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psychologist vol 25 no 10
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Mirror writing Robert McIntosh and Sergio Della Sala explore some intriguing phenomena
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‘The Origin of Symmetry and Asymmetry’, by mirror-writing artist Kasimir Bordihn, frames this month’s cover feature, by Edinburgh psychologists Rob McIntosh and Sergio Della Sala. You may remember Sergio from his fascinating feature on the anarchic hand, with similarly striking cover, in October 2005. Here the pair deliver another intriguing take on a bizarre phenomenon: mirror-writing (see p.742). Talking of reflection (because we were), this is the time of year I consider new formats for another volume of The Psychologist. Ideas always welcome, along with feedback on The Psychologist and Digests in general: e-mail me on jon.sutton@bps.org.uk or follow us on Twitter @psychmag. We are also progressing with redevelopment of The Psychologist website (although not at the pace we would like), and members should soon be able to read The Psychologist on Kindle, tablets and smartphones. As we approach our 25th year, please engage with your membership publication and rest assured that we are attempting to develop as resources allow. Dr Jon Sutton
media 740 psychologists and the paralympics, with Kairen Cullen; and the joy of serendipity; consciousness after decapitation; and a feast of links KASIMIR BORDIHN
Mirror writing Robert McIntosh and Sergio Della Sala explore some intriguing phenomena
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Culture, arts and the community Image by Glenn Williams. E-mail ideas for ‘Big picture’ to jon.sutton@bps.org.uk. Dancers perform a traditional Malay dance as part of a promotion of Malaysian culture on the streets of Essex. Musicians accompany them, playing the gamelan – a traditional South East Asian orchestra comprising instruments crafted in Indonesia and imported to the UK. Glenn Williams, a community psychologist and Senior Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, took the photo. ‘I’m heavily involved in studying the impact that community arts programmes can have on people’s health and well-being, and here I was trying to capture how such events can help to foster a sense of community and enhanced feelings of well-being for the participants and audience alike.’ Williams says he is fascinated with the dynamic of how cultural norms and values can be transmitted through artistic and creative activities. ‘Having lived in South Africa as a youngster and witnessed miners dancing the gumboot dance, and gone to a Greek school that celebrated its
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ARTICLE
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the everyday given the right conditions? Is mirror-writing after brain damage a recurrence of the childhood form, or different? More than a century of sporadic scientific literature, and some of our own recent observations, suggest answers to these tantalising questions.
Mirror-writing Robert D. McIntosh and Sergio Della Sala explore some intriguing phenomena
P
questions
Mirror-writing is the production of letters, words or sentences in reverse direction, so that they look normal when viewed in a mirror. Some people may mirror-write intentionally; but unintentional mirror-writing is surprisingly common amongst young children, and in brain-damaged adults. Unintentional mirror-writing suggests a tension between a tendency for our brains to treat mirror-images as equivalent, and a culturally imposed need to distinguish between them for written language. This article explores the various manifestations of mirror-writing, and the ideas put forward to account for it.
Is mirror writing a perceptual or a motor phenomenon? Is it the same phenomenon in young children as in brain-damaged adults?
resources
Schott, G.D. (2007) Mirror writing: neurological reflections on an unusual phenomenon. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 78, 5–13. Della Sala, S. & Cubelli, R. (2007). ‘Directional apraxia’: A unitary account of mirror writing following brain injury or as found in normal young children. Journal of Neuropsychology, 1, 3–26.
references
Why would it be useful for our brains to treat mirror-image objects and actions as equivalent?
Allen, F.J. (1896). Mirror-writing. Brain, 19, 385–387. Angelillo, V.G., De Lucia, N., Trojano, L., & Grossi, D. (2010). Persistent left unilateral mirror writing. Brain and Language, 114, 157–163. Balfour, S., Borthwick, S., Cubelli, R. & Della Sala, S. (2007). Mirror writing and reversing single letters in stroke patients and normal elderly. Journal of Neurology, 254, 436–441.
