In reality shows like American Idol or RuPaul’s Drag Race, contestants compete for the chance to become the next big star. The judges on these shows want to pick a winner who they believe will have long-term success. One way the judges might choose a winner is through similarity-based processing, where they compare contestants to […]
Learning and Memory
Audio Intro Kosovicheva: You’re listening to All Things Cognition, a Psychonomic Society podcast. Now, here is your host, Laura Mickes. Intro to the interview with Professor Nicky Clayton Mickes: Nicky Clayton (pictured below) is a Professor of Comparative Cognition in the Department of Psychology at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Clare College. She was elected […]
I had never given much thought to the saying that “the eyes are the window to the soul” until I watched the TV show, Fleabag. Without giving too much away (although, honestly, this paragraph will probably be a major spoiler), the show follows a woman who regularly breaks the fourth wall, where she looks away […]
What makes you happy? For me: The sun, the ocean, cute animals, musicals, and all things Wicked. But, how do you know you are happy? Glinda asks this of Elphaba at the beginning of “Defying Gravity” in the 2024 movie soundtrack by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Listening to this song produces goosebumps, smiles, and […]
When was the last time you read or wrote something in cursive? If you’re like me, you might find that cursive can sometimes be challenging to read, especially if you haven’t seen any examples in a long time (I’m a bit embarrassed that I recently had to stop and think for a moment before I […]
Picking someone out of a lineup can be tough. Bias in eyewitness testimony is a complicated factor that can influence judicial proceedings. When eyewitnesses identify a criminal, they need to recognize a person’s face, and they need to place them at the scene of the crime. That’s a difficult task for most passersby. We might […]
Last week, I was eating dinner with some friends. One friend shared his dream, in which he was taking a high school exam and was just so nervous about thinking how he didn’t study and hence wouldn’t pass. That gave us all a good chuckle – we are all adults way beyond our high school […]
For the last week and a half, I have traveled by plane, by car, by ferry, by kayak, by boat, and by foot, visiting many beautiful locations within the Pacific Northwest in the United States. Whether it is due to my middle-aged brain or the fact that there have just been so many places, I […]
“But when does lack of ‘simplicity’ in the protective belt of theoretical adjustments reach the point at which the theory must be abandoned?” – Lakatos, 1976 What does it take to falsify a psychological theory? This question sounds straightforward: if you find data that are inconsistent with the theory, you reject the theory. But in […]
We have known Larry for a long time. At first it was a one-way affair, when we were in graduate school and read his work. After we studied Larry’s paper on ad-hoc categories our view on semantic memory was never the same again. We had been working on the boundary between episodic and semantic memory, […]