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Effects of Neuroscience Explanations

This thematic series, published in Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, focuses on the effects of neuroscience explanations.

As neuroscience progresses, laypeople are increasingly exposed to neuroscience explanations for human behaviours. The purpose of this collection of papers is to examine how neuroscience explanations for human behaviours affect our judgments, inferences, and cognition in general, and/or what might be the underlying mechanisms for such effects.

Edited by:

  • Woo-kyoung Ahn
  • Deena Weisberg 

This collection of articles has not been sponsored and articles have undergone the journal’s standard peer-review process. The Guest Editors declare no competing interests.

  1. The use of neuroscience in the courtroom can be traced back to the early twentieth century. However, the use of neuroscientific evidence in criminal proceedings has increased significantly over the last two de...

    Authors: Darby Aono, Gideon Yaffe and Hedy Kober
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2019 4:40
  2. Explanations from neuroscience are threatening to replace those from psychology in the eyes and hands of journalists, university administrators, granting agencies, and research students. If replacement happens...

    Authors: Jonathan Baron
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2018 3:52
  3. Previous work has found that people are drawn to explanations of psychological phenomena when these explanations contain neuroscience information, even when that information is irrelevant. This preference may ...

    Authors: Deena Skolnick Weisberg, Emily J. Hopkins and Jordan C. V. Taylor
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2018 3:44