Above: Gopnik’s acceptance video for the award, recorded with the assistance of her grandchild. See the complete video. APS Immediate Past-President Alison Gopnik, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has received the 2024 David E. Rumelhart Prize in Cognitive Science from the Cognitive Science Society. Announced July 27 at the society’s annual… Read More »
Nobody’s Fool: How to Avoid Getting Taken In
How can our habits of thinking make us vulnerable to deception? What characteristics of information make it more likely to manipulate us? And how can we spot deception before it’s too late? In this episode of Under the Cortex, Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris join APS’s Ludmila Nunes to answer these questions and more, drawing… Read More »
Conspiracy Theorists May Not Always Think Rationally, but They Don’t Generally Believe Contradictory Claims
It’s easy to characterize conspiracy theorists as people who will believe just about anything. However, it’s not true that conspiracy theorists commonly believe contradictory conspiracies, such as the claim that Diana, Princess of Wales, did not die in a car accident but instead both was murdered and is still alive after faking her own death.… Read More »
What Causes Déjà Vu?
It’s an eerie feeling: You walk into a place you know you’ve never been before but are overwhelmed by a sense of familiarity—a memory you can’t quite reach. Has this all happened before? Most people experience this sensation, known as déjà vu, at some point in their lives. It’s a hard feeling to study, though,… Read More »