Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Rebelgecko t1_j6uwztl wrote

Reply to comment by Wagamaga in Scientists have shown for the first time that briefly tuning into a person's individual brainwave cycle before they perform a learning task dramatically boosts the speed at which cognitive skills improve. by Wagamaga

I am not a neuroscientist but the experiment and the headlines don't seem to line up to me

The control group had to do the visual task after the strobelight went off at random intervals. It seems like the study is making claims about how strobing visual tasks in synchronization with peaks/troughs of brainwaves improves performance... but the study didn't measure anyone's performance without the strobing to compare against?

54

Fleinsuppe t1_j6vglql wrote

Why do you think without the strobing is an important control? They are comparing synced vs. randomized, which might as well have been without, unless distracting.

13

Rebelgecko t1_j6vyiga wrote

My intuition is that exposing someone to a flashing light and then asking them to do a timed "where's Waldo" style exercise would actually harm their performance compared to doing it without any light at all. Obviously I could be totally wrong, but to a layman like me it seems like an odd thing to take for granted.

24

amoralhedgehog t1_j6ym48q wrote

That intuition applies in the same way to both groups, so both groups should receive it.

1

DentalBoiDMD t1_j6vnqnu wrote

how can they be so sure that randomized is equivalent to non-strobing? i mean you can't just assume that randomized = no strobing. you even said it yourself that it "might as well have been without", so you don't know for sure which leaves a huge hole in this experiment because it's already based off assumptions that aren't proven yet.

i feel like you'd want to find significance between normal non-strobing and strobing environments before you measure the differences between lights strobing at different rhythms. How can they verify that randomized strobes didn't decrease cognitive function instead of rhythms helping?

its like if i wanted to see if a program helped kids to better in school, it would be useless to test between different programs when im not sure how the students were doing before they started it

right?

20

indoninja t1_j71w1kw wrote

>unless distracting.

Pretty big assumption

1