Dave Munger
dmunger
Posts by this author
April 29, 2009
When you selected the college or university you planned to attend, how did you do it? Did you read narratives offered by college guides? Did you compare relevant statistics such as the student/teacher ratio and percent of students who went on to graduate school? Did you listen to the advice of…
April 27, 2009
Last year's movie Changeling tells the story, from the late 1920s, of a mother whose son is kidnapped. Then, six months later, the police say they've found the boy and return him to his mother, who immediately claims that the boy they returned was not her son. She's then coerced into taking this…
April 24, 2009
On Tuesday I got to see Greta and Nora performing with the Davidson College Symphony Orchestra. As usual, they did a fantastic job playing and the orchestra received a standing ovation. One of the pieces they played was BedÅich Smetana's tone poem "The Moldau," which, as the conductor explained,…
April 23, 2009
Imagine the following scenario:
Matthew is playing with his new kitten late one night. He is wearing only his boxer shorts, and the kitten sometimes walks over his genitals. Eventually, this arouses him, and he begins to rub his bare genitals along the kitten's body. The kitten purrs, and seems to…
April 22, 2009
I was a member of my high school debate team, and I did fairly well, but my partner, Glenn, always got better marks from the judges. Most often, they praised his hand gestures, which were proclaimed to be "expressive" and "informative." One year our topic was arms control, and our opponents were…
April 20, 2009
How many of these faces can you recognize?
Even though these are extremely famous individuals, it's unlikely that you'll be able to identify all four of them, because the pictures were taken early in life, before they became famous. But give it your best shot and try to name them in the comments.…
April 17, 2009
Last week I created a survey that was truly humbling. The goal was to find out if time and money invested in preparing for the SAT and other standardized college admission tests is worth it. The first thing I learned from the study was that Cognitive Daily readers are incredibly smart -- much…
April 16, 2009
Several studies have confirmed this bizarre proposition: If you're taking a test of rote memorization, like words from a list, move your eyes from side to side for about 30 seconds before you start. Really.
Researchers have found, with relative consistency, that if you saccade from left to right…
April 13, 2009
One of the most controversial topics here on Cognitive Daily is whether playing video games can lead to aggressive behavior or violence -- and one of the most dramatic demonstrations of the impact of violent video games was a 2000 study by Craig Anderson and Karen Dill. In that study, participants…
April 10, 2009
It's test-taking season for high-school juniors in the U.S. Most students take the SAT test, which claims to assess mathematical, verbal, and writing ability to help the college/university admissions process. The pressure to succeed on this and other tests has led to the creation of a whole cottage…
April 8, 2009
The Mafa people, who live in the far north of Cameroon in the Mandara mountains, are one of the most culturally isolated groups in the world. Since many of their settlements lack electricity, there are some individuals who have never been exposed to western movies, art, or music.
But the Mafa do…
April 6, 2009
[Originally posted in November, 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…
April 3, 2009
Last week we asked our readers about their reasoning behind decisions they and others make about personal security. Are some of us just paranoid? Or do the decisions we make about security and safety reflect the real threats around us?
Actually, since this is just a casual study, we're not going to…
April 1, 2009
Take a look at this astonishing (and adorable) video demonstrating how a baby acquires object permanence.
At 6 months old, the baby can see and reach for an object, but as soon as it is hidden, she doesn't seem to realize it's there. The baby is interested and excited by the objects, but when they…
March 31, 2009
Take another look at this picture of the Rokeby Venus from last week's post on mirrors in art:
Now, imagine you're actually in the room with Venus, as depicted in this painting. You suspend your astonishment long enough to conduct a quick test of the principle of how a flat mirror works. Consider…
March 27, 2009
Most of us believe that the things we do to stay safe make a lot of sense. But some other people clearly are being unreasonably careful. One might even call them "paranoid." But is there a general consensus about how to stay safe in the modern world? Or does it depend -- on your age, where you live…
March 27, 2009
Here's a bonus bit of analysis from last week's Casual Fridays study. In addition to asking respondents how familiar they were with our selection of stories, we also asked them to describe some detail of the story that was independently verifiable, like how the story ended.
The reason we did this…
March 26, 2009
The Rokeby Venus by Diego Velázquez is a good example of a very common illusion in many paintings:
Most viewers would say this picture depicts a woman viewing her own reflection in a mirror. But based on the orientation of the mirror, it's actually physically impossible for her to see her own…
March 23, 2009
Last week I mentioned that Greta had been discussing a study with her class that was related to the fable of the Fox and the Grapes. When most of her students hadn't heard the story, it provided the opportunity for a lengthy aside: our Casual Fridays study about which stories people had and hadn't…
March 20, 2009
Last week's Casual Fridays study was inspired by an event in Greta's classroom. She had assumed that most of her students would be familiar with the story of the Fox and the Grapes, which goes as follows:
ONE hot summer's day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes…
March 19, 2009
Suppose you're running a small organization with five motor vehicles used by your staff and you want to replace them with more fuel-efficient versions, both to save money and reduce your organization's carbon footprint. Each vehicle travels 10,000 miles a year. Based on your budget and the…
March 18, 2009
Take a look at these two pictures of the Mona Lisa:
They're derived from a series of images of the famous painting that had been obscured by random noise filters (like when your old analog TV wasn't getting a signal), like this:
Each picture appears to have a slightly different facial expression…
March 16, 2009
Attentional blink is a fascinating phenomenon that occurs when we see images, words, or numbers presented in a rapid sequence. As images flash by at about one every tenth of a second, you're asked to look for two in particular. If you were looking for numbers in a sequence of letters, the sequence…
March 13, 2009
In honor of Pi Day, Greta is baking one of our favorite Chicago-style pizzas. This is our reconstruction of the pizza we ate as undergraduates at the University of Chicago. We spent a lot of time hanging out at a pizza place that would later become famous as one of Barack Obama's favorite haunts:…
March 13, 2009
Last week Greta was telling her class about a study that related to a well-known story. She started off the discussion with a reference to the story, indicating that "of course you all have heard the story of _______" (I can't tell you the name of the story now because it's the subject of our study…
March 11, 2009
There's been a ton of research on the impact of working memory: its importance in learning, its effect on math skills, and its relationship to other mental abilities. Yesterday's entry on The Wild Side discusses working memory's relationship with IQ. It's been shown that adults can improve working…
March 6, 2009
Last week we asked readers to rate two hypothetical job candidates for a communications assistant position in a large neuroscience lab. The task seemed to pit education against experience. Everyone saw some version of these two resumes:
(click for a larger image)
Emily was Magna Cum Laude at…
March 6, 2009
After taking a first look at last week's survey responses, I realize there's one more question I should have asked. So if you have a couple minutes, whether or not you participated last week, could you respond quickly to this short survey? You'll just be asked to look at two resumes and answer two…
March 5, 2009
A few years ago we discussed a fascinating study which appeared to show that the main reason we stop eating at the end of a meal isn't because we "feel" full. Instead, we simply see that we've finished eating the food in front of us, so we stop. We don't eat more an hour later because we remember…
March 4, 2009
What's your first reaction on seeing this picture of Nora? Are you excited because she appears to be excited? Or do you react to her intent? Perhaps you think she's cute, or maybe even sarcastic. Ultimately you might have all of those reactions.
There's no doubt we're exceptionally fast at…