The Psychologist October 2012

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october 2012vol 25 no 10

Mirror writingRobert McIntosh and Sergio Della Sala explore some intriguing phenomena

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october 2012vol 25 no 10

‘The Origin of Symmetry andAsymmetry’, by mirror-writing artistKasimir Bordihn, frames thismonth’s cover feature, by Edinburghpsychologists Rob McIntosh andSergio Della Sala. You mayremember Sergio from hisfascinating feature on the anarchichand, with similarly striking cover, inOctober 2005. Here the pair deliveranother intriguing take on a bizarrephenomenon: mirror-writing (seep.742).

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Sexual health – where theory meets lifeTriece Turnbull and Mark Forshawanalyse the contribution of healthpsychology

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Surviving postnatal depressionRebecca Gillibrand reflects on theresearch in the light of her ownexperience

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Dancers perform a traditionalMalay dance as part of apromotion of Malaysian cultureon the streets of Essex. Musiciansaccompany them, playing thegamelan – a traditional SouthEast Asian orchestra comprisinginstruments crafted in Indonesiaand imported to the UK.

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Allen, F.J. (1896). Mirror-writing. Brain,19, 385–387.

Angelillo, V.G., De Lucia, N., Trojano, L.,& Grossi, D. (2010). Persistent leftunilateral mirror writing. Brain andLanguage, 114, 157–163.

Balfour, S., Borthwick, S., Cubelli, R. &Della Sala, S. (2007). Mirror writingand reversing single letters in strokepatients and normal elderly. Journalof Neurology, 254, 436–441.

Chan, J.L. & Ross, E. (1988). Left-handedmirror writing following rightanterior cerebral artery infarction.Neurology, 38, 59–63.

Cornell, J.M. (1985). Spontaneousmirror-writing in children. CanadianJournal of Psychology, 39, 174–179.

Critchley, M. (1928). Mirror-writing.London: Kegan Paul, Trench,Trubner & Co.

Cubelli, R. & Della Sala, S. (2009). Mirror

writing in pre-school children.Cognitive Processing, 10, 101–104.

Davidoff, J. & Warrington, E.K. (2001). Aparticular difficulty in discriminatingbetween mirror images.Neuropsychologia, 39, 1022–1036.

Dehaene, S., Nakamura, K., Jobert, A. etal. (2010). Why do children makemirror errors in reading?Neuroimage, 49, 1837–1848.

Della Sala, S. & Cubelli, R. (2007).

‘Directional apraxia’: A unitaryaccount of mirror writing followingbrain injury or as found in normalyoung children. Journal ofNeuropsychology, 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 mirrorreading as disinhibition phenomena?

Mirror-writing is the production of letters, words or sentences inreverse direction, so that they looknormal when viewed in a mirror.Some people may mirror-writeintentionally; but unintentionalmirror-writing is surprisinglycommon amongst young children,and in brain-damaged adults.Unintentional mirror-writingsuggests a tension between atendency for our brains to treatmirror-images as equivalent, and a culturally imposed need todistinguish between them forwritten language. This articleexplores the various manifestationsof mirror-writing, and the ideas putforward to account for it.

Picture yourself in a taxi on a cold,rainy day, condensation on thewindows. You want to write ‘bye-

bye’ to your daughter waving at you fromthe house. In order to be read by her, youwould need to write in reverse on theinside of the window, transforming yourhabitual writing actions to do so. This is‘mirror-writing’ – reversed writing thatlooks normal when viewed in a mirror;like the sign on the front of an ambulance.Since Western scripts typically run fromleft to right, this reversed form is alsoknown as levography (Critchley, 1928) or sinistrad writing (Streifler & Hofman,1976).

Mirror-writing is striking andmysterious. It has been practiseddeliberately by some notable individuals,most famously Leonardo da Vinci, andportrayed to powerful effect in literatureand visual art (see Box, right). Mirror-writing is of special interest topsychologists because it can sometimesarise in people trying to write normally.For example, unusual writing demandscan sometimes mislead us into writingbackwards. If we write onto paper pressedagainst the underside of a table, or againstour forehead (Critchley, 1928), we may failto transform our actions to compensate forthe altered plane of performance, and ourwriting may come out mirror-reversed.Mirror-writing is also common amongstchildren learning to write, and is noted inadults following brain damage, usually tothe left hemisphere.

But what do these phenomena tell usabout our brains? Do we each harbour alatent looking-glass world, poised to usurp

the everyday given the right conditions? Is mirror-writing after brain damage arecurrence of the childhood form, ordifferent? More than a century of sporadicscientific literature, and some of our ownrecent observations, suggest answers tothese tantalising questions.

