Cognitive Science

The latest breakthroughs, innovations, and cool happenings at the cutting edge of the world of cognitive science. Updated daily.

High-level visual cognition deep down in the brain

A recent study by Peysakhovich and colleagues reveals how the superior colliculus (SC), a deep brain structure commonly associated with spatial orienting and motor control, causally contributes to the abstraction of visual categories. This highlights how subcortical areas with motor-control labels may have central roles in high-level visual cognition and opens avenues for investigation. Read […]

Published on November 2, 2024

The process of gendering: gender as a verb

Gender is important to the social and cognitive sciences, as evidenced by hundreds of meta-analyses, thousands of studies, and millions of datapoints that examine how gender (as an independent variable) shapes cognition and behavior. In this expansive literature, gender is often understood as a noun – a social category that separates ‘men’ from ‘women’. However, […]

Published on October 31, 2024

Whole-to-part development in language creation

Children approach language by learning parts and constructing wholes. But they can also first learn wholes and then discover parts. We demonstrate this understudied yet impactful process in children creating language without input. Whole-to-part learning thus need not be driven by hard-to-segment input and is a bias that children bring to language. Read Full Article […]

Published on October 29, 2024