When you go grocery shopping, how do you remember what to buy? Write down a list, of course. That slip of paper, or your smartphone, will do the remembering for you (it’s an external memory, as we have noted on this blog before). But what if you lose the paper or your phone’s battery dies? […]
The spelling rules of English are by far the most challenging aspect of learning to read, of reading, and of writing. Anyone who has seen a child’s spontaneous writing has seen all kinds of creative misspellings. Adults, of course, are also not immune to spelling errors. Spelling is so strange in the English language that […]
The world around us is structured. Certain features of objects just go together. Imagine a muscular sports car in a 1950s black-and-white photograph, like this classic Ferrari 340: What do you think its color was? And what color would you guess a 1950’s VW beetle in a grayscale image was? Chances are you did not […]
As we approach a new academic year—at least in the northern hemisphere—there have been some changes on the digital team. Richard Morey has decided to withdraw from the team owing to his other editorial commitments. We are sad to see Richard go because he has been doing a terrific job covering the areas of methodology […]
You’ve decided to go to a country you’ve never been to for your next vacation and want to learn some basics of the language to prepare for your trip. You order a book of introductory phrases and grammar basics. When it arrives, you eagerly crack it open, ready to dig in. You start reading the […]
Reproducibility is the hallmark of science. It has been argued that a finding needs to be repeatable to count as a scientific discovery and that replicability is a line of demarcation that separates science from pseudoscience. The fact that a recent large replication effort of 100 studies found that fewer than half of cognitive and social psychology […]
There are certain truths in life that we may find difficult to accept. Some of these truths include admitting when we’re wrong, admitting when we’ve been beaten, and if you’re anything like me, admitting when you’ve gained a couple of pounds around the midsection (you know the ones that have inspired our New Year’s resolution […]