When opposites slow you down but don’t collide: Negligible dual-task costs with stimulus incompatibility Doing two things at once is hard. But why?  Answering this question can give us key insights into how the human mind works. Everyday life in the 21st century is rife with attempts to multi-task (e.g., using a mobile device while doing […]

Trouble finding the red pen? Just say “tomato.” High-level conceptual information can direct our attention during visual search. Wouldn’t it be handy if saying “metallic” made your keys pop out when you were looking for them? Or if saying “green” helped you find your beer on St. Patrick’s Day? Language is used to orient our […]

The ball is about 20 cm from the hole. The grass is smooth. There is no wind, it is not raining, and you have done this hundreds of times before. A gentle tap and you sink the ball. Just as you would expect from looking at the picture below. Now replay the scenario in your […]

If it weren’t for the “Men in Black” (M.I.B.), your life might be at constant risk from extraterrestrial activity on earth. The M.I.B. are best known for using “neuralizers” to erase witnesses’ memories of alien sightings. One might therefore wonder whether the M.I.B. considered Dan Simons and Chris Chabris famous gorilla as sufficiently extraterrestrial to neutralize him […]

It’s getting late and the party is noisy. Everybody around you is talking sat the same time and you have trouble keeping track of the conversation. And then someone at the other end of the room whispers your name. All of a sudden you can hear quite clearly: someone said your name, and all the […]