CogBlog – A Cognitive Psychology Blog

Have you ever wondered if when one sensory module is impaired, other sensory systems learn to develop other means to counteract that deficiency? Past studies have shown that deaf individuals have a larger capability to focus on simple visual stimuli in the parafovea. The parafovea is a region in the eye that surrounds your fovea, the central pit of the eye that is responsible for sharp, central vision. Large rates of illiteracy in the deaf population have caused people to question whether deaf individuals wide range of focus in the parafovea, causes reduced processing in the fovea. A recent study done at the University of California San Diego has shown that deaf people’s parafoveal vision does not cause reduced vision on the fovea and they actually have a wider range of sharp vision which researchers found and can actually aid them in complex visual tasks such as reading (Bélanger et al. 2012).

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Do you still remember the bedtime stories your parents read for you when you were little? Well, most of us just have a vague impression about what was told. Even if we read the story by ourselves, we are unlikely to remember much. However, it is not the same case for our parents: they are likely to remember very much about story, even specific details such as the characters and how you felt about them. Now think back again, comparing the textbook you read aloud for the class in the morning and a message on your cell phone that you read ten minutes ago, which one do you remember better? In my personal experience, I found it easier to recall the sentences from the book rather than the text message. This raises the question: is there a relationship between how people read information and how much is actually remembered? Read more…

Say, you’re Homer (the Greek one), and you’ve just put the finishing touches on your latest epic. You’re going to want a book. You’re going to want one so that you won’t have to worry about people mishearing your singing (because microphones haven’t been invented yet) or those pesky barbarians on the road to the next town mugging you and stealing your lyre. If you think about it, a book is a pretty nifty piece of technology. In fact, books are awesome enough to have been in use for something like 5000 years, and not only to still be in use in modern society, but to still be commonplace in it.

They’re really expensive!

It is probably because books printed on paper have been so reliably awesome for so long that there has been so much controversy surrounding the expansion of reading platforms to include E-reading devices (Kindles or Nooks) and computers. Bibliophiles everywhere are collectively freaking out about the end of printed books, and as a result, a lot of ink has been spilled (Well, maybe not ink. Pixels, maybe? Bytes?) on research to determine how these new formats measure up to our classic, well-loved paperbacks. Read more…

Most people know that there are extreme cognitive deficits associated with DAT, otherwise known as Alzheimer ’s disease, but what is the nature of these struggles? What do those with DAT have the most trouble on, and what is the biggest cause of the troubles? It turns out that those with DAT have the biggest deficits in attentional tasks, and a lot of their memory issues stem from an inability to focus and maintain attention. In 1998 “Sentence Comprehension Deficits in Alzheimer’s Disease: A Comparison of Off-Line VS. On-Line Sentence Processing” looked at and tried to analyze the reasons behind memory deficits in DAT individuals.

The experimenters wanted to test whether the problems were stemming from a lack of syntactic knowledge, or the knowledge of how words form into sentences correctly, or from a working memory deficit. Working memory is the system that holds information in short term memory, deciding whether to attend to it, rehearse it, and transfer it into long term memory or to just throw it out. The better a person’s working memory, the better they can learn and pay attention to what they are looking at. Read more…

Being able to read is an enjoyable skill that usually begins to be taught between the ages of five and seven. Most people can recall what it was like in the early stages of reading. You start off slowly trying to pronounce and string the words together into one fluent sentence. As you progress you move on to more complex sentences and pretty soon you’re trying to read everything everywhere! It’s a skill you’ve become so comfortable with that you probably find yourself reading at a faster pace and only stumble on words that aren’t familiar. A common phrase used amongst students is “Oh, I just skimmed through it.” This phrase has lead to many psychological experiments that try and pinpoint how efficient we are at ‘skipping’ through sentences and our ability to fill in the missing content.

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If you have ever taken an introductory level class in Psychology, chances are you learned about the Stroop task.  For those of you who haven’t, try this activity out for yourself; look at the list of words written below. Simply name the color ink the word is written in. It sounds easy enough, but is actually much harder than you might think.

RED, BLUE, BLACK, ORANGE, PINK, GREEN

BLUE, ORANGE, GREEN, RED, PINK, BLACK

Undoubtedly you were able to read the first line with ease, but the second line, well that was a different story. Chances are you find yourself inclined to read the word initially and then must pause to actually say the color ink instead. This task can be frustrating! Why is it so hard? Why is the bottom row where color words are written in their inconsistent ink so much harder do than the top row where words are in consistent ink color?

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