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28 May 2004
There has been a bit of a chorus of interest1 in what I actually do for a living. Because I'm one of the handful of people (and the only woman) to work on my current study species, I can't tell you exactly what I work on with without giving the game away. However, I can give you a broad overview of my research interests.
I work in the area of animal behaviour, and—more specifically—on how animals make sense of events in the world around them. If you think about it, every species (including humans2) lives in a swirling mass of events and stimuli, but only a tiny proportion of this information is relevant to the animal. An animal paying equal attention to everything would be drowned in information, and waste a lot of time and energy in responding to things that wouldn't provide any actual benefit. On the other hand, without extracting patterns and meaning from the order of events you would be doomed to respond to important events passively, without any ability to predict when, where or how things might happen. Most animals fall somewhere between those two extremes in their responses, but humans are particularly good at extracting patterns and meaning—so much so that we sometimes see meaning where there is none. Ironically, this is what makes being a scientist both possible and very difficult.
One aspect of this idea that I'm particularly interested in is how animals deal with information about the physical world. Even very young human children expect certain standards of behaviour from objects. Objects cannot pass through solid barriers, or suddenly jump from one place to another, and babies show surprise and interest when they see these laws of physics being violated. This allows us to behave in a very flexible way, because we can apply this general knowledge to completely new situations. Is this something that is a human speciality, or do other animals share some of these more abstract concepts about physics and the physical world? Of course, you can't just ask non-human animals what they know about the world3, so you have to devise cunning experiments in which animals reveal their answers to your questions in their choices and responses. I can tell you that this is a lot harder than it sounds. I'm fond of posing questions about mechanisms—how do animals deal with information?—but biology being what it is, you also have to consider why a behaviour has evolved (functional questions), as well as thinking about how the behaviour develops as the animal grows up, and also when it appeared in the evolution of that species.
There are lots of potential ramifications of this area of research, but one that hovers in the background is whether there is some kind of mental discontinuity between human and non-human animals. Do animals have the same kind of abilities (just less of them), or did humans travel at some point over a set of railway points, and go off on a completely different track of their own?
So that—in a nutshell—is what I do, more or less. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out where Lego fits in...
1 Well, OK—a trio.
2 I'm the kind of biologist who regards humans as big, rather ugly primates: embarrassingly under-endowed in the sharp teeth and claws department, but quite nifty at making acceptable claw and teeth substitutes. And inordinately fond of digital watches (with apologies to Douglas Adams).
3 To be more precise, you can ask whatever questions you like, but you'll be waiting a long time for an answer.
2
Ooooh! Sounds like fun! I suppose you use the legos to build train tracks, ball-dropping devices, and other such physics gear so you can watch helpless little babies squirm as solid objects appear to pass through walls. 
By the way, this secret identity stuff is an irresistable challenge. My Googling skills have finally met their match! Although I once tracked down an obscure French rock song knowing only that it was played during a months-old IKEA commercial, searches for various combinations of "animal behavior," "psychology," "xxxx," "Oxford," and "only woman" failed to turn up any dirt. Unless, of course, you happen to be xxxx of Oxford University, whose research animal (xxxx) seems exotic enough, but whose job description doesn't seem to match you.
Of course, being the only woman in your field means it's only a matter of time before you're found out. You can't hide from the BBC forever... ^_^
3
Those of you who visited earlier may have seen my uncensored version of Aaron's comment. He found me, and unwittingly did what I had been hoping to avoid and linked my real name with this blog. I've explained my decision to him by email and apologised for butchering his comment, but I want to preserve this space as somewhere for me to have fun and express myself freely without worrying about students or colleagues finding this page as the second result on Google when they search on my name. If anyone really wants to know who I am, just email me privately, and I'll tell you.
dave m: I'll have a think and see if I can come up with a good general introductory book. There must be one, though evolution is a more popular topic for popular science books. Perhaps I'll write one, one of these days
David (TEFL Smiler): No lab rats (I work with much more interesting animals), and definitely no cutting up of brains. Neurobiology is very interesting, but for my own work, I much prefer my animals whole and doing clever things with their brains still firmly in their skulls. I'm eagerly awaiting the day when functional MRI machines become sophisticated enough for me to put an animal in one while it's doing a task, and I can look at bits of its brain lighting up while it works.
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Aaagh! O sh*t, i'm sorry, i thought i was only joking... Fortunately, the inability to remember names that usually causes me such embarassment has already kicked in, and i've cleared my browser history in case your name was in the URL of whatever page i found. Sorry again! :-(
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Making sense but she's a girl defines humans as big, rather ugly primates: embarrassingly under-endowed in the sharp teeth and claws department, but quite nifty at making acceptable claw and teeth substitutes. And inordinately fond of digital watches (with apolog...
by After Gutenberg @ 29/05/2004 9:06 pm • Permalink •
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Well bsag, I am sorry if we were over curious, and hope that you still feel that this is a place where you can think speak and write freely.
by ThoughtBadger @ 29/05/2004 10:06 pm • Permalink •
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Aaron: No problem. I don't mind too much if individual people find out my name, but I just don't want the link here.
