An entrée of Cognitive Science with an occasional side of whatever the hell else I want to talk about.
Cognitive stuff from a cognitive person. If you've got any requests, drop me an email. If it takes me a while to get to it, drop me another one.
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April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.
The Mixing Memory Reading Group is a place for experts and non-experts alike to discuss books and papers in cognitive science.
June 30, 2006
Category: Research & Theory
I'm going to play biologist for a moment, and talk about a species other than humans or nonhuman primates. First, imagine that you're about 10 mm long, a couple mm high, and you're stuck in the middle of the...
Posted by Chris at 9:10 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 28, 2006
Category: History of Psychology
Jonah, over at Frontal Cortex, has a post titled "Neglected Psychologists," in which he asks: What other great scientists of mind are modern neuroscientists neglecting? The same could be asked of all cognitive scientists. Jonah gives two names: William James...
Posted by Chris at 7:43 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 27, 2006
Category: History of Psychology
In a response to my defense of Freud, Jonah Lehrer states that, with Harold Bloom (ewww!), he sees Freud as "one of the great artists of the 20th century." In my view, how we read Freud today -- as literature,...
Posted by Chris at 8:00 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cognitive Neuroscience
Dave over at Cognitive Daily beat me to this (curse you, Dave!), but I wanted to point everyone to an article in Seed Magazine by Paul Bloom, titled "Seduced by the Flickering Lights of the Brain." If you can't tell...
Posted by Chris at 6:29 PM • 6 Comments • 2 TrackBacks
Category: Cognitive Neuroscience
In the past, I've often wondered how journalists pick which studies to write about. The obvious answer is that they pick studies that will get readers or viewers, but given how little their stories correspond with the research they're writing...
Posted by Chris at 8:07 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 26, 2006
Category: Miscellaneous
The first edition of The Synapse, one of two new neuroscience carnivals, is here. Especially interesting are the mating robots and the post on neurotheology....
Posted by Chris at 8:44 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 25, 2006
Category: Blogs and Blogging
Well, not on blogs exactly, but internet communication in general. What he says definitely applies to blogs, though. The quote is in a footnote in this speech that Habermas gave at the 2006 annual convention of the International Communication Association....
Posted by Chris at 2:20 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blogs and Blogging
This week's "Ask a Science Blogger" question is, "What makes a good science teacher?" I don't know how to answer that. I've had many science teachers, some of whom were very good, some of whom were very bad, and most...
Posted by Chris at 10:55 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 24, 2006
Category: Bad Science Reporting
Mark Liberman has two great posts over at Language Log debunking first a claim made by David Brooks in this article on the gender gap in education, and then Leonard Sax's poor use of science that inspired Brooks' claim. This...
Posted by Chris at 4:34 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Visual Illusions
Here is an illusion that was discovered relatively recently. Take a look at this (from here): You should see two figures with a purple outter border and an orange inner border. What color is the interior of the figure? It...
Posted by Chris at 12:00 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 23, 2006
Category: History of Psychology
A couple Science Bloggers have been giving Freud a hard time lately. In a post on Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, Jonah Lehrer of The Frontal Cortex wrote: So why was Blink less than satisfying for me? Becase Gladwell ended up lumping...
Posted by Chris at 4:40 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cognitive Psychology
Psychological essentialism is the belief that kinds have an underlying, probably unseen essence that makes them what they are. We may, for example, believe that tigers have an underlying essence that gives them their stripes and makes them carnivores. We...
Posted by Chris at 7:26 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 22, 2006
Category: Miscellaneous
Noooooooooooooooo!...
Posted by Chris at 5:16 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 20, 2006
Category: Cognitive Linguistics
I've got it! I know how we can test conceptual metaphor theory in the domain of time. Yesterday I argued that the problem with the experiments published so far is that it's impossible to distinguish mere lexical priming (priming spatial...
Posted by Chris at 7:07 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cognitive Linguistics
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: conceptual metaphor theory sucks. Why does it suck? Well, because there's no experimental evidence for it (and plenty of evidence against it). Except, that is, in one domain: time. Specifically, the...
Posted by Chris at 10:42 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blogs and Blogging
First, the link. This probably won't be of interest to most of you, but some might like this: the published version of Habermas' lecture titled "Religion in the Public Sphere". Here's Habermas' outline of the lecture (from p. 3-4):I would...
Posted by Chris at 3:03 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 18, 2006
Category: Cognitive Neuroscience
In yesterday's post on afterimages and aftereffects, I mentioned that demonstrations of neural adaptation for a particular feature (in the post, I used the examples of color and motion) is generally taken as evidence of the existence of specific neurons...
Posted by Chris at 5:18 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 17, 2006
Category: Visual Illusions
Most of you have probably seen this before, but if you haven't, look at the flag for 30 seconds (if it doesn't work with 30, try 60), and then look at the white space underneath it. You should see a...
Posted by Chris at 12:35 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 16, 2006
Category: Philosophy
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post that was pretty critical of the current state of Experimental Philosophy. In the post, I focused on the work of Joshua Knobe, not because his work is the worst Experimental Philosophy has...
Posted by Chris at 10:27 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 15, 2006
Category: Cognitive Psychology
False memory research has been very popular over the last several years, in part because of its connection to one of the more contentious debates in cognitive science: the recovered memories debate. I remember attending a poster session at a...
Posted by Chris at 1:28 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 12, 2006
Category: Cognitive Psychology
Last time I asked for requests, a couple readers suggested that I write about the theory-theory. I always have mixed feelings about writing about theory-theory. On the one hand, I'm a big theory-theory fan, so I like to spread the...
Posted by Chris at 12:00 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blogs and Blogging
Two new neuroscience carnivals are starting up at the same time. First, there's the one initiated by Science Bloggers, called "The Synapse," which you can read about here. The first edition is scheduled for June 25. The second, initiated by...
Posted by Chris at 3:25 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 11, 2006
Category: Visual Illusions
As you all know, I love visual illusions, and this may be one of my favorites. This picture is pretty small (go here for a bigger version), but you should be able to figure out what's going on by watching...
Posted by Chris at 11:00 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 10, 2006
Category: Cognitive Neuroscience
Anyone who's ever taken a bite of a Reese's Peanut butter Eggs that are only sold during the Easter season knows that chocolate is a mood enhancer, but in case you thought it might just be the wonderful taste, there...
Posted by Chris at 10:10 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 9, 2006
Category: Ask a Science Blogger
This week's (and my first) "Ask a Science Blogger" question comes from a Science Blogs reader named Jake Bryan (aka chezjake). He asks: Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own...
Posted by Chris at 9:59 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blogs and Blogging
So, I was trying to think of new things to do with the new blog, and the first idea that crossed my mind was writing book reviews. Then I realized there was a problem: I don't read that many cognitive...
Posted by Chris at 3:09 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blogs and Blogging
Hello, Science Blogs readers. Many of you may be new to Mixing Memory, so I thought that for the first post at the new site, I would introduce myself a little. By a little, I mean a very little, because...
Posted by Chris at 11:00 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
