Friday, December 31, 2010

A Skateboard Video Study on the Contrast Principle

Do you ride a skateboard? Do you often feel the need to ride it compulsively? Do you often daydream about skateboarding? If you answered 'yes' to any of these questions and are a full-blown skate rat, you may be eligible for participation in a skateboard video research study. Qualified applicants will be compensated in the form of the viewing of dope skate videos. Participants are needed immediately.

Instructions: Watch A and rate it on a scale of 1 to 10; with 10 being the best and 1 being the worst. Write this number down. Immediately watch B and rate it on a scale of 1 to 10. Write this number down. Wait 3 hours. Watch C and rate it on a scale of 1 to 10. Write this number down. Immediately watch D and rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 and write this number down. In the comments section, write down all 4 letters and your corresponding ratings to them. You can also leave your name if you want.

Thank You for your participation. Results will be published in a blog post in the near future. The goal of this study is to test out the contrast principle. For more information on the contrast principle look at the previous post.



A


B




C

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D

Pscycophysics, Copley Square, and What to Do if You Get Bad Grades

Pretend you are a men's suit salesman. You have a customer who comes in and wants to buy a suit and a sweater. You want to sell him both a $500 suit and a $95 sweater. Which item would you show the customer first, in hopes that he would buy both? My guess is that you probably picked the sweater. You probably thought that if a person were to spend $500 on a suit first there would be no way the person would want to spend any more money on anything else. It turns out that it is much more profitable to sell the suit first and then the sweater. After someone has spent a huge chunk of money on an expensive item, the less expensive item relatively inexpensive compared to the more expensive item.

According to http://www.cis.rit.edu/people/faculty/montag/vandplite/pages/chap_1/ch1p2.html psychophysics is "the scientific study of the relationship between stimuli (specified in physical terms) and the sensations and perceptions evoked by these stimuli. The term psychophysics is used to denote both the substantive study of stimulus-response relationships and the methodologies used for this study."

There is a concept in psychophysics called the contrast principle. The contrast principle states that if we are presented two things one after another and these two things are somewhat different from each other we will perceive them as much more different than they actually are. For instance, suppose I ask you to pick up a light object and, right after, I ask you to pick up a heavier object. The heavier object will seem much heavier after picking up the lighter object than if I had just asked you to pick up the heavier object without first picking up the lighter one. The contrast principle not only applies to weight; it also has great psychological implications.

Consider this experiment from the Universities of Montana and Arizona. College students were shown a picture of a potential blind date. One group of the students were shown an episode of Charlie's Angels while viewing the pictures and another group of students weren't. The group of students watching the episode of Charlie's Angels gave a much lower rating of the potential blind date picture than the students who didn't. This is probably because of the highly unrealistic beauty of the Charlie's Angels cast.

The contrast principle holds tremendous power. It is extremely easy to exploit the principle as shown in the men's suit example. When any retail business uses the principle, it is extremely hard for customers to detect it. For all you skate shop owners do yourself a favor and sell those $100 dunks and then the $30 premium collaboration tee-shirt. In fact, it is not only more profitable to sell the more expensive item first; it would be detrimental to sell the less expensive item first (That is, if your goal is to make money). Suppose you sold someone that $30 tee-shirt and then tried to sell him the $100 dunks. The tee-shirt probably seemed pretty expensive on its own, but then being presented with a pair of much more expensive dunks just makes the dunks seem even more costly and the customer would be less likely to buy them. Order of sales matters.

At this time of year, everyone loves going to skate the Copley fountain in Boston. It's a fun little ledge and manny pad that's about 8 inches high. Let's pretend you just learned nose manny nollie flips and you're hyped. Tourists love to go to the fountain and watch the skateboarders. In fact, they are probably judging your ability levels. Suppose you're the only one there and Daewon Song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lj7pnU0e9A) rolls up. Unsurprisingly, people will probably think you suck and Daewon is the norm on a skateboard. This is the contrast principle in action.

