For questions focusing on the interaction of many internal mental processes. If your question involves only one of memory, attention, language, decision-making, or perception then use the associated specialized tag instead of cognitive-psychology.
33
votes
3answers
2k views
Does writing something down help memorize it?
This is a question inspired by this recent question on the Chinese Language & Usage website.
Someone asked why they needed to learn how to write Chinese characters, since today we mostly use ...
24
votes
1answer
907 views
By learning to read and write upside down, what did I do to myself?
If you've ever read Encyclopedia Brown books, you'll be familiar with the backwards writing in the back of the book that explains the solution to the case.
When I was in my mid-late teens (I don't ...
18
votes
1answer
935 views
What makes people easily subscribe to pseudoscientific theories?
There are many theories/disciplines that have been categorized as Pseudoscience in the Scientific community.
The list includes many things that are regularly even quoted in media like Graphology, ...
17
votes
3answers
3k views
Does evidence support Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?
Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs (shown below) is a popular concept and is often taught in basic psychology courses, and often less objectively taught in Business and Marketing courses.
A common problem ...
13
votes
5answers
590 views
What is the current “accepted” science behind dream interpretation?
I'm doing some casual reading about dream interpretation (meaning I'm reading the wikipedia entry) and the article mentions that there are several ways of thinking about dreams from a psychological ...
13
votes
3answers
894 views
Why do you sometimes write down one word while actually intending to write another?
I've caught myself writing (typing) "possible" instead of "possibly" a few times over the past few days, while I do intend to write "possibly". Only upon rereading the sentence I notice my mistake.
...
12
votes
1answer
41k views
How valid is Lumosity's Brain Performance Index and what normative information is available?
Background
There is a test called Lumosity's Brain Performance Index.
A sample profile of scores might be:
...
12
votes
1answer
175 views
What factors improve mood and increase cognitive functioning when people wake up?
I'm a software engineer doing some research in order to figure out if developing some applications are worth the effort. This work is applied to computational devices including mobile devices and even ...
11
votes
4answers
498 views
Why are people inclined to praise or fear the unknown?
Human beings are inclined to "praise" the unknown, and are often afraid of the unknown. This inclination has led to the creation of mythology and many gods. To this date we are still carrying this ...
10
votes
1answer
404 views
How is a young child able to learn language so easily?
It's a well known fact that the earlier children are exposed to languages the better, as young children have a better ability to learn new languages than adults.
Why is this?
At what age does a ...
10
votes
1answer
382 views
Effect of words highlighting on reading comprehension
I'm interested if there are studies dealing with text understanding and POS (part of speech) coloring, or coloring syntactic/semantic information. The studies should solve the questions like:
Which ...
10
votes
1answer
197 views
Is Behaviorism incompatible with Cognitive Psychology?
Both disciplines have historically been at each other's throats, and Radical Behaviorists like B.F. Skinner often completely reject cognitive psychology at a philosophical level.
It seems that today ...
10
votes
2answers
581 views
Motivation vs Goal Oriented Behavior
What's the difference between these two terms when used in the context of cognitive psychology? To the best of my knowledge, research on 'Goal Oriented Behavior' refers to the subset of motivation ...
10
votes
1answer
234 views
Under what conditions does 60hz video produce visual artifacts?
There are some important thresholds of frame rate in video playback that effect whether or not animation appears fluid. This wikipedia page about Visible Frame Rate suggests that a framerate of 60 ...
9
votes
4answers
934 views
Why is recognition easier than recall?
The main ways of memory retrieval are recognition and recall.
Why has it been found that recognition is "easier" to perform, meaning it is usually faster or is more likely to yield an accurate ...
9
votes
3answers
195 views
How can I find open access journals for cognitive science research?
What open access journals that publish research in cognitive science/psychology exist?
Apart from PLOS ONE, are there any other open access journals that publish research in cognitive ...
9
votes
2answers
302 views
Does any evidence show that Smartphone users have poorer memory?
An ages old complaint is that new technology harms memory. Why remember something when you can look it up?
