Few areas of psychology research are as controversial as ‘brain training’. For the last 10 years, we have seen an influx of apps and games that purport to improve users’ cognitive capabilities. The appeal is simple. Play a game, get smarter. The controversy, as we’ve covered here, is that unbiased research on whether brain training […]
Last Friday was Holocaust Memorial Day, which falls on the day of the liberation of the Auschwitz Death Camp by Soviet troops in 1945. U.S. President Trump marked the occasion with a statement, although it omitted any specific mention of the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. On the same day, Trump also […]
How many things can we attend to simultaneously? Imagine being an air traffic controller and you are monitoring O’Hare arrivals on the day before Thanksgiving. How many aircraft can you attend to simultaneously? Or imagine watching a flock of grazing impalas in Krueger National Park or the Serengeti while a pride of lions is casually […]
The past chair of the Psychonomic Society’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee, Janet Metcalfe, shared her views on inclusivity and diversity in a post yesterday, arguing that: “We have seen respect for women, racial and ethnic minorities as well as religious groups come under siege. We do not know what the consequences of this shift will be. […]
In these uncertain times, we send a message of unity and continued allegiance to the principles of diversity and inclusion in the field of psychology and in the Psychonomic Society. We have seen respect for women, racial and ethnic minorities as well as religious groups come under siege. We do not know what the consequences […]
“Isn’t that special?” Many people remember this quip from Saturday Night Live’s TV character “The Church Lady.” Brought to life by comedian Dana Carvey, The Church Lady was as sarcastic as she was smug; her “Superiority Dance” is also legendary. But it was The Church Lady’s signature retort, “Isn’t that special?” that has been immortalized […]
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 […]
Most of us can’t tell one musical note from another – but is it because we can’t really hear the difference, or because our knowledge of musical structure is implicit? Recent evidence suggests that we can take advantage of a lifetime of experience with musical categories to identify whether a musical note sounds wrong. Being […]
How do we recognize the written word? While this seems trivially easy to us, we need to remember that words that are quite close perceptually can be drastically different in meaning. Fin and fine, crew and crow, and deck and desk may look nearly the same but their meanings differ considerably. In the sentence “I […]
Have you checked if your front door is locked? Is your stove turned off? Are you “saving” all those mailers, coupons, and magazines? How about folding those plastic sacks from the grocery store and tucking them away for another day? Have you scrubbed your counter-tops recently? All of these behaviors are considered “normal” for most […]