More Food Type Things Out To Kill You: Tofu and Distilled Water

I wouldn't call the people I work with health nuts, but food comes up often, possibly because we talk over lunch, or maybe the average person just cares more and more about what exactly it is we are all putting in our body.  Where in the past you just assumed that if something is marketed as edible it is actually food, many people understand that processed food is saturated with strange chemicals, flavors and preservatives that take a long term toll on your body, because, well, your body needs actual food and gets confused by the foreign objects it finds boiling down in your stomach juices and passing along down the magical water slide we call the intestinal tract.  Substituting sugar and vegetable oil for other more expensive or high calorie ingredients can take its toll on your body, and the organic/raw/unprocessed food revolution we are still in the midst of has wizened many people to at least a basic understanding of nutrition and eating better = feeling better.

Recently in conversation with 2 people I work with have separately brought two things that even the very healthy regard as staples: distilled water and processed soybean or tofu.  Let me tell you what I've just found out:

Tofu has all sorts of shit going on with it.  I've known for a long time that legumes (family of plants including beans, soy, peas, peanuts) have had it in for people, namely from the lectins they contain, proteins that bind to your intestines and block them from absorbing other nutrients, leading to malnutrition, diarrhea, nausea, bloating and so on if beans are not properly soaked and cooked.  Tofu, or soy in general, also contain phytohormones that mimic human hormones, particularly estrogen.  These fake estrogens have been linked to increases in breast cancer for women, and decreased testosterone production (feminization) in men.  Apparently soy products can also cause imbalance in Thyroid Stimulating Hormone, and perhaps even other hormone function as well, considering how little we actually understand hormone function.  According to this interview, the problem is that they don't ferment tofu in North America and so this is what is causing the problem.  In Asia, where they have eaten tofu for ages, the tofu is properly fermented so does not affect them.  Nevertheless, it is not really a problem as long as you eat tofu in modertation.

Distilled water holds a different problem...while the water has been purified of all the bad things that can be found in water, the distilling process also gets rid of all the minerals that are natural in spring water, for example.  Our body can absorb minerals from food, and other sources like multivitamins, but not to the same extent as vitamins that are already dissolved in water.  Drinking distilled water gets even worse than that...imagine water as being little containers that can hold bits of solids.  In distilled water those containers are empty, and water is ALWAYS trying to fill those containers.  That means when you drink distilled water, it is actually leaching minerals from your body and into the water, which gets flushed through your body faster than regular water.  This study from the World Health Organization reports that studies of distilled water on rats have negative effects on their digestive systems, and leads to increased water intake and more frequent urination.  According to the report, the most important loss of minerals is in calcium and magnesium, and distilled water should be remineralized to be considered safe drinking water.

There is no need to panic, in moderation neither of these things will kill you, only after a protracted period of time is it considered a health risk.  A varied diet can help you avoid particular problems with foods that are a known health problem, or even with foods that could be found problematic in the future.

On Friday the 13th

Since I’m trying to write a slasher short story, and doing whatever the writer equivalent of flailing is in the process, I thought it would be a good time to watch all the Friday the 13^th movies.  I enjoy many horror movies, but slashers are definitely low end by anyone’s standards.  This is because they often lack characters, good dialogue or interesting mythology.  Originally devised to cash in on the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween, Friday the 13th (named after Jason Voorhees’ birthday, the day his mother took revenge) has horrors of Crystal Lake, something much more appealing to me, compared to the cracking one liners of Nightmare on Elm Street, Child’s Play, etc. and gore porn angle of more modern horrors like Saw.  In fact, in watching the entire series, it seems only in more recent movies that focus on the gruesome visualization of people dying in bizzare ways or with quirky murder weapons.  This is more evident if you compare the 2009 Friday the 13^th remake, although the deaths are more drawn out and gruesome it is still a far cry from the movies that make suffering and special effects the movie’s entire purpose.

