Around this time of year, when the weather is cooling and the leaves are turning, I love to snuggle up on the couch and watch a good crime mystery! One of my absolute favorite shows is BBC’s, Sherlock, a television crime drama based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes detective stories. The show stars […]
Have you ever found yourself whispering something to yourself in the comfort of your own head? If you had, you’re not alone. Many people – but not all – do. This phenomenon is known as internal verbalization or inner speech. Curiously, people who don’t experience internal verbalization are surprised about the notion of others “listening” […]
My young daughter plays computer games that allow her to learn a skill while playing and competing with other players. It’s probably a gift and a curse of the COVID-19 pandemic all at once — children getting more than enough screen time per day, but gaining a skill that they might otherwise not attain while […]
Three years ago, I bought a new car that had a keyless push start. It took almost six months of driving before I stopped trying to put my key into the ignition. Each time I tried to put an imaginary key into the imaginary ignition slot, I shook my head and laughed at myself. My […]
Memory is such a fickle thing. Have you ever found yourself forgetting things that you should have remembered and remembered things that you should have forgotten? This happens to me all the time! I can completely forget where I placed my cell phone, even if placed minutes ago. However, I can remember lyrics to a […]
Should you have to be a data archeologist with open data? Have you ever come back to a dataset a few years after collecting it, and scratched your head over what Past You was thinking and what the variables and labels mean? Now, imagine it’s not Past You, but another researcher, and you are trying […]
The night before a big exam, college students may attempt to “study” by listening to their recorded notes while they fall asleep. They may feel that processing the information before sleep will help them remember it better the next day. A number of studies have shown this to be effective, even though it didn’t help […]
One of life’s most difficult challenges is keeping information a secret, even when well-intentioned. Imagine you need to plan a surprise party for your dad. You send out the invitations, order a cake, and buy the decorations. When you’re talking over these details with your brother, he suddenly looks toward the door. Naturally, you look […]
Imagine learning how to read and play music for the first time. It starts with a series of dots and lines thrown around on a piece of paper. Soon you learn how to interpret these so-called notes. You assign a letter name to each note, and then you figure out how to produce that note […]
What’s SpongeBob Squarepants’ claim to fame besides being an animated cheese-looking, blockhead sponge under-the-sea main character of a children’s cartoon with catchy song lyrics? Apparently, aside from the possible influence on decreased attention span in children, the creators of SpongeBob SquarePants weren’t too far off in their character portrayal of different sea creatures, including the […]