Birth of a Language in Nicaragua

This clip from the documentary “Evolution” shows the development of a new sign language in Nicaragua in the 1980s. This supports an interactionist approach to language acquisition, suggesting that our innate capacity for language must be combined with a social … Read More

Test Your Awareness

Test your awareness with this clever Whodunnit! video demonstrating change blindness

The “Door” Study

This video from Daniel Simons shows original footage from Simons and Levin’s 1998 study demonstrating change blindness in the real world.

Gradual Change Blindness

You can find several demonstrations of gradual change blindness from J. Kevin O’Regan’s site http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/

“Flicker” Change Blindness Demos

You can find some great demonstrations of “flicker” change blindness at http://www.gocognitive.net/demo/change-blindness The demo allows you to adjust the duration of time for each image as well as the duration of the mask screen in between. Longer pauses will make detecting … Read More

Joshua Foer on Learning Mnemonic Techniques

In this TEDtalk Joshua Foer (author of Moonwalking with Einstein – highly recommended!) discusses how he learned about mnemonic techniques and trained to win the U.S.A. Memory Championship in 2006.

Speed Cards World Record

Here’s a video of Simon Reinhard setting the world record for speed card memorization at the World Memoriad in 2010. Simon memorized the order of a shuffled pack of playing cards in 21.90 seconds. Remember that this apparently savant-like ability … Read More

Clive Wearing’s Memory Loss

This video shows the tragic case of Clive Wearing, who suffers from both anterograde amnesia (unable to form new memories) and severe retrograde amnesia (unable to recall past memories) and only recognizes his wife, Deborah. You can also find a touching story … Read More