Forget the fish and spell that student's name: B.O.B.
Knowing things sometimes makes it harder to learn new things. What happens if you try to forget existing knowledge, does that help you learn? Recent research suggests this may help you acquire new motor sequences. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - February 10, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Personality and attention: birds of a feather scoping the return
We think of personality as a structure that governs our behavior towards others and determines how we approach major challenges in life. We probably do not think that our personality might govern our low-level attentional processes. Recent research shows otherwise. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - February 9, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
When rats go shopping: Three is the magic number
Our lives would be unimaginable without knowledge of numbers. We buy 3 liters of milk, we eat 2 eggs for breakfast, and we cycle 65 km on Saturdays. Recent research shows that rats also have an abstract concept of number that they can put to use when seeking a reward. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - February 4, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Lasting Learning in Pasteur's Quadrant
The Psychonomic Society has amassed an impressive body of knowledge of how people learn, think, and remember things. But much of that research is not very accessible to the public. A startup company in California has seen an opportunity in the translation of our research into lasting learning. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - February 3, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Corralling the Texas Sharp Shooter: $1,000,000 Reward
Legend has it that in Texas, Farmer Joe wins the sharp-shooting competition by first blasting a barn door with a shot gun and then drawing a bull's eye around his favored bullet hole. The Open Science Foundation is offering $1,000,000 to scientists who can draw their bull's eye first. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - January 28, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
When the tiger pounces into your head before it is near you: the looming bias and your survival
People's risk perception is not always coherent. We may ignore diffuse and distant risks, but we startle at the slightest rustle in the bush and perceive sounds that are moving towards us as looming more quickly than they do. Recent research has examined how our cognitive resources affect this so-called looming bias. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - January 26, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Cruel to be kind but not cruel for cash: Resolving moral dilemmas in the dictator game
People regularly take pro-social actions, making individual sacrifices for the greater good. People also generally avoid causing harm to others. These twin desires to do good and avoid harm often align, but when they are in conflict, a moral dilemma may result that is difficult to resolve. Recent research sheds light on how people handle such dilemmas. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - January 21, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
In the mind's ear: No connection between hearing and speaking in motor cortex
According to the fascinating motor theory of speech, brain activity associated with listening to speech should be similar to the brain activity associated with speech production. Early evidence suggested that this might indeed be the case. However, recent research provides a different answer. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - January 19, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
From Bach to Bayes and Wales: the Richard Morey challenge
Richard Morey of Cardiff University has joined the team of Digital Associate Editors and his first post will run tomorrow. His appointment comes with a challenge. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - January 17, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Remembering the future and anticipating the past, like it or not
Mental time travel, both to the future and the past, is a powerful cognitive ability, as well as fuel for an ever-growing number of movies. Recent research has focused on the involuntary aspects of mental time travel, such as when memories pop to mind unbidden. It appears that the involuntary future and the involuntary past share similar cognitive attributes. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - January 14, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
A rows by any other name would smell as suite?
When we judge the meaning of pictures, can we do this without hearing or seeing the associated words? Recent research suggests that we cannot: even when we look at pictures, we process more than just meaning. We also activate phonological and orthographic representations. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - January 12, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Size matters—and not just in the movies
People are very good at rapidly classifying the emotion of a facial expression. How does this ability depend on how far away that face is? Does visual clutter affect our ability to identify expressions? Recent research has examined those questions with some surprising answers that relate to the history of the cinema. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - January 7, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Cognitive continental drift: the American vs. European schools of thought about thought
People have been thinking about the nature and character of thought for millennia. Modern experimental research on thinking has proceeded along two surprisingly independent traditions on either side of the Atlantic. Perhaps 2016 will see the beginning of a merging of those traditions owing to a forthcoming key event. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - January 5, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Telling apart Santas, stockings, and sneaky Waldos: Ho-Ho-How similar is similar?
Visual search performance is affected by similarity between targets and distractors. Recent research provides a new way to measure similarity efficiently. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - December 16, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
Conducting an orchestra is not all hand-waving! The cognitive expertise of conductors
Conductors have extraordinary cognitive abilities, which allow them to do their jobs. Conductors must maintain a constant tempo for a piece – which requires long term memory – and they must be able to listen to both individual instruments and the orchestra as a whole – requiring divided as well as selective attention. Recent research sheds more light on this exquisite expert performance. (Source: Psychonomic Society News)
Source: Psychonomic Society News - December 14, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news
