Chapter 1 | Number Sense: Basic Numeracy 5. Have I Got a Story for You! Title: The Split Brain Revisited Author: Michael S. Gazzaniga Source: Scientific American 279, no. 1 (1998): 50-55 About the Study: The author, psychology professor Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, describes part of the split brain study he conducted. On page 53 he writes: My colleagues and I studied this phenomenon by testing the narrative ability of the left hemisphere. Each hemisphere was shown four small pictures, one of which related to a larger picture also presented to that hemisphere. The patient had to choose the most appropriate small picture. [The right hemisphere-that is, the left hand-correctly picked the shovel for the snowstorm; the right hand, controlled by the left hemisphere, correctly picked the chicken to go with the bird's foot. Then we asked the patient why the left hand-or right hemisphere- was pointing to the shovel. Because only the left hemisphere retains the ability to talk, it answered. But because it could not know why the right hemisphere was doing what it was doing, it made up a story about what it could see- namely, the chicken. It said the right hemisphere chose the shovel to clean out a chicken shed. a. In the study described above, was the snowstorm shown in the left visual field or right visual field? Why? b. The real import of this activity is contained neatly in the last two sentences of the Gazzaniga excerpt. Explain why the results Gazzaniga cites above are evidence that we are hardwired toward slippery thinking. c. Explain why the results Gazzaniga cites above are evidence that human inference is potentially a far more complex task than many realize. 10 Beyond the Numbers: A Student-Centered Approach for Learning Statistical Reasoning