General / Site news
May 5, 2008
Category: General / Site news
Last week's post on perceptual restoration in toddlers brought a lot of speculation from commenters. To answer some of the questions, I thought I'd elaborate a bit here on the phenomenon and how I created the demo.
First, here's the original recording again, with me saying "dinosaur" three times:
In the first case, I edited out the "s" sound, and everyone with normal hearing can hear that. The last "dinosaur" is complete. Did I edit out the "s" in the middle dinosaur?
Most adults believe they hear the "s" sound in cases like this, even if the sound has been edited out: the perceptual system adds in a sound where it doesn't exist.
Indeed, more than half of the respondents to our poll said they had heard an "s" sound, even though in fact the sound was edited out in the second "dinosaur."
But some commenters speculated that an "s" sound was embedded in the sneeze sound effect I created, thus nullifying the effect. The "sneeze" was actually a composite of a fake cough and a fake sneeze (neither sounded realistic enough on its own). Do you hear an "s" in either of these sounds?
Personally I'm not hearing it, but I agree that it's closer to an "s" sound than other sounds I could have inserted. In fact the authors of the study do point out that perceptual restoration doesn't always occur; it's less likely to occur when the inserted sound is less like the sound it replaces. As a demonstration, I've redone the demo below, using a horn sound instead of a sneeze:
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 11:54 AM • Comments (2)
April 16, 2008
Category: General / Site news
The 43rd Encephalon is available over at GNIF Brain Blogger. It's a fantastic collection of the best psychology and neuroscience blogging from the past two weeks.
The next Encephalon will be hosted right here at Cognitive Daily on April 28. To submit your posts about psychology and neuroscience, email encephalon {dot} host [at] gmail {dot} com.
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:37 PM • Comments (0)
April 11, 2008
Category: General / Site news
Sorry, no Casual Friday this week -- I'm frantically finishing up our tax returns.
We actually did a Casual Friday about tax procrastination a couple years back though, so if you need a Casual Friday fix, check that one out:
Casual Fridays: Dave FINALLY finishes analyzing the procrastination data.
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:19 PM • Comments (0)
February 4, 2008
Category: General / Site news
We've heard from a few teachers who use Cognitive Daily in class, and we know several class web sites link to CogDaily. So we were wondering: if you're a teacher, instructor, or professor, how do you use Cognitive Daily in your class? As a suggested supplemental reading? A required assignment?
Or maybe you've consciously chosen not to use CogDaily in class. We'd also appreciate it if you'd let us know why you don't use it. Maybe there's something else we could do to make it more usable for your class. We're open to suggestions.
Even if you feel like you're just repeating someone else's comments, please let us know -- we'd like to get a relative sense of the numbers of people falling into each category.
Thanks!
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:14 PM • Comments (7)
January 30, 2008
Category: General / Site news
Today is my birthday, so instead of offering a post for you, I thought I'd ask for a small gift. I'd like to revamp my personal web browsing system so that it's more efficient. I already keep up with psychology blogs via RSS, but I'd like to start browsing other things -- news, entertainment, and so on -- the same way.
So here's what I want for my birthday: I'd like you to suggest what should go in my RSS reader.
I'd like my whole list to be browsable in 30 minutes or so, so I need a *limited* list of suggestions for good RSS feeds to subscribe to. The whole list should have perhaps 100-200 items in a day, so if a blog posts 10 times a day, it better be good -- that's 1/10 of my list! Ideally some of the items in the list should be link-rich, so if I'm bored in the afternoon and I'm looking for extra reading material, I can always follow the links.
Please provide the actual link to the RSS feed itself along with your reasons why you think it's something I should be reading every day.
I'm looking forward to seeing your suggestions in the comments! Since comments with multiple links get held up in moderation, I'll be monitoring the comments pretty closely over the next couple hours.
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:00 PM • Comments (49)
January 28, 2008
Category: General / Site news
The number of psychology / neuroscience blogs on scienceblogs.com will soon decrease by one. However, the number of bloggers will stay the same. How is that possible?
The hilarious Omni Brain and thought-provoking Restrospectacle are each closing down shop. But they're re-emerging as a new blog that combines the efforts of Steve and Shelley. They haven't yet come up with a name for their project, so head on over to their blogs and offer suggestions. If they choose a name picked by a commenter, they're offering a generous prize. I'm closing comments here so all their suggestions are in the same place.
One other bit of ScienceBlogs news: Kevin Zelnio of The Other 95% has joined the staff at Deep Sea News. This was the announcement I mentioned on Friday -- I met Kevin at the Science Blogging conference last week and he told me then he'd soon be joining us here.
