#psynom20: Interview with Twitternome Enes Avcu

Our 61st Annual Meeting is one month away! You’re probably well aware because you’ve been feverishly working on your pre-recorded poster or talk presentation to meet the pre-recorded video submission deadlines. The pandemic has necessitated that we no longer meet in Austin, Texas, as initially planned, but instead, we will converge virtually to discuss our research. As in […]

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Spreading your attention divides your rate of conscious perception

One recommendation to reduce COVID-19 transmission is to keep a distance of at least 2 meters/6 feet from others. If you are a pedestrian making your way through busy city streets, this advice is easier said than done. There’s a lot to keep track of to maintain distance with people coming from different directions and […]

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Long shots into the future: Reducing delay discounting to improve decisions and well-being

Goals and temptations. The first, the very substance of life. But, oh, the second, they are everywhere! Both are desirable in their own ways, and they do not always align. We wouldn’t call them temptations if they did, would we? In other words, we often need to decide between behaviors leading to short-term immediate rewards […]

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Psychological science can now tell us how many innocent suspects are in police lineups

Have you ever said hello to someone who looked familiar, but then realized that they are a complete stranger? It’s embarrassing, sure. But the cost of mistaking someone for another person is much greater if you made this error as an eyewitness to a crime. This type of error is made when an eyewitness identifies an […]

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A fanfare for the awesome teamwork of compound words

Compound words are funny creatures. They exist as words themselves, but also contain smaller words which have their own unique meanings.  For example, the compound word butterfly refers to the pretty insect with wings, but it also contains the smaller words butter (yellow spread made from cream) and fly (move through the air). But how […]

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Sounds good! Acoustic patterns of positive emotional expressions

My friend recently exclaimed with delight, “You will not believe this!” but before she could tell me what I wouldn’t be able to believe, she answered her phone. What was the news? She sounded happy, for sure. Was she awarded major funding? Did her crush just ask her out? Did she solve a difficult problem? Much […]

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Surviving the Crisis: The resulting plight of the early career cognitive scientist, Virhia

A large part of my ‘surviving the crisis’ as a cognitive scientist and mother of two has involved engaging and continuously entertaining two little ones at home (a speedster 2-year-old who gets into everything and a prankster 4-year-old with a clever sense of humor). One way my husband and I have found to cope is […]

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Right-wing authoritarianism and reduced updating

I recently had the pleasure of meeting with Allie Sinclair to chat about her latest paper published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. True or False? Diamonds are formed when coal undergoes high pressure. Coffee reduces the influence of alcohol. Sunflowers turn to track the sun across the sky. All are false. If you happened to […]

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Where comparative psychology meets clinical psychology: Examining sex differences in psychiatric disorders from a rat’s perspective

This semester I have the privilege of teaching three sections of introductory psychology. While teaching this many sections generally makes things challenging (the third time being the charm does not apply since by then you can’t keep straight what you have or have not covered), doing so with online, virtual classes that seem never to […]

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