A new cognitive psychology article nearly every day
Cognitive Daily reports nearly every day on fascinating peer-reviewed developments in cognition from the most respected scientists in the field.
Greta Munger is Professor of Psychology at Davidson College whose works include The History of Psychology: Fundamental Questions. Dave Munger is co-founder and president of ResearchBlogging.org and a writer whose works include Researching Online. And yes, he is married to Greta.
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April 30, 2005
Category: Music • Perception • Research
We often think of music as expressing emotions, and research has backed this notion up. But typically the research has focused on melodic instruments: sweet, sorrowful violins; bright, happy guitars; melancholy, wailing oboes. So what about percussion instruments: drums, cymbals,...
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:04 PM • 4 Comments
April 29, 2005
Category: Learning and testing • Research
I used to be a high school biology teacher, and I noticed that students often found it easier to learn irrelevant information than the information I was trying to teach. When learning the steps involved in the process of cell...
Posted by Dave Munger at 5:04 AM • 1 Comments
April 26, 2005
Humans readily establish false memories. If you give adults a study list of words like hot, snow, warm, winter, ice, wet, chilly, weather, heat, freeze, shiver, frost, and then test them later, they will "remember" related words like cold that...
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:04 PM • 1 Comments
April 25, 2005
Category: Attention • Perception • Research
It's impossible to pay attention to everything in the visual field at once. If we could, magicians would be out of business: most "magic" tricks work by distracting the viewers' attention while the real trick is being done in plain...
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:04 PM • 5 Comments
April 22, 2005
How is language acquired? We don't have to teach our children to speak; instead they just seem to pick it up on their own. Because language is acquired so readily, the study of language acquisition can be a messy business....
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:04 PM • 0 Comments
April 20, 2005
Category: Development / Aging • Learning and testing • Research
There has been a great deal of reporting about the harmful impact of video games, including here at Cognitive Daily. Yet the simple act of playing a video game can require learning a great deal of information. We have discussed...
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:04 PM • 18 Comments
April 18, 2005
September 11. The Challenger disaster. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. If we were over the age of 10 when these events occurred, we all remember them vividly: where we were when we heard the news, the weather that...
Posted by Dave Munger at 12:04 PM • 8 Comments
April 13, 2005
Category: Research • Social • Video Games / Technology
Yesterday we reported on the results of studies on the impact of media violence. Today we'll discuss theoretical implications and responses to those studies, as reported by Craig Anderson et al. in their report "The Influence of Media Violence on...
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:04 PM • 7 Comments
April 12, 2005
Category: Research • Social • Video Games / Technology
Yesterday we reported on the general reactions to studies on the impact of media violence. Today we'll get into the specifics of those studies, as reported by Craig Anderson et al. in their report "The Influence of Media Violence on...
Posted by Dave Munger at 7:04 PM • 9 Comments
April 11, 2005
Category: Research • Social • Video Games / Technology
In the summer of 2000, a committee of scholars was commissioned to write a chapter on the effects of media violence on youth for the Surgeon General's Report on Youth Violence, published in January 2001. But their chapter was not...
Posted by Dave Munger at 4:04 PM • 12 Comments
April 9, 2005
Category: Perception • Research
(source of original images: Wikipedia. See license) When my daughter Nora was 15 months old, she had started to pick up a few words. She could say "Mommy," and "Daddy," and "JimmyNO," which is what she called her brother....
Posted by Dave Munger at 11:04 AM • 3 Comments
April 6, 2005
Category: Music • Perception • Research
Listen to these two musical excerpts and note any differences you discern: Ave Maria, version 1 Ave Maria, version 2 (Source: courtesy of Mayumi Hamamoto and Kyota Ko) If you're a typical nonmusician, you will probably notice some sort of...
Posted by Dave Munger at 4:04 PM • 13 Comments
April 5, 2005
Category: Perception • Research
It is well known that humans and other animals can recognize biological motion when shown only a point-light display. Other research has shown that social cues are deeply embedded in our perceptual system. We can also perceive emotions and intentions...
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:04 PM • 2 Comments
April 4, 2005
Category: Perception • Research • Taste
Wine expert Robert Parker claims to be able to distinguish every wine he has ever tasted—10,000 different wines a year—by taste alone. Winemakers can use their sense of smell to detect slight imbalances early in the wine production process that...
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:04 PM • 0 Comments
April 2, 2005
Category: Development / Aging • Research
One of the most difficult things for small children to learn is how to take someone else's perspective. If a typical three year old hides a toy when her brother is out of the room, she believes he will know...
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:04 PM • 0 Comments
