The waiter asks whether you’d prefer potatoes or rice with your entrecote. Are you free to make that decision based on, well, free will? Or should you respond with “Look, I am a determinist. I will just wait and see what I order because I know that my order is determined”? At first glance, the […]
Attention
Attention guides human perception, memory, and action in intriguing ways. Some time ago on this blog we learned that visual search can be directed by conceptual information: Saying or reading a word such as “tomato” makes it easier to find red things. We also learned on this blog that looking at a tomato can help you touch […]
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 […]
We owe most of our visual acuity to our fovea, the area of the retina that is most densely packed with photo-receptive cones. Whenever we focus on an object, we move our eyes so that the image is projected onto this area that contains nearly 150,000 cone receptors per square millimeter. Anything that is projected onto […]
Video games have gotten a bad rap. When googling “do video games”, the first results Google suggests are “rot your brain”, “make you dumber”, and then finally “make you smarter.” As far as the last option is concerned, evidence seems to be accumulating that shows that gaming does enhance visual processing and cognitive control skills. […]
Groundhog Day is better for your homework: We adapt to attentional conflict but only if nothing changes William James famously postulated that the world presents itself as “one great blooming, buzzing confusion” to an infant, whose senses are constantly assaulted by visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory stimuli. To make sense of the world requires attention, […]
The TV is tuned to the Superbowl channel and popcorn and a cold beverage are at hand. What more could one need to enjoy a few relaxing hours? Actually, if you are among the people who media multitask, then you would have to throw in at least a smartphone and a laptop to satisfy your craving […]
Eating dinner without checking your email: impulse control, time preference, and mobile device usage
How well would you do in the phone stacking game? In case you have not heard of it, it’s played during a dinner out and it goes as follows: at the beginning of the meal everyone puts their phone on a pile in the middle of the table. Like this: And then you start ordering drinks […]
You are looking at a display of 17 green blobs and one red blob. Your task is to find the red blob and press a key as soon as you have found it. What could be simpler than this visual search task? Its apparent simplicity notwithstanding, this task has opened a fascinating and sometimes complex window […]
When looking at a tomato helps you touch a fire engine: Attentional processes cross effector boundaries Our attention guides our perception, memory, and action in intriguing ways. For example, some time ago on this blog we learned that visual search can be directed by conceptual information: Saying or reading a word such as “tomato” makes it […]