Apes vs Humans: Social Traditions – Monday 14th November 2016, 7pm
If you invited a chimpanzee or a monkey to a dinner party would he know how to behave? Probably not, but whilst greeting and welcoming guests, sharing food and solving problems are usually seen as social traditions unique to humans,…
Pimp Your Memory: Lessons From Psychology – Monday 10th October 2016, 7pm
How should you prepare for an upcoming exam or test? What can you do to maintain information in memory for a long time? Cognitive Psychology, an area of Psychology that focuses on how we learn, think, judge, perceive and remember,…
Ageing Brains and Ageing Minds – Monday 29th September 2014, 7pm
‘My brain might be 70 years old but who I really am isn’t!’ What is the relationship between a person and the brain? Need we think of ageing as impairment just because mental processes are subject to age-related change? This…
Pink for Girls and Blue for Boys? The Colour of Gender Stereotyping – Monday 24th March 2014, 7pm
The recording of this talk are now available as a playlist on YouTube. Despite attempts to eliminate gender stereotyping from society through passing new laws, the likelihood of stereotyping people on the basis of their gender remains a social problem….
The psychology of making decisions – Wednesday 8th May, 6pm
Should I have a tea or a coffee in the morning? Should I marry this person? Is this defendant guilty or innocent? Should I undergo this risky operation? From the banal, to the weighty, pretty much everything we believe…
Does it matter how we speak to our children? – Monday 29th April, 7pm
Last time you spoke to a baby, did you find yourself using funny words like ‘milkie’ and ‘blankie’ in an embarrassingly high-pitched voice? Profesor Vera Kempe from the University of Aberaty will join us this month to discuss what characterises child-directed speech, who…
The Psychology of Magic: Understanding how we see the World – 7pm, Monday 25th March
For centuries, magicians have baffled audiences by performing seemingly impossible acts. One reason for this is that our perception of the world around us is itself an illusion created by our brains. Magician’s are able to exploit this disconnect between…
Into the mind of the forgotten ape: bonobo behaviour and the evolution of language
This talk from Dr. Zanna Clay was held at Dundee Science Centre on Wednesday 11th April 2012 at 6pm. Despite being one of our closest living relatives, bonobos are still one of the least well understood of the great apes,…
Being social, being sneaky and being human: how to win friends and influence people – Mon 30th, 7pm
Humans are intensely social; our lives are inextricably entwined with the lives of others. Relationships between ourselves and others in our social group are variable. Some are based on family ties, while others are maintained as friendships, work relationships or…
Mood detectors: Can computers understand the way we feel?
What do you think of when you hear the term artificial intelligence? Outrageous Hollywood movies like machines taking over the world perhaps! In computing we are trying to teach machines to behave with at least as much intelligence as human…