Explanations of mirror-writingDoes mirror-writing imply reversedperceptions, or is it only that the actioncomes out backward? This captures thedichotomy between perceptual and motorexplanations of mirror-writing, from theclassical literature to the present day. Onthe perceptual side, Orton (1928)suggested that, for every word or objectwe recognise, an engram is stored in thedominant (left) hemisphere, and itsmirror-image in the non-dominanthemisphere. Mirrored-forms emerge inchildren, due to incompletely establishedhemispheric dominance, but aresuppressed in adults unless released byleft-hemisphere damage. Subsequentperceptual accounts, such as the spatialdisorientation hypothesis (Heilman et al.,1980), share the core idea that mirror-writing is one aspect of a more generalmirror-confusion. Perceptual explanationspredict that mirror-writing should beassociated with perceptual confusion, andeven with fluent reading of reversed text.And if the mirroring arises at a perceptuallevel, then mirror-writing should emergeregardless of which hand is used.

On the motor side are those who arguethat action representations are critical tomirror-writing (e.g. Chan & Ross, 1988;Erlenmeyer, 1879, cited in Critchley,1928). The basic insight is that learnedactions are represented in a body-relativescheme, not in external spatial coordinates.Thus, for a right-handed Westerner, thehabitual writing direction is not left-to-right per se, but abductively outwards fromthe body midline. If executed by theunaccustomed left hand, this abductiveaction will flow right-to-left, unless it istransformed into an adductive inwardaction, much as we need to transform our

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Schott, G.D. (2007) Mirror writing:neurological reflections on an unusualphenomenon. Journal of Neurology,Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 78, 5–13.

Della Sala, S. & Cubelli, R. (2007).‘Directional apraxia’: A unitaryaccount of mirror writing followingbrain injury or as found in normalyoung children. Journal ofNeuropsychology, 1, 3–26.

Is mirror writing a perceptual or amotor phenomenon? Is it the samephenomenon in young children as inbrain-damaged adults?Why would it be useful for our brains totreat mirror-image objects and actionsas equivalent?

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Mirror-writingRobert D. McIntosh and Sergio Della Sala explore some intriguing phenomena

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action when writing on a window for a reader on the other side. On this view,children might mirror-write with eitherhand if they have yet to learn aconsistent direction, but literate adultsshould do so only when attempting towrite with the left hand whilstcognitively impaired or distracted, sothat the required transformation isomitted. Since perceptual factors playno explanatory role, motor accountspredict that mirror-writing should notentail perceptual confusions or mirror-reading.

Of course, perceptual and motoraccounts need not be mutuallyexclusive: the manifestations of mirror-writing may be too various for anyunitary account (Critchley, 1928; butsee Della Sala & Cubelli, 2007). As weshall see, the facts favour a motorinterpretation in most cases; but thereare possible exceptions, and interestingnuances to the story, as well as someunresolved puzzles.

Spontaneous mirror-writing in childrenAs any nursery or primary teacherknows, mirror-writing is very commonamongst children learning to write.These productions are not mereconfusions of legal mirror-imagecharacters (such as ‘b’ and ‘d’) but caninvolve the reversal of any character, andeven whole words and phrases. A childmay sign her name neatly but back-to-front. Interestingly, some characters aremore likely to be reversed than others,particularly those such as ‘3’ or ‘J’ inwhich the correct form ‘faces’ leftwards.This suggests that during exposure towritten language, the child implicitlyextracts the statistical regularity that mostcharacters ‘face’ to the right, then over-applies this ‘right-writing rule’ (Fischer,2011).

Several myths surrounding mirror-writing in children should be dispelled.Most prominent is the traditionallyassumed association with slow intellectual

development, arising from early anecdotalliterature (e.g. Orton, 1928) and studies of‘mentally defective’ children (Gordon,1920), and propounded as a visual motifthrough popular works (e.g. Winnie-the-Pooh, the Far Side cartoons). Recentstudies have converged in showing that the likelihood of mirror writing does notcorrelate with intellectual abilities. Cubelliand Della Sala (2009), for instance,reported no significant difference inintelligence between mirror-writing andnon-mirror-writing children of the sameage (cf. Fischer & Tazouti, 2011). There issimilarly little truth in the idea that mirror-writing is more common in left-handers.Mirror-writing in childhood does of coursecorrelate with age, but the true underlying

factor here is the stage of acquisition ofwriting, with occasional mirror-writing asan intermediate stage between no writingand correct writing (Della Sala & Cubelli,2009; Fischer & Tazouti, 2011).

Situational factors further modulate the likelihood of mirror-writing at anygiven moment. For instance, childrenshow sequential biases, tending to faceeach character in the same direction as thepreceding one. An example from Fischer(2011) concerns the character pair ‘C3’, as written by 300 five-to-six-year oldchildren: the probability of mirror-writingthe ‘3’ was far greater (0.73 vs. 0.10) if the‘C’ had been correctly written (i.e. right-facing) than if it had been mirror-written(i.e. left-facing). Spatial constraints are also

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 toright, but thus: 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 theutmost difficulty in writing except from right to left across the paper with his left hand.

