Tagged: cognition

Featured image: Polly knows probability: this parrot can predict the chances of something happening

Polly knows probability: this parrot can predict the chances of something happening - Guest Work

Guest Author • Mar 04, 2020 •

Ximena Nelson, University of Canterbury Avian experts have repeatedly demonstrated the remarkable brainpower of birds. Parrots, in particular, have established a reputation as skillful imitators – a talent that requires a complex network of neural connections. Now, researchers Alex Taylor and Amalia Bastos from the University of Auckland have once again observed parrots beating the odds when it comes … Read More

Featured image: Paul Connett’s misrepresentation of maternal F exposure study debunked

Paul Connett’s misrepresentation of maternal F exposure study debunked - Open Parachute

Ken Perrott • Mar 06, 2018 •

Anti-fluoride campaigners are misrepresenting a recent Mexican study claiming its findings should cause governments around the world to abandon community water fluoridation (CWF). Their claims are unwarranted because the study has a high degree of uncertainty. Activists are misrepresenting the accuracy of the studies findings. Because Mexico has areas of endemic fluorosis the study itself is not relevant to CWF. Read More

Featured image: ‘Anumeric’ people: What happens when a language has no words for numbers?

‘Anumeric’ people: What happens when a language has no words for numbers? - Guest Work

Guest Author • Feb 06, 2018 •

Caleb Everett, University of Miami This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Numbers do not exist in all cultures. There are numberless hunter-gatherers embedded deep in Amazonia, living along branches of the world’s largest river tree. Instead of using words for precise quantities, these people rely exclusively on terms analogous … Read More

Featured image: Babies can learn the value of persistence by watching grownups stick with a challenge

Babies can learn the value of persistence by watching grownups stick with a challenge - Guest Work

Guest Author • Jan 17, 2018 •

Julia Leonard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. You’re at home trying to make fresh tomato sauce, but can’t seem to get the tomatoes out of their plastic container from the grocery store. The bottom latch is not opening, so you pull harder. Although you’ve never … Read More

Featured image: ‘Brain training’ apps won’t make you smarter

‘Brain training’ apps won’t make you smarter - Guest Work

John Kerr • Dec 01, 2017 •

If you think that a few bucks spent on a braining training app is a solid investment in your intellectual future, think again. Anyone who has spent a reasonable amount of time on the internet has probably heard of the brain training app Lumosity. The San Francisco-based company has spent millions on advertising and claims to have 85 million users. Their app is … Read More

Note to self – eat more chocolate - Kidney Punch

John Pickering • Oct 17, 2012 •

Apparently the pinnacle of one’s scientific career is to win a Nobel Prize.  Having not won a Nobel yet I will just need to accept by faith that it would indeed be the pinnacle of my career.  Thanks to a brilliant article in the New England Journal of Medicine this week I now have a … Continue reading » … Read More

Crows join humans in the ability to infer hidden causal agents - misc.ience

Aimee Whitcroft • Sep 20, 2012 •

New Caledonian crows – smarter every time we look at them. A fascinating new piece of research was published a couple of days ago in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (or PNAS for short). It shows that New Caledonian crows are capable of a cognitive feat previously only thought to be [...] … Read More