Think video games make you smarter? Not so fast...

Wouldn’t it be great if you could improve your attention and perception abilities by playing video games? Over the past decade, many papers have made just that claim. Expert gamers often outperform novices on some cognitive tasks, and gaming novices who spend many hours practicing a game tend to perform better as well. Although the accumulated evidence seems strong, the literature is fraught with methodological shortcomings. In fact, some of the limitations are sufficiently severe that it’s not clear there is any benefit at […]

gorillas, working memory, and the media

Speculative conclusions and definitive evidence: When press releases and media coverage diverge from the actual evidence. A closer look at the link between working memory and gorilla […]

unexpected bicycles and inattentional blindness

This article reports a tragic accident that happened on Sunday. A bicyclist was hit by a car and killed. Unfortunately, such accidents are far too common, and this particular example typifies how inattentional blindness operates in the real world.

Most people believe that unexpected or unusual events draw attention, perhaps even more […]

Vision Sciences Stuff -- the skinny on a new illusion

This week I’m attending the annual meeting of the Vision Sciences Society in Naples Florida. Every day or so, I’ll post about a subset of the cool, interesting, funny, or quirky (I won’t say which) talks/posters I happened to catch. You can read the first installment here. Here’s a fun one from my […]