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icture yourself in a taxi on a cold, rainy day, condensation on the windows. You want to write ‘byebye’ to your daughter waving at you from the house. In order to be read by her, you would need to write in reverse on the inside of the window, transforming your habitual writing actions to do so. This is ‘mirror-writing’ – reversed writing that looks normal when viewed in a mirror; like the sign on the front of an ambulance. Since Western scripts typically run from left to right, this reversed form is also known as levography (Critchley, 1928) or sinistrad writing (Streifler & Hofman, 1976). Mirror-writing is striking and mysterious. It has been practised deliberately by some notable individuals, most famously Leonardo da Vinci, and portrayed to powerful effect in literature and visual art (see Box, right). Mirrorwriting is of special interest to psychologists because it can sometimes arise in people trying to write normally. For example, unusual writing demands can sometimes mislead us into writing backwards. If we write onto paper pressed against the underside of a table, or against our forehead (Critchley, 1928), we may fail to transform our actions to compensate for the altered plane of performance, and our writing may come out mirror-reversed. Mirror-writing is also common amongst children learning to write, and is noted in adults following brain damage, usually to the left hemisphere. But what do these phenomena tell us about our brains? Do we each harbour a latent looking-glass world, poised to usurp
Chan, J.L. & Ross, E. (1988). Left-handed mirror writing following right anterior cerebral artery infarction. Neurology, 38, 59–63. Cornell, J.M. (1985). Spontaneous mirror-writing in children. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 39, 174–179. Critchley, M. (1928). Mirror-writing. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Cubelli, R. & Della Sala, S. (2009). Mirror
Explanations of mirror-writing Does mirror-writing imply reversed perceptions, or is it only that the action comes out backward? This captures the dichotomy between perceptual and motor explanations of mirror-writing, from the classical literature to the present day. On the perceptual side, Orton (1928) suggested that, for every word or object we recognise, an engram is stored in the dominant (left) hemisphere, and its mirror-image in the non-dominant hemisphere. Mirrored-forms emerge in children, due to incompletely established hemispheric dominance, but are suppressed in adults unless released by left-hemisphere damage. Subsequent perceptual accounts, such as the spatial disorientation hypothesis (Heilman et al., 1980), share the core idea that mirrorwriting is one aspect of a more general mirror-confusion. Perceptual explanations predict that mirror-writing should be associated with perceptual confusion, and even with fluent reading of reversed text. And if the mirroring arises at a perceptual level, then mirror-writing should emerge regardless of which hand is used. On the motor side are those who argue that action representations are critical to mirror-writing (e.g. Chan & Ross, 1988; Erlenmeyer, 1879, cited in Critchley, 1928). The basic insight is that learned actions are represented in a body-relative scheme, not in external spatial coordinates. Thus, for a right-handed Westerner, the habitual writing direction is not left-toright per se, but abductively outwards from the body midline. If executed by the unaccustomed left hand, this abductive action will flow right-to-left, unless it is transformed into an adductive inward action, much as we need to transform our
writing in pre-school children. Cognitive Processing, 10, 101–104. Davidoff, J. & Warrington, E.K. (2001). A particular difficulty in discriminating between mirror images. Neuropsychologia, 39, 1022–1036. Dehaene, S., Nakamura, K., Jobert, A. et al. (2010). Why do children make mirror errors in reading? Neuroimage, 49, 1837–1848. Della Sala, S. & Cubelli, R. (2007).
‘Directional apraxia’: A unitary account of mirror writing following brain injury or as found in normal young children. Journal of Neuropsychology, 1, 3–26. Della Sala, S., & Cubelli, R. (2009). Writing about mirror writing. Cortex, 45, 791–792. Durwen, H.F. & Linke, D.B. (1988). Temporary mirror writing and mirror reading as disinhibition phenomena?
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Examples in literature and film ‘And how was the anonymous letter written?’ ‘Backhanded.’ Again the abbe smiled. ‘Disguised.’ ‘It was very boldly written, if disguised.’ The Count of Montecristo by Alexandre Dumas père He wrote, Dear Henry Phipps, in a violet-coloured ink. He did not write these words from left to right, but thus: sppihP yrneH raeD He wrote fluidly, as if long accustomed to that distrustful art. …The Thief-taker has given you the mirror. Jack Maggs, a novel by Peter Carey Since the occurrences we are about to consider (as impartially as possible), he has found the utmost difficulty in writing except from right to left across the paper with his left hand. The Plattner Story, a novel by H.G. Wells WARNER BROS / THE KOBAL COLLECTION
action when writing on a window for a reader on the other side. On this view, children might mirror-write with either hand if they have yet to learn a consistent direction, but literate adults should do so only when attempting to write with the left hand whilst cognitively impaired or distracted, so that the required transformation is omitted. Since perceptual factors play no explanatory role, motor accounts predict that mirror-writing should not entail perceptual confusions or mirrorreading. Of course, perceptual and motor accounts need not be mutually exclusive: the manifestations of mirrorwriting may be too various for any unitary account (Critchley, 1928; but see Della Sala & Cubelli, 2007). As we shall see, the facts favour a motor interpretation in most cases; but there are possible exceptions, and interesting nuances to the story, as well as some unresolved puzzles.
