dmunger | December 5, 2007A reader asks:
I've been reading Cog Daily for about 4 months now and have always found that I am particularly fascinated with entries dealing with developmental psychology, such as the latest one regarding the logarithmic-like representation of numbers in young children. I was curious as to whether you knew of any [credible] blogs or highly active websites that are dedicated to the field of Dev Psych (don't worry, I will still read Cog Daily!). I'm currently finishing up my BA in Psychology at UC Santa Barbara and plan to go the route of developmental clinical psychology, come grad-school. I…
dmunger | December 4, 2007One of our readers emailed us asking if there has ever been research on whether kids' understanding of numbers -- especially large numbers -- differs from adults. Greta did a little poking around and found a fascinating study on second- and fourth-graders.
In the U.S. (and I suspect around the world), kids this age are usually taught about numbers using a number line. In first grade, they might be introduced to a line from 0 or 1 to 10. In second grade, this is typically expanded up to 100. But what happens when second-graders are asked to place numbers on a line extending all the way up to 1…
dmunger | December 3, 2007Pediatrics Grand Rounds is up at Hope for Pandora, complete with its first-ever Cognitive Daily selection.
Encephalon is up at A Blog Around the Clock, featuring all manner of brainy goodness, including a CogDaily post as well.
dmunger | December 3, 2007I've reviewed Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee's recent book The Body Has a Mind of Its Own over at The Quarterly Conversation. So, is this the science book that should have made the New York Times' Notable Books list? (Several ScienceBloggers have complained that the list includes no science books).
As I point out in my review, the book does have some great highlights:
The Blakeslees ... describe some truly fascinating phenomena. You know about visual illusions, but did you realize there's also such a thing as a sensorimotor illusion? One of the most astounding is the "Pinocchio illusion,"…
dmunger | November 30, 2007Two weeks ago, we challenged our readers to see if they could discern the difference between MP3 recordings at different sampling data rates. Nearly 700 completed our study. So does a very high data rate result in a noticeable difference? Here our are basic results:
Respondents rated two recordings, one by rock guitarist Carlos Santana, and another by orchestral composer Aaron Copland. Each recording was encoded into an MP3 file at three different data rates: 64, 128, and 256 kbps. For both recordings, there was a significant difference between ratings of the 64 kbps data rate and the 128…
dmunger | November 28, 2007I've just finished reading fellow ScienceBlogger Chris Mooney's new book Storm World, and I highly recommend it -- not only to people interested in hurricanes and global climate change, but also to fans of cognitive psychology.
Why psychology? Because the book offers an excellent case study of how scientific research becomes part of the popular consciousness. Hurricane Katrina was a devastating storm, and its repercussions are still being felt. There's also little doubt that global warming is occurring. While there's a great deal of scientific uncertainty about the precise relationship…
dmunger | November 27, 2007Do people ever tell you to "just smile, you'll feel better"? If you're like our daughter Nora, you hear it a lot, and you get annoyed every time you hear it. Telling a teenager to smile is probably one of the best ways to ensure she won't smile for the next several hours. But the notion that "smiling will make you feel better" has actually been confirmed by research. There are several studies demonstrating that people are happier when they smile, at least in certain circumstances.
It's not as easy as you might think to study the effect. For one thing, it's possible that it's not the physical…
dmunger | November 26, 2007What do most parents want for their kids as they grow into adults? Successful careers? Happy family lives? Or do they simply want their children to be good people? They probably want all of these things -- and a little wealth and fame wouldn't hurt either. The bigger question parents have is about the right way to inspire, motivate, cajole, or prod their kids in the direction they believe is most likely to yield the desired results.
There's been a lot of research about good parenting, but much of that research has focused on parenting style: parents' overall philosophy of childrearing, such…
dmunger | November 24, 2007That's right, you can now get the full text of every Cognitive Daily post via RSS. There's just one catch: You must buy a $399 Amazon Kindle and pay 99 cents (per month, I assume) to subscribe to Cognitive Daily.
I don't know if this subscription will allow you to view images, and I'm pretty certain video, polls, and other interactive features won't be available, but for some people this might be a very attractive way to get Cognitive Daily. You can also get the amazing ScienceBlogs Select feed, which includes the best CogDaily posts as well as the best from dozens of other ScienceBlogs for $…
dmunger | November 20, 2007Nothing brings out conflict an academic department like a hiring decision. Adding a new faculty member is complicated by dozens of factors: What field should the new hire be in? Is it more important to hire someone in precisely the right field, or with a better publication record? Will the new hire impinge on the turf of a current faculty member?
And consider this: even if the requirements for the job are agreed upon by all, what if the member of the hiring committee disagree on the qualifications of an applicant? For example, a psychology department might have decided that two requirements…
dmunger | November 19, 2007Suppose you're playing a game where the goal is to accumulate as many points as possible. Now suppose your decisions -- and only your decisions -- control not only how many points you get, but also how many points the other player gets. Suppose further that at the end of the game, you'll be able to cash in your points at a rate of 10 cents per point.