Don’t get me wrong, the Friday the 13ths aren’t “interesting” by any means.  With a few exceptions the movies follow the formula they helped to pioneer: a sandwich of careless/clueless people murdered one by one between two measly slices of a bare bones story, ending with one or two survivors at the end of the movie where they think they kill the killer for good, often in some epic fashion.  The movie is interspersed with scares, some real and some false (like a cat flying through the camera shot like a paratrooper, or a practical joker up to whacky antics) all the while most of the people who end up dying have sex, do drugs, or commit crimes (something that becomes more pronounced during the late 80’s early 90’s when the crack epidemic/crime wave was peaking in big US cities – an interesting piece of cultural history really noticeable in many movies of that era).  An interesting aspect in reflecting on all the people Jason Voorhees had killed are the many exceptions of the ‘rule’ that they establish that sinners are being punished.  Couch potato rednecks are killed in their homes, friendly teens rejected by their peers are killed alongside the popular kids who teased them, and of course the inept law enforcement – enough to reject any kind of idea that Jason could represent any sort of just angel of death.  The innocent die alongside the guilty, and except for Part 8 (in New York where apparently people wearing hockey masks with exposed spinal cords are mundane enough to be ignored by passers by), every single person coming across Jason is killed, unceremoniously, without hesitation, and sometimes with surprisingly little camera time devoted to their slaying.  Even though it is a slasher series, I was often surprised with how little blood and guts I had to sit through, since I prefer the classic off camera horror approach leaving more to the imagination.

I could devote as much time as Star Wars nerds do dwelling on problems with the movies like continuity, inconsistencies, and things that don’t “make sense”, but what would be the point?  After all, Jason pretty much just acts like an invincible juju zombie killing everyone in a forgotten quest to avenge his mother’s death – or perhaps just a never ending attempt to seek motherly approval by killing those who would never meet her high standards of moral code.  But the glaring problem rearing its head throughout the series I HAVE to bring up is this: Jason was supposed to be drown as a child, something we are reminded of in most of the movies, yet the killer is an adult Jason who lived in a shack of stitched together house pieces (at least in part 2, and also looked really, really cool).  In Part 2 (and also the 2009 remake, which is a remake of Part 2 not Part 1) they state at the beginning that he survived the drowning and instead witnessed his mother die, and eventually took revenge on his mother’s killer by somehow tracking the girl down to her city apartment and stabbing her in the head with an icepick.  I have no problem with him being able to find people, teleport around like a wizard, being super strong and invincible, but if he drowned in the lake, shouldn’t he be a little undead kid?  And if he never drowned, why didn’t he find his mom, yet saw her beheaded?  And why would they keep referring to him having drowned, being the most pronounced in part 8 where the main character of that movie has nightmares about learning to swim in Crystal Lake and the drowned boy version of Jason grabbing her leg, haunting her dreams and giving her visions?  They try to address some of these issues in Jason Goes to Hell (technically Part 9), but that movie doesn’t fit properly  (it was made by New Line Cinema not Paramount like all the others) and completely loses the feel of the other movies so I can’t help but instinctively reject it’s explanations.

No one has approached me to write Friday the 13^th fiction yet, but I would say what happened after Jason drowned in the Lake, Mrs. Voorhees got a replacement child – maybe by kidnapping, adoption, or some sort of pact with Evil – and raised him as Jason.  Heck, he may have even helped her do some of the killing in the first movie, hiding offstage during her confrontation with Alice in the last half hour of the movie.  It could explain his supernatural powers and helps everything fit together since he may never have been a normal boy at all.

Incidentally the entire sequence after Mrs. Voorhees reveals in the first movie is one of my favorite and unintentionally funny series of scenes in horror movie history.   Mrs. Voorhees sets the standard for a ruthless killer turning into a hesitating bumbler and Alice constantly bopping the murderer and running away blubbering still makes me chuckle and could actually be believable as someone who would be panicking and fleeing for their life.  Making mistakes like unbarricading the door at the sight of the jeep, running away from the vehicle because there is a body in the passenger seat, and running back in to her cabin and turning off all the lights and closing the curtains – when every other light on camp has been turned on – I got to say is pretty damn funny but also manages to make good, agonizing suspense for someone who doesn’t know what is going to happen in a theatre in 1980.  The sequences lasts for a half hour, 1/3 of the entire movie.  Also I have no idea why 20 rifles were in an unlocked storage shed in a camp for kids – maybe rifle training is standard at kid’s camps in the US?

