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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February 27, 2006
Category: Perception • Research
You can get a lot of information from a simple bar graph, but to what extent does the arrangement of the bars matter? You can find great commentary about good design, but what about a nice clean experiment? Martin H....
Posted by Greta Munger at 10:58 AM • 9 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
February 24, 2006
Category: Casual Fridays
This week's survey was inspired by our efforts to get our middle-school-aged kids to behave appropriately when greeting adults. Both Jim and Nora tend to mumble, look away, hunch over, and give other anti-social cues when, say, an adult compliments...
Posted by Dave Munger at 7:45 PM • 6 Comments
Category: Casual Fridays
Dave hasn't finished analyzing the data from last week's survey, but since this week's survey is ready to go, we thought we'd go ahead and post it now. Click here to participate. As always, you'll have until 11:59 p.m. U.S....
Posted by Greta Munger at 3:41 PM • 2 Comments
February 23, 2006
Category: Attention • Research • Social
Since yesterday's post on attention grabbed so much, well, attention, let's try another one. Only this time, instead of looking at what factors cause us to pay attention to something, we'll consider an experiment that studied the emotional effects of...
Posted by Dave Munger at 5:19 PM • 8 Comments
February 22, 2006
Category: Attention • Research
I'm sure most Cognitive Daily readers are aware of the massive debate permeating the scientific world these days. No, not evolution versus creationism; I'm talking about object- versus space-based attention. Haven't heard of this raging debate? Well, then, let me...
Posted by Dave Munger at 5:11 PM • 8 Comments
February 20, 2006
Category: Development / Aging • Perception • Research
Here's a picture of our daughter Nora at about 3 months of age. She looks like she's fairly aware of the events going on around her (arguably more aware than she sometimes appears now, at age 12). However, as our...
Posted by Dave Munger at 4:07 PM • 2 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
February 17, 2006
Category: Casual Fridays
This week's Casual Fridays survey studies the cues you use to decide if a new acquaintance is friendly or confident. Greta and I have a couple of ideas about how the responses might break down in America, but we're especially...
Posted by Dave Munger at 6:17 PM • 0 Comments
Category: Casual Fridays
Last week's Casual Friday study was all about illusion. For example, you may have thought our goal was to see how well you could recognize an illusion. However, we really just wanted to know what kind of computers our readers...
Posted by Dave Munger at 5:02 PM • 14 Comments
February 16, 2006
Category: Learning and testing • Perception • Research
Can you tell the difference between the images below? At first, they just look like fuzzy diagonal lines -- there doesn't appear to be a significant difference between them. But if you look at them closely, you begin to notice...
Posted by Dave Munger at 6:11 PM • 4 Comments
February 15, 2006
An old college friend and accomplished writer, John Scalzi, recently posted a list of writing tips for nonprofessionals, which I'd highly recommend for professionals and nonprofessionals alike. One of his most unusual suggestions is to "speak what you write" --...
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:06 PM • 13 Comments
February 13, 2006
The TV movie Flight 93, which re-enacted the hijacking of a United Airlines flight on September 11, 2001, was criticized because it "humanized" the hijackers (despite this apparent humanity of their captors, the movie did portray the passengers and crew...
Posted by Dave Munger at 4:23 PM • 5 Comments
February 10, 2006
Category: Casual Fridays
This week's Casual Friday study is the most complicated design we've done yet. However, in the spirit of Casual Fridays, it should still take only a minute or two of your time. It involves an incredibly clever visual illusion, and...
Posted by Dave Munger at 6:05 PM • 4 Comments
Category: Casual Fridays
Last week's survey asked readers how their drinking habits changed when they were at work-related social events compared to with friends. Due to my own very casual Friday, I posted the survey rather late, after 10:00 p.m., so we received...
Posted by Dave Munger at 4:28 PM • 2 Comments
February 9, 2006
Category: Attention • Research
Take a look at this video (click on the image to play). It's pretty clear what's going on -- the green dot bumps into the red dot, causing it to move: But what about this one? With this movie, it's...
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:33 PM • 12 Comments
February 8, 2006
Category: Development / Aging • Film • Research • Social
One of the first questions our son Jim asks when a new movie comes out is "what's it rated?" The more "adult" the rating, the more appealing the movie is to him: PG is the lowest rating he'll even consider,...
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:01 PM • 13 Comments
February 6, 2006
Category: Learning and testing • Research • Social
In 1973, a massive study of almost 400,000 Dutch men appeared to confirm what anecdotal evidence and even some scientific research had led scholars to suspect: The first-born child in a family tends to be the most intelligent. The researchers,...
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:30 PM • 10 Comments