The Plattner Story, a novel by H.G. Wells

Mirror-writing has also been portrayed in films: in Christopher Nolan’s Memento, the ‘facts’ aretattooed on Leonard's chest in mirror-writing sothat he can read their reflection; in StanleyKubrik’s The Shining, Danny writes REDRUM onthe door, which is MURDER backwards (Maggiedoes the same with her toy blocks in the Simpsonsepisode Reality Bites). Mirror-writing also featuresin the Simpsons episode ‘Brother from the sameplanet’; the Scooby-Doo episode ‘Mystery maskmix-up’; The 25th Hour; Alvin and the Chipmunks;

and Flowers for Algernon. For further examples, seeDella Sala and Cubelli (2009).


mirror-writing

A case study. Neuropsychologia, 26,483–490.

Fischer, J-P. (2011). Mirror writing ofdigits and (capital) letters in thetypically developing child. Cortex, 47,759–762.

Fischer, J-P. & Tazouti, Y. (2011).Unraveling the mystery of mirrorwriting in typically developingchildren. Journal of EducationalPsychology. doi: 10.1037/a0025735

Gordon, H. (1920). Left-handedness andmirror-writing especially amongdefective children. Brain, 43, 313–368.

Gottfried, J.A., Sancar, F. & Chatterjee, A.(2003). Acquired mirror writing andreading: Evidence for reflectedgraphemic representations.Neuropsychologia, 41, 96–107.

Heilman, K.M., Howell, G., Valenstein, E.& Rothi, L. (1980). Mirror-readingand writing in association with right-

left spatial disorientation. Journal ofNeurology, Neurosurgery andPsychiatry, 43, 774–780.

Lambon-Ralph, M., Jarvis, C. & Ellis, A.(1997). Life in a mirrored world:Report of a case showing mirrorreversal in reading and writing andfor non-verbal materials. Neurocase,3, 249–258.

Orton, S.T. (1928). Specific readingdisability – strephosymbolia. Journal

of the American Medical Association,90, 1095–1099.

Parsons, L.M. (1987). Imagined spatialtransformations of one’s hands andfeet. Cognitive Psychology, 19,178–241.

Parsons, L.M. (1994). Temporal andkinematic properties of motorbehavior reflected in mentallysimulated action. Journal ofExperimental Psychology: Human

Danny writing on the door in The Shining

Dear Henry Phipps

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important, and children as old as sevenmay write their name backwards ifrequired to start from a point on the pagethat leaves inadequate space to write itforwards (Cornell, 1985; Fischer &Tazouti, 2011). That a simple spatialrestriction can elicit mirrored scriptsuggests a dominant role for motor factors,rather than perceptual confusion.Consistent with this, Della Sala andCubelli (2009) found that the frequency of mirror-writing was no higher amongstchildren who had difficulty discriminatingmirror images than amongst those who didnot. Uncertainty about how letters shouldlook does not seem to drive mirror-writingin children.

Rather, childhood mirror-writing may tell us something about how writingactions develop. Specifically, it implies thatthe general shape of a letter is learnedmore rapidly than the direction for writingit. The key to understanding this may beto regard mirror-writing not as intrinsicallyerrorful, but as a feat of actiongeneralisation. It is a neat trick for a childto produce a perfect mirrored-form, whichthey have never been taught, as readily asthe correct form that they have beenshown repeatedly. For most actions, thismirror-generalisation would be useful,because anything that we do one way mayneed to be done in reverse at another time;we do not learn separately to turn a tapclockwise and anticlockwise, only to turnthe tap. Writing, however, belongs to anunusual, evolutionarily recent, class ofactions that have a culturally setdirectionality, and for which thisgeneralisation is unhelpful. Acquiring the correct direction for writing in one’sculture may be a matter of stamping outthe unwanted alternative after havinglearned the general shape of the action.

Involuntary mirror-writing after brain damageChildren grow out of mirror writing, butin some adults it makes an unexpectedreturn. Mirror-writing is quite commonfollowing stroke, though usually

transient. Frequencyestimates vary from2.5 per cent(Gottfried et al.,2003) to 13 per cent(Tashiro et al., 1987),but are much higher(24 per cent) if onlyleft hemispherelesions are considered(Wang, 1992). A review of singlecases confirmed that mirror-writingfollowing stroke is overwhelminglyassociated withdamage to the lefthemisphere (93 percent) and with use ofthe non-dominant lefthand (97 per cent)(Balfour et al., 2007).The prototypicaladult mirror-writer isa right-hander who loses right-arm motorfunction following left-hemisphere stroke,being forced to write with the left hand.

Given this profile, could the strongassociation of mirror-writing with left-hemisphere damage be an artefact of forcedleft-hand use? Would mirror-writing beelicited in other groups simply byrequesting writing with the left hand?When this tactic was tried, it yieldedmirror-writing rates that did not differstatistically between right- and left-hemisphere damaged people (14 per centof 36 cases vs. 20 per cent of 50 cases)(Balfour et al., 2007). Even amongst 86healthy controls, writing with the left handproduced at least some reversals in 7 percent of people; but writing with the righthand never did.

These results fit the motor hypothesis,according to which involuntary mirror-writing in adults reflects left-handedexecution of a right-hand action, withoutmotor transformation. The transformationrequires cognitive resources, so would besusceptible to attentional lapses, andespecially vulnerable after brain damage.

