Which steak would you prefer: one that is 25% fat, or one that is 75% lean? If you’re like the participants in a classic study by Irwin Levin, you’d pick the latter. This finding represents a framing effect, where equivalent information presented in different ways influences behavior. In this example, the steak labeled with a […]
Human Learning and Instruction
If you’re an educator, you’ve probably wondered how many of your students are paying attention as you deliver course content in class. Although most research on mind wandering has been conducted in the laboratory, understanding when and why students mind wander during class can have important implications for how we teach and design our learning […]
When you go grocery shopping, how do you remember what to buy? Write down a list, of course. That slip of paper, or your smartphone, will do the remembering for you (it’s an external memory, as we have noted on this blog before). But what if you lose the paper or your phone’s battery dies? […]
“Working memory” is a broad term that describes what we do with information that is consciously accessible. For instance, when students take notes in class, they are hearing the lecturer’s sentences, placing them in the context of what they know about the topic, and synthesizing both to form the note they ultimately write on the […]
And the winner is….. in 2014, cognitive scientists from University College London launched an international competition, with a $10,000 prize, to find the best way of tackling a challenge faced by millions every day, namely how best to acquire the vocabulary of a new language. Prof David Shanks and Dr Rosalind Potts from UCL teamed […]
Many of our beliefs are factually wrong. For example, according to the General Social Survey, roughly 20% of Americans polled in 2014 think that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Although such incorrect beliefs are a justified source of dismay to educators and scientists, they have little bearing on our everyday life. A sunset would […]
Few areas of psychology research are as controversial as ‘brain training’. For the last 10 years, we have seen an influx of apps and games that purport to improve users’ cognitive capabilities. The appeal is simple. Play a game, get smarter. The controversy, as we’ve covered here, is that unbiased research on whether brain training […]
How do we recognize the written word? While this seems trivially easy to us, we need to remember that words that are quite close perceptually can be drastically different in meaning. Fin and fine, crew and crow, and deck and desk may look nearly the same but their meanings differ considerably. In the sentence “I […]
Conversations in Milan, Rome, or Madrid seem ever so much more animated and exciting than those polite chats over a tea cozy in Oxford, London, or Wetwang (Yorkshire). At least in part, this may reflect the greater physical rigor that denizens of the Mediterranean exhibit during their speech. As the New York Times put it: […]
Old Faithful but not El Capitan: multiple-choice pretesting helps learning about cronartium ribicola
Old Faithful…. Hayden Valley…. Mammoth Hot springs. Clearly I am talking about the natural wonders of Yellowstone National Park. Now try and answer the following question: What state does the majority of the park reside in? The choices are: (a) Idaho; (b)South Dakota; (c) Wyoming; (d) Montana. If you correctly picked Wyoming, you clearly know too […]