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.
May 31, 2007
Category: Social Cognition
The belief that creativity and political conservatism are negatively correlated is widespread not only among the general public (except, maybe, among some conservatives), but among researchers in a variety of fields. And there are some indirect empirical justifications for this...
Posted by Chris at 9:12 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 28, 2007
Category: Miscellaneous
Originally posted on the old blog on Memorial Day 2005. On Memorial Day, I'm always reminded of the poems of war because, perhaps more than any other form of literature, they paint of it a picture that is more real...
Posted by Chris at 11:28 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cognitive Psychology
A little over a year ago, I wrote a post describing some research showing that there are cognitive barriers to understanding evolution. There I listed three specific factors: Intuitive theism, in which our intuitions lead us to make design inferences...
Posted by Chris at 9:30 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blogs and Blogging
I haven't really updated the blogroll much since, well, I first created it. So if you've got a blog that fits into one of the categories over there on the left, including "seriously good but I don't know what to...
Posted by Chris at 2:12 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 26, 2007
Category: Miscellaneous
Last night, I took my son to his favorite diner to celebrate the end of 3rd grade. Just before our dinner arrived, a song came on the radio and he stopped talking, listened for a second, and said, "Hey, it's...
Posted by Chris at 8:57 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 20, 2007
Category: Visual Illusions
Everybody's seen Kanizsa's triangle: It's a simple illusory figure illusion, first reported by Kanizsa(1). The illusion is likely caused by the processes that the visual system uses to separate figures from their ground(2), but to date there doesn't appear to...
Posted by Chris at 1:44 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 17, 2007
Category: Cognitive Psychology
Some of you who are interested in the history of psychology or philosophy of mind might find this paper interesting: Gentner, D., & Grudin, J. (1985). The evolution of mental metaphors in psychology: A 90-year retrospective. American Psychologist, 40(2), 181-192....
Posted by Chris at 9:05 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 15, 2007
Category: Visual Illusions
In honor of the announcement of the Best Visual Illusion of the Year (via Steve), I thought I'd revive the old cool visual illusion series. I may post about this year's winner, the leaning tower illusion, in the future, but...
Posted by Chris at 4:13 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 14, 2007
Category: Philosophy
The second Online Philosophy Conference has begun, and the first week's presentations are up. If you didn't participate in last year's OPC, here's how it works: a presentation and one or two responses are posted for you to read, and...
Posted by Chris at 4:05 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 11, 2007
Category: Cognitive Psychology
File this one in the annals of "huh?" There's been a lot of research over the last decade or so on what only be described as the bizarre implicit priming of social concepts. In a typical experiment, participants are given...
Posted by Chris at 10:12 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 9, 2007
Category: Cognitive Psychology
Cool video (via Bill Benzon over at The Valve: A bit more below the fold, but only after you watch the video....
Posted by Chris at 11:31 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Miscellaneous
Someone over at Real Climate has way too much free time....
Posted by Chris at 4:24 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 8, 2007
From the proud papa. First, the league's best right fielder: He hasn't let a ball past him all year. Granted, no balls have been hit to him this year, but that's neither here nor there. Next up, at the plate....
Posted by Chris at 11:30 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 7, 2007
The story of research on linguistic relativity can be summarized thusly: early cognitive scientists, inspired by the work of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, were all-too eager to find that thought is influenced, if not determined, by language (either by...
Posted by Chris at 4:18 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 2, 2007
Even though study after study has shown that implicit race bias is pretty much ubiquitous in American society, I'm still occasionally surprised when a study comes out demonstrating it in an area I hadn't previously thought about. That was the...
Posted by Chris at 2:59 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 1, 2007
Category: Research & Theory
Jeremy Dean of PsyBlog is doing another online study, this time on emotions, and he needs participants. So if you have about 10 minutes, and you'd like to participate in some real live research, click here and follow his instructions....
Posted by Chris at 11:00 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
