dmunger | December 8, 2008What you remember about your life is almost certainly not accurate. Adults have very few memories before age five, and there is a systematic bias to the memories most people have for the rest of their lives. We are more likely to remember details about positive events like marriage and having children than we are to remember negative events like hospital stays or the death of a loved one.
Many studies have found that people appear to remember much more from their teens and 20s than the rest of their lives. A fifty-year-old might remember more about her 20s than her 30s, even though the events…
dmunger | December 5, 2008The last place I lived before small-town Davidson, North Carolina, was New York City. One thing that seemed extremely different to me when I moved from New York to Davidson was the behavior of pedestrians and drivers. In New York, drivers honk at you at a stoplight to remind you that the light's going to turn green in five seconds, so you'd better get moving. In Davidson, it's rude to honk for any reason other than to say "hello."
Pedestrians, too, behaved differently. In New York, they seemed to openly defy cars, almost daring them to run them down. There's a New York look that seems to say…
dmunger | December 4, 2008Can you hear colors? Can you see sounds? Do words have colors or images associated with them? It may sound impossible, but there are many documented cases of people who experience all these things. We've discussed it before on Cognitive Daily, and even found some limited evidence of similar phenomena among the general population. Collectively, these experiences are called synesthesia. Perceptions have many modalities corresponding to different ways of experiencing the world. The most well-known modalities are the five senses, but "words" or "numbers," or "colors" may also be considered…
dmunger | December 2, 2008We can quickly spot a face staring at us in a crowd. We can do this much quicker, for example, than we can determine that no one is staring at us, as this movie demonstrates. A grid of 100 pictures of Greta will be flashed for about 1/3 of a second. Can you spot the photos where she's looking at you? You'll see two different grids.
Most people are able to detect the staring faces much faster than those looking to the side. But we can also sometimes be fooled by faces, something we discussed on one of the first-ever CogDaily posts:
In this picture, the eyes for each face are exactly the…
dmunger | November 28, 2008Greta walks a mile to work every day. I work at home, so I don't walk around town much. I'm much more likely to be driving down the street where we live than walking on it.
Does this affect our attitude towards pedestrians when we drive? Greta and I have also both noticed that there are certain situations where drivers seem more likely to stop for pedestrians than others. Is it a universal rule? Or are our own observations biased by our personal experience?
This week's study may give us a way to find out. I've taken several photos of a pedestrian at/approaching a crosswalk. Your job is to…
dmunger | November 26, 2008(This entry was originally posted in May, 2006)
We've discussed implicit attitudes on Cognitive Daily before, but never in the context of food. The standard implicit attitude task asks you to identify items belonging to two different categories. Consider the following lists. Use your mouse to click on items which are either pleasant or related to Genetically Modified foods (GM foods). (Clicking won't actually do anything, it's just a way of self-monitoring your progress)
Horrible
Good
Transgenic
Nasty
Crops
Wonderful
dislike
GE livestock
Now with this next list, do the same task, only click…
dmunger | November 24, 2008Boundary extension is a phenomenon we've discussed a lot on Cognitive Daily. It's typically described as a memory error: We remember scenes as having bigger boundaries than what we originally saw. Take a look at these two pictures of Jim:
If you only saw picture A by itself, then later you'd remember seeing a picture that looks more like picture B. If you look at them side-by-side, it's easy to see that picture A is cropped closer than picture B, but if you see the pictures separately, then it's likely you'll misremember the first picture has having broader boundaries than it really has.…
dmunger | November 21, 2008Last week we wondered how having kids affects our own childhood memories. In many ways, our kids remind us of our own childhood, allowing us to relive our favorite memories. But kids also distract us by being so adorable (or not so adorable), and with new memories that might become more prominent than the old ones.
My own experience suggests that kids do remind me of my own childhood. Now that Jim and Nora are teenagers I find myself thinking about my own experience in high school -- sometimes about memories I hadn't considered for decades. But maybe that's an illusion. What I would have…
dmunger | November 20, 2008Here are the four posts that I selected to nominate for Open Laboratory 2008, the collection of the best science blog posts of the year:
Toddlers play with impossibly small toys as if they're the real thing
Will video games solve sex-discrimination in science?
How to make your eye feel like it's closed, when it's actually open
Changing belief in free will can cause students to cheat
Disagree with my choices? You can nominate one yourself, here. But remember that the post has to work in book form (with some adaptation). I had to pass over some great posts because they included videos or…
dmunger | November 19, 2008A Necker cube is bi-stable figure, meaning that it can be perceived as two different three-dimensional objects, depending on how you look at it:
Cube A is ambiguous -- the true Necker cube. Cube B and cube C show the two ways you can perceive the Necker cube: either the bottom of the cube is in front, or the top is in front. What's interesting about figures such as the Necker cube is that once you're aware of its bi-stable nature, it's impossible to see it only one way. Don't believe me? Then take this challenge. Play the movie below (it lasts for two minutes). The figure will flash every…
dmunger | November 17, 2008I've set up accounts on FriendFeed and Twitter with the username davemunger. I'm going to give these sites a try for the next week or so. Unlike with Facebook where we've got a profile but haven't really done much, I'd actually like to actively participate in these networks.
