Dave Munger
dmunger
Posts by this author
April 18, 2008
After spending all last weekend preparing our income tax return, I must have money on my mind. So this week's Casual Fridays study is about money. I don't want to tell you much more about it before you participate in the survey because it may affect the results, so just go ahead and click.
Click…
April 17, 2008
If you saw a headline like this one in your local newspaper, you might first think it's some type of info-tisement sponsored by the floral industry. You'd probably be right, too. So what is this headline doing in Cognitive Daily? We've found a study to support the notion that flowers actually…
April 16, 2008
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,…
April 15, 2008
Clicking on the link below will bring up an image in a new window (you may need to disable pop-up blockers to do this). The picture contains five rows of asterisks. Your job is to count them as quickly as possible. Try using your finger to point and help keep track.
View image
Now try the same task…
April 14, 2008
How often do you take time to reflect on the things you're grateful for? Once a month? Once a week, at church, perhaps? Maybe you say "grace" at mealtime every day. But even prayers that do express gratefulness, such as a traditional mealtime prayer, are often expressed by rote. Growing up, my…
April 11, 2008
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.
April 8, 2008
In our little college town, one of the most popular fitness trends over the past few years has been yoga. Friends and acquaintances often suggest we join them in their favorite class, claiming not only that we'll get stronger and more flexible, but that we'll feel better about ourselves.
But Greta…
April 7, 2008
The fact that infants are able to learn language without any help from adults can sometimes seem almost miraculous. Not only do children learn to speak and understand language completely on their own, active teaching of language skills seems to make almost no difference in their ability to talk.…
April 4, 2008
Do you recognize this man? If so, you're not alone: over three-quarters of our readers were able to spot Richard Dawkins as he flashed by in a QuickTime video. So does this mean that the gatekeepers at Expelled who ejected the much-less-famous PZ Myers but not Dawkins two weeks ago are a bunch of…
April 3, 2008
"Outing" gays and lesbians has always been a controversial practice, especially when done without the outed person's consent. But even when an individual outs him or herself, some people argue that outing is inappropriate because of the negative stereotypes that are evoked. But there's a subtler…
April 1, 2008
Imagine yourself walking on a treadmill that starts at a reasonable pace: say, two and a half miles per hour. Every two minutes, the treadmill increases its speed by 0.2 mph: 2.7 mph, 2.9 mph, 3.1 mph, and so on. If you're in good physical condition, at some point -- usually between about 3.0 and 4…
March 31, 2008
Researchers have known for some time that people are surprisingly accurate at visually judging distances to objects as far as 25 meters away. If you're allowed to briefly look at an object up to that distance away, then blindfolded, you'll walk right up to it with great precision. If you walk…
March 28, 2008
[This post was originally published in November of 2006]
Do you recognize the person depicted in this video? (QuickTime required; the movie is below the fold)
How about this one?
The first video is actually a "chimera," formed by fusing half-images of two well-known faces together, then animated…
March 26, 2008
[This article was originally published in January of 2007]
Many many studies have repeatedly shown the dangers of driving while using a cell phone. Yesterday, while discussing a new law in Britain imposing heavy penalties not only for driving using a handheld phone, but also while using phones with…
March 25, 2008
Do you recognize the faces in this picture?
Sure you do -- you could recognize the authors of this blog anywhere, even upside-down. It might take you just a bit longer to realize that something isn't quite right with the picture. I'll show you what the problem is at the end of this post.
We've…
March 24, 2008
This coming Friday I'll be at the NISO Discovery Tools Forum in Chapel Hill, NC, to talk about ResearchBlogging.org, along with fellow ResearchBlogger and librarian Eric Schnell. Here's the abstract for our presentation:
ResearchBlogging.org began simply as a way for academic bloggers to identify…
March 21, 2008
Everyone on ScienceBlogs seems to be talking about the latest Intelligent Design debacle. Apparently the extremely famous blogger PZ Myers attempted to attend a free screening of Expelled, a Ben Stein screed against "Darwinists." The security folks at the screening had been alerted that he would be…
March 20, 2008
Point-light displays are an amazing demonstration of how the visual system creates order out of what initially seems to be a random pattern. Take a look at this short movie (QuickTime required). Just looking at the first frame, it might be difficult to tell what's being displayed, but after…
March 18, 2008
My first introduction to psychology was in a required social science class in college over 20 years ago, reading Sigmund Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. The experience made me think I'd better be careful if I ever had kids: I didn't want them telling their psychoanalysts how my…
March 17, 2008
There is a growing body of evidence that very young children -- too young even to talk -- still know plenty of words. When our kids were very young, it was quite clear that they knew the meanings of many more words than they could actually produce. When they couldn't speak at all, they understood…
March 14, 2008
Music has been associated with drug use for decades -- from the flower children smoking weed at Woodstock to jazz great Charlie Parker getting hooked on heroin, it seems that every type of music has a drug that we associate with it. Last month we discussed a study where college students were asked…
March 13, 2008
Psychologists often complain that neuroscientists get a disproportionate share of the glory when the mainstream media reports on their studies. It seems to some that an important new psychology study is often neglected or ignored entirely, while neuroscience studies of similar importance are hailed…
March 11, 2008
It shouldn't take you long to notice what's wrong with this picture:
Obviously Nora is defying gravity in this shot -- you can't help but notice it. But in your first glance at the photo, how quickly do you notice what's wrong? Do you spot the oddity faster than you'd notice Nora in the original…
March 10, 2008
What makes children so cute? Is it their adorably soft skin? Their innocently mischievous smiles? Their oversized eyes and tiny little mouths? Why is it that some kids are singled out for TV commercials and child beauty pageants, while others don't seem to be noteworthy in any way?
Attractiveness…
March 7, 2008
A couple weeks back we discussed a study examining stereotypes about music fans and how they related to actual fans' real preferences. Unfortunately, the researchers couldn't test one of the most intriguing stereotypes about music fans: the types of drugs and alcohol preferred by fans of particular…
March 6, 2008
When I write an article for Cognitive Daily, I follow a similar pattern nearly every time. First I carefully read the journal article I'll be discussing. Next I take a break and work on something else. Then I get myself a caffeinated beverage and some kind of sweet treat (usually it's chocolate-…
March 5, 2008
Any serious wine drinker will tell you she can distinguish between inexpensive, low-quality wine and the fancy premium-priced stuff. She may also claim the ability to discern the difference between wine made from different grapes, or produced in different regions of the world. Yet some studies have…
March 4, 2008
Take a look at this amazing video (via slashdot) showing how traffic jams can occur even when all the drivers are attempting to drive the identical speed.
As you can see, at first everything works fine -- the drivers have all been instructed to try to drive about 30 KPH. But almost inevitably…
March 3, 2008
You might expect someone's cultural background to influence their speech, their appearance, their musical tastes, and the foods they like. You'd probably also expect culture to have an impact on values and beliefs, on stories and traditions. But what about their bodies -- not just physical features…
March 3, 2008
Of Two Minds, the much-anticipated merger of Steve Higgins' Omni Brain and Shelley Batts' Retrospectacle, makes its debut today.
Not Exactly Rocket Science is also up and running here on ScienceBlogs.com.
If you haven't had a chance to take a look at the relatively new blog Translating Autism, you…