In a course on Human Memory I distinctly recall an interesting discussion on phones and ...
9
votes
2answers
112 views
Do people estimate combined probabilities differently to uncombined ones?
Suppose, somebody has to estimate the likelihood of one of the following events (or has to estimate which event is more likely):
A coin is tossed six times and each time the result is heads. ...
9
votes
1answer
208 views
What are biological primary mathematical skills?
In doing a bit of background reading for this question I came across a section in the book Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind on page 602 stating:
There are no sex-related differences ...
9
votes
1answer
108 views
When is higher confidence predictive of less accuracy?
Normally, when an individual is more confident in a particular response (e.g., memory decision, general knowledge answer), he or she is also more likely to be accurate. There are also studies in which ...
9
votes
1answer
127 views
Predicting how long a task will take
As a software engineer I have always struggled with predicting how long a project would take by underestimating and I have noticed that all of my colleagues have the same problem.
In this video at ...
9
votes
1answer
298 views
Why people choose “boring” colors for new cars?
I've been interested in this question for a few years, sorry if this is not the right place to ask it.
As I've been driving around the US for the last few years, I noticed that some community parking ...
9
votes
1answer
194 views
Cognitive explanation of why beta blockers are effective for anxiety
Beta blockers essentially reduce physical effects of anxiety and panic disorder, but there is no proof that there is a direct effect on anxiety. Some scientists believe there is an indirect effect.
...
9
votes
1answer
145 views
Are intelligence scores correlated with detection of second stimulus in an Attentional Blink test?
Definitions
Attentional Blink: An attentional blink is a phenomenon where when presented with rapid visual stimuli if you are asked to track two particular stimuli you will fail to notice the second ...
9
votes
0answers
92 views
Do cultures differ in the perception of emotions from body expression?
In their classic study, Ekman and Friesen (1971) identified seven facial expressions recognised by people universally across all cultures as depicting certain emotions: happiness, sadness, surprise, ...
8
votes
2answers
160 views
Bias by which we tend to accept vague descriptions of ourselves
There's an effective strategy employed by horoscopes and "psychics" where they say vague statements like "You like being with friends but you value your time alone"; statements that basically "cover ...
8
votes
3answers
179 views
Math or Physics: Which is the more relevant background to enter Cognitive Sciences and Psychology? [closed]
What would be a more suitable background to enter cognitive sciences, mathematical psychology, and study of emotions? I have the option of taking a Integrated Masters Degree in Mathematical Sciences, ...
8
votes
2answers
205 views
How does the brain act on the information gained via eye saccades?
I've often heard that the process of saccading can be described as a statistical sampling technique. Specifically, the standard textbook definition of the function of saccades seems to be that the ...
8
votes
2answers
165 views
Is it possible to run multiple thought processes concurrently?
For example, let's say I have a friend sprinting a 50m distance and that friend wants me to time the race, but I don't have a stopwatch so I have to count "manually". Can I count while simultaneously ...
8
votes
3answers
232 views
Is it possible to create a false memory by trying to remember something that eludes you?
Sometimes I have difficulty remembering the specifics of an event, specifically if I'm tired or possibly have recently consumed alcohol. A close friend of mine has gotten me in the habit of ...
8
votes
1answer
79 views
What happens when a person “imagines” how food could taste like just from looking at it?
What processes are triggered by imagining the taste of food (let's assume it's sealed so that its smell doesn't reach the test subject's nose) only by looking at it, based on memories of food with ...
8
votes
1answer
124 views
Why do participants prefer to give input values that are “round numbers”?
Background
I have just been analysing some data where participants attempt to control a dynamic system with integer numeric inputs between 0 and 100. I've noticed that there is a general tendency for ...
8
votes
1answer
218 views
Do children show top-down processing as much as adults do?
There has been much research into how top-down processing works, such as the suggestibility of patients to mishear lyrics based on what the patients are told they are.
Is there any research to show ...
8
votes
1answer
107 views
Problem understanding the calculation of normative (Bayesian) base rates
I am having trouble understanding Table 1 of Gigerenzer, Hell, and Blank (1988, PDF, table on page 516):
Focusing on the Jack row, it is stated that the mean probabilities of Jack being an engineer ...
