Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Chris Chabris, who together with Dan Simons was awarded the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize in psychology (for their experiment in which people did not notice a gorilla) explores some recent books about how well the brain makes decisions. In particular Professor Chabris appreciates the work of the 2011 Ig Nobel medicine prize winners: Is the […]
Tag: attention
Press release about sex sex sex
The headline of this week’s Press Release of the Month is almost perfectly designed to attract attention. It’s from the University of Tennessee: Frequent sex protects marital happiness for neurotic newlyweds Los Angeles, CA (December 8, 2010) People who are neurotic often have more difficulty with relationships and marriage. But if neurotic newlyweds have frequent […]
Driving while blinding self with helmet
This video shows a man driving an automobile down a major highway while a helmet repeatedly flaps shut, blinding him. It documents the experiment described in “The attentional demand of automobile driving” [Senders, J. W., Kristofferson, A. B., Levison, W. H., Dietrich, C. W., & Ward, J. L., Highway Research Record, vol. 195, 1967, pp. […]
Swordswallower recapitulates gorilla
Swordswallower Dan Meyer, co-winner of the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine (for the BMJ study “Swordwallowing and Its Side Effects“) accidentally replicated the findings of an earlier Ig Nobel Prize-winning study that involved a gorilla. This video shows it happening: The video was filmed during the 2010 Ig Nobel Tour of the UK (for […]