We must stress that the sporadic reversalsobtained by asking brain-damaged peopleto write with the left hand are of a differentorder of severity from florid clinical cases,which may involve consistent reversal ofwords, multi-digit numbers and sentences(see Della Sala & Cubelli, 2007). To fullyaccount for severe and persistent mirror-writing may require more pervasivecognitive insufficiencies, perhapscombined with anosognosia (lack ofinsight) or anosodiaphoria (lack ofconcern) (e.g. Angelillo et al., 2010).

So, children may mirror-write becausethey are unsure of the correct direction,whilst adults retain the correct (abductive)direction, but fail to modify this motorhabit for the unaccustomed hand.However, an alternative motor account,which relates involuntary mirror-writingmore closely to the childhood form, hasbeen advanced by Della Sala and Cubelli(2007). This ‘directional apraxia’hypothesis proposes that involuntarymirror-writing reflects loss of knowledge of the direction of learned actions, withexecution instead governed by a preference

Perception and Performance, 20,241–245.

Pegado, F., Nakamura, K., Cohen, L. &Dehaene, S. (2011). Breaking thesymmetry: Mirror discrimination forsingle letters but not for pictures inthe Visual Word Form Area.Neuroimage, 55, 742–749.

Pflugshaupt, T., Nyffeler, T., vonWartburg, R. et al (2007). When leftbecomes right and vice versa:

Mirrored vision after cerebralhypoxia. Neuropsychologia, 45,2078–2091.

Russell, J.W. (1900). A case of mirrorwriting. Birmingham Medical Review,68, 95–100.

Streifler, M. & Hofman, S. (1976).Sinistrad mirror writing and readingafter brain concussion in a bi-systemic (oriento-occidental)polyglot. Cortex, 12, 356–364.

Tashiro, K., Matsumoto, A., Hamada, T. &Moriwaka, F. (1987). The aetiology ofmirror writing: A new hypothesis.Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgeryand Psychiatry, 50, 1572–1578.

Turnbull, O.H. & McCarthy, R.A. (1996).Failure to discriminate betweenmirror-image objects: A case ofviewpoint-independent objectrecognition? Neurocase, 2, 63–72.

Wade, J., & Hart, R. (1991). Mirror

phenomena in language and non-verbal activities: A case report.Journal of Clinical and ExperimentalNeuropsychology, 13, 299–308.

Wang, X-de (1992). Mirror writing ofChinese characters in children andneurological patients. ChineseMedical Journal, 105, 306–311.



mirror-writing

for abductive movements. This impliesthat the direction of an action is not onlyacquired later than its shape, butrepresented separately, and vulnerableseparately to damage. It is not clearwhether this account improves on thestandard motor account in explainingdocumented cases of mirror-writing, butfurther data on the influence of languageand handedness may prove decisive.Directional apraxia predicts that mirror-writing should affect the left hand forrightward scripts such as English, but theright hand for leftward scripts such asHebrew or Arabic, regardless of the writer’shandedness. There is one report, which fitsthis prediction exactly, of a man whomirror-wrote in Hebrew but not in Frenchwith his right hand, yet produced theopposite pattern – mirror writing inFrench but not in Hebrew – with his lefthand. However, the observation isanecdotal (Marinesco, cited by Russell,1900), and requires replication.

The role of mirror-perceptionsMirror-writing does not entail anadvantage for reading mirrored text; a fact that considerably bolsters a motoraccount (Critchley, 1928). But analogousphenomena can affect perception. Parietallobe damage can induce an inability totell apart mirror-images, even thoughsubtle changes in shape or rotation arespotted (Davidoff & Warrington, 2001;Turnbull & McCarthy, 1996). Suchmirror-confusions sometimes co-occurwith mirror-writing (Durwen & Linke,1988; Heilman et al., 1980; Wade & Hart,1991). In other cases, perception may be

systematicallyreversed, yieldingfluent mirror-reading (Gottfriedet al., 2003;Lambon-Ralph etal., 1997;Pflugshaupt et al.,2007). If thesepeople also mirror-write, it may bedeliberate, andsome state thatthey do so in orderto be able to readwhat they write.However, the mostunusual report isof a polyglotwoman who,following aconcussion,mirror-read and

wrote her firstlanguage, Hebrew (a

right–left script), but not Polish orGerman (left–right scripts) (Streifler &Hofman, 1976). Her mirror-writing wasapparently involuntary, affecting thedominant right hand (the left hand wasnot tested); and she displayed a range of other reversals, perceptual andconceptual (confusion of opposites like inside/outside, above/beneath). The language-specificity of her mirror-reversals is challenging to explain, but the tight parallel between her reading and writing suggests that involuntarymirror-writing can have a perceptual (or conceptual) basis in some cases.

Like mirror-writing, acquired mirror-reading recalls the errors of childhood;and, as for writing, perceptual confusionsin children may reflect a broadlyadvantageous mirror-generalisation. Innature, mirror-images are invariably twoinstances or views of the same thing, so itis efficient to represent them as equivalent.On the other hand, we sometimes need todistinguish mirror-forms, and nowhere isthis more vital than in decoding writtenlanguage. Functional neuroimagingsuggests that a region of the leftmidfusiform gyrus (the ‘visual word form area’) may be critical to mirror-discrimination in reading (Dehaene et al.,2010; Pegado et al., 2011). Thedevelopment of this capacity presumablysuppresses mirror-reading errors duringlearning.

