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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September 29, 2006
Category: Casual Fridays
We are nearly finished grading the 109 entries for the Blogger SAT Challenge. Chad Orzel has designed a way for our readers to view and rate the essays themselves, but it's not quite ready yet. We're going to take the...
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:37 PM • 1 Comments
Category: Attention • Intentionality • Perception • Research
Occasionally you read a journal article so well-titled, you have to steal it for your blog post title. "Smells Like Clean Spirit" is a report by Rob Holland, Merel Hendricks, and Henk Aarts, in which they use smells to unconsciously...
Posted by Dave Munger at 8:40 AM • 5 Comments
September 27, 2006
Category: Face perception • Memory • Research
Thousands of police departments use face composite software to help create a picture of crime suspects. You've probably seen one of the systems in use on TV: witnesses build a picture of the suspect by choosing each individual facial...
Posted by Dave Munger at 9:37 AM • 5 Comments
September 26, 2006
Category: News
I've just learned about what so far look to be two great new blogs. In the order I heard about them: Sound and Mind Written by two cognitive musicologists, "Sound and Mind will primarily provide links to articles in journals...
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:23 PM • 4 Comments
Category: News
My aunt Jeannie died of brain cancer when she was just in her 30s. Though her death was tragic, her illness did allow me to witness firsthand a most curious vision impairment. A few months after her cancer was diagnosed,...
Posted by Dave Munger at 6:36 AM • 4 Comments
September 22, 2006
Category: Casual Fridays
Musical complexity is bafflingly difficult to define. Is it just a lot of notes? Would a 100-note trill (the same two notes alternating over and over again) be more complex than 50 completely random notes? Most people would probably say...
Posted by Dave Munger at 11:22 AM • 11 Comments
September 21, 2006
Category: Casual Fridays
The data-collection phase of the SAT Challenge is complete. By any measure, this was the most successful Casual Friday ever. We maxed out the generous 500 responses I allotted for the challenge, the most ever responses to a Casual Friday...
Posted by Dave Munger at 6:45 AM • 26 Comments
September 20, 2006
Category: News
Encephalon, the biweekly neuroscience carnival, will be hosted at Omnibrain this week. Send in links to your favorite neuroscience posts, pronto! Don't wait, or you'll forget, like I usually do!...
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:23 PM • 2 Comments
In 2001, Mark Orr and Stellan Ohlsson found that experts preferred more complex bluegrass music compared to non-experts, but there was no difference in preferences with jazz music. The model they were using to describe music preferences did not appear...
Posted by Dave Munger at 12:23 PM • 0 Comments
Category: News
Simon Owens has posted the results of his survey of diversity in the blogosphere at his site Bloggasm. Here are the results for the blogosphere as a whole: Male: 69% Female: 31% *** White/Caucasian/European: 73% Black/African: 9% Asian: 10% Middle...
Posted by Dave Munger at 6:34 AM • 0 Comments
September 19, 2006
Category: Casual Fridays
There are just over 24 hours remaining in the Blogger SAT Challenge. The challenge has gained substantial notice in the blogosphere, with dozens of blogs linking to it, including at least one top-20 blog. I expect that when we publish...
Posted by Dave Munger at 5:12 PM • 0 Comments
A week ago Friday we conducted a little survey about musical preferences. Readers were asked to listen to three different clips, then say which music they preferred. We promised you we'd be back to let you know what the preferences...
Posted by Dave Munger at 8:38 AM • 5 Comments
September 18, 2006
Category: News
Science writer Edmund Blair Bolles has begun a new blog on the origin of speech: Babel's Dawn. If it lives up to the promise of its first post, it may prove to be a valuable resource. The blog aims to...
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:45 PM • 2 Comments
September 15, 2006
Category: Casual Fridays
The New York Times recently published sample top-scoring essays from the new written component of the SAT test in order to show the type of work that was likely to score highly. Several bloggers, as well as the Times itself,...
Posted by Dave Munger at 10:00 AM • 46 Comments
September 14, 2006
Category: Color perception • Language • Perception • Research
Color categories, as we pointed out in this post, are remarkably consistent, even across different cultures and languages. "TLTB" pointed out in the comments that for people with color blindness, the color categories might not make much sense. He brought...
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:34 PM • 1 Comments
September 13, 2006
Category: News
So, researchers have found a way to "edit" the memories of rats. Rats can easily be trained to avoid an electrically charged region of their cages. Then researchers injected a chemical into the rats' memory centers, and successfully "erased" the...
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:39 PM • 6 Comments
