As self-aware beings, we humans seem to be in a constant dance between our information storage faculties and our own assessment of those faculties—I think I remember that familiar-looking person’s name, but how sure am I? This dance guides our behavior. Sometimes we act on what we remember (“go say hi!”). Sometimes we don’t (“I’m […]
In an increasingly globalized world, one of the most important things we have to do is understand people from different parts of the world and the things they say. Not only are there an estimated 5,000 different languages on Earth today, but also the number of non-native speakers of English vastly outnumbers the number of […]
We learn at a young age that we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, smell with our noses. The clear anatomical differences between these sense organs appear to map intuitively on how we think about the different perceptual modalities. The scientific study of perception is likewise largely divided along these modal lines. Someone […]
Psychologists from the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College London (UCL) have launched a unique international competition, with a $10,000 prize, to find the best way of tackling a memory problem faced by millions of people every day, namely how best to learn foreign language vocabulary. Dr Rosalind Potts and I have teamed up […]
If people’s memory for past events was entirely accurate and if people could only act on things they remembered, our ability to survive in the world would be severely curtailed. This may sound provocative (it is) and counter-intuitive (it is) but it’s also commonly accepted as true. Why? Because if all you remembered about certain […]
In a previous post, Dorothy Bishop explained why it is that research scientists might be interested in using Twitter. I share her views, having been moderately active on Twitter for a few years under my handle @STWorg. I have lost count of the number of really interesting papers and articles that I have come across using Twitter. Although it […]
If I tell people I’m on Twitter, I tend to get one of three reactions: a) Isn’t it all about what Lady Gaga had for breakfast? b) How do you find the time? c) You?!!! (Implication: Twitter is for hip juveniles rather than fossilised academics) This is unfortunate, because Twitter is a valuable resource for […]
Thursday, September 25, 2014 The academic publishing business is undergoing a revolutionary transition. Within the last few years, conventional ‘paper’ publishing modes have become nearly obsolete and most scholarly literature is now online. On the face of it, this shift is merely technological. However, the technological shift has been accompanied by substantial cultural shifts towards […]