I've also learned of another blogger from the CogDaily blogroll who'll soon be part of the ScienceBlogs team, but once again that news will have to wait for the official announcement.
Posted by Dave Munger at 6:33 AM •
January 25, 2008
Category: General / Site news
Three great new bloggers have joined the ScienceBlogs team:
Kate Seip has joined Jake at Pure Pedantry. You may remember her excellent blog Anterior Commissure.
Sometime CogDaily commenter DrugMonkey is also now in the house, with coblogger PhysioProf.
Let's welcome these fabulous new additions to ScienceBlogs! I also met up with one more great blogger who'll soon be joining ScienceBlogs at the Science Blogging Conference last weekend, but that news will have to wait for the official announcement.
Posted by Dave Munger at 10:46 AM • Comments (1)
January 23, 2008
Category: General / Site news
Less than a week after its official launch, ResearchBlogging.org now has 78 active, registered users. We're already bigger than ScienceBlogs.com! Of course, many of our users are ScienceBloggers -- these projects can definitely work together. We can also get much bigger. Over 200 bloggers have used our icon, and we need to get them signed up for the new aggregation site. There's the potential to enroll literally hundreds more bloggers from all parts of the research community -- not just scientists.
All in all the launch has gone amazingly smoothly. As far as I know, the site never went down, and I haven't heard from any user whose post wasn't aggregated successfully (if that happens to you, please do let me know, or post your issue in the forums).
We've also received compliments from dozens of blogs. Here are some of the really good ones:
Clastic Detritus:
I think this is great. Firstly, the reader can click on that right away to get the paper...that's just plain and simple convenience. Secondly, it keeps posts out that aren't really about a real paper. Most science blogs (including me) have other posts not really about any particular research paper. This is a great filter. I simply don't have the time to sift through the hundreds or thousands of science-related posts per day to find good comments about a recent study, especially if it's out of my field.
DMU Pathfinder:
Since the posts all have correctly formatted links to the research under discussion, the site is a good example of the value of things like citations.
Innovate this:
Wearing a badge can change the life of your blog
Golden Swamp:
It seems likely that good results will occur here, as so often when the best of analog and online learning work together. The pot and the kettle can will keep a virtual eye on each other.
Uncertain Principles:
A spiffy new aggregator and a nice home page collecting the most recent articles in different categories
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:13 PM • Comments (4)
January 21, 2008
Category: General / Site news
I'm pleased to announce a new site that allows bloggers to not only show when they're blogging about peer-reviewed research, but also to share that work with readers and bloggers around the world.
ResearchBlogging.org doesn't just enable you to mark posts with our icon, it also collects those posts in one central location. Readers can then visit just one site to find all the posts on a topic, or browse through all of the blogosphere's most thoughtful posts on peer-reviewed research.
Here's how it works:
- Bloggers -- often experts in their field -- find exciting new peer-reviewed research they'd like to share. They write thoughtful posts about the research for their blogs.
- Bloggers register with us and use a simple one-line form to create a snippet of code to place in their posts. This snippet not only notifies our site about their post, it also creates a properly formatted research citation for their blog.
- Our software automatically scans registered blogs for posts containing our code snippet. When it finds them, it indexes them and displays them on our front page -- hundreds of posts from dozens of blogs (and soon to be many more), in one convenient place, organized by topic.
- The quality of the posts listed on our site is monitored by the member bloggers. If a post doesn't follow our guidelines, it is removed from our database. Borderline cases may be discussed in our forums.
The site isn't yet perfect -- consider this the beta version. But we've tested it extensively and found that it's easy to use and works on a variety of blogging platforms, including wordpress, blogger, and movable type.
If you're a blogger who writes about peer-reviewed research, you can register your blog today and quickly and easily share your work with the world. Whether or not you blog, bookmark the site today and visit often to find the best research blogging on the web.
Posted by Dave Munger at 8:38 AM • Comments (16)
January 10, 2008
Category: General / Site news
A reader pointed out to me that Schultze's 1978 study did not find a bias to hear a fast tempo as speeding up and slow tempo as slowing down. In fact, Schultze found that we were remarkably accurate at detecting tempo changes. So we do replicate Schultze! A misreading on my part of Quinn and Watt led to the confusion.
However, Quinn and Watt do cite a 1997 article which claims to find the bias I describe in the post from yesterday and the day before.
I haven't been able to get my hands on the article, but here's the reference:
Vos, P. G., van Assen, M., & Fraiiek, M. (1997) Perceived tempo change is dependent on base tempo and direction of change: Evidence for a generalized version of Schulze's (1978) internal beat model. Psychological Research, 59, 240-247.