Overall, some of the movies in the franchise hold up under the test of time more than others.  Obviously the first one is great for a few different reasons.  The mysterious ‘unseen’ killer is really effective and was groundbreaking for its time.  The orchestral music is also top notch and something I really noticed compared with bland modern day soundtracks, including the 2009 remake (which is full of the typical ‘modern’ ambient noise and industrial music similar to every other modern horror), part 3, part 9 and 10.  The high pitched violin accompanying glimpses of the killer or the unexpected stab add tremendously to the scare factor and tension, and inevitable doom to chase scenes and other badness.  I cannot emphasize enough how much good music adds to a spooky movie and I hope directors who are serious about making good movies pick this up.

Something else I want to draw your attention to in scary movies is the ‘seriousness’ in scenes.  I think that if you want a movie to retain its scariness and rewatchability/long term quality the serious factor is important.  The characters have to interact with the situation in a realistic way, and the director also has to portray the scene for what it is, that is if it is a serious situation like a murder, people involved need to treat it that way.  A murder should be a frightening experience and that should be conveyed to the audience as well.  I already mentioned the scary music is an excellent way to facilitate this, but the characters, unless they are hardened by a life of war or crime would probably react quite severely to being stalked by a murderer in the middle of nowhere.  Some of the movies handled this bang on, while others suffer from a lack of that serious factor, giving the movie a campy feeling (where characters do not react in a believable manner to the situation they are in) or removing the fright from a scene for the audience.  Any scary movie where people aren’t getting scared is a missed opportunity, n’est pas?  It is possible, however, that screening audiences respond better to these, but I don’t know the criteria for selecting test audiences…are they completely at random or are they people that actually want to be at a scary movie?  If that is the case, then all screened movies would not be scary because they would want to appeal to the broadest audience possible, and the majority of people probably don’t want to be scared I think.  And it’s those little touches that change a movie from being a romp to beholden of terror.

Overall, while the first movie captured the essence of a scary movie where everyone is stalked and murdered and hits all cylinders very well, Part 7 is still my favorite.  The New Blood does all the old things right, with good music, visuals and the serious factor, but adds something new, a girl with psychic powers.  More than just a gimmick, this adds a new level of the supernatural to movies that lack any mysticism at all save the killer.  It is someone who can actually stand toe-to-toe with Jason and makes for some cool special effect sequences and makes the showdown sequence at the end a lot more fun to watch.  Some of the other episodes of Friday the 13^th are lacking an climactic ending or feel short, while 7 feels satisfying.  Parts 3, 6, 8 and 10 suffer from an overabundance of campiness and are mostly horrible soundtracks, although the ending for 6 was well done, the kids in the camp cracking wise deflated any suspense and made them feel like they were a part of the audience and were never in any danger.  Part 2 was pretty good and felt like it stuck to the roots, and 4 and 5 were all right and told the story of Tommy Jarvis which made part 6 less sufferable as well.  Part 4 has a great, more subtly terrifying ending, having Jason get hacked to pieces by a prepubescent Cory Feldman and sets up the future movies.  Part 5 was kind of confusing but also refreshingly different storyline, I really need to rewatch it.  Part 8 feels like they just go off the deep end like they are trying to be ridiculous with purpose.  Consistently Jason shows a homing instinct to go back to Crystal Lake, but this time boards a boat headed for New York.  The movie turns him in to some sort of strange anti-hero, killing drug dealers, rapists, etc. and takes on a strange form of postmodernism, as it feels like Jason knows the camera is on him, following him around as he goes about his business stalking victims and even stopping to do purposeful poses after kills.  Part 9 – Jason Goes to Hell - isn’t really a Friday the 13^th movie and is more this parasite horror movie tied to Jason Voorhees name.  Part 10 completely isn’t even worth talking about but is just more of the same from 8…let’s put Jason in space ok whatever.

