Eye movements to nothing make good verbal memories

Have you ever had a conversation with someone who constantly averted their gaze? Why do you think that is? If you are like most people, you might suspect a myriad of reasons, with most being categorically not good. You might suspect that your conversational partner is socially uncomfortable, disinterested in the conversation, hiding something, or […]

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Filling-in words but in-filling music: Differentiating domains in short-term memory

Language and music unfold in time in similar ways. Just like we do not produce an arbitrary sequence of words, music follows a set of principles, and notes that fail to follow them can sound “ungrammatical.” Both language and music also often show hierarchical structure, with the pace of speech and music often having what […]

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As easy as Yī-Èr-Sān

If you have ever asked a stranger for directions, especially in a place where people speak in a wonderful Scottish accent, you may relate to the experience of the driver in this video: It may not be such a challenge to remember directions if your memory span—that is, the number of items you can recall […]

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Breaking slow: When good learning gets in the way of memory updating

Cogito ergo sum. Thus spake René Descartes, usually translated into English as “I think, therefore I am.” Thinking is what makes us human—quite literally so because homo sapiens means “wise man”. So what does it mean to think, let alone to be wise? Much debate can be had about that question, but it seems safe […]

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Drinking Beck’s rather than Heineken? Perhaps it is the result of life-long associative learning

Asking your waiter what beers are on tap should come with a trigger warning, because the simple question may trigger a cognitive challenge. From Heineken to Becks and some other local boutique IPAs whose names you cannot even pronounce, the list can be so extensive that you are put into frantic rehearsal mode just to […]

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Drawn to remember: the benefits of artistic shopping lists

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? […]

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Doubling down on consonant doubling: When sound and spelling both contribute to spelling

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 […]

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The uncompromising red of a Ferrari: Feature inferences in probabilistic categorization

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 […]

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