Edward A. Wasserman Ph.D.

About

Edward Wasserman, Ph.D., is a professor of experimental psychology and director of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory at the University of Iowa. His research is on learning, memory, and cognition in humans and animals, and specific topics of interest include anticipatory learning, visual categorization and conceptualization, selective attention, and task switching. The author of The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Cognition and How Animals See the World, Wasserman adopts a natural science approach to understanding the behavioral mechanisms of learning and cognition.

Books by Edward A. Wasserman Ph.D.

Recent Posts

An Aged Tortoise Tells Us Much About Pavlovian Conditioning

Most believe that Pavlovian conditioning is a form of learning that is limited to simple reactions like salivation. But Pavlov's own view of conditioning was vastly more expansive.

What Do We Make of Surprising Coincidences?

Coincidences certainly capture our attention. Most are quite personal and prompt many interpretations. But beware of magical or conspiratorial accounts. Sheer chance may suffice.

The "Lightbulb Moment" Is Innovation's Most Misleading Meme

Most people have heard of the "Eureka!" moment, when Thomas Edison instantly and brilliantly invented the lightbulb. The problem? It never happened.

Pigeons Can Solve a Task that Would Stump Us

Associative learning is often deemed to be rigid and limited, yet this process enables pigeons to learn a categorization task that can stump more sophisticated forms of learning.

Racist Robots? Part of the Problem, Part of the Solution

Do you think only people can become prejudiced? Recent work suggests that AI can also acquire biases. That fact may help us reduce social bias in published media.

Inventing the Lithophone: Intelligent Design Hits the Rocks

We marvel at the products of human innovation and hail their inventors as geniuses. Learning more about the creative process behind their making tells a very different story.

Does Innovation Come "Out of the Blue"?

Creative ideas are often bedecked with extravagant romance. Innovative ideas are believed to arise in a blinding flash, seemingly out of the blue. Let's take a look at this notion.

Writing Hit Songs—As If by Design!

How do songwriters put lyrics to music? Do they wait for a burst of inspiration? Do they follow rigid rules? Do they have a clear end in mind? Or is the process more improvisational?

Trial and Error in Developing Vaccines

Vaccine development can be a slow and uncertain matter—one often disparaged as ‘trial-and-error medicine.’ Is there no better way?

Keeping Pigeons Close to Our Hearts

By keeping pigeons close to our hearts and seeing the world through their eyes, we learned a thing or two about the processes underlying our own classification of medical images.