In retrospect it seems extremely strange how horror movies had evolved to the point where the killer becomes the main character, but that seems to just be a byproduct from any protagonists having to die, combined with wanting to make sequels to reuse the ‘formula’ and brand name to make money.  As a result people often end up cheering for the killer, and being desensitized to people being killed, because they have little or no back story, so why would you care about them?  Also you can’t cheer for any of the other characters because you know they are going to die and do little of merit while they are alive.  Do horror movies create a desensitized populous, or is their popularity a product of it?  I’ve already made up my mind, I just wanted you to think about it for a minute.  Ready for what I think?  Senseless violence, justice, brutal murder, people being jerks go at least as far back as the bible and probably further.  The very existence of this series of movies has never been about storytelling or brain washing, just about making money.  Corrupting youth is a distant, unintentional side effect, like smoking cigarettes.  It’s only through the sheer volume of movies that they have managed to tell bits of a story, created a few characters, and created a bit of lore.  And that’s just the nature of reality.  Good things come about as a side effect that was never intended.  Like, penicillin and shit.

Regarding Air Canada

If you are Air Canada management wondering about ways to cut costs, improve efficiency or, heaven forbid, increase customer service, I have good news for you: I know what the problem is.

The problem is with your operations. Airport operations are currently being run by either the willfully ignorant or completely incompetent. One of the two. With my new job I was sent to Winnipeg for two one week excursions, and both times I flew from Victoria to Calgary, Calgary to Winnipeg, and back Winnipeg to Vancouver, Vancouver to Victoria. The first time there was smooth...no complications, weather was good, etc. On the way back the airplane was late arriving to Winnipeg due to "unforeseen delays" by an hour, which didn't affect my schedule since I had to wait a few hours for my connecting flight in Victoria anyway. My second trip, however, was a different story.

Victoria to Calgary, again, was smooth. Victoria almost always has great weather, and it was only lightly raining when we left. When we arrived in Calgary, however, it was the middle of a snowstorm. This was mid February, mind you, not at all unexpected for a winter stricken hell hole like Alberta. Leaving the Calgary airport was delayed because we had to wait to get de-iced...sensible and a necessary precaution. What happened next confused the hell out of me. After de-icing and driving around the 'strip at a snails pace, we wait in line for our turn to take off....for about an hour. At the end of this hour, snow falling just as hard as when we arrived, the captain makes an announcement - we will need to de-ice the plane again, but because we have been idling so long, we also needed to refuel. With groans and contemptuous remarks, the passengers resign themselves to their fate of being trapped in Calgary on a hallway with wings and chairs with nothing they can do but groan. Another hour later, we are finally airborne - effectively doubling our 2.5 hour flight. One thing lead to another and it was midnight by the time I got to my hotel, starved from not being able to access real food all day because I have been at airports, yet being trapped in a city where restaurants don't stay open past 12.

Looking back at the situation, it makes no sense to me. The ground crew at the Calgary airport were supposedly caught "off guard" by snow...falling in February...in Alberta. Really? Air Canada, in business since 1936, has never implemented any preparedness protocols for snowstorms in one of the snowiest populated places on Earth? On top of that, they decide to de-ice the plane, then leave it in the queue while crossing their fingers that, despite seeing how many planes are in line to take off, and how long each take off is taking, hopefully maybe they will perhaps get the chance to lift off before snow builds up on the plane again. Can't this be easily solved by creating a system where planes are de-iced just before they take off. Sure it may slow things down a tiny bit, but it would easily prevent these rediculous delays. I also find it strange that one hour of idling burns enough gas that a plane is no longer safe to make a 2.5 hour flight. I always was under the impression that planes had massive amounts of extra fuel to ensure they could stay in the air much longer than they needed to in case of emergencies, even enough to fly all the way back to their point of origin.

Now I'm going to put passenger convenience aside in my argument. Sure, people were pissed, but considering Air Canada has a near monopoly on flights in Canada, it's not like people can show their contempt by using someone else's services. What boggles my mind is, with all the complaints from Air Canada about how flying isn't profitable with rising fuel costs, and threatening unions because they want decent wages, they are still not able to cut costs that are easily avoidable. Hey, here's an idea guys - instead of demonizing unions and trying to pay your workers sweatshop wages, why not try and eliminate easily avoidable massive costs by actually running things smoothly? When our flight was delayed, fuel was burned, the plane was de iced one extra time, and you had to pay all of your staff involved overtime for all the extra time involved. Not to mention the effort rerouting the plane and trying to fit it in at new departure and arrival times, no doubt interfering with other flights to some extent. To an outside observer like myself, it looks like no one is overseeing the smoothness of overall flow from departure to arrival, as well as planes getting to where they need to be in a timely manner. It looks like pure, unbridled incompetence, and it is costing everyone a lot of money.

