Cognition is so interesting that we might never realize it. Most of the time we don’t think about our cognition, although we are constantly thinking, seeing, attending, memorizing, and deciding during our waking hours. When teaching my first-year student “Intro to Cognitive Psychology”, the greatest joy for me stems from seeing their faces when they […]
Imagine standing in an isle of cereals and you want to find THE cereal that has been advertised to you as exceptionally yummy and at the same time, exceptionally healthy—and all that for a great price! What will influence your decision regarding what cereal box you’ll eventually place into your cart, and how could companies […]
This election has been intense, in every sense of the word. At times, some of us might have wished to just shut out the images of angry faces and the sounds of hateful or uninformed utterances. You could have closed your eyes, but you sadly cannot close your ears. It seems clear that this openness […]
Have you stood in line at the Louvre in Paris to catch a glimpse of famous Mona Lisa’s smile? People say that besides her ambiguous smile, her gaze tends to follow you, which might add to the mysterious aura that has been created around her for centuries. There is a considerable body of evidence that […]
Currently the EU is officially working and speaking in 24 different languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish. Growing up in such an environment by necessity leads to a great number of people speaking more than just […]
When we teach our first-year Psychology students about the “history of Psychology”, they usually get to see at least one slide that shows a “black box”. “This black box” – we tend to say – “is what Behaviorists like Watson and Skinner wanted to keep unopened, since all they were interested in was the relationship […]
It is Christmas time and everything these days seems to be covered with singing Santas and stuffed stockings, shining brightly in red, white and green. Now imagine that sneaky red and white striped Waldo is hiding among the Christmas decorations. Telling him apart from the rest will be tedious. Needless to say, the similarity between […]
Did you ever wonder why Winnie-the-Pooh tends to close his eyes when he tries to come up with yet another genius idea (like turning himself into a little black rain cloud to trick some bees)? Is he just trying to think really hard despite all the fluff in his head or turning away from the […]
Most objects that surround us seem familiar and are easily identifiable even when viewed from the corner of our eyes. We are so quick to identify objects that it almost seems trivial, but just like speech production, object recognition is quite complex. How is object recognition actually achieved? Of course knowing what objects tend to be […]
If you have ever taken an intro class to sensation and perception, chances are that you have experienced the “waterfall illusion” as an example of motion aftereffects. You can try this yourself: Next time you stumble upon a waterfall, stare at it without moving your eyes for about a minute. When you then look at some […]