length of time an observer can attend to an object. While some studies affirm an effect, others discredit these claims and deny any impact of information exposure on attention-span at all. I, however, ... |
The independent variable, information exposure, can be quantified using market integration: a measure of how easily two or more markets can trade with each other. The greater a group’s market integration, the more advanced their society is, the more technology their constituents possess, and the more information their... |
The experiment that I propose will draw a random sample of 30 people, 15 men and 15 women, from the Hadza (0 percent market integration), Maragoli (Western Kenyan community with 46 percent market integration), and Accra (100 percent market integration). In the first trial, all 90 participants will be individually expo... |
If my hypothesis is not supported by the data, and greater market integration does not correlate with lower scores on change blindness tests but instead with higher scores, then doubts would be raised toward current attentional theories. This finding would maintain that information-intake does not distress our attenti... |
If my hypothesis is supported by the data, and greater market integration correlates with lower scores on change blindness tests, then limited capacity theories of attention would be upheld. Replication would still be needed, but confidence in the hypothesis that information exposure distresses filters of attention wo... |
I would like to see this experiment carried out because of its cognitive and societal implications. It may revitalize our conception of attention. Or, it may warrant big data and information reform. Both are equally important. |
Nine years ago, on the day before Father's Day, I was scrambling to find a last-minute card. I went to every pharmacy in town but didn't find anything Dad-worthy. With time winding down and few options left, I took things into my own hands and made a card myself. I called it: the iDad, an iPad-shaped card with handwri... |
I want to deliver solutions that people love with McKinsey. Instead of paper and scissors, I'm now using machine learning, virtual reality, and other, more advanced tools, to assess and create. However, my goal of having a positive impact on the end-user of my projects has still remained the same. As a Solution Deliver... |
I have the technical skills. Last year, public sector consulting firm Marts & Lundy asked me to help them answer a simple question: “How do we know who to direct fundraising resources towards in higher education?” In response, I built a model to predict how much money candidates are likely to donate to colleges and uni... |
I have the creative mind. This summer, as a Technology Consultant Intern with EY, I created one of the first auto dealerships in the metaverse. My team's client – an online auto retailer – wanted to explore the viability of expanding into the metaverse. To answer their questions, I assessed the business case using indu... |
I feel like the Solution Delivery Analyst role was made for me. You are looking for a candidate who can take a theoretical or practical problem, identify the steps that need to be taken and the people that need to be involved to solve that problem, and then help visualize, prototype, and execute that solution. My techn... |
I was excited to see that Digitas advertised its need for an Experience Design Intern on Indeed. You are looking for a candidate who is filled with ideas, good at backing up those ideas, and motivated to do so. My experience with design thinking, communications, and marketing would be an asset to your firm’s mission of... |
I am an experienced designer and communicator who co-founded and co-produced TEDxScarsdale, a lecture series in my hometown. I learned how to give recruiting pitches, work with clients, and advertise and market an event. In turn, our speakers taught me about public speaking and the fundamentals of verbally or visually ... |
I further developed marketing and communication skills during my internship with Patti Conte, Ltd. Two summers ago, I had the privilege of working with a public relations firm that promoted up-and-coming musicians in the New York area. Through pitching artists to media outlets and writing press releases, I grew my prof... |
My goal is to build upon my experience in a position that leverages and further enhances my skills in design thinking, communications and marketing. At the same time, I feel that I can contribute to the Digitas team’s aim of revolutionizing connection in the marketplace. Given the shaky climate surrounding COVID-19, I ... |
America’s two-party system is plagued by antipathy and inaction. As Americans filter into one party or the other, political attitudes and ideals are becoming as binary as the two-party system itself. At the polls, voters habitually adopt the policy stances of their preferred party. On the Senate floor, representatives ... |
Although the American Constitution lends itself to a two-party makeup, the rise of a third, fourth, or fifth party is not impossible. And, from a psychological standpoint, the diversification of competing ideologies ought to be welcomed with open arms. Currently, America’s two-party system is incompatible with the psy... |
In the following analysis, I discuss the psychological implications of two political factors – partisanship and media – on American voters in two-party and multi-party systems. First, I argue that a multi-party system is more conducive to effective partisanship because it motivates information-seeking behavior that fi... |
Partisanship |
Americans are inclined to side with a party because it allows them to be political actors without needing political literacy. Forming political attitudes is as easy as figuring out what the stance of one’s preferred party is. Electing a preferred party is as easy as mapping one or two matters of personal importance to... |
But endorsing an entire belief system based on an issue-specific consideration leaves quite a large margin of error in assuming the rest of the party’s political judgments. Who’s to say that just because the Democrats and I both support gun control, I will also support increasing income tax? Still, voters forego import... |
So, the ideal party system will look to correlate partisan beliefs with people’s actual beliefs and motivate thoughtful information processing as much as possible. How do the two-party and multi-party systems match up? |
