We are all part of a culture: certain behaviors and practices are deeply ingrained in our society and, by implication, in all of us. For example, one strongly normative behavior in the United Kingdom is to queue politely for the bus or the checkout in the supermarket. (Apparently this norm is so strong that disproportionately […]
Learning and Memory
We forget. Whether we trade the name of a fish for the name of a student, or whether we eventually forget the name of the U.S. President, the loss of information from memory is nearly always unavoidable. The reasons that underlie forgetting are, however, still debated. One putative mechanism that has attracted considerable attention is the idea […]
Think about many of the decisions you make. Often, people can articulate reasons why they made a particular choice. Why are you voting for that presidential candidate? Why did you order chicken instead of fish? Why do you like soccer better than football? Not only could you describe why you made each of these decisions, […]
A variety of things can influence memory, and we frequently find that existing knowledge can impact the learning of new information. For example, some people (including me) find it hard to learn to drive an automatic car because of their pre-existing knowledge of driving a stick shift (standard) car. For example, early during the transition, […]
A few days ago I saw this video of Cycle Ball and thought what thousands of others thought, “how is this possible?!” The answer is, as the old joke goes, “Practice!” But practice what? I have been biking regularly for far longer than many of the players in the video and I am no closer to being […]
Signing a Swedish sound beats catching a ball: linguistic processing in sign language and working memory performance Imagine that you are discussing a familiar topic with a friend in a quiet room. If you are a neurotypical individual, understanding them and knowing what to say next may seem effortless. Now imagine that you are having […]
When you were a famous rock star: reading emotional facial expression during autobiographical recall
We all remember what it was like to be young, when we were rock stars, Blues singers, invincible volleyball players, or marathon runners. We may also remember that specific marathon on a Tuesday in November where some particularly clever person put a billboard next to the finish line that said “turning back now would be […]
William James famously said that the world is “one great blooming, buzzing confusion” to an infant whose sensory apparatus is “assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once.” As adults, we are still assailed by all of the above, but somehow we manage to deal with the complexity of the world. We use […]
David Starr Jordan, the renowned ichthyologist and founding President of Stanford in 1891, was famous for his encyclopedic knowledge of fish. Names, classifications, habitats—everything was impeccably memorized and available for recall from the expert’s exquisite memory. Sadly, President Jordan proved unable to get to know the students at Stanford by name, as had been his […]
What if your dad told you that you were capable of time travel? Well, what day goes by when we don’t imagine landing our dream job or snagging that grant? How many days go by that we don’t look fondly on that time we pretended to be incredibly sick and took our best friend’s car to […]