Finally, if you ever get bad grades in school, send this letter (an extreme example of the contrast principle taken directly out of Influence The Pschology of Persausion by Robert B. Cialdini):

"Dear Mother and Dad,

It has been nearly three months since I left for college. I have been remiss in writing, and I am very sorry for my thoughtlessness in not having written before. I will bring you up to date now; but, before you read on, please sit down. You are not to read any further unless you are sitting down. Okay.

Well, then, I am getting along pretty well now. The skull fracture and the concussion I got when I jumped out of the window of my dormitory when it caught fire shortly after my arrival are pretty well healed now. I only spent two weeks in the hospital, and now I can see almost normally and only get those sick headaches once a day.

Fortunately, the fire in the dormitory and my jump were witnessed by an attendant at the gas station near the dorm, and he was the one who called the Fire Department and the ambulance. He also visited me at the hospital; and, since I had nowhere to live because of the burnt out dormitory, he was kind enough to invite me to share his apartment with him. It's really a basement room, but it's kind of cute. He is a very fine boy, and we have fallen deeply in love and are planning to get married. We haven't set the exact date yet, but it will be before my pregnancy begins to show.

Yes, Mother and Dad, I am pregnant. I know how much you are looking forward to being grandparents, and I know you will welcome the baby and give it the same love and devotion you gave me when I was a child. The reason for the delay in our marriage is that my boyfriend has some minor infection which prevents us from passing our premarital blood tests, and I carelessly caught it from him. This will soon clear up with the penicillin injections I am now taking daily.

I know you will welcome him into our family with open arms. He is kind; and, although not well educated, he is ambitious. Although he is of a different race and religion than ours, I know your oft-expressed tolerance will not permit you to be bothered by the fact that his skin color is somewhat darker than ours. I am sure you will love him as I do. His family background is good too, for I am told that his father is an important gun bearer in the village in Africa from which he comes.

Now that I have brought you up to date, I want to tell you that there was no dormitory fire, I did not get a concussion or a skull fracture, I was not in the hospital, I am not pregnant, I am not engaged, I do not have syphilis, and there is no one in my life. However, I am getting a "D" in History and an "F" in Science, and I wanted you to see these marks in the proper perspective.

Your loving daughter,

Sharon

Sharon may be failing chemistry, but she gets an "A" in psychology"

Source: Influence The Pschology of Persuasion by Richard B. Cialdini

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Thanks Steve and Kevin you guys are Rad!

When I was little I would frequently go into Concepts, a skate shop in Harvard Square, and bother Steve Costello who worked at the shop. Steve, along with Kevin Susienka, started Ready Amongst Willing (RAW), a skateboard and apparel company, in the spring of 2006. On one of my visits to Concepts, I remember Steve showing me the sample cards for the first batch of RAW products. This was months before the official launch of the brand and I was so psyched I probably went into Concepts multiple times a week to find out as much information about RAW as possible. The moment I knew RAW would be here to stay was at the City People 2 (a Boston skate video by Zander Taketomo) premiere in Davis Square in August of 2006. I'd say 80% of the people at the premiere had something RAW-related on.

I think one of the reasons people back RAW so hard is that Steve and Kevin have made an effort to get to know their supporters personally as well as it's humanly possible. Before RAW opened up its Brick and Mortar store in Somerville, MA, Kevin worked full time in Worcester. It just so happened I attended the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) at this time. Every week Kevin would drive up to WPI and we'd have a flatground session. This is just one of many examples of how Steve and Kevin have gone out of their way to get to know me and many of Boston's other skateboarders.

Steve and Kevin are not only the owners of RAW; they are also my friends and I'd like to thank them for linking me up on
Rad Collector:

Wheels Of The Future By Will Burstein

In case you haven't seen it Steve has a great part in the Coliseum 99' video amongst PJ Ladd and Ryan Gallant:

Monday, December 27, 2010

Wheels of the Future Clip #1

Last Spring Ariel and I were working on a video that never really came through. Both of us filmed a good amount of the crew over the past year. I figured since the weather is getting pretty miserable a lot of people are probably home on their computers and antsy to see some unseen Boston footage! I don't know if this will be the last original clip I put up or not. Only time will tell. Enjoy!

Wheels of the Future Clip #1 from Wheels of the Future on Vimeo.