In a two-party system, it’s easy for people to form partisan identities on the basis of few issue-specific considerations. Because there are only two parties, and the parties’ ideologies are relatively polar, discerning where the parties stand on a given issue is clear-cut. If my determinant issue consideration is rest... |
Multi-party systems, on the other hand, demand more issue-specific considerations than two-party systems do. With more parties, the political spectrum grows wider and more convoluted. No longer is one party the opposite of another; instead, parties may overlap, supporting similar ideals but different policies or vice v... |
Media |
What Americans know is not only driven by personal importance and issue-relevancy, but also by what is most readily available. For the average American, the quickest and easiest point of entry into the political world is media – cable news, political journals, digital social networks, etc. (Delli Carpini et al., 1996)... |
Naturally, the information that we consume constitutes what we know. Yet, the information that viewers deduce from media is relatively homogenous. As Taber and Lodge (2006) illustrate in a series of experiments exploring how citizens evaluate arguments about affirmative action and gun control, when people are free to ... |
The ideal party system will subdue the hostility of the media environment and stifle the formation of polarizing unconscious attitudes. Can two-party or multi-party systems satisfy these conditions? |
A two-party system breeds hostility because there is a salient tension between ingroup and outgroup. The enemy in a two-party system – the lone outgroup – is easy to identify and vulnerable to hostile narratives. As of late, particularly in the Trump-era election cycles, political attitudes in America across the aisle... |
In contrast, multi-party systems foster a more amicable media environment because there is not as much opportunity for narrative-stitching. Different parties clash on some policy stands and agree on others, thus there is no consistent, clear enemy (no one likes a reality TV show with new characters each episode). Unco... |
Discussion |
In its current two-party state, America is a nation divided against itself. The ease with which party identifications are formed demotivates bipartisan information-seeking, enables peripheral processing of political information, and misaligns partisan ideals with people’s actual beliefs. The sharp division between par... |
A nation divided against itself cannot stand, and multi-party systems offer a solution to growing polarization. More parties mean more issues have to be taken into consideration to assign partisanship, thus motivating systematic processing of novel information and mapping people’s actual beliefs to their party’s ideol... |
The question still remains as to whether a multi-party system could ever come into being in American politics. Right now, given the great schism between Democrats and Republicans, there does not seem to be room for a third contestant. However, if the Left-Right stalemate persists, it seems plausible that some other id... |
I was excited to see that Future Media advertised its need for a Partnerships & Marketing Intern on Indeed. You are looking for a candidate who is a relentless and self-sufficient worker, skilled organizer, and talented researcher and marketer. My experience building a popular lecture series and marketing at a public r... |
I am an experienced marketer who co-founded and co-produced TEDxScarsdale, a lecture series in my hometown. I learned how to search for and approach potential clients remotely, give recruiting pitches, and market an event using social media. In turn, our speakers taught me about public speaking and the fundamentals of ... |
I further developed marketing skills during my internship with Patti Conte, Ltd. Two summers ago, I had the privilege of working with a public relations firm that promoted up-and-coming musicians in the New York area. Through sourcing and pitching to media outlets, leading email marketing campaigns, and writing press r... |
My goal is to build upon my experience in a position that leverages and further enhances my skills in marketing. At the same time, I feel that I can contribute to the Future Media team’s aim of spearheading the media industry using partnerships and customer connection. Given the shaky climate surrounding COVID-19, I wo... |
Alumni often bear the misconception of being old-timers trying to relive their glory days (we get it, Terry, you were in AD), but they are the thriving backbone who promote Dartmouth for students like me to make the most of our time on campus. I want to have the opportunity to connect with alumni so I can learn how to ... |
Hill Winds Society is a four-year commitment with weekly meetings on Mondays and various events throughout the year. Please talk about any current commitments you have at Dartmouth, and tell us about a time when you committed to a group (a club, a team…) (max 1250 characters) |
On campus I am a full-time member of the Dartmouth Brovertones a capella group and I also frequent the Dartmouth Philosophy Society, Hillel, and Overcooked. Through these clubs -- especially the Brovertones which I am committed to upwards of 6 hours a week -- I have learned about self-management and met some of my bes... |
Hill Winds Society is comprised of members who each contribute a unique perspective to our group. What unique perspective would you contribute to Hill Winds Society? (max 1250 characters) |
My unique perspective exists in my personality and my Dartmouth experience. I am a perfectionist. This can be a bad trait when I am trying to grind out an essay the night before it is due, but it does fuel me with a desire to always seek improvement. With the power of Hill Winds Society, I can use this perfectionism i... |
As a member of Hill Winds Society, you would be participating in networking events with Dartmouth alumni who may have different backgrounds and perspectives from your own. Tell us about a time when you connected with someone different from yourself. (max 1250 characters) |
The most polarizing experience with someone that I’ve had was with my childhood best friend, Matt. Matt knew me before I was even born. As we began to develop personalities, we realized that we were complete opposites. While I enjoyed sports and being active, Matt preferred film and art. Instead of abandoning our frie... |
