3. August 2010 by John Schinnerer.

July 30, 2010

Imagine technology that allows you to get inside the mind of a terrorist to know how, when and where the next attack will occur.

That’s not nearly as far-fetched as it seems, according to a new Northwestern University study.
Say, for purposes of illustration, that the chatter about an imminent terrorist attack is mounting, and specifics about the plan emerge, about weapons that will be used, the date of such a dreaded event and its location.

If the new test used by the Northwestern researchers had been used in such a real-world situation with the same type of outcome that occurred in the lab, the study suggests, culpability extracted from the chatter could be confirmed.

In other words, if the test conducted in the Northwestern lab ultimately is employed for such real-world scenarios, the research suggests, law enforcement officials ultimately may be able to confirm details about an attack - date, location, weapon — that emerges from terrorist chatter.

In the Northwestern study, when researchers knew in advance specifics of the planned attacks by the make-believe “terrorists,” they were able to correlate P300 brain waves to guilty knowledge with 100 percent accuracy in the lab, said J. Peter Rosenfeld, professor of psychology in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

For the first time, the Northwestern researchers used the P300 testing in a mock terrorism scenario in which the subjects are planning, rather than perpetrating, a crime. The P300 brain waves were measured by electrodes attached to the scalp of the make-believe “persons of interest” in the lab.

The most intriguing part of the study in terms of real-word implications, Rosenfeld said, is that even when the researchers had no advance details about mock terrorism plans, the technology was still accurate in identifying critical concealed information.
 

“Without any prior knowledge of the planned crime in our mock terrorism scenarios, we were able to identify 10 out of 12 terrorists and, among them, 20 out of 30 crime- related details,” Rosenfeld said. “The test was 83 percent accurate in predicting concealed knowledge, suggesting that our complex protocol could identify future terrorist activity.”

Rosenfeld is a leading scholar in the study of P300 testing to reveal concealed information. Basically, electrodes are attached to the scalp to record P300 brain activity — or brief electrical patterns in the cortex — that occur, according to the research, when meaningful information is presented to a person with “guilty knowledge.”

Research on the P300 testing emerged in the 1980s as a handful of scientists looked for an alternative to polygraph tests for lie detection. Since it was invented in the 1920s, polygraphy has been under fire, especially by academics, with critics insisting that such testing measures emotion rather than knowledge.

Rosenfeld and Northwestern graduate student John B. Meixner are co-investigators of the study, outlined in a paper titled “A Mock Terrorism Application of the P300-based Concealed Information Test,” published recently in the journal Psychophysiology.

Study participants (29 Northwestern students) planned a mock attack based on information they were given about bombs and other deadly weapons. They then had to write a letter detailing the rationale of their plan to encode the information in memory.

Then, with electrodes attached to their scalps, they looked at a computer display monitor that presented names of stimuli. The names of Boston, Houston, New York, Chicago and Phoenix, for example, were shuffled and presented at random. The city that study participants chose for the major terrorist attack evoked the largest P300 brainwave responses.

The test includes four classes of stimuli known as targets, non-targets, probes and irrelevants. Targets are sights, sounds or other stimuli the person being questioned already knows or is taught to recognize before the test. Probes are stimuli only a guilty suspect would be likely to know. And irrelevants are stimuli unlikely to be recognized.

“Since 9/11 preventing terrorism is a priority,” Rosenfeld said. “Sometimes you catch suspicious people entering a building. You suspect that they’re terrorists, and you have some leads from the chatter. You’ve heard they’re going to attack one city or another in one fashion or another on one date or another. Our hope is that our new complex protocol - different from the first P300 technology developed in the 1980s - will one day confirm such chatter in the real world.”

In the laboratory setting, study participants only had about 30 minutes to learn about the attack and to detail their plans. Thus, Rosenfeld said, encoding of guilty knowledge was relatively shallow. It is assumed that real terrorists rehearse details central to a planned attack repeatedly, leading to deeper encoding of related memories, he said. “We suspect if our test was employed in the real world the deeper encoding of planned crime-related knowledge could further boost detection of terrorist intentions.”

Provided by Northwestern University

The implications of this are far-reaching, disturbing and reassuring simultaneously.

Disturbing since this same procedure, when perfected, can be used with any of us (which is fine along as you’re staying away from involvement in destructive activities, OR activities which arouse guilt in you!).

Reassuring as it will provide a better means of discovering solid leads on imminent attacks by domestic threats. 

