Why #time4action? Some context for the digital event

This post was co-authored by Timothy Welsh. In May of 2018, the Psychonomic Society Leading Edge Workshop titled “Time for Action: Reaching for a Better Understanding of the Dynamics of Cognition” was held in Amsterdam. The overarching goal of the workshop was to share and discuss data and theoretical perspectives that advance the understanding of […]

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To PREcrastinate or not to PREcrastinate … when PREcrastination increases physical effort but reduces cognitive load

In all my years of schooling (four years of high school, four years of undergraduate studies, and six years of graduate school), one thing I have never been accused of is PREcrastination. Precrastination, refers to the tendency to hasten engagement in a subgoal at the expense of exerting extra effort. However, here I report that […]

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Spinal Tap in the lab: Why loudness fatigues with two ears but not one

Noise can be annoying. It is also by far the most common preventable cause of hearing impairment. Unsurprisingly, noise levels in the workplace are therefore subject to occupational health regulations. Workers must wear headphones to protect themselves against noise from chainsaws, jet engines, or any other loud device. No such standards exist for recreational noise, […]

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From Hamlet to the amygdala: The role of ruminations and their neural substrates

“Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,” considered one of Shakespeare’s best tragedies and perhaps one of the most famous English plays ever written, chronicles the quest of Prince Hamlet to avenge his father’s death through ruminating soliloquies and machinations. Hamlet, Act III Scene 1: “To be or not to be: that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler […]

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Prosody and a Christmas Carol: Welcome to Brett Myers

The Psychomic Society’s Digital Team is welcoming another Digital Associate Editor: Brett Myers has joined our team. Because there have been quite a few recent changes to the team, here is the lineup of current Digital Associate Editors: The newest member, Brett Myers, is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders […]

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Context is everything—but what is context? Disentangling the “what” from the “when”

An old but common adage is that “context is everything”, and while this aphorism can be applied to many different topics, it has been especially significant in theories of memory. Even in early psychological research, theorists believed that having knowledge and memory for an item meant connecting it to the “context which the world provides”, […]

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Facilitating your fovea’s focus by crowding your periphery: Visual crowding in 3-D

We owe most of our visual acuity to the fovea, the central area of the retina that is most densely packed with receptors—around 150,000 cones per square millimetre. Whenever we focus on an object, we move our eyes so ensure that the image is projected onto the fovea. And we see whatever is there, irrespective of […]

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On being SMARTer than Vincent

Imagine an experiment in the psychological laboratory. In the experiment, some number of participants are asked to solve problems of varying difficulty. Crucially, the participants are unique individuals and not faithful copies of one another. If that bit of fiction sounds familiar, that might be because it describes a good chunk of cognitive science and […]

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Mortgage disclosures: When sweet nothings are neither sweet nor nothing

Imagine living in a home for decades and then someone, perhaps an armed law enforcement officer, shows up and removes you and your belongings, often facing an uncertain future. Foreclosure of one’s home is right up there among life’s most stressful events. Not surprisingly, foreclosures have been associated with an increased incidence of major depression, […]

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