Language and music do not strike the casual observer as similar; it would be hard to confuse a Mozart symphony with an Obama speech. But structural parallels between linguistic and music theory and recent findings in neuroimaging show that the way we learn, understand, and produce music and language are not all that di... |
As they relate to the human mind, language and music both (1) rely on syntactic structure and (2) involve the same brain regions for processing. Musical and linguistic syntax are hierarchical structures that organize inputs into predictable, meaningful patterns. In language, speech sounds are combined to form ... |
Mapping language and music processing in the human brain has revealed surprising overlap and breadth. Research during the 1960s found that patients with damage to certain areas of the left hemisphere developed aphasia, while those with damage to certain areas of the right hemisphere suffered from amusia (Kleis... |
The similarities between language and music reveal symbolic and physical structures that the human brain uses to create and communicate: rigid syntax organizes structural components, the left hemisphere processes its literal meaning, and the right hemisphere extrapolates this meaning. |
Understanding and modeling these building blocks has allowed music-producing AIs to get off the ground. IBM Watson Beat, a neural network that composes original music, is a foremost example. The system learns by consuming audio files broken down into their core syntactic elements, which are linked with information on e... |
IBM Watson Beat’s demonstrated comprehension of music theory is remarkable, but its ability to form connections between musical elements and emotions are what allowed it to pioneer artificial music production. Previous attempts to create a music-producing AI overlooked the right hemisphere’s role in music contextualiza... |
Text-generating AIs, on the other hand, have not seen as much success. GPT-2, produced by OpenAI, is the most advanced text-generating AI to date. Given a prompt, the neural network’s objective is to predict the most likely next word. GPT-2 produces impressive text, often many paragraphs long, that can convinc... |
I propose that the shortcoming of GPT-2 and other text-generating AIs may be that they overlook the right hemisphere’s role in understanding and creating language. Since the right hemisphere is responsible for extrapolating connotations, a lack of coherence among outputs of text-generating AIs could be attribu... |
During our journey in this course, we have seen numerous examples of how architecture can elicit feelings of uncanniness. From short stories to film noir to musical masquerades, the context surrounding an uncanny experience has been anything but consistent. As a result, I grew curious about what architectural features ... |
I first conducted a meta-analysis of the texts and films we have studied over the past ten weeks (The Jolly Corner, The Bridge on the Drina, The Third Man, Citizen Kane, and Blade Runner). I read the texts and screenplays for each work, picking out terms, phrases, and quotes with uncanny associations. I then fed variou... |
The following paper is a discussion of my findings. I first define “uncanny” and offer some background information about artificial text-to-image generation. Then, by comparing the images I have extracted and generated, I argue that the features most closely tied to uncanny experiences are light, context, and scale. Fi... |
Background |
A deep dive into the uncanny necessitates a concrete definition of what “uncanny” really means. We have seen many different uses of the term across countless contexts, but the definition that sticks with me is “taking something familiar and making it unfamiliar.” This definition makes the uncanny tangible and actionabl... |
This discussion also requires some background into artificial text-to-image generation. A text-to-image model is a machine learning model that takes a natural language description as input and produces an image matching that description. These models were initially quite naïve, but due to recent advances in data proces... |
Methods |
I analyzed two texts (The Jolly Corner and The Bridge on the Drina) and three screenplays (The Third Man, Citizen Kane, and Blade Runner), pulling terms and quotes that we had collectively deemed “uncanny” in class discussions. I then experimented using different combinations of terms and phrases as text inputs for Mid... |
Results |
Feature #1: Light |
Light, and particularly the absence of it, has an incredible ability to evoke the uncanny. Light does not necessarily have to be an intrinsic property of architecture; oftentimes, it is added on top of an existing structure to turn it from something familiar into something wildly unfamiliar. In this way, you can make a... |
Conversely, The Jolly Corner and Midjourney also exploit an absence of light to create a sense of uncanniness. Darkness turns familiar architecture in foreign realms by inhibiting vision, the sense that we rely on most to navigate the world. Without the power of sight, we lose most of our ability to corroborate familia... |
Silhouettes are a particular kind of darkness with a proclivity for uncanniness, since they leave an especially disconcerting question unanswered: who is it? Most of the media we analyzed in this course featured some sort of human silhouette, and The Third Man may be the exemplar of them all. Figure 3c illustrates how ... |
Feature #2: Context |
The context that architecture is situated within has the power to influence whether it is interpreted as uncanny. The human mind builds understanding through associations, and if we come to associate architecture with an uncanny history or circumstance, we will likely consider the architecture uncanny on its own as we... |
The Bridge on the Drina is another example of how context alters perception. As we discussed in class, the Bridge on the Drina is not an intrinsically uncanny bridge. If you were walking through Višegrad on a sunny day, you might even say that the bridge is especially beautiful or comforting. However, once we have read... |
Both Figure 4b and Figure 5b look eerily similar to Figure 5c, which shows the Bridge on the Drina surrounded by a wartime haze after it was partially destroyed during World War I bombings. It is a testament to the power of context how artificially generated images, just by nature of their historical contexts, can look... |
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