Spontaneous mirror-writing in children As any nursery or primary teacher knows, mirror-writing is very common amongst children learning to write. These productions are not mere confusions of legal mirror-image characters (such as ‘b’ and ‘d’) but can involve the reversal of any character, and even whole words and phrases. A child may sign her name neatly but back-tofront. Interestingly, some characters are more likely to be reversed than others, particularly those such as ‘3’ or ‘J’ in which the correct form ‘faces’ leftwards. This suggests that during exposure to written language, the child implicitly extracts the statistical regularity that most characters ‘face’ to the right, then overapplies this ‘right-writing rule’ (Fischer, 2011). Several myths surrounding mirrorwriting in children should be dispelled. Most prominent is the traditionally assumed association with slow intellectual
A case study. Neuropsychologia, 26, 483–490. Fischer, J-P. (2011). Mirror writing of digits and (capital) letters in the typically developing child. Cortex, 47, 759–762. Fischer, J-P. & Tazouti, Y. (2011). Unraveling the mystery of mirror writing in typically developing children. Journal of Educational Psychology. doi: 10.1037/a0025735
Danny writing on the door in The Shining
development, arising from early anecdotal literature (e.g. Orton, 1928) and studies of ‘mentally defective’ children (Gordon, 1920), and propounded as a visual motif through popular works (e.g. Winnie-thePooh, the Far Side cartoons). Recent studies have converged in showing that the likelihood of mirror writing does not correlate with intellectual abilities. Cubelli and Della Sala (2009), for instance, reported no significant difference in intelligence between mirror-writing and non-mirror-writing children of the same age (cf. Fischer & Tazouti, 2011). There is similarly little truth in the idea that mirrorwriting is more common in left-handers. Mirror-writing in childhood does of course correlate with age, but the true underlying
Gordon, H. (1920). Left-handedness and mirror-writing especially among defective children. Brain, 43, 313–368. Gottfried, J.A., Sancar, F. & Chatterjee, A. (2003). Acquired mirror writing and reading: Evidence for reflected graphemic representations. Neuropsychologia, 41, 96–107. Heilman, K.M., Howell, G., Valenstein, E. & Rothi, L. (1980). Mirror-reading and writing in association with right-
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Mirror-writing has also been portrayed in films: in Christopher Nolan’s Memento, the ‘facts’ are tattooed on Leonard's chest in mirror-writing so that he can read their reflection; in Stanley Kubrik’s The Shining, Danny writes REDRUM on the door, which is MURDER backwards (Maggie does the same with her toy blocks in the Simpsons episode Reality Bites). Mirror-writing also features in the Simpsons episode ‘Brother from the same planet’; the Scooby-Doo episode ‘Mystery mask mix-up’; The 25th Hour; Alvin and the Chipmunks; and Flowers for Algernon. For further examples, see Della Sala and Cubelli (2009).
factor here is the stage of acquisition of writing, with occasional mirror-writing as an intermediate stage between no writing and correct writing (Della Sala & Cubelli, 2009; Fischer & Tazouti, 2011). Situational factors further modulate the likelihood of mirror-writing at any given moment. For instance, children show sequential biases, tending to face each character in the same direction as the preceding one. An example from Fischer (2011) concerns the character pair ‘C3’, as written by 300 five-to-six-year old children: the probability of mirror-writing the ‘3’ was far greater (0.73 vs. 0.10) if the ‘C’ had been correctly written (i.e. rightfacing) than if it had been mirror-written (i.e. left-facing). Spatial constraints are also
left spatial disorientation. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, 43, 774–780. Lambon-Ralph, M., Jarvis, C. & Ellis, A. (1997). Life in a mirrored world: Report of a case showing mirror reversal in reading and writing and for non-verbal materials. Neurocase, 3, 249–258. Orton, S.T. (1928). Specific reading disability – strephosymbolia. Journal
of the American Medical Association, 90, 1095–1099. Parsons, L.M. (1987). Imagined spatial transformations of one’s hands and feet. Cognitive Psychology, 19, 178–241. Parsons, L.M. (1994). Temporal and kinematic properties of motor behavior reflected in mentally simulated action. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human
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important, and children as old as seven may write their name backwards if required to start from a point on the page that leaves inadequate space to write it forwards (Cornell, 1985; Fischer & Tazouti, 2011). That a simple spatial restriction can elicit mirrored script suggests a dominant role for motor factors, rather than perceptual confusion. Consistent with this, Della Sala and Cubelli (2009) found that the frequency of mirror-writing was no higher amongst children who had difficulty discriminating mirror images than amongst those who did not. Uncertainty about how letters should look does not seem to drive mirror-writing in children. Rather, childhood mirror-writing may tell us something about how writing actions develop. Specifically, it implies that the general shape of a letter is learned more rapidly than the direction for writing it. The key to understanding this may be to regard mirror-writing not as intrinsically errorful, but as a feat of action generalisation. It is a neat trick for a child to produce a perfect mirrored-form, which they have never been taught, as readily as the correct form that they have been shown repeatedly. For most actions, this mirror-generalisation would be useful, because anything that we do one way may need to be done in reverse at another time; we do not learn separately to turn a tap clockwise and anticlockwise, only to turn the tap. Writing, however, belongs to an unusual, evolutionarily recent, class of actions that have a culturally set directionality, and for which this generalisation is unhelpful. Acquiring the correct direction for writing in one’s culture may be a matter of stamping out the unwanted alternative after having learned the general shape of the action.
Involuntary mirror-writing after brain damage Children grow out of mirror writing, but in some adults it makes an unexpected return. Mirror-writing is quite common following stroke, though usually
Perception and Performance, 20, 241–245. Pegado, F., Nakamura, K., Cohen, L. & Dehaene, S. (2011). Breaking the symmetry: Mirror discrimination for single letters but not for pictures in the Visual Word Form Area. Neuroimage, 55, 742–749. Pflugshaupt, T., Nyffeler, T., von Wartburg, R. et al (2007). When left becomes right and vice versa:
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transient. Frequency estimates vary from 2.5 per cent (Gottfried et al., 2003) to 13 per cent (Tashiro et al., 1987), but are much higher (24 per cent) if only left hemisphere lesions are considered (Wang, 1992). A review of single cases confirmed that mirror-writing following stroke is overwhelmingly associated with damage to the left hemisphere (93 per cent) and with use of the non-dominant left hand (97 per cent) (Balfour et al., 2007). The prototypical adult mirror-writer is a right-hander who loses right-arm motor function following left-hemisphere stroke, being forced to write with the left hand. Given this profile, could the strong association of mirror-writing with lefthemisphere damage be an artefact of forced left-hand use? Would mirror-writing be elicited in other groups simply by requesting writing with the left hand? When this tactic was tried, it yielded mirror-writing rates that did not differ statistically between right- and lefthemisphere damaged people (14 per cent of 36 cases vs. 20 per cent of 50 cases) (Balfour et al., 2007). Even amongst 86 healthy controls, writing with the left hand produced at least some reversals in 7 per cent of people; but writing with the right hand never did. These results fit the motor hypothesis, according to which involuntary mirrorwriting in adults reflects left-handed execution of a right-hand action, without motor transformation. The transformation requires cognitive resources, so would be susceptible to attentional lapses, and especially vulnerable after brain damage.
