What does being in nature actually do for us? In the last couple of years, when we’ve all been in lockdown and had to work from home for prolonged periods, we’ve each probably thought “I should get out of the house and get some fresh air” – but does that help in more than the […]
If you watched the Academy Award winning film, CODA (trailer below), you’ll appreciate that the character who played the son is a native signer. That is, he learned sign language from his parents from the start. How do we learn spatial relations? It’s a fundamental ability we pick up early. Much of what we know […]
Rhyming verses may make you think of Shakespearean sonnets or old-fashioned love poems. Yet, rhymes are ubiquitous in modern life. We remember how to spell words by repeating “i before e, except after c,” and the number of days in the months through “Thirty days hath September …,” Attorneys admonish jurors that “if it doesn’t […]
In fourth grade, I learned to play the trumpet. Although my very musically inclined father attempted to teach me piano before then, my band director gets the credit for teaching me to read the music. Two key mnemonics were instrumental in my success in remembering the treble clef notes. Treble clef notes are the upper […]
One of the major head-scratchers that keep researchers of many disciplines awake at night is the concern about reproducibility of past experimental findings. As it emerges, only a fraction of existing experimental studies, when replicated with the same methodology and conducting the same analyses, returned results that are comparable to the original ones. This replication […]
Did you watch an interview where Robert Downey Jr. says he’s coming back as Iron Man or did you just read an avid fan theory on Reddit? Was it your mother or anatomy professor who said bubble gum would stay in your stomach for seven years? Whether you’re sharing celebrity gossip or submitting a homework […]
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 […]