It feels like, culturally speaking, we’ve developed quite an interest in the role of fear, anxiety, and trauma in shaping our everyday lives. Popular works of fiction explore the trauma and anxieties of their characters in settings that range from the mundane to the fantastical; just look at the popularity of TV shows like Ted […]
When I was a kid, I had a pair of sunglasses that had little mirrors on the side of the lenses that allowed you to see what was happening behind you. I would walk around my neighborhood feeling so cool, like a bona fide Spy Kid. James Bond had nothing on me. I thought someday […]
Music and language share many cognitive features. Not surprisingly, it has been argued that they may have shared evolutionary origins and are present in every culture. I have a soft spot for cognitive studies in these two areas. When reading my earlier posts, you may notice that I covered topics such as bilingualism, the acoustics of emotions in the voice, […]
Older adults are more motivated than younger adults to do well in lab studies. What does this mean for our understanding of cognitive aging? If you’re a psychologist who studies cognitive aging, chances are you recruit younger adults (18-22 years) from the college or university and older adults (65+ years) from the community and have […]
Intro Adding to his long list of awards, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus David Sherry (pictured below) of Western University in London, Ontario, Canada, was awarded the Comparative Cognition Society 2021 Research Award. Recipients of the award give a master lecture at the International Conference on Comparative Cognition and a Special Issue in the Psychonomic Society’s journal, Learning & Behavior, is dedicated to research […]
Professor David Sherry (pictured below) is the awardee of the Comparative Cognition Society‘s Annual Research Award for 2021 for his contributions in the field of comparative psychology. The award is associated with a Special Issue in Learning & Behavior in honor of his research. In the interview, I talk with Professor Scott MacDougall-Shackleton (pictured below), on the the Guest Editors of the […]
Have you ever played a video game where the first few levels are relatively easy and slow, but as you progress, the game becomes harder and faster? Years back, I played Tetris, Frogger, PacMan, Space Invaders, Centipede, etc. I can remember my 10-year-old self (or my 22-year-old graduate student self) working so hard to beat the […]
Kimele Persaud is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University and a long-serving Digital Associate Editor (DAE; pictured below). Kimele has decided to leave the Digital Content team, much to my chagrin. This post is an interview about her time as a DAE. Having been familiar with her writings, I first met Kimele in real life […]
We all enjoy a tasty snack every now and then, and we usually have personal preferences for specific foods. Some of us may prefer chocolate, whereas others prefer potato chips. Sometimes we may get a little carried away snacking, ending up eating way more than we intended. So, what happens in the brain when we […]
In October 2008, ‘Year2183’ posted a message on the anti-Muslim website ‘Gates of Vienna’, arguing that Muslims should be forcibly deported from Norway. Three years later, on 22 July 2011, the same individual posted and e-mailed a 1500-page document describing his extreme-right ideology and the extensive preparations that he made before killing 77 people in […]