Description: Even if you like winter (I do not) and you can manage the cold and have winter things you like to do, like skating or skiing, you may find that you have less energy in winter or you may notice other symptoms. For those of us who live at northern latitudes one thing we… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Sensation-Perception
Understanding Consciousness: Blindsight Might Help
Description: Here is a scenario for you to think about. Imagine that you are volunteering in a psychology research lab, and it is your first day and you do not yet know what it is that they are researching in the lab. Your orientation is going to happen shortly, but first you are asked to… Read more »
Ouija Boards – What’s Up With That?
Description: Do you believe that it is, or might be, possible to communicate with the departed? It is around Halloween after all. I bet you know about and may have actually tried one of the supposed “technologies” for communicating with the spirit world, a Ouija board. If you believe that things like Ouija boards do… Read more »
Last Time for Standard Time?
Description: OK, as we approach the date (November 6, 2022) when provinces and states in North America that switched to daylight saving time in the spring switch BACK to standard time consider these pop-quiz questions. If we HAD to pick one time (daylight saving or standard) and make it our permanent time, which would be… Read more »
Interoception – A General Sixth Sense?
Description: Can you list your basic senses? Of course, right? There is sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. The term ‘sixth sense’ is typically reserved for things that seem mysterious and perhaps even a bit magical like getting a feeling that something bad or good is about to happen or that someone is following you… Read more »
The ‘Are We Nearly There Yet’ in Children AND Adults
Description: “Are we nearly there yet?” Even if you have not (yet) heard that question being asked (over and over and over) in a small voice from the backseat of your family car you have heard it used as a sort of social meme tossed out in social situations that are or seem to be… Read more »
When Fat Cells Talk Does the Brain Listen?
Description: The standard introductory psychology account of how our systems maintains consistent levels of food intake used to involve a couple of components. The first involves close areas within the hypothalamus which seem to be implicated in appetite regulation. The most dramatic data involved rats who had one or the other of these areas surgically… Read more »
Sentience, Ethics, and Octopuses: Recent Thoughts
Description: What does sentient mean? Its dictionary definition typical says something like responsive to and conscious of sense impressions; aware; conscious. We (us humans) are sentient, though there was a time when we believe that infant humans were not (we DO think they ARE sentient now). A huge part of how we manage or are… Read more »
Psychology of Inventory Placement and Impulse Buying
Description: Two large grocery stores near my home have been undergoing renovation for the past few months (though it feels like it has been a year!). Way the long drawn out process? Well the renovations are large and complex but as I wandered around trying to find my “usual stuff” to buy I started to… Read more »
Risk-Taking While Sleeping
Description: Imagine that you were tasked, perhaps by a large insurance company you were working for, with coming up with a way of measuring individual risk -taking propensity. Some companies are doing a version of this already by rewarding drivers who do not have any accident claims with lower rates. Some companies are also looing… Read more »
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