mixingmemory | June 23, 2006Psychological essentialism is the belief that kinds have an underlying, probably unseen essence that makes them what they are. We may, for example, believe that tigers have an underlying essence that gives them their stripes and makes them carnivores. We could represent that essence as a particular underlying feature of tigers, such as their genetic makeup, or we could believe that such an essence exists without having any ideas about what it might be. Whether we know what the essence of a particular kind might be doesn't matter. We are psychological essentialists about a particular kind if…
mixingmemory | June 20, 2006I've got it! I know how we can test conceptual metaphor theory in the domain of time. Yesterday I argued that the problem with the experiments published so far is that it's impossible to distinguish mere lexical priming (priming spatial meanings of the terms, which influences subsequent temporal reasoning) from conceptual priming due to metaphorical mappings between time and space. As I was walking across campus today, I came up with an idea. Now, this idea is in its infancy, but I bet some of you can help me with it. Of course, I don't actually plan on running this experiment, because coming…
mixingmemory | June 20, 2006I've said it before, and I'll say it again: conceptual metaphor theory sucks. Why does it suck? Well, because there's no experimental evidence for it (and plenty of evidence against it). Except, that is, in one domain: time. Specifically, the work of Lera Boroditsky, along with Dedre Gentner and her colleagues, has provided interesting demonstrations of the influence of the way we talk about space on the way we conceptualize time. I've talked about their work before, and now Dave's talking about Gentner's work over at Cognitive Daily, so I won't go into a lot of detail. Instead, I'll give you…
mixingmemory | June 19, 2006First, the link. This probably won't be of interest to most of you, but some might like this: the published version of Habermas' lecture titled "Religion in the Public Sphere". Here's Habermas' outline of the lecture (from p. 3-4):I would like first of all to bring to mind the liberal premises of the constitutional state and the consequences which John Rawls's conception of the public use of reason has on the ethics of citizenship (2). I shall then go on to treat the most important objections to this rather restrictive idea of the political role of religion (3). Through a critical discussion…
mixingmemory | June 18, 2006In yesterday's post on afterimages and aftereffects, I mentioned that demonstrations of neural adaptation for a particular feature (in the post, I used the examples of color and motion) is generally taken as evidence of the existence of specific neurons or groups of neurons that detect/process that feature. With motion or color, which are very basic features of the visual environment, this isn't very surprising, but in this post, I'm going to talk about some recent research demonstrating neural adaptation for a much more complex and surprising feature. But first, a little background on…
mixingmemory | June 17, 2006Most of you have probably seen this before, but if you haven't, look at the flag for 30 seconds (if it doesn't work with 30, try 60), and then look at the white space underneath it.
You should see a red, white, and blue flag when you look at the white space. That is a color afterimage.
Again, most of you probably know how this works, but just in case you don't, I'll briefly explain it. As I'm sure you know, when light comes through the iris, it is projected onto the retina by the lens. The retina is covered with photoreceptors, which come in two types, rods and cones. Photoreceptors are…
mixingmemory | June 16, 2006A few weeks ago, I wrote a post that was pretty critical of the current state of Experimental Philosophy. In the post, I focused on the work of Joshua Knobe, not because his work is the worst Experimental Philosophy has to offer, but because it is, in my mind, the best by far. Yesterday on the Experimental Philosophy blog, David Pizarro linked to a manuscript he's writing with Knobe and Paul Bloom that demonstrates quite well why I think this, and furthermore provides a very good example of what Experimental Philosophy can be when it closely aligns itself with scientific psychology.
The…
mixingmemory | June 14, 2006False memory research has been very popular over the last several years, in part because of its connection to one of the more contentious debates in cognitive science: the recovered memories debate. I remember attending a poster session at a conference a couple years ago, and an entire room was filled with posters on false memory experiments. The vast majority of the experiments on false memory aren't the least bit interesting, because they tell us very little about memory, or anything else for that matter, and they all use variants of the same two experimental paradigms. As you can probably…
mixingmemory | June 12, 2006Last time I asked for requests, a couple readers suggested that I write about the theory-theory. I always have mixed feelings about writing about theory-theory. On the one hand, I'm a big theory-theory fan, so I like to spread the good word, but on the other hand, theory-theory is notoriously difficult to describe, so I'm also a little reticent. So it's taken me a while to get to it. The theory-theory began as a theory of concepts, loosely (or at least opaquely) described in a paper by Greg Murphy and Doug Medin titled "The Role of Theories in Conceptual Coherence"1. Bot the gist of and…
mixingmemory | June 11, 2006Two new neuroscience carnivals are starting up at the same time. First, there's the one initiated by Science Bloggers, called "The Synapse," which you can read about here. The first edition is scheduled for June 25. The second, initiated by The Neurophilosopher, is called "Encephalon" and has its own webpage here. Its first edition will be posted on July 1. They both seem to have been created independently on the same day. What are the odds of that?
At first, I wondered about the wisdom of having two carnivals on the same subject, but when I thought about it more, I decided this might be a…
mixingmemory | June 11, 2006As you all know, I love visual illusions, and this may be one of my favorites. This picture is pretty small (go here for a bigger version), but you should be able to figure out what's going on by watching it for a moment. Notice that as the face flips over, you briefly see the concave surface of the back or inside of the mask, but it quickly switches back to a convex, upside-down mask. That's not because the image changes, though. Instead, your brain decides that faces can't be hollow, so it changes it for you. This is called depth inversion, or the "hollow face illusion." Interestingly,…
mixingmemory | June 10, 2006Anyone who's ever taken a bite of a Reese's Peanut butter Eggs that are only sold during the Easter season knows that chocolate is a mood enhancer, but in case you thought it might just be the wonderful taste, there is actual empirical evidence that chocolate can elevate your mood. Specifically, eating chocolate appears to make individuals suffering from atypical depression and seasonal affective disorder (SAD) feel better. As a result, chocolate and carbohydrate cravings are common in atypical depression and SAD, perhaps as a form of self-medication1. Several hypotheses have been offered to…
mixingmemory | June 9, 2006This week's (and my first) "Ask a Science Blogger" question comes from a Science Blogs reader named Jake Bryan (aka chezjake). He asks:
Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?
The answer is all of them. I'm an information junky, so I'd love to study just about everything. Of course, my less-than-stellar math abilities would make theoretical physics pretty difficult, but a guy can dream, right? But if I'm going to give a real answer, the choice would have to boil down to either…
mixingmemory | June 9, 2006So, I was trying to think of new things to do with the new blog, and the first idea that crossed my mind was writing book reviews. Then I realized there was a problem: I don't read that many cognitive science books (fewer than one a month). The reason is that, as a friend always says, you can say anything you want in a book (just ask Steven Pinker!). So it's usually better to stick with the peer-reviewed literature, and read the occasional edited book when you want to find a good introduction to a particular topic.
Then I thought to myself, this is all the more reason to do book reviews! I…
mixingmemory | June 9, 2006Hello, Science Blogs readers. Many of you may be new to Mixing Memory, so I thought that for the first post at the new site, I would introduce myself a little. By a little, I mean a very little, because in case you hadn't noticed, I blog anonymously. Maybe that will change someday, but for the moment, I feel that I have good reasons for doing so. Here's what I can tell you: I'm a cognitive psychologist who studies a wide range of higher-order stuff (i.e., I don't do vision). For the cognitive science initiates among you, I work mostly within the symbolic tradition. That doesn't mean that I…