When we launched the Psychonomic Society’s featured content site back in 2014, we had a simple idea: take the remarkable work of cognitive scientists and make it approachable, inviting a broader community into the conversation. Over the years, we did just that. Through blog posts (over 800!), podcasts (6 seasons!), interviews, research highlights, and digital […]
At this point, we’ve probably all spent more time than we want to think about on Zoom calls. Whether that’s meeting with students or collaborators when we’re spread across countries (or the planet), or committee meetings, or even social events, if you’re reading this, you’re probably more familiar than you want to be with a […]
Ever confuse two people you’ve met, particularly if they’re both of a different race than you are? It’s likely that part of why this is hard for you is the Other Race Effect, where we find people whose appearance differs from our own to be harder to tell apart. This happens even when we’re motivated […]
Search in the lab doesn’t look like search in the world (mostly) Visual search is something that we do all the time – in the morning, pre-coffee, you might stumble into the washroom and look for your toothbrush (hoping that your cat didn’t get rambunctious in the night and knock it into the sink), followed […]
How do we build true novelty? We have new experiences all the time (maybe reading a blog post about a scientific article is one, and if it is, welcome!), but studying how we learn about new items and new categories poses significant challenges. I mean, we could spend a lot of time trying to learn […]
Have you ever had the experience of talking with someone and partway through, you realize that while you both might be using the same vocabulary, what you mean is quite different? Sometimes, this comes from a generational gap. Slang words change frequently, and some words don’t have the same meaning that they once did. For […]
How am I supposed to learn my way around this confusing new place? Picture the following situation: you’re on vacation, you’ve spent all day (and then some) in airports and on planes, and you’ve finally made it to your hotel. Now you’ve got to find your room, and you need to remember how to get […]
Is this the right assessment for you? Is it right for me? Imagine you’re back in school (it may have been a while for you!) and you’re undergoing some kind of psychometric assessment, perhaps to see if you need extra support to be the best student you can be. If you’re reading this, it’s probably […]
While you might not think of it, your life and your experience of moving through the world is governed by innumerable sets of rules that you’ve learned. We tend not to think much about these rules or grammars, much less how we learn them, but they’re nearly as ubiquitous as the air we breathe. Imagine […]
When was the last time you looked for a T among Ls? Unless you spend a lot of time in the lab, running in visual search experiments, your experience of visual search probably isn’t looking for Ts amongst Ls. Your experience of visual search in day to day life is probably more like “where’s my […]