Mirrored vision after cerebral hypoxia. Neuropsychologia, 45, 2078–2091. Russell, J.W. (1900). A case of mirror writing. Birmingham Medical Review, 68, 95–100. Streifler, M. & Hofman, S. (1976). Sinistrad mirror writing and reading after brain concussion in a bisystemic (oriento-occidental) polyglot. Cortex, 12, 356–364.
We must stress that the sporadic reversals obtained by asking brain-damaged people to write with the left hand are of a different order of severity from florid clinical cases, which may involve consistent reversal of words, multi-digit numbers and sentences (see Della Sala & Cubelli, 2007). To fully account for severe and persistent mirrorwriting may require more pervasive cognitive insufficiencies, perhaps combined with anosognosia (lack of insight) or anosodiaphoria (lack of concern) (e.g. Angelillo et al., 2010). So, children may mirror-write because they are unsure of the correct direction, whilst adults retain the correct (abductive) direction, but fail to modify this motor habit for the unaccustomed hand. However, an alternative motor account, which relates involuntary mirror-writing more closely to the childhood form, has been advanced by Della Sala and Cubelli (2007). This ‘directional apraxia’ hypothesis proposes that involuntary mirror-writing reflects loss of knowledge of the direction of learned actions, with execution instead governed by a preference
Tashiro, K., Matsumoto, A., Hamada, T. & Moriwaka, F. (1987). The aetiology of mirror writing: A new hypothesis. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, 50, 1572–1578. Turnbull, O.H. & McCarthy, R.A. (1996). Failure to discriminate between mirror-image objects: A case of viewpoint-independent object recognition? Neurocase, 2, 63–72. Wade, J., & Hart, R. (1991). Mirror
phenomena in language and nonverbal activities: A case report. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 13, 299–308. Wang, X-de (1992). Mirror writing of Chinese characters in children and neurological patients. Chinese Medical Journal, 105, 306–311.
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for abductive movements. This implies that the direction of an action is not only acquired later than its shape, but represented separately, and vulnerable separately to damage. It is not clear whether this account improves on the standard motor account in explaining documented cases of mirror-writing, but further data on the influence of language and handedness may prove decisive. Directional apraxia predicts that mirrorwriting should affect the left hand for rightward scripts such as English, but the right hand for leftward scripts such as Hebrew or Arabic, regardless of the writer’s handedness. There is one report, which fits this prediction exactly, of a man who mirror-wrote in Hebrew but not in French with his right hand, yet produced the opposite pattern – mirror writing in French but not in Hebrew – with his left hand. However, the observation is anecdotal (Marinesco, cited by Russell, 1900), and requires replication.
The role of mirror-perceptions Mirror-writing does not entail an advantage for reading mirrored text; a fact that considerably bolsters a motor account (Critchley, 1928). But analogous phenomena can affect perception. Parietal lobe damage can induce an inability to tell apart mirror-images, even though subtle changes in shape or rotation are spotted (Davidoff & Warrington, 2001; Turnbull & McCarthy, 1996). Such mirror-confusions sometimes co-occur with mirror-writing (Durwen & Linke, 1988; Heilman et al., 1980; Wade & Hart, 1991). In other cases, perception may be
systematically reversed, yielding fluent mirrorreading (Gottfried et al., 2003; Lambon-Ralph et al., 1997; Pflugshaupt et al., 2007). If these people also mirrorwrite, it may be deliberate, and some state that they do so in order to be able to read what they write. However, the most unusual report is of a polyglot woman who, following a concussion, mirror-read and wrote her first language, Hebrew (a right–left script), but not Polish or German (left–right scripts) (Streifler & Hofman, 1976). Her mirror-writing was apparently involuntary, affecting the dominant right hand (the left hand was not tested); and she displayed a range of other reversals, perceptual and conceptual (confusion of opposites like inside/outside, above/beneath). The language-specificity of her mirrorreversals is challenging to explain, but the tight parallel between her reading and writing suggests that involuntary mirror-writing can have a perceptual (or conceptual) basis in some cases. Like mirror-writing, acquired mirrorreading recalls the errors of childhood; and, as for writing, perceptual confusions in children may reflect a broadly advantageous mirror-generalisation. In nature, mirror-images are invariably two instances or views of the same thing, so it is efficient to represent them as equivalent. On the other hand, we sometimes need to distinguish mirror-forms, and nowhere is this more vital than in decoding written language. Functional neuroimaging suggests that a region of the left midfusiform gyrus (the ‘visual word form area’) may be critical to mirrordiscrimination in reading (Dehaene et al., 2010; Pegado et al., 2011). The development of this capacity presumably suppresses mirror-reading errors during learning.
