How long is a piece of string? It’s as long as it makes the object appear big

How long is a piece of string? We all know this proverbial and largely rhetorical question. We also probably assume that it has no right answer—indeed, that’s the point of this rhetorical question in the first place, namely to indicate that the issue under consideration does not have a meaningful answer. Enter the venerable BBC. […]

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“You are never fully dressed without a smile” (But it makes you look older)

Smiles are . . .  Powerful.  Infectious.  Uplifting. . . .and Aging? In my younger days, I refereed high school and collegiate basketball and was often told that I needed to stop smiling on the court.  As one of my colleagues said, smiling made me look young, too attractive, not serious enough, and like I […]

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Knowledge is (still) power: Memory for chess positions is better for experts with more chess knowledge and chess experience

Memory researchers love chess. Chess experts have been studied by psychologists to try to explain the role of higher-level processing in memory. One reason chess is a great domain in which to ask these questions is because its rules and concepts provide meaning to the spatial positions of the pieces only if one knows them. […]

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