Trumping Bonferroni to keep your ANOVAs honest

Chemists have test tubes and Bunsen burners. Astronomers have telescopes, computer scientists have computers, and psychologists and cognitive scientists have ANOVAs. If there is one tool that is being used across virtually all domains of psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience, it is the Analysis of Variance or ANOVA. Somewhat ironically, ANOVA does not actually test […]

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Exploring the interface theory of perception: Reply to more commentaries

This post was co-authored by Manish Singh of Rutgers University and Chetan Prakash of California State University, San Bernardino. A new theory in science, like the new offspring of an altricial species, needs an initial phase of development under the care of its progenitors. With the wane of this phase, its fitness must be tested in the rough and […]

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Is Interface Theory a Special Case of Q-morphs or Full-blown Solipsism?

In their Interface Theory of Perception, Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash argue for the role of evolution in human perception. This is a claim that is undoubtedly true and with which few modern perceptual scientists would disagree. But neither is it particularly novel. But then they follow this claim so its logical extreme, ending in solipsism (the […]

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#interfacetheory: True enough

In 1625, the astronomer Christopher Scheiner confirmed Johann Kepler’s hunch that images projected to the retina through the crystalline lens of the eye, much like images passed through telescope lenses, were inverted. Up was down, down was up. This observation stymied many philosophers and scientists into the 20th century. Why, if the images formed on the retina of […]

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Mind that Epistemic Gap! Perceptions Reside Within, not Outside of, Reality

Hoffman and colleagues propose the Interface Theory of Perception (ITP), which asserts that perceptions evolved to render organisms sensitive to the objective world in terms of payoffs, or fitness functions, not truth. According to ITP, “…perception is about having kids, not seeing truth”, so evolution ensures that perceptual representations simplify an organism’s search for survival/reproduction-relevant dimensions. Accordingly, […]

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#interfacetheory: Our species-specific desktop

Tomorrow, Monday 21st September 2015, a collection of papers will appear in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review that are dedicated to the Interface Theory of Perception. The theory is proposed by Donald Hoffman, Manish Singh, and Chetan Prakash in a major article and is followed by a collection of scholarly comments and a reply to those comments by Hoffman […]

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Objects here, objects there, objects everywhere

Most objects that surround us seem familiar and are easily identifiable even when viewed from the corner of our eyes. We are so quick to identify objects that it almost seems trivial, but just like speech production, object recognition is quite complex. How is object recognition actually achieved? Of course knowing what objects tend to be […]

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SLAM dunk for aphasia: Explaining speech production

We all take speech for granted. We are able to say things to others without thinking about how we do that. We may struggle to know what to say when we are left speechless, but once we gather our thoughts, we can utter them without difficulty. Once you consider speech production more carefully, however, it reveals its full complexity. In […]

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Simon says: Keep your hands in your lap (sometimes)

When babies explore the world and stumble upon an interesting object, they check it out carefully. Usually by putting the object into their mouth. Adults tend to be more restrained in their oral explorations, but we retain a natural tendency for physical touch: when we become interested in an object we usually pick it up […]

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