| Abruptly Forgotten: Working Memory Disappears in a Blink When you go from bed to bathroom on a dark night, a quick flick of the lights will leave a lingering impression on your mind’s eye. For decades evidence suggested that such visual working memories--which, even in daylight, connect the dots to create a complete scene as the eyes dart around rapidly--fade gradually over the span of several seconds. But a clever new study reported in the journal Psychological Science finds that such memories actually stay sharp until they are suddenly lost.Cognitive psychologists Weiwei Zhang and Stephen J. Luck, both at the University of California, Davis, tested subjects’ recall for the hues of colored squares flashed briefly on a screen up to 10 seconds earlier. Subjects marked their answer on a color wheel. If memories decay gradually, the guesses should have become increasingly imprecise as time wore on, evidenced by participants selecting yellow or red, for example, when the correct choice was orange. Instead subjects went straight from fairly accurate answers to random choices--no better than chance--indicating the memories were decaying all at once. According to Zhang and Luck’s mathematical analysis, most subjects’ memories went “poof” somewhere between four and 10 seconds after the stimulus. [More] rss.sciam.com |
SciAm 's 2009 Gadget Guide: 10 Tech Toys You Deserve after a Tough Year [Slide Show] After a long year of belt tightening perhaps the time has come to reflect on all that you missed out on in 2009 and add some last-minute items to your holiday wish list. Although this year's Scientific American gadget guide features some pricey technology, such as a $1,100 dual-screen notebook computer, it also includes some practical and budget-conscious low-tech solutions that could help you resurrect water-damaged electronics, keep closer tabs on your electricity consumption, and warm your hands after you turn down the thermostat a bit. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Haiti’s Do-It-Yourself Recovery In poverty and disaster, Haitians left on their own are doing what needs to be done. nytimes.com |
Alcatraz’s Newest Star, the Melancholy Dane The We Players theater troupe is presenting “Hamlet” in, of all places, Alcatraz, with the action taking place all over the island. nytimes.com |
Silent Seas: Smart Controls Could Rescue Depleted Fisheries We are emptying the oceans of fish faster than most species can repopulate themselves. [More] rss.sciam.com |