I'd appreciate any tips readers have for getting established there, and any other similar sites that it might be useful to be a part of. Ideally these sites would link back in to FriendFeed so I only have to check up on one site. And of course, if you'd like to follow my feed, you're welcome to.
dmunger | November 17, 2008One of things I was taught over and over again when I was in education school was the importance of getting parents involved in kids' learning. If you get the parents on your side, my professors insisted, then you're going to be much more able to get through to the students. I didn't last long enough as a teacher to see how well this advice worked, but as a parent, I've certainly experienced the process from the other end. From an early age, our kids were given "homework" that they couldn't possibly do without the help of their parents.
Sometimes it seemed as if these assignments were really…
dmunger | November 14, 2008This morning I was having a conversation with Nora about her AP European history class, and it got me thinking about my own experience taking the same class about 25 years ago (yes, kids, they did have AP classes back then). Mainly it reminded me that I can't remember much at all about the class. I remember lots of facts about European history, but I can't track any of them specifically to that class. But it also made me wonder if I would have thought about that class at all if it hadn't been for Nora taking the class now.
On the other hand, I seem to remember my other AP classes from high…
dmunger | November 14, 2008Greta and I will be participating in a panel on blogging tomorrow in Charlotte, NC. If you're in town, you might want to stop by. More information here.
dmunger | November 13, 2008Remember this video?
A few weeks ago we used it to demonstrate that facial expressions can disrupt the perceptual system in fundamental ways. Actually, because we could only show a few short clips, we weren't able to duplicate the research results found by John Eastwood, Daniel Smilek, and Philip Merikle. But in their, more comprehensive study, although viewers were instructed only to count "upturned arcs" or "downturned arcs," when those arcs formed "faces" with negative expressions, people counted the arcs slower and less accurately.
But how exactly do facial expressions disrupt the…
dmunger | November 12, 2008When Jim and Nora were toddlers, they were huge fans of everything Disney. Here they're wearing their Disney pajamas as they play next to their Seven Dwarves figurines, underneath their TV, which was frequently used to watch Disney videos. We even took them to Disney World, where they had an absolute blast, but turned out to be afraid of life-sized Disney characters (but that's a story for another day).
While we didn't let them watch Disney movies whenever they wanted, we did allow it once or twice a week, and even built up a large collection of videos, which we still use to entertain younger…
dmunger | November 11, 2008Philosophers have wondered for centuries whether someone who was blind from birth would "see" the world in the same way as people with normal vision. After all, there's much more to perceiving the world than properly functioning eyes. Think of it: otherwise all you'd need to do is strap a camcorder to a car and you'd never have to learn how to drive!
But there are surprisingly few cases of people who were born completely blind and then had their sight restored after many years of blindness. If a patient can be cured, it's usually done quite early in life. But a few cases have emerged in…
dmunger | November 10, 2008Today I'm visiting Shireen Campbell's class at Davidson College to talk about Cognitive Daily and other writing projects. This post collects the links I'll be using for class. If you're not in the class they might not be relevant to you, but they include some of our most popular posts, so maybe you'll enjoy reading them too!
Violent video games may be linked to aggression
More on video game violence
Is 17 the "most random" number?
How to report scientific research to a general audience
How we learn to walk
Dave's first blog
Dave's personal blog
For more, new links about psychology and…
dmunger | November 7, 2008Last week we asked our readers to predict the result of the election. How did they do?
Out of the 474 people who guessed the results of this year's presidential election, only six got the electoral vote right - 365 votes for Obama (assuming Missouri goes for McCain and Omaha goes for Obama). None of these respondents was accurate on the popular vote, but one anonymous respondent got close, guessing that McCain would get 47 percent (the actual figure was 46.3 percent). Only one person who guessed 365 left his name, so let's give Wayland credit as the unofficial "winner" of our prediction…
dmunger | November 5, 2008I play soccer every week with an ever-changing group of people. We're all busy, and people get injured or lose interest, so every week the crowd is slightly different; it often feels like we need to re-acquaint ourselves before every game. The easiest way to do this is during warm-ups when small groups kick the ball around in a circle or take practice shots on goal.
If you arrive a little late, you might have to insinuate yourself into one of the groups by strolling up and hoping someone passes you the ball. Typically this is pretty easy, but if the others are engaged in conversation, they…