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Have a Cognitive Halloween [ The Happy Hour Archive | obereed.net ] [C&P Halloween Happy Hour: Friday, 4pm Charleys! ] Oh joy, Halloween is upon us. It is important during this time of year not to lose sight of the real meaning of the holiday, namely eating a lot of candy and throwing eggs at people. Of course, the decision about what costume one wears is a complex, personal one, and it is often beneficial to rely on one's area of expertise in choosing a costume. Therefore, as food for thought, I've compiled a list of costumes that cognitive psychologists will be wearing. Cognitive Halloween Costumes Each year, Irv Biederman gets 36 people together and they go as geons. In theory they can form every possible costume. Alan Baddeley has been known to Strap an Etch-a-Sketch to himself and go as the visuospatial sketchpad. Danny Kahneman and Anne Treisman are so cute when they go out together, he dresses up as a visual feature, she as a feminist bank teller. Frank Yates can never decide what to wear. Thad Polk will go as Martha Farah's superhero sidekick "Imaging Boy." Phil Johnson-Laird will be wearing an Einstein wig and a swimsuit. He's going as a mental model. Jun Zhang and his lab will go as the fictional rock band Big Sigma and the Integrals. Don Norman goes as an evil Calvin Klein. (A "bad designer," get it?) Jay McClelland generally doesn't dress up. When people ask him where his costume is he tells them that he's a microfeature in a larger, distributed costume. Mike Gazzaniga often dresses up in two separate costumes, one on the left the other on the right. Bob and Saul Sternberg will just trade pants. K. A. Ericsson generally wears a crappy homemade costume. When people make fun of him he says, "Oh yeah, like you're some kind of expert!" Dave Meyer will once again dress up as a bottleneck. Roger Schvaneveldt will dress up as a doctor, covered with butter. (think about it... Lexical decision task...) Ed Smith doesn't celebrate Halloween, but people often ask if he's dressed as a prototypical famous psychologist. Mike Posner and his family go as slight variations on this. Herb Simon and John Holland go trick-or-treating together. Simon goes as an ant, Holland as an ant hill. Beth Loftus went as a giant asprin once, although this year her whole lab is going as police lineup. George Furnas will attempt break a few laws of physics with his 37 dimensional costume. Gary and Judy Olson will go as Judy and Gary Olson (Again...) Bill Gehring dresses up on the twenty-ninth by mistake. Denise Park, Patti Reuter-Lorenz and Colleen Seifert generally entertain at Halloween parties as the Brainettes. Eleanor Rosch goes as a piece of furniture, but nobody's quite sure what kind. John Jonides and friends each wear a shirt with a giant letter on it. They then walk in a straight line and go as the two-back task. Other Ideas: A tall person and a short person could go as a main effect. Add two more people and you can have an interaction. Don't forget man's best friend. Dress up your pooch as a Stroop task - You then have a Stroop Doggy Dogg. Of course, you're expected to bring your spooky self to happy hour at Charley's at 4pm on Friday for a hauntingly good time. |