ThoughtBadger: It's not a problem, and it's a very human trait to be curious I think I averted the problem (which was bound to happen sooner or later).
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This little episode has made me think about the whole nature of an online diary/scrapbooks such as yours, which even though you are properly reticent about your private life, is nonetheless both very personal and public at the same time. Indeed reading blogs is among other things, a slightly voyeuristic experience. This public/private contradiction can never fully be resolved, but I can quite understand why you do not wish those you interact with professionally to know about it. It would be slightly like someone rummaging through your mental underwear drawer, though of course I would add that everything on display is neatly folded and sparkling white - no skidmarks here! However it is quite likely that sooner or later someone you work with will get wind of the fact that this blog exists, and even without your name, I do not think it would be too hard to track down. I hope this possibility is one which would not be too distressing for you.
by ThoughtBadger @ 30/05/2004 11:06 pm • Permalink •
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ThoughtBadger: Yes, I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult, but if it does happen, I'm not going to get too worried about it. I've thought about the issue of privacy and where to draw the line a lot—as you say, it's something that always comes up when you write online. I might write a post about it at some point.
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A friend of mine (a philosophy major to be more precise) has been discussing some theories with me which might be of interest to you. Not that I think his ideas would have any true bearing on your research, but they might provide you with a fresh look at whatever you are dealing with specifically right now. At the very least you might simply find them amusing.
If we ever bother to get the philosophy blog started, I'll let you know so you can read his papers if you have the time.
11
I have never even thought about who you "really" are or what you "really" do... Somehow I have just blithely accepted the person I meet in your writings and never even considered that there are dimensions missing. I make no claim to some sort of virtue, my family and friends will assure my lack of curiosity is probably the result of my raging egocentricity. Nonetheless I still find my nonreflection weird. I think I relate to your blog like a very lucky seating on a long train ride when you have a compartment companion who can broaden your horizons, share some of your likes and give you a good philosophical run for your money without causing you to totally despair for yourself or mankind. "Kemosabe, just who was that masked blogger?" (slight generational reference)
by john @ 02/06/2004 5:07 pm • Permalink •
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indieb0i: Sounds very interesting. My work is very cross-disciplinary by nature, so I'd be interested to read the papers.
john: Well, this is who I am as well; some of the details are missing, but I'm essentially the same person here as at work. I love your analogy about the train journey, though. If I had thought about it at all, that is exactly the kind atmosphere I was trying to create. Your Lone Ranger reference also brought back very fond memories of playing cowboys and indians when I was kid.
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Whoops. I'm terribly sorry - my brain was in one place, and my fingers were somewhere completely different :(
by Howard Jones @ 03/06/2004 9:07 am • Permalink •
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Hello matey
by Howard Jones @ 03/06/2004 9:07 am • Permalink •
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Howard Jones: No problem. :-D Are you using 'focus-follows-mouse' by any chance? That's a killer.
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Great post. I've been having trouble with your trackback thing - can't seem to be able to get the trackback URL for this post - can you help me out here?
by siddhartha @ 07/06/2004 7:07 am • Permalink •
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siddhartha: The trackback URI is linked to just below the comment header above, in this case:
http://www.rousette.org.uk/blog/archives/2004/
05/28/making-sense-of-the-world/trackback/
In all cases, it's the permalink for the entry with /trackback/ on the end. With most blogging clients, you only need to include the URI of the post itself in the post, and the correct trackback ping will be sent (I have WordPress set to accept all incoming pings), but that obviously didn't happen in this case.
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Living in a swirling mass of stimuli, and how we deal with it. From but she's a girl:
"If you think about it, every species (including humans) lives in a swirling mass of events and stimuli, but only a tiny proportion of this information is relevant to the animal. An animal paying equal attention to everythin...
by complexity theory: a weblog @ 08/06/2004 4:06 am • Permalink •
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by siddhartha @ 08/06/2004 4:07 am • Permalink •
1
Digital watches! Puhleeeeze! It's all about fashion statements now isn't it?
The work does sound interesting though. Are there any 'layman's' books on the subject?
I am pleased for you that you got sorted though, It's obviously been stressful these last few months and you are equally obviously more cheerful now
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Fascinating! Lab rats playing with Lego, eh? Isn't icky slicing up their brains afterwards, though? 
by David (TEFL Smiler) @ 29/05/2004 12:05 am • Permalink •