Sigmund Freud, Kevin Bacon, and Adolescent Attachments

Attachments to other people – you can’t live with them, you can’t live without them. Kevin Bacon in his classic role as Ren McCormack in “Footloose” is a bad boy teenager who reminds the straight-laced minister (played by John Lithgow) and his quiet town that dancing is also important in leading a fulfilling life. A social […]

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When actions have consequences you’ll know right from left more readily

When a person “doesn’t know right from left”, they are metaphorically confused, or unable to navigate the world. In the non-metaphorical meaning of the phrase, we’re talking about a person whose concepts of right and left are somehow undeveloped – and telling left from right is an ability that we definitely need in order to […]

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Are the times a-changin’? Reporting before and after the 2015 statistical guidelines

“Progress is not possible without deviation.” — Frank Zappa The ways by which psychological science deals with methodological problems are many. There are bottom-up approaches such as peer-reviewed papers and workshops given by methodologists who advocate particular types of changes. There are also top-down approaches, such as funding agencies requiring data sharing or journals requiring […]

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Alpha, Beta, Blink: Synchronicity between brain oscillations and the attentional blink

We are constantly bombarded with a lot more information than we can process at once. We use our attentional abilities to filter out unwanted information and to focus on those things that appear particularly relevant—for example, right now I am trying to ignore all the buzz around me in a Star Alliance lounge at Heathrow […]

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Two languages and two worlds in America: Psycholinguistics and Donald Trump’s resonance with “common people”

You may have heard that the United States had a presidential election last year. You may have also heard that the winner of that election was an outsider, a “straight-talker,” and an anti-establishment candidate. Enough material to fill the Library of Congress has been written on the content of what (first candidate, and now) President […]

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