Neuroscience
Another fun word game, this time from wordcount.org, which tells you how popular a word is according to the British National Corpus. There are over 86,000 words in wordcount's database (vs 100 million in the corpus itself). You can either search for a word to see how popular it is ("Stephanie" is 2 words more popular than "noses", for example) or browse to see the 100th most popular word (got) and the words that follow.
Fun in a wasting time kind of way.
(thanks to Marylane Block's "Neat New Stuff" for the link)
- How Remembering Can Lead To Forgetting
Sometimes we're more likely to remember words that we were instructed to forget, while being more likely to forget words that we were instructed to remember. How can this be? Fifty-six students were presented with four words from two different categories,...
- When Castanets Taste Of Tuna
Words have sensory connotations to most of us. The word leathery really does feel ...well, rather leathery. But to some synaesthetes – people who experience a cross-over of the senses – such analogies are literal and can relate to tastes. That is,...
- Psychopaths Unmoved By Words
Imagine I show you the word “love” and I ask you to classify it as positive or negative. You’ll classify it far quicker as positive, if just beforehand I had showed you another positive word such as “honesty” – a phenomenon that’s known...
- Synesthesia In Fiction
Just finished Julia Glass's terrific new novel the Whole World Over. Saga, one of the characters, is a synesthete - with words. Here are some examples (taken from the NYT review on June 11, even tho' they fail to identify Saga as a synesthete)....
- Preserving Languages
Fun podcast recently from Science Friday about"a plan to preserve dying languages before they disappear entirely. The National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Smithsonian institution are planning approximately $2 million...
Neuroscience
WordCount of the British National Corpus
Another fun word game, this time from wordcount.org, which tells you how popular a word is according to the British National Corpus. There are over 86,000 words in wordcount's database (vs 100 million in the corpus itself). You can either search for a word to see how popular it is ("Stephanie" is 2 words more popular than "noses", for example) or browse to see the 100th most popular word (got) and the words that follow.
Fun in a wasting time kind of way.
(thanks to Marylane Block's "Neat New Stuff" for the link)
- How Remembering Can Lead To Forgetting
Sometimes we're more likely to remember words that we were instructed to forget, while being more likely to forget words that we were instructed to remember. How can this be? Fifty-six students were presented with four words from two different categories,...
- When Castanets Taste Of Tuna
Words have sensory connotations to most of us. The word leathery really does feel ...well, rather leathery. But to some synaesthetes – people who experience a cross-over of the senses – such analogies are literal and can relate to tastes. That is,...
- Psychopaths Unmoved By Words
Imagine I show you the word “love” and I ask you to classify it as positive or negative. You’ll classify it far quicker as positive, if just beforehand I had showed you another positive word such as “honesty” – a phenomenon that’s known...
- Synesthesia In Fiction
Just finished Julia Glass's terrific new novel the Whole World Over. Saga, one of the characters, is a synesthete - with words. Here are some examples (taken from the NYT review on June 11, even tho' they fail to identify Saga as a synesthete)....
- Preserving Languages
Fun podcast recently from Science Friday about"a plan to preserve dying languages before they disappear entirely. The National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Smithsonian institution are planning approximately $2 million...