Luckily for science, as a child R. Duncan Luce had astigmatism and parents who didn’t think much of art as a career choice. Otherwise, he might have ended up a fighter pilot or an artist instead of a pioneer in mathematical behavioral science. As it is, during his career he More

The water has been pumped out and the sludge and debris are being hauled away, yet mention of Hurricane Katrina still conjures gut-wrenching images of New Orleans under water: widespread devastation and chaos, ineffectual public leadership, profound despair and desperation that in turn inspired extremes of human behavior – incredible More

The Student Notebook welcomes Jeffrey Scott Mio as this months’ Champion of Psychology. Mio, California State Polytechnic University, specializes in three lines of research: metaphors, and their use in political persuasion; multicultural issues; and how to develop allies. He teaches multicultural issues at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in More

The Cambridge Handbook of Visuospatial Thinking Priti Shah and Akira Miyake Cambridge University Press 2005 ISBN: 0521807107 454 pages Visuospatial thinking encompasses a wide range of thinking processes concerning space, whether it be navigating across town, understanding multimedia displays, reading an architectural blueprint or a map. Understanding it and in More

Among the things not emphasized enough in graduate school is the versatility of a psychology degree in academia. This thought occurred to me during a visit to Wake Forest Medical School to give a talk in the department of neurobiology and anatomy, where my best friend from graduate school is More

Randomly Confused I AM PUZZLED BY THE ARTICLE titled, “How Random Is That?” [September 2005 Observer]. The article appears to confuse (or at least not helpfully distinguish) random selection with several other “randoms” that populate our research vernacular. A similar confusion among several doctoral students taking comprehensive exams led me More

Enough Is Enough It goes without saying, doesn’t it?: More is better — at least, when we’re talking money, ice cream, or the other good things in life. Actually, it’s not so simple. Economists have long known that as the magnitude of some good increases, people’s subjective evaluations of the More

Student study behavior, as recorded on a test preparation Web site, has changed with the introduction of the new SAT in March 2005. With the elimination of the popular analogy questions, students are spending less time overall on preparation, and appear to view vocabulary drills as less important. Three years More

James McKeen Cattell was already recognized as a founding father of psychological science when he and two former students launched the Psychological Corporation in 1921 to develop and publish psychological tests and materials. He invested $6,000 of his own money for 60 percent of its shares. In 1942, two years More

Remember how, as a student listening to a lecture, your attention drifted between the words of the professor and sundry personal thoughts? A particular class might have been uneventful had not the speaker suddenly changed pace and begun directing questions at the class. If silence prevailed the teacher, intent on More

Remember how, as a student listening to a lecture, your attention drifted between the words of the professor and sundry personal thoughts? A particular class might have been uneventful had not the speaker suddenly changed pace and begun directing questions at the class. If silence prevailed the teacher, intent on More

Urie Bronfenbrenner, a co-founder of the national Head Start program and widely regarded as one of the world’s leading scholars in developmental psychology, child-rearing and human ecology — the interdisciplinary domain he created — died September 25, 2005. He was 88. At his death, Bronfenbrenner was the Jacob Gould Schurman More

When we read scientific psychology journals, we notice that many well-respected researchers often use commentaries and other rebuttals to address their work or to critique the work done by other researchers. Listed below are several tips for new researchers and aspiring scientific readers in the field. What approach should students More