Featuring: Jake Medoff, Jason Jenkins, Curt Daley, Andrew Whittier, Nate Keegan, Daishawn Ulysse, Dana Ericson, Jeff Valcourt, Vince Bailie, Gavin MacMahon Nolan, Jack Kelly, Ariel Perl, Charlie Crowell, Adam Russell, and John Wisdom

Music: O.C.-My World

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Ariel Perl

Ariel is the man! The best part about Ariel is that you never know what's going to happen when you spend a day with him. At about this time last winter he moved back to Boston after a long hiatus. Even in the grittiest conditions Ariel is down to skate. Look out for a brand spankin' new Ariel part in the near future. I've always dug this clip. Enjoy!

am ariel from AM on Vimeo.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!! This is a friends montage from the third FTC video that's always gotten me super hyped. Enjoy!


Guess it's movies and Chinese food for me.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Deliberate Practice, Hypodermic Needles, and PJ Ladd

Why are phone numbers broken up into three parts? The answer lies in memory and how our brains form new memories. Our short-term memories can store only about three to four unrelated chains of information at a time. However, the capacity of our long-term memory is, for all practical purposes, infinite. When we memorize a phone number, we are not remembering ten unrelated pieces of information, we are remembering three chunks. This method of remembering fits perfectly with the short-term memory model. Categorizing unrelated pieces of information into several subsets is known as chunking and is shown in the previous example. People who can memorize more numbers than other people don't have better short-term memories than people who cannot memorize as much information; they are simply able to recognize patterns faster and use more efficient strategies to chunk information.

Mnemonists are people who can remember huge amounts of new and disconnected information. Most people
believe that mnemonic talent is an innate ability. Anders Ericsson, a Swedish psychologist, and William Chase, a p
ioneer of cognitive psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, weren't so sure. They believed they could transform any ordinary per
son into a mnemonist. To test their hypothesis, Ericsson and Chase recruited a student, whom they called S.F., to b
e their test subject. S.F. tested normal for intelligence and memory.
Figure 1a

Ericsson and Chase met with S.F. three to five times a week for an hour. S.F. was read a sequence of numbers at a rate of one number per second and was instructed to repeat this chain of numbers. If he repeated the numbers correctly, one more number was added to the sequence. If he repeated the numbers incorrectly, one number was subtracted from the sequence. After every session, S.F. was asked to repeat as many of that day's numbers as possible. Although these sessions were mentally draining and extremely intense, S.F. continued because he was seeing progress. His number recall went from seven digits, to ten, to twenty, to thirty, to seventy, and so on(See Figure 1a). After two years and over 250 hours of this incredibly intense practice, S.F. could remember over 80 digits when the experiment was concluded.

Initially, S.F. aimlessly tried to memorize the entire chain of numbers with no strategy. Since S.F. ran track, he began associating race times with strings of numbers. For example, if S.F. was read the numbers 6-3-5-2, he thought of these numbers as representing a race time of six minutes and thirty-five point two seconds. In other words, S.F. utilized a strategy that has been used for thousands of years: to assign new information to a system already in long-term memory. In his case, S.F. assigned random numbers to race times. Since short-term memory is extremely limited, S.F. changed the way he formed new memories to take advantage of his long- term memory system. In order to be sure that S.F. had not increased his capability to form memories in the short term, Ericsson and Chase tested him on his ability to memorize random alphabet letters. When tested on letters, S.F.'s memory immediately reverted to normal, since he had never learned any mnemonic tricks relevant memorizing letters.

Ericsson and Chase's memory experiment has implications for almost all types of physical and mental activities, which range from painting, to basketball, to writing music, and even to skateboarding. Here are some facts regarding deliberate practice:

deliberate practice: "practice which forces the practitioner to come up with new ways to encourage and enable themselves to reach new levels of performance"

Source for the above defintion: Wikipedia

1. When one practices deliberately, there are changes in the brain and organs to adapt to the stress that practice entails.

