Dave Munger
dmunger
Posts by this author
March 2, 2009
When I'm writing a post for Cognitive Daily (or doing almost any kind of writing, for that matter), I try to keep outside distractions to an absolute minimum. I even have an application on my computer that shuts off all access to the internet for a specified period of time. I find most music…
February 27, 2009
There's a lot of advice online about what makes a good resume, and in these tough economic times, getting a job is tougher than ever.
So this week, I thought we'd test some different resumes and see which factors are most important in picking a good candidate. You'll be asked to read two resumes…
February 26, 2009
Last week, we presented research by Miranda Scolari's team about visual expertise and visual short-term memory. Their conclusion: "experts" don't have a larger visual memory capacity than non-experts, they just have the ability to process more details. Scolari's team was working under the…
February 25, 2009
What is so mesmerizing about pointillist paintings like Seurat's Sunday Afternoon at La Grande Jatte? At first, we're impressed by the technical virtuosity of the work. It's an immense painting that Greta and I visited many times when we were in college in Chicago (and now, whenever we return for a…
February 23, 2009
One of my most vivid memories from middle school was in English class. The class wasn't paying attention to the teacher -- we were chattering during "work time" and she wanted us to stop and return to a full-class lesson. So she shouted "SEX!" We all shut up immediately and stared at her in…
February 20, 2009
This week's Casual Fridays study was inspired by this comment on the Random Number thread:
When a freshman at Penn State too many years ago to count, the intro psychology prof did an amazing demonstration. I wonder if anyone knows the answer to this which I have long forgotten.
He said he had…
February 18, 2009
Take a look at this quick video. You'll see a set of six small images, arranged in a circle, for 1 second. Then the screen will go blank for 1 second. Finally, one image will reappear in the place of one of the first six pictures. Your job: indicate whether the final image is the same or different…
February 17, 2009
I had a newspaper route up until I was in the ninth grade, and what I dreaded about the job was going door-to-door collecting subscription fees. The worst part was probably the odors in some of the houses. One house emanated a toxic mixture of Lysol, alcohol, pet dander, and cigarette smoke. These…
February 16, 2009
In honor of President's Day in the U.S., I bring you this work of "art," generated on the basis of a survey of 1,001 Americans' preferences about art:
The work was created to embody the survey responses. The respondents were asked questions like "what is your favorite color" and "would you prefer…
February 13, 2009
Just a random Casual Friday survey this week.
Click here to take survey.
As usual, the survey is brief, and should take only a minute or two to complete. You have until Thursday, February 19 to respond. There is no limit on the number of responses. Don't forget to come back next Friday for the…
February 11, 2009
How do you decide how dangerous a sex-offender is? Certainly all cases of sexual assault are appalling, but clearly some incidents are worse than others. In some places, teenagers who photograph themselves naked and send the pictures to their friends can be prosecuted as purveyors of child-…
February 10, 2009
A couple hours ago I posted a quick poll, in what might be construed as an unbiased fashion. I simply asked respondents for their sexual orientation, offering a wide array of choices ranging from "straight" to "mostly gay" to "gay" to "other."
In fact, my poll was biased -- not because the question…
February 10, 2009
I'm having a dispute with a reader in an online forum. Let's settle it here with a quick, private poll:
What is your sexual orientation? ( surveys)
Trust me, this is related to psychology.
February 9, 2009
One of stand-up comic George Carlin's most famous routines was the seven words you can't say on TV (obviously, not safe for work). He repeated the words over and over, and it was hilarious -- especially back in the days before most people had cable. These days we've become desensitized to those…
February 7, 2009
Last week's Casual Fridays study started out innocently enough: A contact on Twitter asked if most women would prefer fresh fruit or chocolates as a romantic gift. That's a fascinating question, I said -- maybe even interesting enough to merit study on Casual Friday. With Valentine's Day coming up…
February 6, 2009
Sorry, this week's Casual Friday results won't be ready until tomorrow. There's lots of interesting data, and I want to make sure I do it justice.
February 5, 2009
Have you seen this "illusion" before?
The arrangement of the pacman shapes leads you to perceive rectangles, which are actually just empty spaces between the pacmen (that's a technical term -- it's in a journal article, so it must science!). Technically the rectangles are called "Kanizsa-type…
February 3, 2009
You may have heard of the Stroop effect, and you may have even seen it demonstrated. But can the Stroop effect itself be manipulated? This short demo may show that it can.
In case you're not familiar with the effect, it occurs when you try to say the color a word is printed in, while the word…
January 30, 2009
Valentines' Day is coming up in just a few weeks, so we thought we'd help our readers prepare by assessing the romance level of a few common gifts they might consider getting for their significant others.
I've noticed that there's often a fine line between a romantic gift and a disappointing downer…
January 29, 2009
Some of the things psychologists ask their research subjects to do are really rather annoying. I'm not talking about Milgram-esque studies where people confront their inner demons, I'm talking about much more pedestrian stuff. This movie, for example, gives you a small taste of the Sustained…
January 28, 2009
Take a look at this graph showing population distribution by county in a fictional U.S. state:
How do you read such a graph? Is this the ideal way to depict this sort of information? If you wanted to know which part of the state was most populous, how would you go about figuring it out?…
January 26, 2009
Two years ago, we linked to a post about an ABC news program that claimed to have replicated Stanley Milgram's controversial experiments from the 1960s and 70s about obedience to authority. The original study tricked unwitting paid study participants into believing that they had administered…
January 25, 2009
Today's Slashdot poll covers some of the same territory as this week's Casual Fridays study. Their poll asks "How Many Hours Of Work Do You Do Per Workday?" We asked two questions that get at the same concept: How much time to you spend at work per day, and how much of that time do you spend doing…
January 23, 2009
Last week's Casual Fridays study was supposed to be about distractions and distractibility. Many of us struggle to keep our minds on work when the whole wide internet is available to entertain and inform us. So I wondered: Are people who are more easily distracted by the temptations of the internet…
January 22, 2009
What are we looking at when we recognize faces? The shapes of of the individual components of the face -- eyes, nose, mouth? Or are we recognizing the larger patterns of how those parts relate to one another -- the distance between the eyes, the position of the mouth relative to the nose? We're…
January 21, 2009
There's lots of evidence that most TV isn't beneficial to toddlers, and it may even be harmful. But can't kids learn from TV too? Isn't that supposed to be what shows like Teletubbies, Barney, and Sesame street are all about? For older children, three and above, it does seem to be true that some…
January 16, 2009
One of my most difficult challenges as I work at home on Cognitive Daily and other projects is to keep focused on the task at hand. The internet, with its myriad distractions, is just a click away. It used to be that I could just head to a coffee shop with my laptop to get away from the internet,…
January 15, 2009
In 2007 I received a really cool Christmas present that I still haven't used. It's a kit to help identify the various components of the aroma in a glass of wine. I haven't used it because I wanted to wait for the right occasion -- say, a party with some of my wine-loving friends. But I've also been…
January 14, 2009
Can you tell if these two faces are the same or different?
How about these?
Or these?
If you're like most adults, it will be easier for you to identify different adult faces compared to the infant faces in the second example, and even the small children's faces in the third example.
This…
January 12, 2009
Take a look at this video made by fellow ScienceBlogger Dr. Isis. She's talking with her son, a toddler who adorably mimics her as she says very complicated words such as "Adventures in Ethics and Science" and "Wackaloon" (but sadly, not "Cognitive Daily"):
It's cute, but it's difficult to say…