Deliberate mirror-writingWriting in Brain in 1896, F. J. Allen, a neurologically healthy Professor ofPhysiology, recorded his subjective

experience of fluent left-handed mirror-writing, speculating that the ability maynot be rare, just rarely practised. Heproposed that ‘mirror-writing is often asymptom of nerve disease; but the diseaseneed not be the cause of the existence ofthe faculty, but only the cause of itsdiscovery’ (p.385). As already noted,mirror-writing is adopted deliberately bysome brain-damaged people with reversedperceptions. It is also cultivated by somehealthy, albeit unusual, people; often to a high level of skill. Celebratedpractitioners include Lewis Carroll, who experimented with spatial as well as logical inversions, and was a skilledmirror-writer. Amongst the 100,000letters that he wrote were a series of‘looking glass letters, designed to be readin a mirror. Mirror-writing also appears inhis stories and poems. In Through theLooking-Glass one of Alice’s firstdiscoveries is a book printed in mirror-script. There was also Leonardo da Vinci,who wrote thousands of pages of hisnotebooks in mirrored script, with his lefthand. Could deliberate mirror-writingoffer insight into the nature ofinvoluntary mirror-writing in brain-damaged adults?

We have recently had the chance toaddress this issue with Kasimir Bordihn(KB), a German artist, who has practisedvarious forms of mirror-writing for morethan 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 timewriting lines by writing forward with hisright hand and simultaneously backwardwith his left. He later practised andextended this technique, writing forwardor backward with either hand, includingvertical as well as horizontal flips, andincorporating these into a distinctive‘mirror-art’ (see cover). We have begun a case study of KB’s abilities, which isproviding clear support for the motorhypothesis of mirror-writing, and someless expected results.

First, whilst KB writes skilfully in anumber of different directions, his mostfluent form, and the only non-standardform that closely resembles his normalforward right-handed script, is horizontalmirror-writing produced with his left hand.This special status is consistent with theview that left-handed mirror-writingreflects the untransformed execution of a learned right-hand action. Second, whenwriting with both hands, his performanceis far better if his hands move mirror-symmetrically to produce opposite scripts,than if they move in tandem to producesimilar scripts. It is the motor and not theperceptual congruence that counts. Third,

psy 10_12 p742_747 mcintosh_Layout 1 17/09/2012 14:44 45

as with most involuntary mirror-writers,KB’s versatility with a pen confers noperceptual benefit: he is as baffled bymirrored text as any other reader. Thesecharacteristics match a motor account ofmirror-writing.

As well as asking KB to read mirroredtext out loud, we assessed his recognitionof reflected letters by psychophysicalmeans, finding nothing unusual. But when instead we asked KB to discriminatepictures of left and right hands, he showeda consistent inability, performingdramatically worse than matched controls,and on one occasion faring no better thanchance. This was not a general problemwith body parts, as he could discriminatethe laterality of feet very well; and it wasnot due to rushed decision making, as hishand discriminations were both slow andinaccurate. Rather, KB revealed a specificimpairment for the discrimination of leftand right hands.

This body-part identification task isused widely as a test of motor imagery.People solve this task by mentally rotatingtheir own hands or feet to confirm amatch to the viewed picture (Parsons,1987, 1994). One possible interpretationof KB’s result is that his unusual facility for

(and/or history of) executing right-handactions with the left may entail anabnormal degree of overlap in the neuralmotor representations of the hands. Hemay thus rotate his hands mentally tomatch the picture, yet fail to identifyintrospectively which hand has made thematch. This is a highly preliminarysuggestion, but the observation is certainlyintriguing. One more flippant implicationmight be that Leonardo da Vinci, for all ofhis genius, may have had more troublethan the average Renaissance man intelling his left hand from his right.

Final reflectionsAs children, we make mirror-errors inreading and writing. These perceptual and

motor confusions are not tightly linked,but arise from parallel strategies ofmirror-generalisation in perception andaction. If we then learn to write with ourright hand, mirror-writing may be thelatent natural script of our left, and vice-versa, requiring only certaincircumstances to emerge.

Mirror-writing in its various forms –spontaneous, involuntary and deliberate –has long fascinated observers in art andscience. Beyond its obvious curiosity value,it provides compelling insights into howwe learn about, and represent the worldand our actions within it.

The story is intriguing, yet incomplete.We think there will be more to learn about ourselves in this particular looking-glass.


mirror-writing

Sergio Della Salais at Human CognitiveNeuroscience, Psychology,University of [email protected]

Robert D. McIntosh is at Human CognitiveNeuroscience, Psychology,University of [email protected]

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psy 10_12 p772_777 ads_Layout 1 17/09/2012 15:30 Page 776


Absolutely. I think you’ve always got tomake 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? Howcould we ever tell the difference? If youadopt the materialist position, which I doand most neuroscientists do, the answeris you would never know, because we are a product of the brain.