Deliberate mirror-writing
Writing in Brain in 1896, F. J. Allen, a neurologically healthy Professor of Physiology, recorded his subjective
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experience of fluent left-handed mirrorwriting, speculating that the ability may not be rare, just rarely practised. He proposed that ‘mirror-writing is often a symptom of nerve disease; but the disease need not be the cause of the existence of the faculty, but only the cause of its discovery’ (p.385). As already noted, mirror-writing is adopted deliberately by some brain-damaged people with reversed perceptions. It is also cultivated by some healthy, albeit unusual, people; often to a high level of skill. Celebrated practitioners include Lewis Carroll, who experimented with spatial as well as logical inversions, and was a skilled mirror-writer. Amongst the 100,000 letters that he wrote were a series of ‘looking glass letters, designed to be read in a mirror. Mirror-writing also appears in his stories and poems. In Through the Looking-Glass one of Alice’s first discoveries is a book printed in mirrorscript. There was also Leonardo da Vinci, who wrote thousands of pages of his notebooks in mirrored script, with his left hand. Could deliberate mirror-writing offer insight into the nature of involuntary mirror-writing in braindamaged adults? We have recently had the chance to address this issue with Kasimir Bordihn (KB), a German artist, who has practised various forms of mirror-writing for more than 50 years. KB is a natural left-hander, schooled to write with the right hand, who ‘discovered’ mirror-writing aged nine, finding that he could halve his time writing lines by writing forward with his right hand and simultaneously backward with his left. He later practised and extended this technique, writing forward or backward with either hand, including vertical as well as horizontal flips, and incorporating these into a distinctive ‘mirror-art’ (see cover). We have begun a case study of KB’s abilities, which is providing clear support for the motor hypothesis of mirror-writing, and some less expected results. First, whilst KB writes skilfully in a number of different directions, his most fluent form, and the only non-standard form that closely resembles his normal forward right-handed script, is horizontal mirror-writing produced with his left hand. This special status is consistent with the view that left-handed mirror-writing reflects the untransformed execution of a learned right-hand action. Second, when writing with both hands, his performance is far better if his hands move mirrorsymmetrically to produce opposite scripts, than if they move in tandem to produce similar scripts. It is the motor and not the perceptual congruence that counts. Third,
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as with most involuntary mirror-writers, KB’s versatility with a pen confers no perceptual benefit: he is as baffled by mirrored text as any other reader. These characteristics match a motor account of mirror-writing. As well as asking KB to read mirrored text out loud, we assessed his recognition of reflected letters by psychophysical means, finding nothing unusual. But when instead we asked KB to discriminate pictures of left and right hands, he showed a consistent inability, performing dramatically worse than matched controls, and on one occasion faring no better than chance. This was not a general problem with body parts, as he could discriminate the laterality of feet very well; and it was not due to rushed decision making, as his hand discriminations were both slow and inaccurate. Rather, KB revealed a specific impairment for the discrimination of left and right hands. This body-part identification task is used widely as a test of motor imagery. People solve this task by mentally rotating their own hands or feet to confirm a match to the viewed picture (Parsons, 1987, 1994). One possible interpretation of KB’s result is that his unusual facility for
(and/or history of) executing right-hand actions with the left may entail an abnormal degree of overlap in the neural motor representations of the hands. He may thus rotate his hands mentally to match the picture, yet fail to identify introspectively which hand has made the match. This is a highly preliminary suggestion, but the observation is certainly intriguing. One more flippant implication might be that Leonardo da Vinci, for all of his genius, may have had more trouble than the average Renaissance man in telling his left hand from his right.
Final reflections As children, we make mirror-errors in reading and writing. These perceptual and
motor confusions are not tightly linked, but arise from parallel strategies of mirror-generalisation in perception and action. If we then learn to write with our right hand, mirror-writing may be the latent natural script of our left, and viceversa, requiring only certain circumstances to emerge. Mirror-writing in its various forms – spontaneous, involuntary and deliberate – has long fascinated observers in art and science. Beyond its obvious curiosity value, it provides compelling insights into how we learn about, and represent the world and our actions within it. The story is intriguing, yet incomplete. We think there will be more to learn about ourselves in this particular lookingglass.
Robert D. McIntosh is at Human Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology, University of Edinburgh r.d.mcintosh@ed.ac.uk
Sergio Della Sala is at Human Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology, University of Edinburgh sergio@ed.ac.uk
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Research. Digested.
