Lighting up the inner GPS
The Psychonomic Society's journal Learning & Behavior has launched a new section of the journal that is intended to provide an outlook on the field and a venue for discussion of the most exciting current research in learning and behavior. Two of the first outlook articles discuss research that examines animals' nagivational skill and spatial memory. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - April 11, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Simian memory has no time for decay
A general principle of memory is that previous information may make it harder to learn something new. This proactive interference can be observed across many species, including monkeys. Recent research shows that the extent of proactive interference does not depend on how much time has elapsed between learning the interfering information and the new material. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - April 6, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Keeping your mind on the cycle ball: Region of proximal learning and mind wandering
How can we improve how we learn? One important variable is the difficulty of the material: things that are too easy or too hard do not lead to mastery. When things are too easy, our mind wanders off task. When things are too hard, we give up in frustration and the mind also wanders. Recent research shows that the ideal difficulty, known as the region of proximal learning, varies with people's performance level. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - April 1, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Signing a Swedish sound beats catching a ball: linguistic processing in sign language and working memory performance
We think of language as flowing effortlessly, and yet it may interfere with other activities such as driving a car. What happens when we sign -- rather than speak -- our language? Recent research illuminates the subtleties of linguistic processing in sign language. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - March 29, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
When you were a famous rock star: reading emotional facial expressions during autobiographical recall
People love stories. And when we tell autobiographical stories from our past, our faces often--but not always--reveal the emotion that is associated with those memories. Recent research shows the circumstances under which facial expressions mirror our memories. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - March 22, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Batman is cleverer than Hans: Concept learning in dogs
We can learn very quickly to pick the "odd one out": when shown a tray of vegetables, we can pick the single fruit, and when shown pictures of cats we can pick out the odd aardvark. Until now, it has been presumed that only humans have this cognitive ability. Recent research shows that at least one clever dog can also learn to pick the odd object out. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - March 17, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Eating dinner without checking your email: impulse control, time preference, and mobile device usage
Can you last through a 2-hour dinner without checking your email? What about a 4-hour picnic with the family? Recent research examined the factors that determine people's reliance on their devices. Impatience and low impulse control determine whether someone can last through a romantic dinner without a phone. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - March 10, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Opening the black box within the black box: What the brain tells the brain
The main aim of cognitive psychology is to "look inside the black box"; that is, to model the processes that translate stimuli into responses. So what is the aim of neuroscience? What can imaging data tell us? What does it mean to measure "information" in the brain? Recent research examines those conceptual issues. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - March 9, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
The American Statistical Association statement on p-values
Few things incite the passions of statisticians and scientists as much as the p value, which has been accused of causing bad science and cult-like ritualistic behavior. Top experts of the American Statistical Association today released a consensus statement on p-values to help inform the discussion. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - March 7, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
"Popout" and the Airbus A380: Serial vs. parallel models of visual search
A red blob among an array of green blobs "pops out", no matter how many green blobs there are. Does this mean we process the entire array of blobs in parallel? If we search for a red blob among blobs of 10 different colors, it takes longer to find it if the number of distracting blobs goes up. Does this mean we search the array serially? Recent research provides a quantitative answer based on quantitative models. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - March 3, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
A puppy in a cup, for open science
Since the enlightenment, openness has been a core feature of science. There has been much recent emphasis on making science more open and transparent, including several recent articles in journals of the Psychonomic Society. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - March 1, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
"Everything is awesome!!" - So dictators beware
In the dictator game one player, the dictator, decides how to share a given amount of money with another player. Most people do not grab all of the money but share it reasonably equally. Recent research examines the response of the brain regions that may be involved in decision making in this task. One intriguing result is that when people are happy to begin with, they tolerate less unfairness. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - February 25, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
When looking at a tomato helps you touch a fire engine: Attentional processes cross effector boundaries
It has long been known that an attentional benefit is obtained when targets are repeated across trials. But it is unclear whether that benefit persists if the mode of responding is changed: Will looking at a red object help me touch a red object next? Recent research suggests that the answer is yes. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - February 23, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
The blooming buzzing confusion and filtering of visual working memory
People are very good at focusing attention on relevant objects and their attributes. We can often prevent irrelevant information from entering visual working memory. Recent research shows that this filtering is much harder when the relevance of information changes from moment to moment. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - February 18, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Trading your air guitar for a video game: Are Guitar Heroes like guitarists?
Video games create their own reality. But does that reality sometimes intersect with actual reality? Recent research on music games suggest that it might. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - February 16, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