Posted by Dave Munger at 7:22 AM • Comments (1)
December 11, 2007
Category: General / Site news
Scienceblogs has launched the beta version of its German-language site. You can check it out at Scienceblogs.de.
The site looks great -- I've never regretted not learning German more! It also offers a feature I'd like to see here on the English version: A thumbnail view of the ScienceBlogs Select feed (in English).
The logical next question: What language should ScienceBlogs tackle next? You can share your preference with the ScienceBlogs overlords here.
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:53 PM • Comments (5)
December 5, 2007
Category: General / Site news
A reader asks:
I've been reading Cog Daily for about 4 months now and have always found that I am particularly fascinated with entries dealing with developmental psychology, such as the latest one regarding the logarithmic-like representation of numbers in young children. I was curious as to whether you knew of any [credible] blogs or highly active websites that are dedicated to the field of Dev Psych (don't worry, I will still read Cog Daily!). I'm currently finishing up my BA in Psychology at UC Santa Barbara and plan to go the route of developmental clinical psychology, come grad-school. I figure since it interests me as much as it does, it'd be good idea to get a leg up by spending my online time a bit more productively!
There are a few blogs in our blogroll which intermittently cover development, most notably Developing Intelligence, but I haven't yet found a regularly-updated blog that focuses primarily on developmental psychology. Plus my internet connection is quite sporadic this morning, so I can't even do much searching to help out. Can any readers offer their own recommendations?
Posted by Dave Munger at 7:25 AM • Comments (2)
December 3, 2007
Category: General / Site news
Pediatrics Grand Rounds is up at Hope for Pandora, complete with its first-ever Cognitive Daily selection.
Encephalon is up at A Blog Around the Clock, featuring all manner of brainy goodness, including a CogDaily post as well.
Posted by Dave Munger at 12:02 PM • Comments (0)
November 24, 2007
Category: General / Site news • Opinion
That's right, you can now get the full text of every Cognitive Daily post via RSS. There's just one catch: You must buy a $399 Amazon Kindle and pay 99 cents (per month, I assume) to subscribe to Cognitive Daily.
I don't know if this subscription will allow you to view images, and I'm pretty certain video, polls, and other interactive features won't be available, but for some people this might be a very attractive way to get Cognitive Daily. You can also get the amazing ScienceBlogs Select feed, which includes the best CogDaily posts as well as the best from dozens of other ScienceBlogs for $1.99.
[Update: This isn't meant to be a pitch for Kindle or for subscribing to our feed. We're not getting paid by anyone to support these ventures; I'm simply intrigued by Amazon's attempt at an ebook reader. I'd actually be shocked if many people decided to pay to get this blog, since they can get it for free online.]
There have been dozens of reviews of the Kindle across the blogosphere. Most of these reviews share two traits: they are negative, and the reviewer has never used the device. I'm skeptical about this thing too, but I'm willing to suspend judgment until I actually have one in my hands.
The Kindle is being hyped in some quarters as the iPod of reading, which also strikes me as a bit over the top -- although Newsweek's Steven Levy has at least used the thing. Even without having used it, I'm certain that it's not quite an iPod; it doesn't have the seamless integration of your existing library, your computer, and your future online purchases that the iPod has.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 10:44 AM • Comments (26)
November 15, 2007
Category: General / Site news
Earlier this week we asked readers which CogDaily posts we should submit to the Open Laboratory anthology. We didn't get many suggestions, and commenter Keely had a guess as to why:
Perhaps what would be more helpful is to post links to the articles YOU were thinking about, and we could sort of vote on which of those we liked best. Your question as it stands now is a little broad. This is perhaps why you've had relatively few responses.
Okay, we'll do it. Here are our top posts from the past year (we couldn't use Keely's nomination since that was originally posted in 2006). You can vote for your favorite below.
Take a look at the posts, then vote in the poll below! We'll submit our readers' favorites to the anthology.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 4:12 PM • Comments (0)
Category: General / Site news
Have you been following the progress over at BPR3? Here's an update:
With the release of the Research Blogging icon, dozens of blogs and hundreds of posts are already showing the world when they are discussing peer-reviewed research. But the next step will be far more dramatic: a site which consolidates all those posts in one place.
For now, you can do a Technorati search to find out who's using the icon. I love Technorati, but its results aren't always consistent, and it can take several clicks to locate the specific post you're interested in. BPR3's new system will display the opening of each blog post as well as a complete citation of the peer-reviewed articles discussed in the post. In fact, we're running a test version of the system right now, and beginning to open it to bloggers for testing. Here's a screenshot:
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 9:44 AM • Comments (1)
Cognitive Daily reports nearly every day on fascinating peer-reviewed developments in cognition from the most respected scientists in the field.
