Dave Munger
dmunger
Posts by this author
December 3, 2007
Pediatrics 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.
December 3, 2007
I'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).…
November 30, 2007
Two 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…
November 28, 2007
I'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…
November 27, 2007
Do 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 "…
November 26, 2007
What 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…
November 24, 2007
That'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…
November 20, 2007
Nothing 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…
November 19, 2007
Suppose 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…
November 16, 2007
There'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…
November 15, 2007
Earlier 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…
November 15, 2007
Have 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…
November 14, 2007
Both 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…
November 13, 2007
Yesterday 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…
November 12, 2007
Bora 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…
November 12, 2007
One 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…
November 9, 2007
Last 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…
November 8, 2007
Regular 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…
November 7, 2007
Update: Thanks to everyone who voted. The contest is over; it has been declared a tie. That's a little odd because at last count, Bad Astronomy was ahead. But it's likely there were trickerations on both sides. Oh well.
Thousands of Google Reader users subscribe to Cognitive Daily's feed via the…
November 7, 2007
Children follow a consistent pattern when they acquire language. Instead of learning the most common words first, they start by learning a disproportionate number of nouns. In the youngest talkers nouns form up to 60 percent of their vocabulary, compared to just 40 percent of the vocabulary of a…
November 6, 2007
Well, we didn't quite reach our goal of raising $6,000 for Donors Choose. However, we were able to raise over $2,000 for students in underfunded schools. Greta and I matched ten percent of the donations, contributing $203 in addition to the funds you donated.
Five of the projects we chose are now…
November 5, 2007
Imagine that, over the course of a conversation with a friend from work, she makes the following two statements:
It's possible that my brother will be coming into town tomorrow
It's possible that our boss knows about the affair you had with the intern
(You might also have to imagine a more…
November 2, 2007
I'll fess up: I leave coffee grounds on the kitchen counter when I make coffee. It bugs Greta, but it doesn't bother me. Meanwhile, it bothers me when Greta leaves her shoes next to the stools in the kitchen, and it drives both of us crazy when the kids pile their backpacks at the bottom of the…
November 1, 2007
This article was originally posted on May 10, 2006
Recent research suggests that one of the reasons that as many as 97 percent of women and 68 percent of men experience food cravings is because of visual representations of food. When we picture food in our minds, our desire for the food increases.…
November 1, 2007
Tomorrow's Casual Fridays study will be about messes: who makes messes, and who cleans them up. In order to do this right I'm going to need a little help from you.
What I need to know are the typical sorts of messes people (including you) create in your home or workplace. Everything from dirty…
October 31, 2007
Does this ever happen to you? You're preparing green beans to be cooked, putting the stems in the trash and the beans in a bowl. Suddenly you realize you've started putting the stems in the bowl. The dinner guests will be arriving soon, and now you have to search through the beans to pull out the…
October 30, 2007
Updated 5:35 p.m. EDT on 10/30/07: Psych for Seniors Part I is now fully funded, with over $400 in donations today! Let's get Part II funded!
There are just two days left in our DonorsChoose Challenge to raise money for kids to learn science. Have you been putting off your donation? You still have…
October 29, 2007
We're pleased to announce that BPR3's Blogging on Peer Reviewed Research icons are now ready to go! Anyone can use these icons to show when they're making a serious post about peer-reviewed research, rather than just linking to a news article or press release.
Within a month, these blog posts will…
October 26, 2007
Here are a few neat optical illusions.
1. Multi-colored X?
(via Grand Illusions)
It appears that the X is two different colors, but it's actually made using just one shade of pink.
(more below)
2. Is this a circle?
(via eluzions)
It is indeed.
3. Some classic illusions embedded in an animated…
October 25, 2007
Take a look at these schematic faces:
Just a few simple changes to the mouth and eyebrows can create faces depicting a wide array of emotions. Face 1, for example, is clearly quite happy, and face 12 is sad. Face 7 is obviously angry. But what about face 4? Embarrassed? Happy but sleepy?
Perhaps…