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George A. Miller: Remembering a Pioneer
The human mind works a lot like a computer: It collects, saves, modifies, and retrieves information. George A. Miller, one of the founders of cognitive psychology, was a pioneer who recognized that the human mind can be understood using an information-processing model. His insights helped move psychological research beyond behaviorist methods that dominated the field through the 1950s. In 1991, he was awarded the National Medal of Science for his significant contributions to our understanding of the human mind. Miller, who passed away on July 22, 2012, was also a leader in the study of short-term memory and linguistics.
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Fans Fooled by the “Hot-Hand Fallacy”
Which countries and athletes will rise to the top? To make predictions, many people will look for athletes who are on a “hot streak,” such as US Women’s National Team forward Alex Morgan who scored 2 goals yesterday, resulting in a 2-to-4 win over France. Sports provide numerous opportunities to collect statistics, but biases such as the “hot-hand fallacy” can skew a spectator's decision making when it comes to predicting sports outcomes. Peter Ayton, a researcher from City University London, UK, investigates how people make judgments and decisions under conditions of risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity. One way he studies decision making is through sports.
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Journal Alert: Current Directions 21:4 Now Available Online
Current Directions in Psychological Science Volume 21, Number 4 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Prospective Memory in Workplace and Everyday Situations R. Key Dismukes Forgetting to perform intended actions -- also known as failure of prospective memory(PM) -- can have serious consequences, especially at work. Dismukes says that workplace PM failures are likely to occur when a critical set of steps is interrupted, when highly practiced habitual tasks are disrupted, when one step in a procedure is replaced with a different step, or when people are asked to multi-task. Dismukes provides tips for avoiding PM failures, such as creating reminder cues for upcoming tasks.
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Sports Science in the News
Three days, 3 more psychological science highlights: Counting down to the Olympic Opening Ceremony with research insights on sports and performance. #3. With three days left until the 2012 Olympics begin, the science behind the many complexities of sports and competition have been all over the news. Some recent psychological science highlights that have been making headlines.
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Today’s Spotlight: Robert A. Bjork
Watch APS Past President Robert A. Bjork explain his theory on long-term memory in this series of interviews. Bjork is a Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His lab, the Bjork Learning and Forgetting Lab, investigates human learning, memory, and the implications of such research on instruction. Bjork was Co-editor of Psychological Science in the Public Interest. GoCognitive is an educational website supported by the APS Teaching Fund that provides free access to tools on cognitive psychology and neuroscience. GoCognitive has an archive of video interviews of leading researchers in the field, in addition to interactive demonstrations.
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BATMAN Gear for the Real World
The United States Air Force is taking a page from an iconic comic. As an intern in the Human Performance Wing at Wright Paterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, psychological scientist Andre Garcia, from George Mason University, worked on the BATMAN team. Though Garcia tends to think of team BATMAN (which stands for Battlefield Air Targeting Man-Aided kNowledge) as being more like Alfred, Batman’s loyal butler who was always there to help the caped crusader with all of his high-tech gizmos.