That was the worst of it. But then guess what, on the way back, the airplane was delayed AGAIN arriving in Winnipeg due once again, on the very same day of the week, just two weeks layer, to "unforeseen delays". Hey guess what, by the time this happened, even I had foreseen it was going to be delayed. The entire experience just left me feeling that pretty much no one at Air Canada with authority cared whether or not massive amount of resources were wasted with bumbling, or that people would be inconvenienced by flight delays. People arriving in Vancouver missed their flights, and Air Canada happily paid for their hotel rooms and taxis to wait for the next flight in the morning. Hopefully their were enough extra seats on their flights the next day, or else what would they do, send a whole extra flight to make sure people were able to complete their trip?

On Becoming a Musketeer

Every once in a while, I need to be reminded that Hollywood hasn't become an utterly festering pit of despair when it comes to great storytelling of classic and new tales - it has always been that way. And for all the beefs I have for the average movie full of terrible dialogue, mediocre acting and almost no character development, they do usually hit on the sights and sounds, costumes, music, explosions and special effects. If you need proof of this, watch any older movie, pretty much at all. There are always exceptions obviously, and you should remove probably 10% of all movies because they either have exceptional special effects for the time it was made, or some other attribute listed above that makes it exceptional for it's time. That being said, it still doesn't set me at ease sitting down to watch a new movie of any sort knowing I'm going to subject myself to more of the same for reasons I am still not sure of.

That being said, subjecting myself to the 2011 reprise of The Three Musketeers made me particularly irritated, not at the giant computer generated airships or dialogue which seemed to progressively demean every actor who uttered them, but because 20 minutes in I was completely convinced that what I was watching in no way resembled the original story, a bastardized string of action sequences and wonton killing that would make Conan the Barbarian start to question the sanctity of life and Indiana Jones wondering who would spend that much time setting up highly artistic elaborate traps. It seemed like a patchwork of all the most popular movies of the last 30 years - DaVinci Code style pseudo mystery treasure hunting, Matrix style rotational slow motion fight scenes, all the while taking the seriousness of the situation with the stride of the appropriate Loony Tunes character.

With all this in mind, I was determined to find out what the deal was with the original story, mostly so I could make fun of the movie and point out in all the ways it is WRONG. However, as it turns out, I jumped the musket and the reality of the situation is that the movie followed the original story in many ways:

-d'Artagnan is the "stranger coming to town" to become a musketeer
-he runs in to the head of the Cardinal's guard and is almost killed by him
-he then schedules duels with all 3 musketeers the first day in town, then they all get in a fight with the Cardinal's guards
-Milady de Winter is involved in a plot to start war between France and England - Milla Jonavich, shame on you, probably the silliest of all the characters, all of her scenes could have been in Resident Evil: Musketeer Zombies
-probably some other stuff but can't write about since the movie was mind numbing and I never read the original story

I know what you're thinking: QUITE AN IMPRESSIVE LIST!
Still, more than I had expected, and it is quite amazing they were able to put all this together while maintaining little or no integrity and a schlockfest of stupidity, cardboard cutout characters and absurd violence.

Now, my main gripe with the film was that it is or was supposed to be portraying a particular period in history, while simultaneously having no resemblance in terms of technology, manner of speaking, ideology, believability or even in any attempt to portray actual people from history as close to reality as possible, such as the Cardinal Richelieu for example. The Cardinal happens to be the embodiment of pure evil, as demonstrated by putting a skeleton pope with a crucifix and a reaper's sickle on the prow of his guard's airship.

As it turns out, it is probably just me getting older. The next nearest adaptation, the 1993 3 Musketeers made by Disney stars Tim Curry as a Wile E. Coyote style Cardinal, attempting throughout the movie to grope women and torture children if not bound by the producers and their PG 13 rating, and actually still comes across somehow as more evil than his 2011 counterpart.

