The dark side of older adults’ motivation to do well in the lab

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 […]

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L&B Special Issue on David Sherry: Interview with Sherry

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 […]

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L&B Special Issue on David Sherry: Interview with MacDougall-Shackleton

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 […]

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What do space invaders and sequential foraging have in common? Your heart.

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 […]

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Gone (as a DAE) but not forgotten: Interview with Kimele Persaud

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 […]

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Food for thought: What happens in the brain when you eat the whole bag of chips?

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 […]

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Identifying threatening language

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 […]

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Sherlock’s memory palace could use animacy: Animacy and animate imagery improve memory retention

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 […]

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Whispers from within (or lack thereof)

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” […]

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