2. When one acquires a skill from deliberate practice, the acquired skill is extremely specific and, for the most part, doesn't carry over into other skill sets. For example, even though S.F. trained himself to memorize a huge chain of numbers, his skill became simply mediocre when he tried to apply it to memorizing letters. Mike Carroll might just have the freshest front blunt ever(watch FTC Finally), but it doesn't mean he can get the Girl pick-up basketball team to play a game with the Boston Celtics and win.

3. Practice style is crucial. To get better at anything, one can't simply reinforce his existing skills. He must practice slightly outside his boundaries to force his mind and body to adapt to the new demands.

4. To become better at anything one must practice consistently. These physical and neurological changes occur over many years of time. One can't just practice three days a week for a couple hours here and there, then not practice for months and expect to get better at anything. To get better, a person must practice many days a week every week. If executed correctly, the practice should pay off. Referring again to figure 1a, we will change the horizontal axis to Years of Skateboarding and the vertical axis to any number of things. These things could be Number of Flat ground tricks Learned, Speed at Which One Does a Trick, or Percentage of Lands of Ledge Tricks. With skateboarding, this graph should be upward sloping as well- that is, of course, until you hit 30, get a beer belly, and are content with skating mini ramp all day!

PJ Ladd is a testament to the art of deliberate practice. Many people will say PJ is innately talented on a skateboard. This is simply not the case. Do you think that PJ could just do switch tre's at Aquarium all day, the day he started skating? Of course not! Far from it. Rumor has it that PJ would wake up every morning at 4 a.m. and skate in his barn for hours before school started. After school he would skate in his barn for many more hours. Obviously, PJ displayed an extreme passion and compulsion for skateboarding to skate as much as he did in those years. This is deliberate practice to the fullest.

In the Fall of 2009, PJ spent a month in Boston and skated Eggs every day. PJ is a very courteous and kind person of few words. He skated more than anyone. The only time he would socialize was when he drank Gatorade to take a break from the session. His devotion to skateboarding is unparalleled. While many pros get caught up in drugs and alcohol, PJ's deep passion is strikingly apparent in the way he skates. He'll reinforce the ledge skills he already has by doing 100 kickflip front 5-0s in a row. In between he'll work on his new stuff. This kind of practice took place over many hours every day. I think everyone was amazed by the passion and determination shown in his skating. PJ never seemed to be satisfied with his skating, though. In fact, never being satisfied with one's current skill is a pre-requisite for all world class athletes to get better at their skill. In the same spirit as PJ, Ted Williams would arrive for practice before anyone else and leave hours after everyone else had gone home. Williams would hit 100's of balls, all the while evaluating what he was doing wrong. Skateboarding is much like this. If a skater doesn't land a trick, he will usually analyze, consciously or subconsciously, what he was doing wrong. This analysis is a key component in successful deliberate practice.

PJ wasn't always the talented skateboarder he is today. Rumor has it that, when he started, the only ledge trick he would do was a front five-0 front shove at the round ledges across from Window Sills in Boston's financial district. Do you think Rob Welsh could do fakie-back 5-0 fakie flips with a cigarette in his mouth the day he started skating? Do you think Nate Keegan could do 15 foot back nosegrind pop outs over a hypodermic needle at the China Town courts before he learned how to do back nose grinds for three feet off the end of a box? Probably 'no' to all of these questions. P.J.'s determination and passion for skateboarding have allowed him to move from the 5-0 front shove of the mid-nineties to doing whatever the fuck he wants to do on a skateboard today. Welsh, P.J., and Keegs all started somewhere to get to where they are today. You might wonder why we all can't attain the elite level of these three skateboarders. In my previous post about Gene and Environmental Interaction(In this case hard work falls under this category) environment is a big part but not the only component of one's talent limit. It is also partly genes that determine our intellectual and physical limits regarding our capacity for talent. Welsh, P.J., and Keegs may have much greater limits than you or I, but the point is to get where they are now they had to work extremely hard over years of time.

Warning: Skateboarding is an extremely fun activity and practicing deliberately with it may cause it to be extremely unfun. I am not advocating to practice skateboarding deliberately; I am just trying to draw an analogy between talent, the brain, deliberate practice, and skateboarding!

Source: The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

Check out PJ's progress:

To