The British Psychological Society’s free Research Digest Blog, email, Twitter and Facebook
www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog ‘Easy to access and free, and a mine of useful information for my work: what more could I want? I only wish I’d found this years ago!’ Dr Jennifer Wild, Consultant Clinical Psychologist & Senior Lecturer, Institute of Psychiatry ‘The selection of papers suits my eclectic mind perfectly, and the quality and clarity of the synopses is uniformly excellent.’ Professor Guy Claxton, University of Bristol
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INTERVIEW
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‘We are not in control’ Jon Sutton enjoyed a curry with Bruce Hood (University of Bristol), Royal Institution Christmas Lecturer and author of new book The Self Illusion
as presenting the Royal H Institution’s Christmas Lectures opened doors for you? The response was excellent, and now I’m looking at how I can build on it. I’ve been given an opportunity, and I think that psychology could do with an even stronger profile, so I’m hoping to try to take what I’ve got out to the masses a bit more. Not necessarily just with television – I’m doing projects that involve science centres, and the RI has just introduced a teacher’s package based on the lectures. I want to develop something for the general public too. We had an event in April, for more than 300 children from deprived schools in Bristol. We bussed them in to the university, gave them a version of the Christmas lectures and an evaluation, and we’re going to follow up at six months to do a proper empirical assessment of impact. Your new book, The Self Illusion, lends itself very well to introductory lectures. There’s a clear theme and argument, but you cherry pick from so many different areas… I’m not actually saying anything that is that new. I’m putting it together in a framework that we don’t normally think about. Psychology is all about unconscious processes. Most neuroscientists agree that the brain is a complex, multifunctional system, and we all know that when things start to break down, the personality and identity of the individual fractionates. So I don’t think I’m saying anything bizarre. But to the layman in the street, when you confront them with the idea that they are not an integrated individual but rather a collection, then that seems a really strange notion. But does it, really? Do most people find your idea, that ‘the self is a constantly changing story’, that surprising? People think of themselves as a character on a journey through life. So they see
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themselves as a protagonist, a central individual in control, making choices and being influenced by individuals. But that creates the problem of the homunculus, the individual at the centre. I still think there’s this misconception of the self as the individual in the first place, when in fact it’s this emergent property of all the other things that come together. That’s what I’m challenging. In just about every area of psychology, there’s a lot of evidence that we’re not necessarily in control, we’re very much influenced by those around us… so I definitely pay lip service to all those areas of psychology, all the classic studies of Asch, Milgram, etc. Even though they are controversial, they still demonstrate that people are malleable. Even though participants in these studies may be role playing, they’re still doing something that is interesting psychologically. When you combine that with all the new stuff, the neuroscience, I think there’s a very interesting story. As psychologists, we forget that intuitions often clash with the science, so this book was about trying to bring together the sheer overwhelming evidence that people do behave differently, and they certainly don’t behave as they think they would behave… we do have this idealised notion of what we think we’re like, but change the constraints and the context and we find ourselves doing all manner of things. We’re dancers not statues. That’s right. Or we leap away from ships that are sinking, and then we judge people for that, and say that they’re lacking moral fibre or they’re not being true to themselves. We say ‘I wasn’t myself last night?’ Well, if you weren’t yourself, who were you?… We all want a culprit, and that culprit is the self. The book made me think that you’re a bit of a knowledge magpie, picking out the shiny titbits, and so many great real-life examples as well.
Absolutely. I think you’ve always got to make it relevant to a general audience, and references to pop culture always help. I think The Matrix is an amazing film! It tackles some very profound issues. What is reality? What is illusion? How could we ever tell the difference? If you adopt the materialist position, which I do and most neuroscientists do, the answer is you would never know, because we are a product of the brain. The book is packed with those shiny titbits, from doppelgänger hamsters, to forcing students to watch torture, to asking people attitude questions at the height of masturbation. What’s your own favourite psychology study? I have to say that last one, the Dan Ariely study. To even get that past an ethics committee, strikes me as unbelievable! Although I do like the ego depletion work of Roy Baumeister, I’m fascinated by that. He actually believes in the self, he thinks there is an individual. I’m not convinced by the strength of the effects, but I do think it’s plausible that if you abstain or stop yourself from doing things then there are rebound effects. Certainly I know that. But whether it’s this ‘glucose muscle’, I’m not so sure. Given how immersed you are in knowledge, and how many influential colleagues you have worked with over the years, do you think that your self is more of a construct than most? I think knowing and writing about the self as a constructed narrative, I can’t escape the subjective experience that I feel I’m an individual. On reflection I like to reinterpret a lot of my behaviour in terms of the narrative of the self, but ultimately I don’t think it’s going to change the way that anyone behaves, because that’s the whole point – we’ve evolved a brain that deals with selves and deals with individuals. We have all these moral systems that necessitate the existence of an individual, so to completely abandon that is really a folly. However, they are attempting to do that in neuroethics – there are moves in the States, for example, to keep going for defence pleas that deny culpability based on some neuroscience of the mind. Yes – in the book you cover examples like Charles Whitman, Ken Parks, even Mary Bale the ‘cat in bin’ lady, of people committing antisocial acts with mitigating factors of mind. Where do you stand on free will and responsibility for those kinds of acts? I don’t think that any of the new science is going to change, or should change,
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how we treat others. If you have a judicial system that is premised on individual responsibility, that in itself is a good thing because it creates another set of factors that are fed into the multitude of decision-making processes. Because we have a legal system, it’s another thing you take into consideration, it’s put into the mix. So trying to say that no one is responsible, because it’s a multitude of factors, that simply doesn’t work. It’s not really feasible to look for every antecedent that has fed into someone’s behaviour: there would be too many degrees of freedom.
brain anatomy that just makes you more humble, in terms of the problem you’re trying to unravel. The complexity of it, but also the simplicity – like any other complex network, it boils down to on/off switches. Yes. Whenever I talk about materialism, or that the mind is a product of the brain, a lot of philosophers in particular regard that as reductionism, too simplistic. I think they just don’t understand the complexity of the structure they’re trying to demean. It really is phenomenal. Dan Wolpert told me there are more possible connections with just 500 neurons than estimated atoms in the observable universe! As psychologists, we tend to be in awe of the hierarchy of science, with mathematics up there, then physics and chemistry… but we should be a little bit more bullish about what we’re trying to do, which is understand a really complex system.
