Online research

Most of the studies you will want to read can be found online, but some will be behind what is called a ‘pay wall’.  This means that your school librarian should be able to help you with access, in that most school libraries will subscribe to at least one online data repository of resources.  However, that is no guarantee of … Read More

Emotion and memory

We all remember those special moments, don’t we?  The birthday party with the huge cake, or our first day at school, or when we broke our arm playing in the snow.  They seem as if they only happened yesterday, the memories are so vivid! Many years ago, some classic research was conducted by Brown and Kulik (1977) into the phenomenon of … Read More

Cognitive Biases

Cognitive biases – distortions of reality Cognitive biases arise from heuristics (shortcut thinking) and systematically distort the way we think and affect our decision-making. Three of the most common cognitive biases are confirmation bias, anchoring bias and  cognitive dissonance. All three arise from our tendencies to focus on part of a story, especially the part that confirms our pre-existing beliefs, … Read More