The 2001 movie The Musketeer probably shows the least amount of effort, dispensing with all of the other characters but d'artagnan in a Japanese style shoot em up. In 1978 the Soviet's made a musical version, and in 1957 there was a Mexican comedy based on the original story. Anways, point being there has always been absurd revisions and changes to classic stories.

So why does it get my goat so much, why do they seem like such abominations to me? I can only guess that the contemporary "version" of a retelling of a classic story does (and will) speak volumes about the current state of the society it was conceived in, and made for. It represents all of us, preserved for all future generations, and like other stories and characters of popular culture like Dracula 2000 or the new Conan the Barbarian, speaks nothing but ill about the society we are in, where mindless fighting and gore planned around a loose character concept and a setting that is similar to present day in ways it seemingly should not be. Do I find it hard to care about the characters in more modern movies simply because they seem to lack personality, or because they remind me too much of the present. I don't really believe the latter, but it's just an idea.

Your Personal Information in 2011

At my latest job I do surveys over the phone, which is not a difficult or even interesting job but is in line with what I want to be doing, which is research. Aside from the horrible drone of dialing phone numbers over and over and filling answering machines all over the country with a pre scripted message, the hardest part of the job is dealing with the constant rejection of people who do not want to do surveys.

I can't say I blame them, I've got plenty of phone solicitations and have turned down "surveyors" that seem like thinly veiled sales pitches. But these are legitimate surveys being run by branches of the BC government with the intention of improving the programs and infrastructure, something you would think most people would want to do to make the society we live in better. I usually try to find out why people aren't interested in doing surveys, usually people say "I'm busy" which isn't true since anyone can accommodate 10 minutes in to their schedule one time no matter how busy they may actually be. But it is difficult to argue it and that is why they use it. And even though I appreciate on some level when someone actually tells you they don't want to do the survey, as opposed to never answering the phone, hanging up on you, or just getting angry and then hanging up on you, the rejection itself is very difficult to get over, the problem being that both the surveyor and the person answering the phone have the tendency to take the interaction personally, sometimes extremely so.

For the last survey I was working on, just before the "break" for Christmas (people don't like doing surveys on their holidays for some strange reason) I was working on what seemed like a very useful survey for an aspect of infrastructure for the local municipality (I won't get in to any more detail about it just because I don't want to violate any confidentiality). What I found particularly surprising about this study was that when I mentioned the organization I was calling on behalf of, a lot of people got really really upset when I mentioned the name...apparently they have a bad reputation with some of the population, whereas other people were absolutely fine or even eager to help us out with their information.

Still other people stated that they didn't feel comfortable giving personal information over the phone. This is definitely understandable if they are unsure of who is contacting them, but this particular study is done every 5 years and sent out brochures to everyone that would be contacted to let them know the survey was legit. Still, even with this information people didn't want to give out private, personal information about themselves.

This would make sense to me, except on later reflection I realized that they are probably giving up much much more information to other places and are so naive as to not even realize it is happening. The biggest example of this is debit cards and credit cards. Almost everyone I know uses them because it is "easier" than cash...and these are people who are very concerned with their own privacy, and probably wouldn't have done the survey I was doing over the phone either for the same reasons. Just a heads up, THE BANKS ARE COLLECTING ALL YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION EVERY TIME YOU MAKE A PURCHASE, WHERE and WHEN you do it. Your spending information is much more valuable than most of the questions I ask on a typical survey, and unlike a snapshot they are accumulating your spending patterns over your entire lifetime. And unlike us, who are bound by the ethics surrounding legitimate research surveys to keep your data confidential and only use it for the purpose related to the survey, the banks have no regulations as to who they can sell that information to.

Much more blatant examples of this are "club" cards such as Shoppers Optimum, Air Miles and Safeway cards. Every transaction where you input the card tells them what you bought, where and when you bought it, and it goes in to a database along side all your purchases from every other day. And while that information may be horded by them, there is nothing stopping them from selling that information to any marketing company willing to buy that data. They are doing this constantly, and YOU ARE GIVING THEM THAT INFORMATION FOR FREE.