I suppose some people are concerned that the biological determinism angle will trump everything else. Exactly, this is uncharted territory. In many instances I can imagine that we would readily accept that someone with a brain tumour is not responsible, because it seems to be a very obvious, physical, parasite almost. But describing someone’s circuitry as ‘overreactive’, that doesn’t sound the same, that’s not like an alien system. So we have all these naive conceptions about what it is to be an Bruce Hood is Professor of The development of individual, what cancer Developmental Psychology the connections is at is… people talk about it in Society at the University its peak in childhood. like it’s an alien invader, of Bristol Is that when you see but of course it’s your bruce.hood@bristol.ac.uk the construction of the own cells just changing self as at its peak as and mutating. So you do well? have to conceptualise I think there are individuals as milestones, or periods of significant independent of the forces which are change. I don’t think the infant has a exerted upon them. sense of self that we would recognise. I In the book you talk about think they have self-monitoring and can reconnecting with that biological be aware of their own movements, so matter, through the experience they have conscious awareness of the of holding a human brain. Is that correlates of their activity, but I don’t something you would advocate for think they have a self-story. I think that everyone in psychology? fits with the work on infantile amnesia Would you learn anything additional in and also self-recognition, which doesn’t terms of the neuroanatomy, which you really appear until quite late. may have studied already? Probably not. Would that suggest that selfWhat you do get, as soon as you see the construction is at its peak around physical structure, is a real insight into the ‘reminiscence bump’, the tendency the problem you’re facing! There are for older adults to have increased no arrows, no boxes with diagrams, it’s recollection for events that occurred a lump of very densely packed tissue. during their adolescence? There’s an emotional component to
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It turns out you can facilitate infant memory if you talk to your children. Charles Fernyhough talks about the evidence that different cultures have different cut-off points for memory. In the Far East where they describe the child’s day and engage in elaborate storytelling, they’ve got better memories. So I think that fits with the general idea that you have to construct an autobiographical memory in terms of all the information. I think it’s true to say that during adolescence, children have to establish their identity separate to that of their parents. I think that explains a lot of their teenage rebellion, that attempt to mark their own territory out. I’ve certainly seen that in my own children! Do you sometimes feel you know too much about yourself and others? I think psychology has given me an insight into some of my weaknesses. We do have this persona which we present to the outside world. I think everyone has anxieties, concerns, and I think understanding that is a powerful way of thinking. When you understand that other people have social anxiety… some people can be paralysed with fear about speaking in front of others. Understanding the importance that we place on self value from others has helped me in many ways. Your presence on the social networking site Twitter is interesting from that point of view, because it’s a way of performing in public and sharing your anxieties. I remember a study which created two Twitter personas, one who just tweeted random academic pieces of information, and one who interspersed it with little bits of gossip. Clearly the one with gossip ended up with more followers. So I think the social brain is a gossiping brain. The power of Twitter is this illusion it creates that you have a personal relationship with the people that you follow. It’s to do with self-affirmation again… we like to think that if we have something to say, we’re on that soap box and we’re not alone. At two o’clock in the morning, in your converted barn…! You do have to be careful, because after a bottle of Merlot it does go completely to pot, and then you have to eat humble pie! If they could build a breathalyser into Twitter I’m sure it would be a lot better! But there again, people are too fearful that their persona is somehow corrupted by things said indiscreetly… clearly you have to be careful, but we all like a bit of personality!
