The COVID-19 global pandemic is opening new questions for exploring how we get to know and recognize people in our lives. From the rise of digital representations of people — whether through avatars or teleconferences — to the use of masks for protection, we are taking in lots of different types of information beyond mere […]
Unwinding the Movie Reels in the Mind’s Eye
I can see it all in my mind like a mini-movie: my family and I eating breakfast at the kitchen table, pouring cereal, drinking juice and coffee, and chatting. The body positioning, senses, and actions are all vividly recreated in my mind’s eye. We all do it to some extent every day – mentally recreate […]
Sorting Out What is Real: Q&A with Jon Simons
At the CNS meeting last March in San Francisco, I learned a new term during Marcia Johnson’s Fred Kavli Distinguished Career Contributions Award lecture: reality monitoring. Coined by Johnson, reality monitoring refers to how we distinguish what is real from what is imagined in our everyday lives. For some people, having an impairment in this seemingly […]
Social Priorities: We Rapidly Process Communicative Cues
A smile, a wave, a head nod – seemingly small communicative gestures are of vital importance even for babies. And new research finds that the brain processes these social cues faster than previously thought, as quickly as 70 milliseconds. The finding gives insight into the brain’s priorities that may further understanding of both typical and […]
How Loss of Hearing Leads to Improved Vision in the Deaf
We have all heard the amazing things the brain can do when deprived of one of the senses – stories about blind people with incredible hearing or deaf people with amazing visual skills. That is because the part of the brain responsible for hearing reorganizes itself in the deaf to take in visual information (and […]
Copy That: When We’re More Likely to Imitate People Than Robots
When we are around different people, our behavior changes. Some of it is intentional – like talking about things you have in common – but much of it happens spontaneously without us even realizing it, such as folding your arms or scratching your nose when others do the same. But what about around robotic or […]
Why Do People, But Not Cameras, Consciously See?
CNS 2014 Blog Does a camera have consciousness? Well, of course not. But the camera serves as a good starting point for understanding some key features of the human visual system that enable us to have conscious awareness of what we see, as explained Victor Lamme of the University of Amsterdam in a symposium on consciousness […]
Our Visual World is Not Fact: Our Highly Flexible View of Race, Gender, Emotion, and More
CNS 2014 Blog Part 2 of 2 about the role of social context in how we see people We all know that long-held cultural stereotypes influence how we evaluate and interact with others. But what about how we actually – visually – see people? New research, for the first time, shows that stereotypes change how […]
We See Race – and Create Social Categories – Quickly
CNS 2014 Blog Part 1 of 2 about the role of social context in how we see people When you look at a face, you don’t just see what’s in front of you. You are also processing a whole host of social information about the person. And this happens fast – as quick as one-tenth […]
When We See But Don’t See: Using Illusions to Test Our Perceptions
If you are driving home from work listening to a song on the radio or talking to your spouse in the car, you may miss other things happening around you – like a giant display of Christmas trees for sale or even a car on fire on a nearby street. Even if you traveled pass […]
