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Incoming Student Subject Pool [ The Happy Hour Archive | obereed.net ] The beginning of a new semester brings with it a bright, fresh, new class of young graduate students. Although they bring with them new ideas, fresh faces, and 10 new mouths to compete with for 4th-floor kitchen leftovers, the most important gift they bring us is themselves, and their ability to serve as naive pilot subjects. As a member of the subject pool committee, I have taken the liberty to pre-screen the incoming class to determine which type of experiments they each are best suited for. BEHENSKY, CHARLES. Screening indicates BEHENSKY has no dual-task cost, but he does suffer from psyscopagnosia, a disorder that renders him unable to recognize anything but stimuli in psychological experiments. This disorder is actually fairly common, and afflicts millions worldwide. Unfortunately, due to the unique characteristics of the disorder, it can not be studied empirically. GMEINDL, LEON. Due to chronic exposure to radioactive elements in the PET suite, GMEINDL has grown a third arm. This allows him to type and use a mouse at the same time, making him a prime candidate for Human-Computer Interaction research. HALL, ANGELA. HALL tested well in all areas but memory retrieval. Tests indicate she scans her short-term memory in a serial, self-terminating manner. JONES, MATT. Tests indicate that JONES has no corpus callosum. His left and right hemispheres communicate using a combination of Morse code, a soup-can telephone, and ESP. MIKELS, JOSEPH. MIKELS has a unique talent that a clever junior faculty member could use to earn tenure. Using only transcendental meditation, two pots of coffee, and a nine-volt battery, he is able to produce psychological data indistinguishable from a subject of any age you choose. In prescreening, MIKELS impersonated a 2-year-old performing an object permenance test, as well as a 78-year-old performing the two-back task. His unique talent allows for 40-year longitudinal aging data to be collected in less than an hour. MINEAR, MEREDITH. We have discovered that MINEAR's retina has no cones, making her perfect for studies hoping to disprove the Stroop Effect. NELSON, JAMES. We have nicknamed NELSON the 'Superman of Higher Reasoning', because he does not fall prey to the conjunction fallacy, nor does he believes there is a Hot Hand in Basketball. He applies Modus Tollens faster than Daniel Kahneman, and is able to solve the 30-disk Tower of Hanoi in a 45 seconds. As an encore, he will always switch doors when Monty Hall gives him the opportunity. NELSON's kryptonite is that he, like a neural network with no hidden layer, is unable to solve the XOR problem. RIIS, JASON. RIIS's subjective probability is perfectly calibrated with normative frequencies. This skill was attained in a mysterious bargain with a dark power. His payment for perfect calibration is the consistent urge to probability-match. TSCHIRHART, MICHAEL. TSCHIRHART has a seventh-order theory of mind. This not only allows him to beat you at tic-tac-toe every time, he is also able to play 20 Questions with Nature and Win. WAGER, TOR. Tests indicate WAGER does well in experiments involving throwing thunderbolts and rending and cleaving with large hammers. He also excels at plundering and pillaging, so make sure you pay him well. |