Hacker News with Generative AI: Cognitive Science

Vibe Coding, Vibe Checking, and Vibe Blogging (oreilly.com)
For the past decade and a half, I’ve been exploring the intersection of technology, education, and design as a professor of cognitive science and design at UC San Diego.
Education, Design, Technology, Cognitive Science
5 points by BerislavLopac 3 days ago | 0 comments
End-of-History Illusion (wikipedia.org)
The end-of-history illusion is a psychological illusion in which individuals of all ages believe that they have experienced significant personal growth and changes in tastes up to the present moment, but will not substantially grow or mature in the future.[1] Despite recognizing that their perceptions have evolved, individuals predict that their perceptions will remain roughly the same in the future.
Psychology, Cognitive Science, Illusion, Human Development
8 points by jhncls 5 days ago | 0 comments
Mind Wandering Increases Periodic EEG, Improves Implicit Probabilistic Patterns [pdf] (biorxiv.org)
Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Brain Activity, Electroencephalography (EEG)
7 points by gnabgib 12 days ago | 0 comments
Reminiscence Bump (wikipedia.org)
The reminiscence bump is the tendency for adults over forty to have increased or enhanced recollection for events that occurred during their adolescence and early adulthood.
Memory, Psychology, Aging, Cognitive Science
5 points by amichail 13 days ago | 0 comments
Delusional themes may be more varied than we thought (bps.org.uk)
A recent study takes a global look at common themes of delusions, finding far more than previously assumed.
Psychology, Mental Health, Research, Cognitive Science
50 points by domofutu 16 days ago | 70 comments
Preschoolers can reason better than we think, study suggests (phys.org)
Preschoolers can reason better than we think, study suggests
Child Development, Cognitive Science, Psychology, Education, Research
167 points by PaulHoule 32 days ago | 180 comments
The Hypercuriosity Theory of ADHD (epsig.substack.com)
ADHD, Psychology, Neuroscience, Attention, Cognitive Science
16 points by paulpauper 41 days ago | 0 comments
How to learn a new language like a baby (theconversation.com)
Learning a new language later in life can be a frustrating, almost paradoxical experience. On paper, our more mature and experienced adult brains should make learning easier, yet it is illiterate toddlers who acquire languages with apparent ease, not adults.
Language Learning, Cognitive Science, Education, Psychology
87 points by rwmj 41 days ago | 43 comments
What makes code hard to read: Visual patterns of complexity (2023) (seeinglogic.com)
Not long ago, I was auditing a codebase for work (looking for bugs) when I realized that despite the quality of the code, I was becoming mentally fatigued extremely quickly and had a hard time working on it for long stretches of time…
Code Readability, Software Development, Human Factors, Cognitive Science
414 points by homarp 46 days ago | 370 comments
Number-Colour-Phoneme Associations: From IBM CGA Colours to Mnemonic Systems (susam.net)
This is a vanity page that records some of the associations between various numbers, colours, and phonemes as they appear in my mind. I must mention here that I do not have synaesthesia. Many of these connections were shaped by childhood experiences. Notably, two unrelated influences, learning about computers and studying mnemonic systems, have played a significant role in forming these associations.
Memory, Cognitive Science, Psychology, Computing, Mnemonics
29 points by susam 56 days ago | 8 comments
Algorithms are breaking how we think [video] (youtube.com)
Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Video
82 points by dkek 63 days ago | 11 comments
'Event Scripts' Structure Our Personal Memories (quantamagazine.org)
By screening films in a brain scanner, neuroscientists discovered a rich library of neural scripts — from a trip through an airport to a marriage proposal — that form scaffolds for memories of our experiences.
Neuroscience, Memory, Psychology, Cognitive Science
7 points by Brajeshwar 63 days ago | 0 comments
Try thinking and learning without working memory (2008) (sharpbrains.com)
Cognitive Science, Memory, Learning
179 points by yamrzou 67 days ago | 86 comments
Talking out loud to yourself is a technology for thinking (2020) (psyche.co)
Talking out loud to oneself is a technology for thinking that allows us to clarify and sharpen our approach to a problem
Cognitive Science, Psychology, Thinking, Problem Solving
26 points by yamrzou 68 days ago | 0 comments
Facing the Music or Burying Our Heads in the Sand? (nlm.nih.gov)
Defenses that keep threatening information out of awareness are posited to reduce anxiety at the cost of longer-term dysfunction. By contrast, socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that preference for positively-valenced information is a late-life manifestation of adaptive emotion regulation.
