The Wug Test and Overgeneralization

In this clip from Scientific American Frontiers, Steven Pinker explains The Wug Test and also how the overgeneralization of grammatical rules suggests that children acquire the rules of language, rather than simply learning by imitation.   Looking to learn more … Read More

Bonobo Language Learning

Here’s a few videos from the Iowa Primate Learning Sanctuary showing attempts to teach language to Bonobo chimps. The first video is of Kanzi demonstrating his skills in using a lexigram. In the next video, we can see Kanzi following … Read More

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.