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We have talked about pop-out before. The phenomenon is nearly self-explanatory: consider the two sets of dots in the figure below. There are 18 dots on the left and 150 on the right. In each array, there is a single red dot: what is your intuition about how long it would take to detect the […]
You are in the cognitive laboratory and you focus on the screen in front of you. A few color patches are flashed for 1/10th of a second, and 2 seconds later another array of patches appears that stays on the screen until you respond. Your task is to decide whether any one of the patches […]
A variety of things can influence memory, and we frequently find that existing knowledge can impact the learning of new information. For example, some people (including me) find it hard to learn to drive an automatic car because of their pre-existing knowledge of driving a stick shift (standard) car. For example, early during the transition, […]
When do you look something up, and when do you try to remember it? One of the hallmarks of humans is our ability to store and access information in the environment around us as well as in our own central nervous systems. We have an external memory and an internal memory. Many tasks involve moment-to-moment trade-offs between the two. The “soft […]
Imagine the following dystopian job: You are working in a factory, and your task is to look for that matching sock so the pair can be packaged together. To make things worse, you are given another sock every few seconds, together with a new drawer in which to look for its twin. To manage the […]
There is physics. Then there is psychology. And never the twain shall meet? No, quite to the contrary: The nature of the relationship between the physical world and its psychological representation is among the most studied—and understood—of all mental phenomena. For more than 150 years, psychophysicists have been studying the mapping between physical quantities, such as weight […]
The Psychonomic Society’s 65th Annual Meeting is just around the corner, and we’re heading to New York City this year. With an exciting lineup of talks, posters, workshops, and social events, this year’s meeting promises to be unforgettable. A Stellar Kick-off: Nelson Cowan’s Keynote We’re delighted to start the meeting with a keynote address by Nelson […]
“But when does lack of ‘simplicity’ in the protective belt of theoretical adjustments reach the point at which the theory must be abandoned?” – Lakatos, 1976 What does it take to falsify a psychological theory? This question sounds straightforward: if you find data that are inconsistent with the theory, you reject the theory. But in […]
Everyone struggles to remember things. Whether it’s a home address, someone’s phone number, or even a new acquaintance’s name—it’s challenging to recall information when we need to. We have lost count of the number of times we’ve been introduced to someone only to immediately forget their name. However, some things might be easier to remember […]
Imagine A Paradise Every other year, students join my co-instructor and me on a research-oriented field study down to Roatán, Honduras, in collaboration with the Dolphin Communication Project and its director, Dr. Kathleen Dudzinski. During this field-based research course, students learn about dolphin biology and behavior, the conservation of coral and sea turtles, and the […]