EXPERIMENTS & DEMONSTRATIONS: Links to demonstrations and experiments that you may find interesting to explore, as well links to various other cognitive-related resources. Some of the experiments can be run right over the web through your browser. Others you need to download or to obtain a plugin for your browser before running the experiment. In general, if you need something to run the experiments or demonstrations, I've indicated so after the link description.
Demonstrations & Experiments
Cognition Laboratory Experiments. A number of online experiments from Hanover College, including the Stroop experiment, mental rotation, attentional blink, and several other studies, including a partial report experiment similar to Sperling's original experiment.
CogLab. Commerical website for online experiments that you must have purchased license to run. You will need your registration number to use.
Eye Tracking Technology -- Demonstrations of eye-tracking hardware and software. Eye-trackers enable the researcher to track the sequence of eye movements and fixations an individual makes while reading or looking at stimuli--e.g. reading a page of text or looking at a painting or a face:
Eye Tracking Demo 1 - Looking for a gift on amazon.com
Eye Tracking Demo 2 - Scanning a web page and looking at a photograph
Eye Tracking Demo 3 - Reading some text; searching and reading a web page.
Eye Tracking Demo 1 - Looking for a gift on amazon.com
Eye Tracking Demo 2 - Scanning a web page and looking at a photograph
Eye Tracking Demo 3 - Reading some text; searching and reading a web page.
ePsych: Website for Java-based online experiments and demonstrations that you can explore. Developed by Gary Bradshaw
The McGurk Effect. Online demonstration of how speech perception is heavily influenced by visual as well as auditory input in sorting out what speech sound is uttered (e.g. /ba/ versus /da/). Quicktime required. Here's an even better demonstration of the McGurk Effect that I recently found--check it out.
Mental Rotation Experiment. One of many experiments written by John Kranz at Hanover College. These experiments are very nice because you can change several of the parameters when you run the experiment.
Missionaries and Cannibals Problem. An online version of this classic puzzle used to study problem solving processes. (Thanks to Chris Dibartolo for this link). Actually, I like this link better: Missionaries & Cannibals Problem
PsychExps: Experiments that you can run over the web and view your results (requires Authorware Plug-in to be installed on your browser).
Stroop Experiment 1: A very nice online version of the Stroop . Try it for yourself and bring your data to class.
Stroop Experiment 2. Another online demonstration of the Stroop effect.
Tower of Hanoi. An online version of the classic puzzle used to study problem solving processes. There are several of these available on the web. This Tower of Hanoi demonstration lets you solve it or watch a computer program solve it. Here's yet another version of the Tower of Hanoi.
Dictionaries & Guides
Visionary. A dictionary for the study of vision.
Whole Brain Atlas. Need to identify a brain structure. This is an excellent
Perception & Visual Illusions
Filling-in Illusion. Sometimes, if you stare at something long enough, it disappears. The visual system no longer infers that it sees anything!
Images and Links. An long list of perception links, from Dr. Pomerantz's Psychology of Perception course at Rice University. Images as well as demonstrations, some of which are covered by other links here as well.
Motion-induced Blindness. Again, under special circumstances the visual system will not 'see' what is out there. In effect, we are always blind.
86 Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena - Michale Bach's wonderful collection of visual illusions. The best on the web.
Some additional visual illusions links from Rice University.
Papers, Tutorials, Books
ACT Web. John Anderson's ACT research group. The ACT-R unified theory of cognition attempts to develop a cognitive architecture that can perform in detail a full range of cognitive tasks. The theory is implemented as a computer simulation that can perform and learn from the same tasks worked on by human subjects in the lab.
Agnosia. An agnosia is the loss the ability to recognize objects, people, sounds, shapes or smells. Sensory and perceptual processing are usually intact as is memory. The patient suffers from difficulty recognizing patterns (e.g. visual objects such as faces or auditory patterns such as melodies or chords. Agnosias are generally the result of brain injuries or damage. The link here is to a Wikipedia entry that lists the various types of Agnosias as well as external links.
Cell phones and driving. Here's a link to a page created for my graduate cognitive psychology seminar. There are many links here to articles and videos on cell phones and driving. The research is quite overwhelming. Talking on a cellphone while driving is 4 to 6 times more likely to lead to an accident. Research has also established that talking on a cellphone is as likely to lead to an accident as driving drunk. Watch the video interview with Dr. David Strayer.
Creating False Memories. Scientific American article by a leading memory researcher, Elizabeth Loftus, on the false memory controversy.
How Psychological Science Informs the Teaching of Reading. An excellent monograph by Keith Rayner and colleagues on the latest cognitive research about how reading should be taught--published by the Association for Psychological Science . There is also another link at the APS site to an article from Scientific American entitled How Should Reading Be Taught that discusses similar material. Both make the case that phonological mediation plays a critical role in learning to read.
The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Classic paper by George Miller on processing limits. Miller has one of the most beautiful prose styles of any psychologist I've read.
William James was very interested in consciousness and proposed a distinction between primary memory and second memory--what today we would call short-term (or working) memory and long-term memory. However, James was interested in a wide range of psychological topics. This site is devoted to material about William James.
Study & Learning Aids, Strategies for Improving Learning and Memory
More to come....