The book is packed with those shinytitbits, from doppelgänger hamsters,to forcing students to watch torture, toasking people attitude questions at theheight of masturbation. What’s yourown favourite psychology study?I have to say that last one, the Dan Arielystudy. To even get that past an ethicscommittee, strikes me as unbelievable!Although I do like the ego depletion workof Roy Baumeister, I’m fascinated by that.He actually believes in the self, he thinksthere is an individual. I’m not convincedby the strength of the effects, but I dothink it’s plausible that if you abstain orstop yourself from doing things thenthere are rebound effects. Certainly Iknow that. But whether it’s this ‘glucosemuscle’, I’m not so sure.

Given how immersed you are inknowledge, and how many influentialcolleagues you have worked with overthe years, do you think that your self is more of a construct than most? I think knowing and writing about theself as a constructed narrative, I can’tescape the subjective experience that I feel I’m an individual. On reflection I like to reinterpret a lot of my behaviourin terms of the narrative of the self, butultimately I don’t think it’s going tochange the way that anyone behaves,because that’s the whole point – we’veevolved a brain that deals with selves and deals with individuals. We have all these moral systems that necessitatethe existence of an individual, so tocompletely abandon that is really a folly.However, they are attempting to do thatin neuroethics – there are moves in theStates, for example, to keep going fordefence pleas that deny culpability basedon some neuroscience of the mind.

Yes – in the book you cover exampleslike Charles Whitman, Ken Parks, even Mary Bale the ‘cat in bin’ lady, of people committing antisocial actswith mitigating factors of mind. Where do you stand on free will andresponsibility for those kinds of acts?I don’t think that any of the new scienceis going to change, or should change,

Has presenting the RoyalInstitution’s Christmas Lectures

opened doors for you? The response was excellent, and now I’m looking at how I can build on it. I’vebeen given an opportunity, and I thinkthat psychology could do with an evenstronger profile, so I’m hoping to try to take what I’ve got out to the masses a bit more. Not necessarily just withtelevision – I’m doing projects thatinvolve science centres, and the RI hasjust introduced a teacher’s package basedon the lectures. I want to developsomething for the general public too.

We had an event in April, for morethan 300 children from deprived schoolsin Bristol. We bussed them in to theuniversity, gave them a version of theChristmas lectures and an evaluation, and we’re going to follow up at sixmonths to do a proper empiricalassessment of impact.

Your new book, The Self Illusion, lendsitself very well to introductory lectures.There’s a clear theme and argument,but you cherry pick from so manydifferent 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 aboutunconscious processes. Mostneuroscientists agree that the brain is a complex, multifunctional system, andwe all know that when things start tobreak down, the personality and identityof the individual fractionates. So I don’tthink I’m saying anything bizarre. But tothe layman in the street, when youconfront them with the idea that they arenot an integrated individual but rather a collection, then that seems a reallystrange notion.

But does it, really? Do most people findyour idea, that ‘the self is a constantlychanging story’, that surprising?People think of themselves as a characteron a journey through life. So they see

themselves as a protagonist, a centralindividual in control, making choices andbeing influenced by individuals. But thatcreates the problem of the homunculus,the individual at the centre. I still thinkthere’s this misconception of the self asthe individual in the first place, when infact it’s this emergent property of all theother things that come together. That’swhat I’m challenging.

In just about every area of psychology,there’s a lot of evidence that we’re notnecessarily in control, we’re very muchinfluenced by those around us… so Idefinitely pay lip service to all those areasof psychology, all the classic studies ofAsch, Milgram, etc. Even though they arecontroversial, they still demonstrate thatpeople are malleable. Even thoughparticipants in these studies may be roleplaying, they’re still doing something thatis interesting psychologically. When youcombine that with all the new stuff, theneuroscience, I think there’s a veryinteresting story.

As psychologists, we forget thatintuitions often clash with the science, so this book was about trying to bringtogether the sheer overwhelming evidencethat people do behave differently, and theycertainly don’t behave as they think theywould behave… we do have this idealisednotion of what we think we’re like, butchange the constraints and the contextand we find ourselves doing all manner of things.

We’re dancers not statues.That’s right. Or we leap away from shipsthat are sinking, and then we judgepeople for that, and say that they’relacking moral fibre or they’re not beingtrue to themselves. We say ‘I wasn’t myselflast 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, pickingout the shiny titbits, and so many greatreal-life examples as well.

INTE

RVIE

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‘We are not in control’ Jon Sutton enjoyed a curry with Bruce Hood (University of Bristol), RoyalInstitution Christmas Lecturer and author of new book The Self Illusion

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how we treat others. If you have a judicialsystem that is premised on individualresponsibility, that in itself is a good thingbecause it creates another set of factorsthat are fed into the multitude ofdecision-making processes. Because wehave a legal system, it’s another thing youtake into consideration, it’s put into themix. So trying to say that no one isresponsible, because it’s a multitude offactors, that simply doesn’t work. It’s notreally feasible to look for every antecedentthat has fed intosomeone’s behaviour:there would be too manydegrees of freedom.

