We have much to look forward to in the New Year, including reading and hearing about new cognitive science from Psychonomic Society members and published in the Society’s journals. We thought we’d take this opportunity to wish you a happy new year and to remind you of the Society’s digital content features that are available […]
Bonjour-hi fellow Psychonomic Society Fellows and Members! Over 2,400 cognitive psychologists from around the world will descend on the city of Montréal for the Psychonomic Society 60thAnnual Meeting the week commencing November 11th, 2019. Keynote Around 60% of the citizens of Montreal and surrounding areas are bilingual in English and French. What a fitting venue for […]
I don’t know about you, but I remember feeling pretty smug when the large Open Science Collaboration report showing that experiments in cognitive psychology were more replicable than experiments in social psychology was published. Apologies to my social psychologist friends. Rest assured, I get my just desserts. The number of participants you need to recruit […]
What are little boys made of Snips & snails & puppy dogs tails And such are little boys made of. What are little girls made of Sugar & spice & all things nice This very popular rhyme, probably written by English author Robert Southey, has persisted in western culture for nearly two centuries. It embodies […]
In the late 1970s, a chimpanzee named Sarah watched a human named Keith struggle to complete simple tasks. When given various solutions, Sarah picked the solutions that would help Keith succeed in his tasks. In one task Keith attempted to grab for an unreachable object (see the left figure below). Sarah chose the option to […]
Toxic. Justice. Misinformation. These three words garnered much attention in 2018. For example, there was a 45% increase in the number of times that the word “toxic” was looked up and a 75% increase in the number of times that the word “justice” was looked up on online dictionaries. The increase in interest in these […]
Think of any movie scene. Was the scene that came to mind a pleasant one? Something funny or romantic? Or more harrowing? When I did this exercise, a scene from the horror film, The Ring, came to mind before a scene from the comedy, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. That is, for me, a negative scene came to mind […]
Prosocial behaviors are behaviors that advantage others and include helping, cooperating, volunteering, comforting, and sharing. The bird pictured below sharing his catch with his friend or mate is an example of a prosocial behavior. In humans, prosocial behaviors tend to be directed more toward people we like than those we do not like. In the […]
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 […]
If you witness a crime, you may be asked to try to pick the perpetrator out of a police lineup. If you are unfamiliar with this line of research or have never been an eyewitness, your notion of a lineup may have come from movies and tv, and may be something like this: (Warning: watching […]