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Cognition

How Knowledge Can Make You Stupid

By Eric Horowitz on April 24, 2013 in The Inertia Trap

By the age of 5 most children have developed the ability to understand that other people can hold beliefs that are different from their own. However, new research shows that even adults are unable to completely keep their own knowledge from biasing how they perceive the beliefs of others. Read More

Understanding Understanding

By Jesse Marczyk on April 24, 2013 in Pop Psych

Understanding emotions isn't always easy, but using functional accounts to understand them helps. How, then, are we to understand our feelings of understanding? Read More

The Devil in the Detail of Numbering the Mind of God

By Christopher Badcock, Ph.D. on April 24, 2013 in The Imprinted Brain

The fact that psychosis often features religious themes but that autistics tend to be non-religious reflects the fundamental difference between mentalistic and mechanistic cognition. Read More

How Do We Humans Ever Make Good Decisions?

By Jim Taylor, Ph.D. on April 24, 2013 in The Power of Prime

It’s a wonder that good decisions are ever made by the species known as Homo Sapiens. The reality is that the cards are stacked against us whenever we are faced with choices, especially when the decisions are of consequence. Think about all of the horrendously bad decisions that have been made in recent history and how obviously bad they look in our rear-view mirrors. Read More

Different Responses to Criticism in China and the US

By Nate Kornell, Ph.D. on April 24, 2013 in Everybody Is Stupid Except You

A recent article examined how American and Chinese children respond to criticism (Heyman, Lee, & Fu 2013). The findings may help explain the persistent academic gap between children in the two countries. Read More

Montessori Had It Right: We Learn By Doing

By Sian Beilock, Ph.D. on April 24, 2013 in Choke

What does it take for a kid to learn to read? Many people think the answer to this question is simple: lots of reading practice. But, this isn’t the whole story. Practice printing letters turns out to be imperative to reading success. When the body figures out how to write letters, the mind follows suit in terms of being able to recognize them. It's 'learning-by-doing.' Read More

"I Can Easily Beat BlackJack"

By Berit Brogaard, D.M.Sci., Ph.D on April 23, 2013 in The Superhuman Mind

There are people who can remember four decks of cards in a few minutes or recite Pi to 20,000 decimal points. Do these extreme memory abilities require savant skills or hours of relentless practice? Read More

The Need to Understand Tragedy

By Ira Hyman on April 23, 2013 in Mental Mishaps

Last week was horrific. Terrorist attacks and tragic explosions. One city locked down because of terrorism and another destroyed by a fertilizer plant explosion. Like you, I’ve been following the news trying to understand why these things happen. But I’ve also been wondering why are we so fascinated with understanding why? Read More

Learning to Name and See All of Life's Colors

By Gina Barreca, Ph.D. on April 23, 2013 in Snow White Doesn't Live Here Anymore

The names of colors--as illustrated in America by the Crayola folks--are not only the mirror but the lamp of our world: they’ve changed their color-names over the years to reflect various cultural shifts. When the crayon “Flesh” was created in 1949, nobody seemed to blink their eyelids. Then along came the Civil Rights Movement; by 1962, “Flesh” was renamed “Peach." Read More

A Top 10 List of Psychology’s Big Questions, and the Answers

By Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. on April 23, 2013 in Fulfillment at Any Age

Psychologists may be defined as people who answer a question with a question, but as it turns out, we have some pretty intriguing questions ourselves. In fact, we also have answers to many of these questions. This top 10 list of questions shows how, across a wide range of areas, psychology deals with- and helps answer- many of life’s great mysteries. Read More

It Takes Emotion, Not Facts, to Change a Habit

By Richard E. Cytowic, M.D. on April 23, 2013 in The Fallible Mind

Everyone knows what to do to quit smoking or lose weight, yet fails to do it. Likewise, pocketbook reasoning fails to make people change their habits even when it gives them the "more money" that they say they want. The emotional jolt that prods us must be highly personal, and the feeling of what you stand to "lose" must outweigh the present feeling of reward. Read More

Projet Synesthéorie

By Maureen Seaberg on April 22, 2013 in Tasting the Universe

Adding France to the worldwide synesthesia artistic Renaissance... Read More

Extroverts and Introverts, Make Way for the Ambiverts!

By David DiSalvo on April 21, 2013 in Neuronarrative

We like to think that personality is a game of extremes, but the truth is quite the opposite. Read More

The Neural Code and Dreaming

By Patrick McNamara, Ph.D. on April 21, 2013 in Dream Catcher

Advances in machine learning has allowed scientists to build a machine that can learn pairings of neural signatures and sleep images. These machines can now predict dream content based on brain scans obtained during sleep. Read More

The Social Anxiety Spiral

By Barbara Markway, Ph.D. on April 20, 2013 in Shyness Is Nice

Why is the fear of disapproval so chronic and unrelenting? Here are five key factors that keep social anxiety going. Read More

Minds Never Die

By Robert N. McCauley, Ph.D. on April 20, 2013 in Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not

Humans have difficulty imagining their minds' demise. Read More

New Ways to Look at Positive Thinking & Acting

By Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. on April 20, 2013 in Creating in Flow

Though I'm skeptical of self-help books that claim to change my life, a recent one, The As If Principle, uses studies to prove that behavior creates thoughts and feelings. Read More

Who’s More Open-minded, You or Them?

By Dr. Jeremy Sherman on April 20, 2013 in Ambigamy

At impasses, our debates typically turn into fights over who is closed- and open-minded. Can we tell? We think we can, but the most popular tests we employ are fundamentally flawed. Here then are eight popular but flawed tests of open-mindedness and one reliable alternative test. Read More

What Your Clothes Might Be Saying About You

By Ben C. Fletcher, D.Phil., Oxon on April 20, 2013 in Do Something Different

We all make snap judgments about people from the clothes they wear. Are you aware of the subtle effects, and potentially powerful consequences, of your clothing? Read More

"Brain Bursts" Improve Learning and Memory

By Christopher Bergland on April 19, 2013 in The Athlete's Way

Although the genetic link to Alzheimer's disease is strong, neuroscientists published studies this week showing that daily lifestyle choices that stimulate "Brain Bursts" may help protect against Alzheimer’s and that it is possible to reverse memory loss. Read More

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