Description: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (both psychologists) won the Nobel Prize in economics for their work on biases in human decision making in 2002. More recently, Kahneman wrote a book entitled Thinking, Fast and Slow in which he describes, in detail, the different systems we use when we are thinking quickly and “instinctively” as… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Memory
Reactivating Stem Cells: Possbile Key to Treating Neurodegenerative Disorders
Description: When I first started teaching introductory psychology a few decades ago I used to tell students that they had most of the largest number of brain neurons they would ever have at the time they were born. After their birth the number of brain cells dropped due to things like attrition and pruning (neurons… Read more »
Investigator Lies and False Confessions: A Deeper Look
Description: Sometimes an individual who has confessed to a crime recants or withdraws their confession. What comes to mind when you read that sentence? Knowing nothing else about an individual case, what would you estimate is the likelihood that the person recanting a confession is actually guilty of what they origin ally confessed to? Now… Read more »
Psychology of COVID-19: Contact Tracing and Human Memory
Description: Think back over the past 10 days and then itemize everything you did, everywhere you went, everyone you saw, interacted with, for how long and how far apart were you during that interaction? Include every place or situation you encountered over that same period that involved groups of people. How many people? How close… Read more »
Pattern Separation and Human versus Animal Intelligence
Description: What do you know about how memory works? You likely have a basic understanding of how information comes in through or senses (via a very short term sensory store), pauses in working memory (if we work on it) and perhaps eventually gets processed into long term memory. Does that take you bac to a… Read more »
Fixing the Pain of Broken Hearts with a Drug: The Psychology of Memory Re-consolidation
Description: Perhaps not the best topic for Valentine’s day but the fact is some relationships end and some end badly with the former participants struggling to come terms with heartache. Heartache is a very general term, one which has a lot of poetic weight but what does it involve Psychologically and how might it be… Read more »
London Taxi Drivers, “The Knowledge” and Phrenology
Description: If you want to drive for Uber (well drive for yourself through the Uber App) the process to get started will take a couple of weeks (mostly made up of waiting for a background check to be processed). Compare that to what it takes to become a London Taxi driver. To do that you… Read more »
Analyzing Elvis: Parapraxis, Memory and Emotion
Description: Even if you have not taken a single Psychology course you certainly have heard of Freudian slips. A Freudian slip is where someone misspeaks, and the “error” actually exposes a deeper meaning or intention buried somewhere in the speaker’s unconscious that they themselves may be trying to remain unaware of. For example, if you… Read more »
When is Imperfect Brain Function a Good Thing?
Description: What sorts of things does your brain do (or not do) that worry you? Forget where your keys are at? Cannot find the word you think you need? Forget an upcoming event? And, when you worry what is it you are worrying about? Imperfection? Lack of planning? Or, worse, mental deterioration? Well those are… Read more »
Why Are Some Old Memories So Much Stronger Than New Memories?
Description: What was the name of your best friend in grade 1? What did you have for lunch the day before yesterday? We most often find that the older memory is still there but the more recent one is not, or is, at least, harder to recover. I have no doubt that you could come… Read more »
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