The multitasking mind
Cross-posted with permission of OUPblog. Read more
Cross-posted with permission of OUPblog. Read more
Sophie Scott is the group leader of the Speech Communication Group at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London (UCL) (UK). She was awarded a Ph.D. at UCL in the acoustic basis of rhythm in speech and then spent several years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge (UK). She currently holds a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellowship and has been funded by the Wellcome Trust since 2001. Her research uses functional imaging to investigate the cortical basis of human speech perception and production, applying models from primate auditory processing … Read more
Dr Nattavudh (Nick) Powdthavee is a behavioural economist in the Department of Economic at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and is the author of The Happiness Equation: The Surprising Economics of Our Most Valuable Asset. He obtained his PhD the economics of happiness from the University of Warwick. Discussions of his work have appeared in over 50 major international newspapers in the past five years, including the New York Times and the Guardian, as well as in the Freakonomics and Undercover Economist blogs. It’s not often in our lifetime that we could almost hear the intellectual tide turning. The year was … Read more
Steve Fuller is Auguste Comte Professor of Social Epistemology in the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick. His next book, Humanity 2.0: What It Means to Be Human Past Present and Future is out with Palgrave Macmillan in September 2011. You can tell a lot about the sort of creature we think we are, by the value we place on the things we make. In October 2010, the Economist staged an on-line debate on the most important technological innovation of the 20th century. The challengers: the digital computer and the artificial fertiliser. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the computer won by a margin … Read more
David Ropeik is an international consultant in risk perception and risk communication, and an Instructor in the Environmental Management Program at the Harvard University Extension School. He is the author of How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts, principal co-author of RISK A Practical Guide for Deciding What’s Really Safe and What’s Really Dangerous in the World Around You, and blogs for Huffington Post, Psychology Today, and has written guest blogs for Scientific American, Climate Central, and Big Think. He founded the program “Improving Media Coverage of Risk,” was an award-winning journalist in Boston … Read more
This week’s guest blogger is Dylan Evans, an author and academic at University College Cork, Ireland. He lectures in behavioural science and is the author of numerous books including Emotion and Placebo. President Obama recently criticized American spy agencies for failing to predict the spreading unrest in the Middle East. Now a new study is attempting to discover what makes a good forecaster. Volunteers are being recruited for a multi-year, web-based study of people’s ability to predict world events. The study is sponsored by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). One aim of the study is to discover whether … Read more
This week’s guest blogger is Simon Laham, PhD, a social psychologist and a Research Fellow and Lecturer in Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His work focuses on the psychology of morality. Read more
This weeks guest blogger, Peter McOwan, is currently a Professor of Computer Science and Dean for Taught Programmes in Science and Engineering at Queen Mary, University of London. His research interests are in visual perception, mathematical models for visual processing, in particular motion, cognitive science and biologically inspired hardware and software. He is also active in science outreach through various projects such as cs4fn and Sodarace. Peter was awarded a National Teaching Fellow in 2008 by the Higher Aducation Academy. Since I was a kid I’ve been fascinated by magic, the way that you can use science and maths to … Read more
This week’s guest blogger – John Farndon studied earth sciences at Cambridge University and has written more than 300 books on science and nature including How the Earth Works, The Wildlife Atlas, The Practical Encyclopedia of Rocks and Minerals, and the forthcoming The Atlas of Oceans. He also writes extensively on the history of ideas and contemporary and environmental issues, penning such books as China Rises, India Booms, Bird Flu and 101 Facts You Should Know about Food. He was the author of the best-sellers Do Not Open, Do You Think You’re Clever? and The World’s Greatest Idea and his … Read more
Our guest blogger this week is Andrew Robinson, the author of over twenty books on both the arts and sciences. They include biographies of Albert Einstein, A Hundred Years of Relativity, and of the polymath Thomas Young, The Last Man Who Knew Everything. He recently published a biographical study, Sudden Genius? The Gradual Path to Creative Breakthroughs. Gradual preparation with sudden illumination, dogged work with a “eureka” experience, perspiration with inspiration—whichever pair of contrasts one prefers—are defining features of creative breakthroughs in any domain of science or art. In Thomas Edison’s much-quoted remark, from around 1903, “Genius is one per … Read more
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