December 21, 2010

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Editor’s Selections: Lap-Running, Gift-Wrapping, Font-Reading, and Free Will

Here are my Psychology/Neuroscience Research Blogging Editor’s Selections for this week: If you’ve just run 29 laps would you endure the pain and run a round 30 laps?

By Jason G. Goldman

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Here are my Psychology/Neuroscience Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week:

  • If you've just run 29 laps would you endure the pain and run a round 30 laps? If you've run 31 laps, would you attempt to eek out one extra lap to make 32? Most people would rather run 30 laps than 29, but wouldn't run the extra lap in the second case. Why not? Michelle Greene of the NeuRealism blog explains.

  • A timely post: does gift-wrapping influence the gift-receiver? Will he or she be more satisfied with the contents of his or her gift, if it is wrapped? At Maniraptora: Tastes Like Chicken, GrrlScientist explores this question.

  • Christian Jarrett writes that "making learning materials more difficult to read can significantly improve student performance." Apparently, harder-to-read fonts boost student learning. As long as they're not using Comic Sans, I'm cool.

  • Finally, Bjoern Brembs blogs about his own paper, just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Do invertebrates have free will? What is free will, anyway? All good questions, and Bjoern may have some answers.

Jason G. Goldman is a science journalist based in Los Angeles. He has written about animal behavior, wildlife biology, conservation, and ecology for Scientific American, Los Angeles magazine, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the BBC, Conservation magazine, and elsewhere. He contributes to Scientific American's "60-Second Science" podcast, and is co-editor of Science Blogging: The Essential Guide (Yale University Press). He enjoys sharing his wildlife knowledge on television and on the radio, and often speaks to the public about wildlife and science communication.

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