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Do you think that’s pretty close to your true self? Yes, everyone knows I’m a terrible gossip! You reckon you spend half your waking life online. Does it worry you, in a Susan Greenfield-esque way, or do you embrace the way that is changing your self? In the book, you say, ‘Who we are will increasingly become shaped by the mediums in which we exist. Some people find this scary. For many it is liberating.’ Which camp do you fall in? I’m the liberating guy. I do think there’s an interesting issue, and I’m not sure how it’s going to play out. Certainly the younger generation are spending more and more time social networking. I try to make a case in the book that that is returning us to a situation where we have more interaction, whereas previously media were always one directional – books were read, TV was watched, radio was listened to. Now people can actually start to take part, it’s re-establishing a bidirectional form of communication. And now it’s not just amongst 12 people, it’s a thousand people; it’s not just your neighbours, it’s across continents. That’s a totally different dynamic about how information is distributed. What might be paradoxical is that rather than giving you a broader viewpoint, what it in fact might be doing is leading to greater extremism. If you think about it, if you hold an extreme view, normally you would be socially isolated, but with the internet you can find someone who holds those same views. So I think we might see more examples of extremism facilitated by the communication the internet provides. When you get grouping, you get the dynamics of polarisation. I get a bit uncomfortable about the way that seems to be happening with a liberal population. You expect it to happen almost, with a conservative population, but there is a ‘Twitterati’, of which you are part, that seems able to marshal a liberal wrath of frightening speed and intensity. I happen to agree with you… it’s almost like cyberbullying, you can build up and attack someone on the flimsiest of evidence. Psychologists, of all people, should be alive to that… You were born in Toronto. Your mother is Australian, your father was Scottish, and you’ve lived and worked around the world, with so many of ‘the greats’. I’ve been very fortunate. I really do think I’ve got the best job in the world. I hate to
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use the word ‘blessed’, because as you know I’m not much of a religious person, but I feel very fortunate to have had the career I’ve had. Of all those people, who has had the biggest impact on your ‘self’? Without a doubt, Susan Carey at Harvard. She’s a formidable thinker and she has been so influential and so highly regarded, not just by people in her field but outside as well. She has a great stable of graduate students who are now in top positions in the States: Paul Bloom, Karen Wynn, these are all her students. Presumably you’re creating the same kind of stable now with your students? No, I don’t think I am to be honest. The American system is very different to the British system. You tend to have just one or two graduate students at a time, whereas in the American system they will have these big labs with five or six. I haven’t actually stayed in one place for long enough to do that, and the funding’s never actually been that good in the UK to do that. What are your views on the Research Evaluation Framework in terms of impact? You’ve had more than most with the RI Christmas Lectures, but that’s not going to count for anything? Well it will actually, because 20 per cent is due to public engagement or impact… … but doesn’t it have to be traced back to a specific research paper? We’re putting a case forward on my activities, because you can trace it back to the book, Supersense, and there are some papers which are in that. I think it would be relatively unfair to deny the impact of that whole activity. That’s just it, I thought that was a great example of how the system was unfair, so it’s great to hear that. We’re looking to make that argument. I think it’s quite unusual for scientists to write popular books, so I don’t think it would have factored in as an obvious criterion. As for the whole REF thing… I do think academics need to take stock of where they are. We are publicly funded, and we shouldn’t forget that. I think it does help sometimes to sit and consider what kind of influence you’re having. So I’m not totally against the whole idea of being accountable, but I think this whole idea of a massive process seems an overly bureaucratic way of doing it. Dorothy Bishop at Oxford did that interesting blog and column in The Psychologist about people bringing in marketing people to
streamline their REF, which does seem ludicrous. We mustn’t forget that less than 1 per cent of this country’s GDP goes into science funding, so it does seem to be a lot of effort for a very small piece of pie. So, who are you? I’m a number of things. I’m a father, I’m a male, I have all these attributes I can describe. Do I have a core as a self? I think I do… I feel I’m struggling all the time, I feel I’m inadequate. When you start to read about great people in your research for a book, you hear about Kant, the philosophers, Helmholtz, or you meet people like Carey, inevitably you feel that you’re inadequate. And that’s a core part of your self, that feeling of inadequacy? Yes, and time running out. I’m always in a hurry, I’m the most impatient person. I try to instil that in my students, they know that if they hand me work it will be turned around within 24 hours. If there’s any delay in the process it’s not because of me. I’m impulsive as well. Sometimes I’m a little too quick off the mark to criticise, or I’m less generous. But ultimately, what I do has worked to some extent. And I think I’m transitioning out of a pure research role into one that is trying to broaden in a public way, and I think that’s good, I think we need more people like that. Psychology needs to punch above its weight. I’m really frustrated by the way psychology in this country has been portrayed as a little bit common sense – some of the most interesting questions, which are psychological questions, are not common sense. So I do see a purpose now, to move towards that impact aspect. And in doing that, you’re getting the positive feedback that should reduce that core sense of inadequacy. That’s true, but as soon as you put yourself out in the public limelight you do attract a lot of criticism. There are some people who don’t think that academics should have to justify themselves, or market or do public engagement. But I think they’re just living in the wrong era. I think it’s very difficult to balance that engagement role with being a good academic, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do that. But at this time when psychology funding has been really slashed, rather than just sitting on my own and lamenting that, I’m going to redirect, be flexible, put my efforts somewhere else. Hopefully we may get someone in the corridors of power who understands why it’s so important to support social sciences research.
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2012 21 November, Nottingham Trent University How do we stop convicted sex offenders reoffending? Dr Belinda Winder, Head of SOCAMRU (Sexual Offences, Crime and Misconduct Research Unit), Nottingham Trent University Relationships: Stress, well-being and the role of parents. Dr Andrea Oskis, Lecturer in Psychology, University of West London How perception guides action: Examples from sport and health. Professor Cathy Craig, Professor of Perception and Action Psychology at the School of Psychology, Queen’s University Belfast Evolution of Language: What do chimps have to say? Katie Slocombe, University of York Illusions in the lab and in the real world Dr Peter Thompson, University of York
6 December, Kensington Town Hall The social neuroscience of laughter Professor Sophie Scott, University College London Stress: Mechanism, Measurements & Manipulations Dr Mark Wetherell, Senior Lecturer Psychobiology, Northumbria University Experiencing relational depth in therapy Professor Mick Cooper, Professor of Counselling in the School of Psychological Sciences and Health, University of Strathclyde Cognitive Psychology: What it is and why it matters? Professor Ulrike Hahn, Cardiff University Weird science: A brief introduction to anomalistic psychology Professor Chris French, Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit, Goldsmiths, University of London
Visit the event websites at
www.bps.org.uk/P4SNottingham2012 www.bps.org.uk/P4SLondon2012
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