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.
September 30, 2006
Category: Cognitive Neuroscience
One of the top ten coolest experiments ever has to be Botvinick and Cohen's "rubber hand" experiment1. I'm going to let them describe the manipulation: Each of ten subjects was seated with their left arm resting upon a small table....
Posted by Chris at 7:10 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 29, 2006
Category: Cognitive Neuroscience
The last couple weeks have seen a flurry of papers on mirror neurons, with three in last week's issue of Current Biology, and the paper on mirror neurons and sexual orientation in press at NeuroImage (is it just me, or...
Posted by Chris at 11:46 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 27, 2006
Category: Miscellaneous
OK, I learned of this site from Positive Liberty, and tried desperately to resist it, but ultimately was unable to. The result of my weakness: And if you recognize the "slogan," the answer is yes, I am a big fan....
Posted by Chris at 10:38 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Social Cognition
The other day, I talked about terror management theory (TMT) and modern art. That probably wasn't the best way to introduce TMT, because it's a bit of a stretch to turn TMT into an aesthetic theory. Instead, I should have...
Posted by Chris at 8:40 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 24, 2006
Category: Blogs and Blogging
I just got an email about a new blog on music cognition, Sound and Mind. From the email: The vision for Sound and Mind is to provide an interdisciplinary hub, a place for cognitive musicologists, scientists, and critical theorists to...
Posted by Chris at 10:41 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cognitive Science News
Via Will Wilkerson, I learned of Richard Rorty's very good review of Marc Hauser's Moral Minds. He's very critical both of Hauser's moral nativism and of Hauser's more optimistic claims about the study of moral psychology. John McKhail, who is...
Posted by Chris at 7:11 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 23, 2006
Category: Visual Illusions
I was reminded of this illusion by the Seed Daily Zeitgeist yesterday. In order to get the full effect, I'll show you one set of photos here, and the rest of the post will be below the fold. The first...
Posted by Chris at 9:06 AM • 26 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 22, 2006
Category: Link Posts
Been a while, but I thought I'd start doing this again now and then. First, the serious link. If you haven't read about the doctor and five nurses who have been unjustly sentenced to death in Libya, you should. Unfortunately,...
Posted by Chris at 3:51 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 21, 2006
Category: Miscellaneous
A few days ago, the New York Mets clinched the National League East title, becoming the first team to win a division with the Atlanta Braves in it, other than the Braves, since 1990 (excluding the strike-shortened 1994 season, of...
Posted by Chris at 5:59 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blogs and Blogging
Earlier this month, Mixing Memory turned 2 years old. So, happy belated birthday, Mixing Memory, and thanks to everyone who's visited in the last two years, and especially to those who've left comments and feedback. If you haven't yet left...
Posted by Chris at 5:29 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 20, 2006
Category: Research & Theory
There's been some hubbub recently over a study by Gerber and Malhotra (you can get a copy in pdf here), which shows a couple things. First, political science journals don't publish many articles that report negative (null) results, but instead...
Posted by Chris at 3:12 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Social Cognition
I've never really hung out in a social psychology laboratory, but here is how I picture a typical day in one. There are some social psychologists sitting around, drinking some sort of exotic tea, and free associating. One psychologist will...
Posted by Chris at 8:10 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 16, 2006
Category: Cognitive Psychology
Back on the old blog, I wrote a series of posts in which I detailed a revolution in moral psychology. Sparked largely by recent empirical and theoretical work by neuroscientists, psychologists studying moral judgment have transitioned from Kantian rationalism, that...
Posted by Chris at 9:01 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 14, 2006
Category: Cognitive Psychology
A little over a year ago, I reviewed David Buller's anti-Evolutionary Psychology book, Adapting Minds, arguing that, at least in the most important chapter, it fell far short of "demolishing" Evolutionary Psychology, as one philosopher claimed it had done. The...
Posted by Chris at 5:03 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 13, 2006
Category: Philosophy
No, seriously. The paper in which Carrie Jenkins presents a conceptual analysis of flirting is here (via Online Papers in Philosophy). An except: What is it to flirt? Do you have to intend to flirt with someone in order to...
Posted by Chris at 6:03 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 10, 2006
Category: Miscellaneous
OK, this has nothing to do with cognitive science, but today's quake felt throughout the southeast reminded me of a little history that some people may not be aware of. In Tennessee, there is only one large natural lake, Reelfoot...
Posted by Chris at 4:32 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 9, 2006
Category: Comparative Psychology
Over the years I'd heard that, lurking in the basements of psychology departments at various universities throughout the world, there are psychologists studying music cognition, but until the publication of a special issue of the journal Cognition, I hadn't really...
Posted by Chris at 9:34 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