Psychology, Cognitive Science, Aging, Emotion Regulation
12 points by bobongo 69 days ago | 3 comments
Head Games – a humiliating list of all the ways your brain can deceive you (futilitycloset.com)
This is beautifully well done — a humiliating list of all the ways your brain can deceive you (click to enlarge).
Psychology, Cognitive Science, Human Brain, Neuroscience, Deceptions
9 points by beardyw 72 days ago | 0 comments
Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall (2022) (efavdb.com)
My friend Andrew is an advocate of the “spaced repetition” technique for memorization of a great many facts [1]. The ideas behind this are two-fold:
Memory, Learning, Spaced Repetition, Cognitive Science
204 points by yamrzou 83 days ago | 203 comments
Cognitive Reasoning Agents and the Extended Information Filter (jdsemrau.substack.com)
Probabilistic reasoning plays a pivotal role in advancing intelligent systems by enabling cognitive agents to operate effectively in dynamic and uncertain contexts.
Artificial Intelligence, Probabilistic Reasoning, Cognitive Science
14 points by Brajeshwar 90 days ago | 4 comments
The number of exceptional people: Fewer than 85 per 1M across key traits (sciencedirect.com)
Cognitive biases can lead to overestimating the expected prevalence of exceptional multi-talented candidates, leading to potential dissatisfaction in recruitment contexts.
Cognitive Science, Talent, Recruitment, Human Resources
12 points by paulpauper 94 days ago | 8 comments
Concept cells help your brain abstract information and build memories (quantamagazine.org)
Individual cells in the brain light up for specific ideas. These concept neurons, once known as “Jennifer Aniston cells,” help us think, imagine and remember episodes from our lives.
Neuroscience, Memory, Cognitive Science, Brain, Artificial Intelligence
147 points by headalgorithm 95 days ago | 18 comments
How the Brain Distinguishes Memories from Perceptions (quantamagazine.org)
The neural representations of a perceived image and the memory of it are almost the same. New work shows how and why they are different.
Neuroscience, Memory, Perception, Cognitive Science
5 points by Anon84 103 days ago | 0 comments
AI Tools: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking (mdpi.com)
The proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has transformed numerous aspects of daily life, yet its impact on critical thinking remains underexplored.
Artificial Intelligence, Critical Thinking, Cognitive Science
34 points by camillomiller 103 days ago | 14 comments
Maybe ChatGPT has some pre-frontal cortex problems (solresol.substack.com)
People have been complaining that ChatGPT has been degrading with each new version. This sounds like cognitive decline! Let’s administer some tests that might detect incipent dementia.
Generative AI, Artificial Intelligence, Language Models, Technology, Cognitive Science
19 points by solresol 104 days ago | 8 comments
The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (2006) [pdf] (ed.ac.uk)
Cognitive Science, Software, User Interface, Microsoft
132 points by raviisoccupied 117 days ago | 75 comments
Is It Possible to Improve Memory or Are We Doomed to Forget as We Age? (2023) (nzherald.co.nz)
Memory is a fickle beast at the best of times, but it’s easy to think we’re sliding into a pandemic of forgetfulness, a collective midlife side-effect of living a life so fast-paced, we can’t possibly be expected to remember where we put the keys.
Memory, Aging, Health, Cognitive Science
16 points by peutetre 118 days ago | 6 comments
The new science of controlling lucid dreams (scientificamerican.com)
Dreams, Neuroscience, Sleep, Cognitive Science
185 points by cainxinth 120 days ago | 113 comments
Cognitive load is what matters (minds.md)
There are so many buzzwords and best practices out there, but let's focus on something more fundamental. What matters is the amount of confusion developers feel when going through the code.
Software Development, Cognitive Science, User Experience
1766 points by zdw 124 days ago | 718 comments
Attention as the management of electromagnetic field lines (qualiacomputing.com)
Try to focus your attention on the exact center of your visual field right now. Notice how the seemingly straightforward task reveals systematic instabilities: wavering, drifting, and transforming in characteristic ways. These effects aren’t random noise; they suggest an underlying physical mechanism that shapes how attention behaves more broadly.
Attention, Neuroscience, Physics, Cognitive Science
52 points by stoniejohnson 133 days ago | 23 comments
Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness (wikipedia.org)
Global workspace theory (GWT) is a framework for thinking about consciousness proposed by cognitive scientists Bernard Baars and Stan Franklin in the late 1980s.
Consciousness, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Theory
6 points by yamrzou 136 days ago | 0 comments
Effects of Stress on Memory (wikipedia.org)
The effects of stress on memory include interference with a person's capacity to encode memory and the ability to retrieve information.
Memory, Stress, Psychology, Cognitive Science
19 points by yamrzou 137 days ago | 5 comments