Dave Munger
dmunger
Posts by this author
May 28, 2008
Inspired by this post, we've decided to devote a week to the analysis of studies from the history of psychology.
Today we consider the work of Millicent Washburn Shinn, one of the first women admitted to the University of California, Berkeley (in 1874), and the first to earn a Ph.D. there. In 1890…
May 28, 2008
The biweekly neuroscience / psychology carnival Encephalon is now live over at the Neurocritic. There are tons of great posts but one of my favorites has to be this one: Would you vaccinate your kids against drugs?
May 27, 2008
Inspired by this post, we've decided to devote a week to the analysis of studies from the history of psychology.
Today's post discusses a small fraction of the work done by Hermann Ebbinghaus, a pioneer in the study of memory. Ebbinghaus spent two excruciating year-long periods (1879-80 and 1883-84…
May 24, 2008
Quick, solve this problem
3 + 5 * 7 = ?
If you still recall high school algebra, you'll remember that you should be doing the multiplication problem first. So the answer would be 35 + 3, or 38. But if you just punch the numbers into your calculator (or if you haven't had occasion to do algebra…
May 24, 2008
Negative stereotypes about Blacks in the U.S. have declined dramatically since the 1930s -- practically no White person to will say that Blacks are lazy, or superstitious, or many other stereotypes, when these views were common 80 years ago.
Yet huge racial disparities still exist infant…
May 23, 2008
Just a few quick notes about Michael Frese's talk, "Learning from Errors by Individuals and Organizations."
Frese gives a rule: "You make about 3-4 errors per hour no matter what you're doing."
If errors are so ubiquitous, maybe it makes more sense to train people to deal with errors, rather than…
May 23, 2008
This morning I attended a session on the Science of Learning, and heard a bunch of great talks.
I was especially impressed by "There's Nothing so Practical as a Good Theory," by Robert Seigler.
Siegler discussed his work with children's learning of the number line. As children get older, they…
May 22, 2008
As I write this, Greta and I are on the plane to Chicago, to attend this year's Association for Psychological Science convention. We'll be participating in a symposium on Sunday, talking about Cognitive Daily and ResearchBlogging.org, but until then, we'll be attending other sessions and reporting…
May 20, 2008
How do you raise "good kids"? It's one of the questions that plagues parents even before their kids are born. Although everyone's child can't be above average, we all want our kids to be nice to others, to "get along" in the world. But kids don't necessarily cooperate. Babies scream, pull hair,…
May 16, 2008
Greta and I have very different approaches to technology. I like to read all the latest technology news and learn about new products; she just buys the products she needs. That's not to say she doesn't like technology: she has a lab full of computers and uses them extensively in her research. We've…
May 15, 2008
This morning I went into the darkest room in our house (the kids' bathroom), closed the door, and turned off the lights for 5 minutes. There was enough light coming in through the crack in the door that after a minute or two I could begin to make out shapes in the room: A towel rack, the shower…
May 13, 2008
Jim was an early, confident walker. Greta likes to say that he didn't learn to walk, he went straight to running. By the time he was about 16 months old, he could already outrun his already-pregnant mother.
Nora, on the other hand, was a late, tentative walker. She took her first steps at around…
May 12, 2008
We're pretty good at remembering objects in a complex scene. We can even remember those objects when we move to a different location. However, the research so far has found that memory for the original view is a little better than memory when we've moved to a different location. Much of that…
May 10, 2008
Things got a little crazy yesterday, with Greta headed off to VSS and the kids needing to be at three different places at once, so I'm presenting this week's Casual Friday results on Saturday.
Last week we asked our readers who their most important mentors were. We didn't mention it at the time,…
May 8, 2008
Anton races home at speeds well in excess of the speed limit. He's rushing to beat his parents home so that he can hide their anniversary present so it will be a surprise. Suddenly, he hits a slick patch and runs his car off the road an into a tree. He's okay, but the car is totaled and his parent'…
May 7, 2008
Ask almost anyone whether willfully deceiving another person -- lying -- is wrong, and they'll say it is. But probe a little deeper and most people will say there are some instances where lying is okay: lying to prevent a crime or an injustice is acceptable, just not lying for personal gain.…
May 5, 2008
If you've had a lot of musical training, you can probably tell the difference between a major and minor key. If you haven't had much training, even after having the difference explained to you, you're still not likely to be able to make that determination. Listen the following clip. It plays the…
May 5, 2008
Last week's post on perceptual restoration in toddlers brought a lot of speculation from commenters. To answer some of the questions, I thought I'd elaborate a bit here on the phenomenon and how I created the demo.
First, here's the original recording again, with me saying "dinosaur" three times:…
May 2, 2008
This week's Casual Friday is about mentors. We're curious who constitutes the most important influence on our readers, and whether we can identify any patterns in the results. So we've created a brief study that we hope will answer our questions. Simple as that.
Click here to participate
There are…
May 1, 2008
One of the amazing things about learning language is that children rarely hear language sounds in ideal acoustic environments. Maybe other people are talking in the background, or the dishwasher is running, or the TV is on. Yet somehow children they learn words just the same. By the time we're…
April 30, 2008
The man behind the amazing Contrast Asynchrony illusion has started a blog! Arthur Shapiro tells me he has a backlog of literally thousands of illusions. He promises to offer a new illusion every week, along with an explanation of the science behind it. Here's a preview of this week's illusion:…
April 29, 2008
Humans are exceptionally good at recognizing faces they've seen before. It doesn't take much study to accurately recall whether or not you've seen a particular face. However, this pattern breaks down when faces come from unfamiliar races. A white person who lives primarily among other whites will…
April 28, 2008
Thank you for "choosing" to read Encephalon #44 here at Cognitive Daily. Every two weeks, Encephalon "selects" the best psychology and neuroscience blog posts from around the blogosphere, giving readers the chance to "decide" which ones they'd like to investigate further.
Unfortunately for all…
April 27, 2008
CogDaily will be hosting Encephalon tomorrow. There's still time to make your submissions -- just send an email to encephalon.host -- @ -- gmail -- . -- com (remove dashes).
We should be able to include any submissions received before 9 a.m. tomorrow.
April 26, 2008
There's a fun little test over at the BBC: Spot the fake smile (via Green Ideas).
Try to spot the difference between fake smiles and real smiles! I got 17 out of 20. It helps to understand the research about authentic smiles.
Update: Now I'm curious. I wonder if our readers are really that good, or…
April 25, 2008
Last week's Casual Friday study was all about money. The basic question was simply what it means to be rich -- how much income and net worth does it take before you consider someone to be wealthy? We received over 1,000 responses. Perhaps our most interesting finding was simply the diversity of…
April 24, 2008
Although not all games are equal, there's plenty of evidence that playing some violent video games can cause aggressive real-world behavior. Sites like addictinggames.com offer popular games whose sole point is to play the role of a hit-man or even to torture animals. Over 85 percent of video games…
April 24, 2008
ScienceBlogs.de, our German counterpart, is featuring an English-language interview with Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel:
Pertinent to Tuesday's post, he discusses free will, and also drug treatment for behavior disorders, the unification of the sciences, and Sigmund Freud.
April 22, 2008
Do we have free will? While some may see the question as trivial, it's a challenging topic that has been actively debated for centuries. Whether or not you believe a god is involved, a case can be made that free will is simply an illusion, and that every "decision" we make is completely controlled…
April 21, 2008
I know CogDaily is supposed to be a psychology web site, but sometimes, you have a question you simply must know the answer to.
I frequently need to boil a mug of water, and I've often wondered what the most energy-efficient method is. Is it the microwave, or the good-old-fashioned teakettle on the…