Of course we tend to have a head-in-the-sand society who can't see long term consequences of what is going on and if they can avoid thinking about something that isn't right in front of their faces they will do it. It's like participating in the Stanley Cup riot smashing property while 100 people point their cameras at you taking pictures and video. Hmm no that will never be used against you in the future.

If you are against giving out personal information, that's fine, I totally understand where you're coming from, but just 1) think about all aspects of your life and see if you are really practicing what you preach, or are you just doing whatever happens to be easiest at the time; and 2) if you don't want to participate in what people may be asking of you (in person or over the phone) just remember the person you are dealing with is just that, a real person with feelings and other human traits, and treating them that way only takes about 10 extra seconds of effort.

Prosopagnosia in Children

Although prosopagnosia has been frequently documented in adults, recent research has given added attention to deficits in facial recognition in children. One such patient, identified as K.D., sustained cerebral damage in infancy and since had been unable to recognize people’s faces (Young & Ellis, 1989). However, when tested at ages 8-11 her visual abilities were found to be somewhat impaired, but were no poorer than other children who could recognize faces with no difficulty. She was diagnosed with prosopagnosia, where she could identify a face for what it was, can perceive and imitate facial expressions, but she does not have a recognition of faces that should be familiar to her due to previous experiences with them. It is believed that 2-2.9% of the general population is affected by face recognition difficulties (Bowles et al., 2009). Prosopagnosics use other cues such as voice, clothes, context and nonverbal cues to identify familiar people. This cognitive impairment is similar in both children and adults; with the exception that a child whose functional ability has been impaired at infancy has no memory of what it used to be like to recognize faces.

More recently theoretical models to explain face processing have been assembled using data from case studies of prosopagnosics. Initially face processing is analyzed in a way common to all objects, perceiving the size, orientation and figure-ground relationships (Brunsdon et al., 2006). Next the face is structurally encoded, including an abstract representation that integrates a global general configuration along with its individual unique features. Each feature, such as nose, mouth, ears are given a ‘feature value’ recognized as an individual nose, for example, associated with that person. Recognition occurs when a known individual feature value for each feature group is recalled that is associated with that person. This recall also brings to mind associated personality characteristics and facts about that person. Of course the same information can be recalled from nonfacial cues such as those already mentioned above. Face recognition can give other information about a person, such as facial expression and mood since some cues will be specific to the person and vary from the last time the facial information was processed. However, this model is likely oversimplified, as studies with inherited prosopagnosia have shown. Subjects belonging to the same family expressed a variety of impairments, indicating that prosopagnosia may not be a single trait but a cluster of related subtypes, with individuals having some variety of impairments to the face-processing system (Schmalzl et al., 2008). Another interesting point is that studies employing MRI scanning of the brain have shown that the brain does indicate a recognition of faces, but this is a covert recognition not consciously known by the subject (Jones & Tranel, 2001).

Research into treatment for prosopagnosia have indicated successes in training to teach face recognition (Francis et al., 2002). One study focused on training using a complex mnemonic, incorporating remembering a prominent facial feature, the person’s name and occupation in order to remember photographs of particular people. To relearn a familiar face, they rehearsed semantic information about the person while viewing their photograph. However the improvements in facial memory was person specific and not particular to the stimulus used. Brunsdon et al. were able to successfully treat an 8 year old child with prosopagnosia through studying photos and observing and discussing the major facial features, such as those associated with the eyes, nose, mouth and hair (2006). After an established baseline the child showed significant improvement continuing post treatment, as well as anecdotal evidence that his ability to identify family members had improved. The study identified recognition of eyes and mouth as being most important for face processing. In another study, a 4-year-old girl diagnosed with congenital prosopagnosia was tested by monitoring eye movement recordings when studying faces (Schmalzl et al., 2008). Results of the scans revealed that the child’s scan paths lay outside the internal core features, particularly away from the eye region. Previously the girl had tended to use hair and voice to for recognition cues. The study then turned to focusing the child’s training on directing visual attention to characteristics of the internal features of faces. This precise training was rapidly integrated by the child and showed improvements similar to the study by Brunsdon et al.

