Getting ready to play

The Digital Event on The Evolutionary and Psychological Significance of Play got under way yesterday with an overview post. Today is the first day of this event, and it serves to introduce the special issue of the Psychonomic Society’s journal Learning & Behavior on which it is based. In June of 2016, the Chicago Zoological […]

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38 shades of play: Commencing a digital event on the science of a diverse and pervasive behavior

We all know what it means to play. We play badminton, we play with others, we are playfully exploring an environment…. Come to think of it, there is so much to playing, what does it mean to play? According to the Oxford English dictionary, the verb “play” has 7 different meanings, ranging from “Engaging in […]

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A new look at old data: Results may look better but different

Replication and reanalysis of old data is critical to doing good science. We have discussed at various points how to increase the replicability of studies (e.g. here, here, here, and here), and have covered a few meta-analyses (here, here). Maybe it is because technology is constantly changing, and because we forget where we leave files […]

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From zero to mayhem in 4 to 7 seconds: Memory and temporal preparation

The start of a Formula 1 Grand Prix is always exciting and adrenalin producing, even if you watch it on TV from thousands of miles away and keep the noise level below the pain threshold. (A Formula 1 cockpit is one of the loudest places on Earth.) Have a look at a start of a […]

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How long is a piece of string? It’s as long as it makes the object appear big

How long is a piece of string? We all know this proverbial and largely rhetorical question. We also probably assume that it has no right answer—indeed, that’s the point of this rhetorical question in the first place, namely to indicate that the issue under consideration does not have a meaningful answer. Enter the venerable BBC. […]

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“You are never fully dressed without a smile” (But it makes you look older)

Smiles are . . .  Powerful.  Infectious.  Uplifting. . . .and Aging? In my younger days, I refereed high school and collegiate basketball and was often told that I needed to stop smiling on the court.  As one of my colleagues said, smiling made me look young, too attractive, not serious enough, and like I […]

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Knowledge is (still) power: Memory for chess positions is better for experts with more chess knowledge and chess experience

Memory researchers love chess. Chess experts have been studied by psychologists to try to explain the role of higher-level processing in memory. One reason chess is a great domain in which to ask these questions is because its rules and concepts provide meaning to the spatial positions of the pieces only if one knows them. […]

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Reproducible studies may not generate reliable individual differences

The scientific process relies on the ability to replicate findings. This is as true in psychology as in any other discipline. If findings can be reliably replicated, researchers can draw theory-changing conclusions from relatively few data points. But all is not well, and psychology has been dealing with the famous “replication crisis.” Recently a very […]

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The NIH definition of clinical trials: An update for the holiday season

As many of you know, the NIH has broadened its definition of “clinical trials” in a manner that looks like it will include a lot of basic human behavioral and brain sciences that would not normally be included in the conventional definition of a clinical trial. I have outlined this issue in two previous posts […]

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