Dave Munger
dmunger
Posts by this author
February 29, 2008
[I've been sick the past couple days, so I'm not going to be able to post a new Casual Friday today. But here's an old one that many of our readers probably haven't seen.]
Last week's Casual Friday survey asked readers to describe how they expect other drivers to behave when merging onto the…
February 26, 2008
It's hard to resist flirting with babies. Even if a baby has been screaming her head off for hours on end in the seat behind you on a transatlantic flight, if she giggles and smiles when you're deplaning, you'll probably smile back. What is it about babies that makes our hearts melt almost…
February 25, 2008
When adults are asked if they remember pictures of faces, they're more accurate when the faces are the same race as they are. It makes some sense -- people are likely to spend more time with and have more same-race friends, so they may become better attuned to the differences in individuals in…
February 22, 2008
Last week we asked readers how they used their calendars: we were curious if the way people used their calendars said anything about how busy their lives were. We found out an awful lot about how readers use calendars, but we also found that there may not be much of a pattern to how calendars are…
February 20, 2008
One of the most common "icebreaker" conversation topics is music preferences. We ask friends what they're listening to on their iPods, bloggers post playlists on their sidebars, and one of the most popular websites on the planet (MySpace) is built around sharing music. The assumption is that…
February 19, 2008
Take a look at this amazing illusion created by Arthur Shapiro (you'll need the latest version of Flash Player to see it):
You're looking at two donut-shaped figures whose "holes" are gradually changing color from black to white and back again. It appears that the holes are changing in an opposite…
February 18, 2008
The Encephalon blog carnival is up and running at SharpBrains after a short hiatus. Check it out for the latest great posts in psychology and neuroscience.
February 15, 2008
Just a few months ago, I finally convinced Greta to convert her old paper appointment calendar to an electronic version. Now instead of writing her appointments down in a little book, she enters it in her computer or her PDA. It's now possible for me to see her schedule on my computer, and vice…
February 14, 2008
I don't need words to think about the shape of a car, or how to throw a football, or the taste of a chocolate chip cookie. In fact, things like that are probably easier to think about without using language. That's why the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis -- that language is necessary for…
February 13, 2008
Which of these two pictures is more memorable?
The shot on the left is interesting primarily because Nora's in it -- if it was just a picture of a muddy trail, it wouldn't be notable at all to most people. The shot on the right is a dramatic mountain scene that you might remember even though (or…
February 12, 2008
Cognitive Daily readers know that we generally shy away from political issues on our blog. The goal of this blog is to show readers what science is all about, through the example of the fantastic research being done cognitive psychology.
But when James Watson made his most recent comments about…
February 11, 2008
Take a look at this short video clip (QuickTime required). It's called an RSVP (rapid serial visual presentation), meaning that it's a quick sequence of still images. In this case, it's a random sequence of letters. Your job is to look for a number among the letters. At some point during the clip,…
February 8, 2008
Last week's Casual Fridays study elicited quite a few confused reactions. Listeners heard short music clips and then were asked to indicate which color they associated with each piece from a list of 13 colors.
So were we able to come up with consistent results? Yes. For some of the clips, our 377…
February 7, 2008
You're trapped inside a rectangular room with four doors, one in each corner. You try the first door. It's locked. You try the second and the third door -- locked again. Finally the fourth door opens. You make a point of remembering which corner of the room it's in, which turns out to be useful,…
February 5, 2008
A particular source of dread for politicians is how to respond to negative campaigning or other information impugning their character. By responding, they might only bring attention to an issue that voters hadn't even recognized: "Contrary to my opponent's claims, I have stopped beating my wife,…
February 4, 2008
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…
February 1, 2008
A while back we did a little non-scientific study on whether people experience different colors based on their emotions, and indeed found a very small effect.
For this week's study, we thought we'd see if we could extend those results to music. All we're asking you to do is listen to eight short…
January 31, 2008
When we watch a movie, we're usually not conscious of the cuts made by the editor. The camera angle may change dozens of times during a scene, and we follow along as if the flashing from one viewpoint to another wasn't at all unusual. You might think this is just because we've been accustomed to…
January 30, 2008
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…
January 29, 2008
Two facts are true about young children: they sleep a lot more than adults, and they learn language at an astonishing rate. How can they learn so much when they're sleeping so much of the time? Perhaps sleep itself enhances learning. In fact, a number of studies suggest that naps actually enhance…
January 29, 2008
Yesterday's post offered a simple poll question:
# How Many People Will Select The Same Option As You?
0%
1-25%
26-50%
51-75%
76-99%
100%
I didn't think this poll would attract as much interest as it did because in one sense I was just copying a poll from Slashdot. I guess people liked the…
January 28, 2008
Slashdot's poll of the moment is just fantastic, combining psychology and reasoning in a very cool way. Here's the question:
# How Many People Will Select The Same Option As You?
0%
1-25%
26-50%
51-75%
76-99%
100%
Just CowboyNeal [this is the traditional joke Slashdot poll answer]
At first…
January 28, 2008
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…
January 25, 2008
Last week we asked readers how often they eat at buffet-style restaurants, where diners serve themselves unlimited portions of food from heated serving tables. The question was inspired by a post by ScienceBlogs editor Virginia Hughes, which was inspired by an innocuous comment I made as we were…
January 25, 2008
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…
January 24, 2008
When you know something, is that different from remembering? Both types of thoughts are clearly part of the memory system, but is there really any difference between the two concepts? We often use the two terms nearly interchangeably: I might say "I remember Suzanne had her purse when we left the…
January 23, 2008
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…
January 22, 2008
When we first moved to the small suburban town we still live in, we quickly realized we needed to buy a second car. Nora and Jim were just one and two and a half years old, only barely beginning to understand language. After we made our purchase, sometimes we drove in the old car (a Subaru station…
January 21, 2008
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…
January 19, 2008
I'm posting this live from my presentation at the Science Blogging conference. My session is entitled "How to build interactivity into your blog," and this post offers some links that I discuss in the presentation.
Polling servicesBlog Flux pollsQuimble
Survey web sitesQuestion ProSurvey…