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When hand waving turn pistons into engines: The role of gestures in creating understanding

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: […]

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From A to… cognitive science: Welcome to Anja Jamrozik

It gives me great pleasure to introduce our new Digital Associate Editor, Dr. Anja Jamrozik, who joined our team a few weeks ago. Welcome, Anja, great to have you on the team. For future reference, Anja’s Psychonomics bio page is here, and she will be publishing her first post as Digital Associate Editor tomorrow. It’s actually her […]

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Singularities in inflection: Linguistic goslings or resource limitations?

Human beings today communicate in 7,000 different languages. Although many languages are expected to go extinct in the future because there are not enough people left who keep them alive, the ability to speak more than one language will continue to be in high demand. In fact, by some estimates, more of us are bilingual (i.e., speak two languages, […]

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“Popout” and the Airbus A380: Serial vs. parallel models of visual search

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 […]

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When looking at a tomato helps you touch a fire engine

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 […]

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The dark side of easy questions: Early confidence can sway jurors

“During the summer of 1979, Bernard Pagano, a Catholic priest, was arrested and put on trial in Delaware for a series of armed robberies. Seven eyewitnesses, ranging from clerks to bystanders, positively identified Father Pagano as the “gentleman bandit,” whose well-tailored appearance and courteous manners always belied his felonious purpose. As the trial was nearing […]

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Join us in Pasteur’s Quadrant as Psychonomics launches a new journal

Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications Join us in Pasteur’s Quadrant The Psychonomic Society has launched a new journal,Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (CRPI…. pronounced “creepy” …but in a nice way). I am delighted to be the founding editor. Let me tell you what you need to know about this venture: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications will publish […]

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SLAM dunk for aphasia: Explaining speech production

We all take speech for granted. We are able to say things to others without thinking about how we do that. We may struggle to know what to say when we are left speechless, but once we gather our thoughts, we can utter them without difficulty. Once you consider speech production more carefully, however, it reveals its full complexity. In […]

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One year of precocious baboons: More sparkling Pleiades wanted

It’s been a year since we started to roll out the Psychonomics Featured Content section. I published the first post on September 25th, 2014, but there was quite a bit of preparatory work behind the scenes that predates our public appearance, so now is a good time to proclaim “happy anniversary”, or whatever one does after a […]

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Building knowledge requires bricks, not sand

Here is a neat finding, originally reported by Gillian Cohen in 1990. It is easier to remember that someone is a baker than that someone’s name is Baker. Although both memories seem to require making a connection between the person’s appearance and the very same word “baker,” the profession baker is meaningful, evoking rich imagery and other associations. The name […]

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