How cognitive science helps you win "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire"
Here's another one I'm coming late to, but it's so cool I can't pass it up: Ogi Ogas, a cognitive neuroscientist, won $500,000 on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" -- and he did so by employing a handful of mind-hacking tricks he derived from his knowledge of the brain.
For example, for his $16,000 question, he relied on the technique of "priming". Because memories are stored in many different parts of the brain, if you can manage to recall any single part of a pattern, your brain can often fill in missing, related parts. In a superb piece about the experience in Seed magazine, Ogas explains how priming helped him out:
Since the producers allow contestants unlimited time to work out answers (as long as they're not just stalling), I knew that I could employ the most basic of priming tactics: talking about the question, posing scenarios, throwing out wild speculations, even just babbling -- trying to cajole my prefrontal neurons onto any cue that could trigger the buried neocortical circuits holding the key to the answer.
I used priming on my $16,000 question: "This past spring, which country first published inflammatory cartoons of the prophet Mohammed?" I did not know the answer. But I did know I had a long conversation with my friend Gena about the cartoons. So I chatted with [Who Wants To Be A Millionaire host] Meredith about Gena. I tried to remember where we discussed the cartoons and the way Gena flutters his hands. As I pictured how he rolls his eyes to express disdain, Gena's remark popped into my mind: "What else would you expect from Denmark?"
I personally am all in favor of the trend towards using brain-hacking and mind-hacking tricks in everyday life. It's like a sort of fine-grained version of cognitive behavioral therapy -- observing yourself and your mind's odd, curious spastic gestures to help navigate life.
(Thanks to the Corante Brain Waves blog for this one!)
Posted by Clive Thompson at January 08, 2007 10:46 PM
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Wow. Awesome links all around.
Posted by: Steve E. at January 9, 2007 10:52 AM
It's such a great story, eh?
Posted by: Clive at January 9, 2007 11:20 AM
Actually, the more I think about it the more I wonder whether what he was claiming he was doing was really how he managed to come up with the answers. Priming works under very specific circumstances. Sometimes things that intuitively seem like good primes actually negatively affect memory. Degraded objects for instance: more degraded objects make better primes for the complete objects than less degraded ones.
In the article he describes how for one question he just kept repeating a word over and over hoping to prime the answer. I'm not sure that this would produce effective priming. In fact, it could "block" the answer from coming, like in the tip-of-the-tongue phenomena. The harder you try to think of the name, the harder it is to remember it. You only remember it once you stop consciously thinking about it and let your mind wander.
I'm interested to see where this mind-hacking will lead, how far it will go in pop-culture. Particularly if the so-called hacks aren't really effective. It'll just become a sort of nouveau pop-psychology.
Posted by: Steve E. at January 9, 2007 3:53 PM
Heh -- yeah, the science behind many of the mind hacks may be solid, but the application thereof ... not necessarily so straightforward. Would that our brains were so Skinnerian!
Posted by: Clive at January 9, 2007 4:07 PM
I dunno, I think he may have been faking. Those cartoons were not a small part of the news cycle. Then again, many US residents have no conception of European geography, so perhaps his brain didn't, as I suspect and as mine did, immediately spit out the correct country.
Parenthetically, what his friend meant by her "what do you expect" remark utterly eludes me, unless it's a Shakespeare reference.
Posted by: wcw at January 9, 2007 5:09 PM
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Wow. Awesome links all around.
Posted by: Steve E.![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 9, 2007 10:52 AM
It's such a great story, eh?
Posted by: Clive![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 9, 2007 11:20 AM
Actually, the more I think about it the more I wonder whether what he was claiming he was doing was really how he managed to come up with the answers. Priming works under very specific circumstances. Sometimes things that intuitively seem like good primes actually negatively affect memory. Degraded objects for instance: more degraded objects make better primes for the complete objects than less degraded ones.
In the article he describes how for one question he just kept repeating a word over and over hoping to prime the answer. I'm not sure that this would produce effective priming. In fact, it could "block" the answer from coming, like in the tip-of-the-tongue phenomena. The harder you try to think of the name, the harder it is to remember it. You only remember it once you stop consciously thinking about it and let your mind wander.
I'm interested to see where this mind-hacking will lead, how far it will go in pop-culture. Particularly if the so-called hacks aren't really effective. It'll just become a sort of nouveau pop-psychology.
Posted by: Steve E.![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 9, 2007 3:53 PM
Heh -- yeah, the science behind many of the mind hacks may be solid, but the application thereof ... not necessarily so straightforward. Would that our brains were so Skinnerian!
Posted by: Clive![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 9, 2007 4:07 PM
I dunno, I think he may have been faking. Those cartoons were not a small part of the news cycle. Then again, many US residents have no conception of European geography, so perhaps his brain didn't, as I suspect and as mine did, immediately spit out the correct country.
Parenthetically, what his friend meant by her "what do you expect" remark utterly eludes me, unless it's a Shakespeare reference.
Posted by: wcw![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 9, 2007 5:09 PM