I suppose some peopleare concerned that thebiological determinismangle will trumpeverything else.Exactly, this is unchartedterritory. In manyinstances I can imaginethat we would readilyaccept that someonewith a brain tumour isnot responsible, because it seems to be a veryobvious, physical,parasite almost. Butdescribing someone’scircuitry as ‘over-reactive’, that doesn’tsound the same, that’snot like an alien system.So we have all thesenaive conceptions aboutwhat it is to be anindividual, what canceris… people talk about itlike it’s an alien invader,but of course it’s yourown cells just changingand mutating. So you dohave to conceptualiseindividuals asindependent of the forces which areexerted upon them.

In the book you talk aboutreconnecting with that biologicalmatter, through the experience of holding a human brain. Is thatsomething you would advocate foreveryone in psychology?Would you learn anything additional interms of the neuroanatomy, which youmay have studied already? Probably not.What you do get, as soon as you see thephysical structure, is a real insight intothe problem you’re facing! There are no arrows, no boxes with diagrams, it’s a lump of very densely packed tissue.There’s an emotional component to

brain anatomy that just makes you morehumble, in terms of the problem you’retrying to unravel.

The complexity of it, but also thesimplicity – like any other complexnetwork, it boils down to on/offswitches.Yes. Whenever I talk about materialism,or that the mind is a product of the brain,a lot of philosophers in particular regardthat as reductionism, too simplistic.

I think they justdon’t understand thecomplexity of thestructure they’retrying to demean. Itreally is phenomenal.Dan Wolpert told methere are morepossible connectionswith just 500neurons thanestimated atoms inthe observableuniverse! Aspsychologists, we tend to be in awe of the hierarchy of science, withmathematics upthere, then physicsand chemistry… butwe should be a littlebit more bullishabout what we’retrying to do, whichis understand a reallycomplex system.

The development ofthe connections is atits peak in childhood.Is that when you seethe construction of theself as at its peak aswell?I think there are

milestones, or periods of significantchange. I don’t think the infant has asense of self that we would recognise. Ithink they have self-monitoring and canbe aware of their own movements, sothey have conscious awareness of thecorrelates of their activity, but I don’tthink they have a self-story. I think thatfits with the work on infantile amnesiaand also self-recognition, which doesn’treally appear until quite late.

Would that suggest that self-construction is at its peak around the ‘reminiscence bump’, the tendencyfor older adults to have increasedrecollection for events that occurredduring their adolescence?

It turns out you can facilitate infantmemory if you talk to your children.Charles Fernyhough talks about theevidence that different cultures havedifferent cut-off points for memory. In theFar East where they describe the child’sday and engage in elaborate storytelling,they’ve got better memories. So I thinkthat fits with the general idea that youhave to construct an autobiographicalmemory in terms of all the information.

I think it’s true to say that duringadolescence, children have to establishtheir identity separate to that of theirparents. I think that explains a lot of theirteenage rebellion, that attempt to marktheir own territory out. I’ve certainly seenthat in my own children!

Do you sometimes feel you know toomuch about yourself and others?I think psychology has given me aninsight into some of my weaknesses. We do have this persona which wepresent to the outside world. I thinkeveryone has anxieties, concerns, and I think understanding that is a powerfulway of thinking. When you understandthat other people have social anxiety…some people can be paralysed with fearabout speaking in front of others.Understanding the importance that weplace on self value from others has helpedme in many ways.

Your presence on the socialnetworking site Twitter is interestingfrom that point of view, because it’s a way of performing in public andsharing your anxieties.I remember a study which created twoTwitter personas, one who just tweetedrandom academic pieces of information,and one who interspersed it with littlebits of gossip. Clearly the one with gossipended up with more followers. So I thinkthe social brain is a gossiping brain. Thepower of Twitter is this illusion it createsthat you have a personal relationship withthe people that you follow. It’s to do withself-affirmation again… we like to thinkthat if we have something to say, we’re onthat soap box and we’re not alone.

At two o’clock in the morning, in yourconverted barn…!You do have to be careful, because after a bottle of Merlot it does go completely topot, and then you have to eat humble pie!If they could build a breathalyser intoTwitter I’m sure it would be a lot better!But there again, people are too fearful thattheir persona is somehow corrupted bythings said indiscreetly… clearly you haveto be careful, but we all like a bit ofpersonality!


interview

Bruce Hood is Professor ofDevelopmental Psychology in Society at the University of [email protected]


Do you think that’s pretty close to yourtrue self?Yes, everyone knows I’m a terrible gossip!

You reckon you spend half your wakinglife online. Does it worry you, in aSusan Greenfield-esque way, or do youembrace the way that is changing yourself? In the book, you say, ‘Who we arewill increasingly become shaped by themediums in which we exist. Somepeople find this scary. For many it isliberating.’ Which camp do you fall in?I’m the liberating guy. I do think there’san interesting issue, and I’m not sure howit’s going to play out. Certainly theyounger generation are spending moreand more time social networking. I try to make a case in the book that that isreturning us to a situation where we havemore interaction, whereas previouslymedia were always one directional –books were read, TV was watched, radiowas listened to. Now people can actuallystart to take part, it’s re-establishing a bi-directional form of communication. Andnow it’s not just amongst 12 people, it’s a thousand people; it’s not just yourneighbours, it’s across continents. That’s a totally different dynamic about howinformation is distributed.