8
votes
1answer
90 views
Could Fitts Law be used to measure difficulty in platform genre games?
I've been learning about Fitts' law and am wondering if it's applicable to measuring the difficulty of platform type games where the challenge is to hit the platforms?
If so, this could be used to ...
8
votes
1answer
216 views
What are the current suggested models for Primacy Effect in memory recall or personality impression?
What are the current suggested normative, mechanistic or phenomenological models for explaining primacy effect as was observed by Solomon Asch (1946) on personality impression, list-of-words memory ...
8
votes
1answer
221 views
Attention Theory: is it impossible to avoid distraction?
I remember reading at some point in the literature that humans are unable to avoid distraction from a certain primary task if this task isn't using up close to all available 'resources' - basically ...
7
votes
4answers
162 views
Why is it easier to remember the correct response for problems with many options rather than just two?
Sometimes it seems easier, at least for me, to remember an answer, when there are more than 2 options to choose from.
For example, I easily remember my pin (14 bit), but hardly the lighter switch (up ...
7
votes
2answers
246 views
What term describes people that cannot feel pain?
I remember a case study about a girl who could not feel pain due to lacking certain somatosensory receptors; she went on to burn herself on a radiator because she could not feel her flesh burning and ...
7
votes
3answers
184 views
What psychological factors account for code readability?
Readability is often intuitively synthesized. If you see some piece of code, you just know whether it is readable or not. But what are actual psychological, scientific explanations for this?
There ...
7
votes
2answers
148 views
What are the appraisals tendencies for fear and anger?
I understand the actions tendencies for fear and anger. For example: We might verbally insult someone when we are angry. We might feel like running away when we are afraid.
According to appraisal ...
7
votes
1answer
83 views
Are there shapes defined by 3 (or more) generative parameters whose mapping to psychological similarity space is known?
I am trying to generate 4 shapes that are equidistant in psychological similarity space - meaning that they are all equally discriminable from one another - which differ in 3 parameters, such that ...
7
votes
2answers
88 views
What neural mechanism explains the tendency to visually attend to the whole scene before attending to details?
I have the intuition that human vision first attends to large-scale objects and then small-scale details. Is there any mechanism in the visual cortex that will explain this phenomenon? Is there a ...
7
votes
1answer
65 views
How repeatable are cognitive science findings within the same individual?
Thanks to this website, I've seen a number of papers and scholarly articles that deal with cognition. I'm interested in how repeatable the findings are that are discovered as a result of experiments.
...
7
votes
1answer
122 views
Can psychosomatic reactions be completely unconcious?
I had always considered that psychosomatic reactions, such as Psychogenic pain, while "real" to the person experiencing them, would be a concious reaction at some level. That is to say, if the person ...
7
votes
1answer
116 views
Any attempts at testing or modeling the 'cognitive conception' of language?
For those unfamiliar, the 'cognitive conception of language' refers to a claim made by some theorists that, in the words of Carruthers:
"besides its obvious communicative functions, language also ...
7
votes
1answer
107 views
What is the effect of merely expecting an interruption on performance?
There's a lot of research about how interruptions affect cognitive performance.
Are there any studies that have looked at the effect of merely expecting to be interrupted (withou being actually ...
7
votes
1answer
125 views
What research has modelled the difficulty of mental mathematical calculation?
I posted this also on mathoverflow.
What research has modelled the difficulty of evaluating a formula mentally (for your average, numerate, person, not a trained mental calculator)?
For instance, ...
7
votes
0answers
68 views
Is the theory of Information Metabolism a reasonable scientific theory?
Background
I have been checking out various personality typing assessments lately when I came across a Personality typing system known as Socionics which aims at explaining relationships between ...
7
votes
0answers
214 views
How much sleep is required to restore maximum cognitive functioning?
Background: Recently I have really messed up my sleep schedule due to my procrastination. The internet points to some very basic conclusions but I would like to see actual experiments on effects of ...
