Attention

Bayes prevails in implicit learning categorization and beyond

Researchers have argued for centuries over two leading statistical approaches: Bayesian analysis and the Frequentist approach. Both holding their own complex (and convincing) reasoning, well-meaning researchers can all agree on the goal of their analyses: reaching conclusions with the least amount of bias and error. The war between Bayesians and Frequentists is likely far from […]

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He’s right behind you! Distraction by gaze cues is difficult to override

One of life’s most difficult challenges is keeping information a secret, even when well-intentioned. Imagine you need to plan a surprise party for your dad. You send out the invitations, order a cake, and buy the decorations. When you’re talking over these details with your brother, he suddenly looks toward the door. Naturally, you look […]

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May I have your attention test, please?

Attention is a key part of cognition, and, therefore, it plays an important role across almost any context you can imagine. It’s critical for behaviors as diverse as air traffic control and keeping track of predators and influences outcomes with high relevance (such as academic performance). It is also sensitive to many factors such as […]

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Predicting changes in cognitive workload in real time

In cases where humans are tasked with jobs that have a lot of variability in workload, the aid of an automated system at the right times would undoubtedly come in handy. In this interview, Andrew Heathcote (pictured below) describes a recent paper by him and his co-authors published in the Psychonomic Society journal Cognitive Research: Principles […]

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What’s hiding in your reaction time data? New features of visual search behavior from hazard analysis

Sometimes, it seems like the most simple tasks are also the most frustrating. Take the junk drawer in your kitchen, for example. They’re in every home, we’re not proud of them, and whenever we spend several minutes looking for the vegetable peeler when cooking dinner, we promise ourselves that one day, we will get this […]

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How aware are remote operators of autonomous vehicles?

The title of this post is “How are aware remote operators of autonomous vehicles?” According to a new paper by Mutzenich, Durant, Helman, and Dalton (pictured below) published in the Psychonomic Society journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, the answer is: we don’t know. One of the points of the paper is to urge researchers to […]

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