Although prosopagnosia affects both children and adults alike, there seems to be more we can learn from studying these cognitive deficits in children. It appears that the underlying problem tends to be with abnormal scan pathing in the prosopagnosic subjects, at least with regards to faces. The treatment seems to be clear, but there are still some questions that merit further study. Why do some children have this abnormal scan pathing? Is there some common reason for why this may be happening in some children but not others? Although in some cases there may be a genetic component, in developmental prosopagnosia environmental factors may contribute the most. Further studies should consider potential environmental effects or particular childhood experiences that could contribute to inducing developmental prosopagnosia. In congenital prosopagnosia, brain-imaging studies can reveal more detailed information about how visual components of the brain develop, and how the brain can correct these physical problems over time.

References

Bowles, D. C., McKone, E., Dawel, A., Duchaine, B., Palermo, R., Schmalzl, L., et al. 2009. Diagnosing prosopagnosia: Effects of ageing, sex and participant-stimulus ethnic match on the Cambridge Face Memory Test and Cambridge Face Perception Test. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 26, 423-455.

Brunsdon, R., Coltheart, M., Nickels, L. & Joy, P. 2006. Developmental prosopagnosia: A case analysis and treatment study. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 23, 822-840.

Francis, D., Riddoch, M. J., & Humphreys, G. W. 2002. “Who’s that girl?” Prosopagnosia, person-based semantic disorder, and the reacquisition of face identification ability. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 12, 1-26.

Jones, R. D. & Tranel, D. 2001. Severe developmental prosopagnosia in a child with superior intellect.

Schmalzl, L., Palermo, R. & Coltheart, M. 2008. Cognitive heterogeneity in genetically based prosopagnosia: A family study. Journal of Neuropsychology, 2, 99-117.

Schmalzl, L., Palermo, R., Green, M., Brundson, R. & Coltheart, M. 2008. Training of familiar face recognition and visual scan paths for faces in a child with congenital prosopagnosia. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 25, 704-729.

Young, A. W. & Ellis, H. D. 1989. Childhood prosopagnosia. Brain and Cognition, 9, 16-47.

Some Effects of Punishment

My next big paper/presentation is on Humanism, so in doing some research I came across a really interesting paper written by the Psychologist Dr. Hans Eysenck. He describes two interesting experiments done with rats and dogs:
In the first one, a rat is put at the bottom of a t-maze, and so reaching the end can turn right or left. In all 3 conditions food is placed on the right end and want to teach him to turn right. One group is rewarded with food when they turn right, a second group is punished by shock when they turn left and rewarded when turn right. A third group is punished when they turn right in addition to getting the food.

You would think that if punishment deters learning, the third group should learn less quickly and 2nd group most quickly, but as it turns out the the 2nd and 3rd group both learn equally more quickly than group 1. It seems strange, but it doesn't matter if the reward and punishment are paired or paired as right or wrong. The point made against traditional forms of punishment like serving jail time for stealing is that it doesn't matter if they were successful at stealing or not, but if the thieves are punished it is reinforcing the behavior regardless.

In the next experiment dogs are put in compartment A, divided by a low fence from compartment B which the dogs can jump over. They are given a signal, and a few seconds later compartment A is electrified, making the dog jump to B, which they quicklylearn. Now to teach them not to jump to the signal. In group 1 the researchers give the signal but do not shock so if the dog hesitates it learns not to jump. Group 2 has no shock in compartment A but electrocutes B instead. If punishment for jumping into B is effective in making them learn not to jump, they should stop the habit more quickly than group 1, but the dogs punished for jumping continue to jump into compartment B and never learn it is safe to remain in A. They behave like recidivists who return to criminal activity each time they are punished for criminal behaviour.

The idea from both of these is that punishment can stamp in behaviour we are punishing rather than stamp it out. This in itself is pretty profound (and this research was done decades ago), however it seems that in the case of education, this could be used as an argument to punish children in school. Since memory works better when you punish the subject regardless of whether they were right or wrong, wouldn't regular random punishment make students smarter? There must be some reason they don't do this because they haven't allowed hitting in school for quite a long time now.