Breaking Rules; The Brain Often Fumbles During Simple Tasks

Humans have used their brain power to achieve extraordinary feats; we made the Pyramids, put a man on moon and are on the threshold of creating artificial intelligence. However, the same brain that made supercomputers can fumble over basic commands like differentiating between odd and even numbers.

Researchers say that humans tend to look at the "big picture." The brain gets so tangled up in contextual information that it sometimes forgets to follow simple rules.

Gary Lupyan, a cognitive scientist and psychology professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, asked a group of participants to determine whether a given number was odd or even. He found that a significant minority of the subjects identified 400 to be a better even number than 798. Some even said that 798 was an odd number. Participants knew that one needs to simply look at the last digit to find whether a number is even or odd. So, it came as a surprise that people would fumble over such a simple rule.

"Most of us would attribute an error like that to carelessness, or not paying attention," said Lupyan, in a news release. "But some errors may appear more often because our brains are not as well equipped to solve purely rule-based problems."

Also, this didn't just happen with numbers. The study team found that participants, of varying formal education levels, broke simple rules while dealing with shapes, sizes and even hypothetical scenarios.

For example, participants were asked to imagine a contest, which was open only for grandmothers. They were told that every eligible contestant had an equal chance of winning. However, study subjects said that a 68-year-old lady with 6 grandchildren had higher chances of winning than a 39-year-old with a just-born grandkid.

"Even though people can articulate the rules, they can't help but be influenced by perceptual details," Lupyan said. "Thinking of triangles tends to involve thinking of typical, equilateral sorts of triangles. It is difficult to focus on just the rules that make a shape a triangle, regardless of what it looks like exactly."

The brain keeps filtering out information and sometimes pays little attention to details. This inability to ponder over simple rules could be advantageous in making quick decisions.

But, during math test, the brain needs to overlook contextual information and play by simple rules. Researchers haven't yet found why some people find it easier to follow simple steps while doing math problems while others find it extremely difficult.

"After all, although some people may mistakenly think that 798 is an odd number, not only can people follow such rules - though not always perfectly - we are capable of building computers that can execute such rules perfectly," Lupyan said. "That itself required very precise, mathematical cognition. A big question is where this ability comes from and why some people are better at formal rules than other people."

The study is published in the journal Cognition.

Previous research has shown that the brain does a marvelous job of filtering out the clutter to focus on simple task. It has specialized cells in the prefrontal cortex that act as bouncers to allow only important data to pass through such as "yikes hot!" or "ooh shiny."

When these "spam filters" fail, the brain gets overloaded with information, which could result in disorders such as Attention deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or schizophrenia. Another related study had found that suppressing brain filters allows a person to be more creative.