10 FEB 2018 by ideonexus
Why Kids Abandon Creative Play
The observation that play gets short shrift as children come of age in the Western world is surely as old and as perennial as that civilization itself. The Bible puts it thus: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that 1 am become a man, I have put away childish things." Turning their attention to the phenomenon, psychologists have asked what might be the causal factors.
In the early 1900s, for instance, G. Stanley Hall argued that as children... 1 
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notes06 JAN 2018 by ideonexus
Considering Art Creative but Engineering Not as a Questio...
In retrospect, Cohen and MacKeith made a number of questionable assumptions that undermine that conclusion. To be fair, these assumptions were quite common among psychologists at the time and still persist to a significant degree among the public. One of these assumptions is that some activities, such as the arts, are inherently creative, whereas others, such as science or engineering, are not. Another assumption is that creativity is a function of one's ability to fantasize, which is to say,... 1 notes
notes03 NOV 2015 by ideonexus
The Myth of the Brain as a Video Camera
Before we discuss what current research tells us about memory and recall, it may be helpful to address a common misconception that emerged from the work ofCanadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield in the 1930s and 1940s. Penfield reported that during surgery, an electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe produced episodes of recall, almost like seeing movie clips. Many concluded that the brain ―videotaped‖ life, and to remember things, our memories simply needed to be prompted. But these epi... 1 notes
notes22 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Being in a Car Affects Our Sense of Personal Space
Psychologists have noted that people driving a motor car react in a manner that is
often completely unlike their normal social behaviour as regards their territories. It seems that a motor vehicle sometimes has a magnifying effect on the size of a person’s personal space. In some cases, their territory is magnified by up to ten times the normal size, so the driver feels that he has a claim to an area of 9 to 10 metres in front of and behind his motor car. When another driver cuts in front o...Folksonomies: perception personal space
Folksonomies: perception personal space
1 notes
notesThe car magnifies our personal space perception, making us angry when others violate it.
15 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
Demoivre's Death
The manner of Demoivre's death has a certain interest for psychologists. Shortly before it, he declared that it was necessary for him to sleep some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour longer each day than the preceding one: the day after he had thus reached a total of something over twenty-three hours he slept up to the limit of twenty-four hours, and then died in his sleep. Folksonomies: synchronicity
Folksonomies: synchronicity
1 notes
notesHe slept a little longer each night until he slept for 24 hours, then died.
06 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Skinner and Freud's View of Child Learning
The theories that did dominate psychology, especially in America, were Freudianism and the behaviorism of psychologists like B. F. Skinner. Both theories had lots of things to say about young children. But like Aristotle with the teeth, neither Freud nor Skinner took the step of doing systematic experiments with children or babies. Freud largely relied on inferences from the behavior of neurotic adults, and Skinner on inferences from the behavior of only slightly less neurotic rats. And like ...Folksonomies: psychology inference
Folksonomies: psychology inference
1 notes
notesThey got it mostly wrong because they relied on a philosophical inference method of science.
20 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Scientists Do Not Work for the Benefit of Humanity
This leads me to comment upon the opinion, held by many people, that the scientist is a completely altruistic being, devoting himself selflessly to the pursuit of truth, solely in order Jo contribute to the welfare of humanity. I do not intend it as a derogation of men whom I cherish when I say that this is, in my experience, not really the basic motivation for any of them, and as additional motivation it is more often absent than present. That they do, in fact, expend themselves in activitie... 1 notes
notesThey work out of curiosity, we're just lucky that they also benefit society.
01 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Publication Bias Produces a "Decline Effect"
Jennions, similarly, argues that the decline effect is largely a product of publication bias, or the tendency of scientists and scientific journals to prefer positive data over null results, which is what happens when no effect is found. The bias was first identified by the statistician Theodore Sterling, in 1959, after he noticed that ninety-seven per cent of all published psychological studies with statistically significant data found the effect they were looking for. A “significant” re...Folksonomies: research decline effect
Folksonomies: research decline effect
1 Because publications are biased towards positive results, when a phenomenon produced in earlier studies turns out not to be true, then later studies will increasingly have difficulty reproducing the results.