What might be paradoxical is that rather than giving you a broaderviewpoint, what it in fact might be doingis leading to greater extremism. If youthink about it, if you hold an extremeview, normally you would be sociallyisolated, but with the internet you canfind someone who holds those sameviews. So I think we might see moreexamples of extremism facilitated by the communication the internet provides.When you get grouping, you get thedynamics of polarisation.

I get a bit uncomfortable about the way that seems to be happening with a liberal population. You expect it tohappen almost, with a conservativepopulation, but there is a ‘Twitterati’,of which you are part, that seems ableto marshal a liberal wrath offrightening speed and intensity.I happen to agree with you… it’s almostlike cyberbullying, you can build up andattack someone on the flimsiest ofevidence.

Psychologists, of all people, should bealive to that…You were born in Toronto. Your motheris Australian, your father was Scottish,and you’ve lived and worked aroundthe world, with so many of ‘the greats’. I’ve been very fortunate. I really do thinkI’ve got the best job in the world. I hate to

use the word ‘blessed’, because as youknow I’m not much of a religious person,but I feel very fortunate to have had thecareer I’ve had.

Of all those people, who has had thebiggest impact on your ‘self’?Without a doubt, Susan Carey at Harvard.She’s a formidable thinker and she hasbeen so influential and so highlyregarded, not just by people in her fieldbut outside as well. She has a great stableof graduate students who are now in toppositions in the States: Paul Bloom, KarenWynn, these are all her students.

Presumably you’re creating the samekind of stable now with your students?No, I don’t think I am to be honest. TheAmerican system is very different to theBritish system. You tend to have just oneor 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 forlong enough to do that, and the funding’snever actually been that good in the UKto do that.

What are your views on the ResearchEvaluation Framework in terms ofimpact? You’ve had more than mostwith the RI Christmas Lectures, butthat’s not going to count for anything?Well it will actually, because 20 per centis due to public engagement or impact…

… but doesn’t it have to be traced backto a specific research paper?We’re putting a case forward on myactivities, because you can trace it back tothe book, Supersense, and there are somepapers which are in that. I think it wouldbe relatively unfair to deny the impact ofthat whole activity.

That’s just it, I thought that was a greatexample 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 obviouscriterion. As for the whole REF thing… I do think academics need to take stockof where they are. We are publicly funded,and we shouldn’t forget that. I think itdoes help sometimes to sit and considerwhat kind of influence you’re having. SoI’m not totally against the whole idea ofbeing accountable, but I think this wholeidea of a massive process seems an overlybureaucratic way of doing it. DorothyBishop at Oxford did that interesting blogand column in The Psychologist aboutpeople bringing in marketing people to

streamline their REF, which does seemludicrous. We mustn’t forget that less than1 per cent of this country’s GDP goes intoscience funding, so it does seem to be alot 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 candescribe. Do I have a core as a self? I think I do… I feel I’m struggling all thetime, I feel I’m inadequate. When youstart to read about great people in yourresearch for a book, you hear about Kant,the philosophers, Helmholtz, or you meetpeople like Carey, inevitably you feel thatyou’re inadequate.

And that’s a core part of your self, thatfeeling 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, theyknow that if they hand me work it will beturned around within 24 hours. If there’sany delay in the process it’s not because ofme. I’m impulsive as well. Sometimes I’ma little too quick off the mark to criticise,or I’m less generous. But ultimately, whatI do has worked to some extent. And I think I’m transitioning out of a pureresearch role into one that is trying tobroaden in a public way, and I think that’sgood, I think we need more people likethat. Psychology needs to punch above itsweight. I’m really frustrated by the waypsychology in this country has beenportrayed as a little bit common sense –some of the most interesting questions,which are psychological questions, arenot common sense. So I do see a purposenow, to move towards that impact aspect.

And in doing that, you’re getting thepositive feedback that should reducethat core sense of inadequacy. That’s true, but as soon as you putyourself out in the public limelight youdo attract a lot of criticism. There aresome people who don’t think thatacademics should have to justifythemselves, or market or do publicengagement. But I think they’re just livingin the wrong era.

I think it’s very difficult to balancethat engagement role with being a goodacademic, and I’m not sure I’m going tobe able to do that. But at this time whenpsychology funding has been reallyslashed, rather than just sitting on myown and lamenting that, I’m going toredirect, be flexible, put my effortssomewhere else. Hopefully we may getsomeone in the corridors of power whounderstands why it’s so important tosupport social sciences research.


interview



www.bps.org.uk/P4SNottingham2012

www.bps.org.uk/P4SLondon2012

Visit the event websites at

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 Psychologyat 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

2012

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The Psychologist October 2012

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Transcript of The Psychologist October 2012