Far-reaching because this technology can and likely will be extended far beyond the scope of hunting terrorists. Easy rationalizations can be made to use it to fight drug trafficking and other major clear cut illegal operations. But where does the line get drawn once we get into lesser, gray areas?

Obviously, it will be many years before the technology is accessible and affordable enough to use ubiquitously. However, what about if the IRS uses it around issues of tax evasion? Or the courts use it in child custody evaluations? At what point do our civil liberties get breached?

This will be an ongoing issue as we head into the next decade because, like it or not, it’s coming!

Best,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Positive Psychology Coach

Author of the award-winning Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion & Thought

Guide To Self, Inc.

913 San Ramon Valley Blvd. #280

Danville CA 94526

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Posted in Emotion recognition software, Danville CA, Neuropsychology, Psychology and technology, Values and ethics, Reading terrorists minds, Guilt, Emotion and technology, Curiosity, Guide to Self, Dr. John Schinnerer, Emotional mind, Emotional management, Subconscious mind, Consciousness, Measuring emotions | Print | No Comments »

17. February 2010 by John Schinnerer.

Peak performers like Olympic athletes sense information differently.

New study at Colorado State University, finds that, to experts, people with over 10,000 hours of training in a particular area, the world looks like it is in super slow motion when performing at their peak.

http://www.today.colostate.edu/story.aspx?id=3190

Cheers,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Posted in Visual perception, Visual Attention, Optimal Human Functioning, Emotion & Athletics, Alamo CA, Psychology and technology, San Ramon CA, Dr. John Schinnerer, Positive Psychology, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Subconscious mind, Danville CA, Sports Psychology | Print | No Comments »

21. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

From ScienceDaily (Oct. 20, 2009) — Everyone tends to float off into space once in a while and fail to see what is sitting there right in front of them. Recently researchers decided to put the theory of “inattentional blindness” to the test: the unicycling clown test. They documented real-world examples of people who were so distracted by their cell phone use that they failed to see the bizarre occurrence of a unicycling clown passing them on the street.

The study is published in an upcoming issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology.

Compared with individuals walking alone, in pairs, or listening to their ipod, cell phone users were the group most prone to oblivious behavior: only twenty-five percent of them noticed the unicycling clown. The walkers not using a cell phone noticed the clown over fifty-percent of the time.

Furthermore, the cell phone users had difficulties performing even the simple task of walking, an action that should require relatively few cognitive resources. They walked more slowly, changed direction more often, were prone to weaving, and acknowledged other individuals more rarely.

Dr. Ira E. Hyman, Jr. at Western Washington University, head researcher of the study, says: “If people experience so much difficulty performing the task of walking when on a cell phone just think of what this means when put into the context of driving safety. People should not drive while talking on a cell phone.” Furthermore, the research shows that the level of familiarity with the person’s real-world environment does not affect their attentional awareness.

 For full article, please click here.

Is it possible that using a cell phone makes us more mind-less? Perhaps it disconnects us from what is going on within our bodies and immediately around us outside our bodies. Use caution when talking on the cell while driving.

Latest stats show that driving while talking on cell is as dangerous as driving drunk. It simply overtaxes our minds and our attentional capabilities.

 The take home point is that our attention is limited in nature, not limitless.

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.
Danville, CA 94526

Positive psychology coach

Posted in Danville CA, National speakers, Executive coach, Psychology and technology, Visual Attention, Emotion and technology, Awareness, Guide to Self, Life coach, Consciousness, The human brain, Mindfulness, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »

19. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

A camera you can wear as a pendant to record every moment of your life will soon be launched by a UK-based firm.

Originally invented to help jog the memories of people with Alzheimer’s disease, it might one day be used by consumers to create “lifelogs” that archive their entire lives.

Worn on a cord around the neck, the camera takes pictures automatically as often as once every 30 seconds. It also uses an accelerometer and light sensors to snap an image when a person enters a new environment, and an infrared sensor to take one when it detects the body heat of a person in front of the wearer. It can fit 30,000 images onto its 1-gigabyte memory.

The ViconRevue was originally developed as the SenseCam by Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK, for researchers studying Alzheimer’s and other dementias. Studies showed that reviewing the events of the day using SenseCam photos could help some people improve long-term recall.

For full article, click here.

Have a wonderful Monday!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

A Curious Guy

Guide To Self, Inc.

Posted in Psychology and technology, Memory and recall, Emotion & productivity, Mindfulness, Guide to Self, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »