dmunger

Last week we asked readers to tell us under what circumstances they would be likely to use a public restroom reserved for the other gender. We've all been in the situation where there's a long line for one restroom and a very short or non-existent line for the other (although this tends to happen…

As a young child, my family was poor and we had to go to a public clinic for dental work. Since we were being seen by dental students, often the process was painful and took much longer than it should have. It was a tremendous relief when my uncle opened a swanky dental practice with a lake view,…

Every year about this time, we start thinking about an exciting television event: the Super Bowl. I'm excited because it's the biggest football game of the year. The rest of the family just likes to watch the commercials. No doubt, some of those commercials are hilarious, and there's often more…

Baby sign language is all the rage these days. Upscale day-care centers and nanny services promote it as a better way of understanding what babies want. Babies have been known to reliably produce signs as young as 5.5 months, and studies have shown that they reliably produce signs significantly…

Yesterday on our way back from a vacation in New York, we stopped to get coffee and use the bathroom. There was a long line at the women's room, and a much shorter line at the men's restroom. These were both one-seat restrooms with locks on the door. A man in line for the men's room gallantly…

[This entry was originally posted in April 2007] The Beck effect is difficult to replicate online, because it involves testing reaction times. However, I think I've figured out a way to approximate the effect. This movie (Quicktime required) will show you how it works. Just follow the directions on…

[This article was originally posted in February, 2007] The setting was an integrated suburban middle school: nearly evenly divided between black and white students. As is the case in many schools, white students outperformed black students both in grades and test scores. But how much of this…

[Originally posted in December, 2006] So it's December 22, and you are one of the few people who hasn't already bagged out of work to get ready for the holidays. You've been absolutely deluged -- swamped with work -- the entire month of December. You've hardly had time to think about Christmas, let…

There's a fair bit of evidence that playing games can enhance your cognitive ability and prevent decline as we age. Or at least that's the excuse I use when I take a few minutes off during the course of the workday to play a game or two. Here are some of my current favorites: Str8ts. This game…

Two summers ago in Paris, I was astounded at the volume of traffic that somehow managed to negotiate the traffic circle at the Arc de Triomphe without incident. Here's the (poor quality) video I made to document traffic flow there: I learned to drive in my 20s in New York City. Like Paris, New…

Last week's Casual Fridays study was inspired by my (incorrect) observation that the latest beta version of Firefox always displays tabs. (Actually, while it defaults to that setting, it's possible to disable it.) When I pointed this out on Twitter, the reaction was one of astonished disbelief that…

[This is our synchroblogging post in honor of PLoS ONE's second birthday. Why not write your own?] Ever wonder whether it's better to study all night before a big exam, or to get a good night's sleep, but maybe not have a chance to go over all the material? We know that memory consolidation can…

Earlier today we asked readers to imagine an angry face. Then, in a surprise poll, we asked what gender the face was. So far our results match those of a study led by D. Vaughn Becker: over three-fourths of the responses were "male." In the published study, there was no difference in the response…

Think about an angry face. Make a picture of it in your mind. Then, answer the poll below. I'll add in a bit of extra space here so you don't see the poll before you picture an angry face. Imagine an angry face. What gender is it? ( polls) Thanks! We'll have more discussion about this poll,…

When I was 12 years old, I sometimes got to ride the train from Seattle to my aunt's house in Portland. Staring at the countryside flashing past the train window, it seemed to me that the landscape was rotating in a giant circle: Nearby objects flashed past the train as expected -- they appeared to…

A few days ago after downloading the latest beta version of the FireFox web browser, I posted what I thought was an innocuous complaint on Twitter: The software assumes you will always have multiple web pages open. Even if you're only reading one web page, the browser puts it in a tab, thus taking…

Yesterday's post showed that our memory for objects depends on the background information available when we first see the object: If you see a toy in a room, you remember it better later if you see it again in the room. Being in the same position in a blank picture of the room doesn't help. So what…

PLoS ONE turns two this month, and to celebrate, they're partnering with ResearchBlogging.org to make history on December 18. On that day, we're asking bloggers to write about one of the thousands of articles that have appeared on PLoS ONE in the past two years, in a synchroblogging event of epic…

Change blindness is a truly remarkable phenomenon. There are so many ways that the human perceptual system can be tricked into missing a change that appears right before our eyes, that it's sometimes astonishing that we aren't constantly running into walls or misplacing the basics of life -- our…

The New York Times has an interesting article about the latest international math/science testing. American kids actually fared pretty well, behind just a few other countries. More focused testing on individual states puts Massachusetts kids behind only Taiwan and Singapore. Encephalon is up at…

What you remember about your life is almost certainly not accurate. Adults have very few memories before age five, and there is a systematic bias to the memories most people have for the rest of their lives. We are more likely to remember details about positive events like marriage and having…

The last place I lived before small-town Davidson, North Carolina, was New York City. One thing that seemed extremely different to me when I moved from New York to Davidson was the behavior of pedestrians and drivers. In New York, drivers honk at you at a stoplight to remind you that the light's…

Can you hear colors? Can you see sounds? Do words have colors or images associated with them? It may sound impossible, but there are many documented cases of people who experience all these things. We've discussed it before on Cognitive Daily, and even found some limited evidence of similar…

We can quickly spot a face staring at us in a crowd. We can do this much quicker, for example, than we can determine that no one is staring at us, as this movie demonstrates. A grid of 100 pictures of Greta will be flashed for about 1/3 of a second. Can you spot the photos where she's looking at…

Greta walks a mile to work every day. I work at home, so I don't walk around town much. I'm much more likely to be driving down the street where we live than walking on it. Does this affect our attitude towards pedestrians when we drive? Greta and I have also both noticed that there are certain…

(This entry was originally posted in May, 2006) We've discussed implicit attitudes on Cognitive Daily before, but never in the context of food. The standard implicit attitude task asks you to identify items belonging to two different categories. Consider the following lists. Use your mouse to click…

Boundary extension is a phenomenon we've discussed a lot on Cognitive Daily. It's typically described as a memory error: We remember scenes as having bigger boundaries than what we originally saw. Take a look at these two pictures of Jim: If you only saw picture A by itself, then later you'd…

Last week we wondered how having kids affects our own childhood memories. In many ways, our kids remind us of our own childhood, allowing us to relive our favorite memories. But kids also distract us by being so adorable (or not so adorable), and with new memories that might become more prominent…

Here are the four posts that I selected to nominate for Open Laboratory 2008, the collection of the best science blog posts of the year: Toddlers play with impossibly small toys as if they're the real thing Will video games solve sex-discrimination in science? How to make your eye feel like it's…

A Necker cube is bi-stable figure, meaning that it can be perceived as two different three-dimensional objects, depending on how you look at it: Cube A is ambiguous -- the true Necker cube. Cube B and cube C show the two ways you can perceive the Necker cube: either the bottom of the cube is in…