Now consider this scenario, one of a series of similar scenarios throughout the game: If you take 7 points, then the other player gets 9 points. If you take 5 points, then the other player gets 3 points. How many points would you take? Let's make…
dmunger | November 16, 2007There's a lot of debate online about whether people can really tell the difference between the various audio formats -- AAC, MP3, you name it. Does it really make a difference?
Recently I saw a blog post suggesting that the methodology for many so-called studies on the phenomenon was flawed. If you're going to test this sort of thing, listeners shouldn't be aware of the format they're listening to. And they shouldn't be asked to compare two versions of a song, they should simply rate how good each particular recording sounds. According to this post, few studies take the time to be rigorous…
dmunger | November 15, 2007Earlier this week we asked readers which CogDaily posts we should submit to the Open Laboratory anthology. We didn't get many suggestions, and commenter Keely had a guess as to why:
Perhaps what would be more helpful is to post links to the articles YOU were thinking about, and we could sort of vote on which of those we liked best. Your question as it stands now is a little broad. This is perhaps why you've had relatively few responses.
Okay, we'll do it. Here are our top posts from the past year (we couldn't use Keely's nomination since that was originally posted in 2006). You can vote for…
dmunger | November 15, 2007Have you been following the progress over at BPR3? Here's an update:
With the release of the Research Blogging icon, dozens of blogs and hundreds of posts are already showing the world when they are discussing peer-reviewed research. But the next step will be far more dramatic: a site which consolidates all those posts in one place.
For now, you can do a Technorati search to find out who's using the icon. I love Technorati, but its results aren't always consistent, and it can take several clicks to locate the specific post you're interested in. BPR3's new system will display the opening of…
dmunger | November 14, 2007Both Greta and I are big wine fans. Despite Jonah's recent extremely popular post, I, at least, believe that I can tell the difference between good and bad wines. I'm still convinced that a good wine is more than just an attractive label (though I'm a sucker for labels with Zinfandel puns like "Zen of Zin" or "Amazin"). That said, the research suggesting that labeling has a lot to do with wine preference is also quite convincing.
Several studies suggest that we expect to prefer wines from certain vineyards or regions, and in many cases wine drinkers will actually rate the identical wine…
dmunger | November 13, 2007Yesterday we discussed several experiments offering converging evidence that exposure to the color red, even for brief periods before taking a test, can result in lower achievement. It's startling research, but as my daughter suggested at breakfast this morning, maybe people are just intimidated by the color red because that's the color that's always used for grading.
Aren't we just conditioned to see red as threatening? That might be part of it, but in nature red also frequently suggests danger. Many poisonous plants and animals are red. Blood is red. Hot coals and lava are red. It's…
dmunger | November 12, 2007Bora Zivkovic is finishing up his nominations for Open Laboratory 2007, a collection of the best Science Blogging in 2007. I'd like to nominate a couple Cognitive Daily posts (this post made it into the 2006 collection), but I thought it might be good to get our readers' input on the posts they liked the most.
Since these posts are supposed to go into a book, posts with interactive demos, polls, and so on, aren't necessarily ideal (though we could write up the poll results for the purposes of a book chapter).
So, what CogDaily post was your favorite this year? Let us know in the comments. Or…
dmunger | November 12, 2007One of the things I was taught in English graduate school was never to grade papers using red ink. Students don't respond well to the color red, I was told -- it's intimidating. I always thought this was a little far-fetched, and my instructors couldn't offer a peer-reviewed journal article that definitively answered the question of whether red ink was harmful.
There is some research on the question of whether red is harmful in an academic setting -- but it's inconclusive, with some studies showing harm and others appearing to show a benefit to the color red. For decades, there has been a…
dmunger | November 9, 2007Last week's Casual Friday study focused on messes around the home. We identified eight common household messes, and then asked readers how annoying they were, and who cleaned up.
An interesting thing happened: for the first time ever, we had significantly more female respondents than male respondents: Nearly 60 percent of the 490 responses to the study came from women. We've had as many as 70 percent male respondents to Casual Fridays studies, and the previous best showing for women was right about 50 percent. My best guess at the gender ratio in our readership is about 60-40 (male-female),…
dmunger | November 8, 2007Regular CogDaily readers know that I don't usually harp relentlessly on a single issue. Believe me, I'd much rather be talking about things like this, but it's not very often that I get a chance to make an impact in the blogosphere. Thanks to a link from Fark (via BoingBoing) it looks like today might just be that chance.
If you voted in the Weblog Awards Best Science Blog Contest yesterday when I first posted about it, you can now vote again. If you didn't get a chance to vote because the site was down, it looks like it's up again. I'll post the poll below as well for your convenience. This…