Renovations at the Cognition and Language Laboratory


I am in the processing of doing a complete overhaul of the Web-based laboratory. The site has been due for some editing for a while; the page about me still lists me as an “incoming graduate student,” though I just started my third year.

More importantly, though, I want to make the website more interesting.

Though I’ve collected some very good data, leading to two publications already with several more on their way, the experiments I’m currently interested in running require more participants. Right now I get about 30-40 participants a day. For the new experiments to work, I need closer to 100 per day.

Here is where you, the reader, comes in. What do you think would make the site more interesting and the experiments more compelling? I am doing a few things already. First, you may have noticed there are lately more pictures on the website. The new experiments are all going to be game-like. Participants will get back scores and, in some cases, know how they did compared to others. This has worked very well for folks like Games with a Purpose or TestMyBrain.org. I also admit that some of the experiments I’ve posted over the last few years have been pretty dry.
One last thing I’m considering doing is changing the name of the site to reflect the new brand. I had planned on LanguageGames.org, but someone just snagged that domain. I could still go with LanguageGames.com, but there is always the risk of confusion. What else might be a catchy name?
If you have any ideas about the domain name or any other aspect of the website, please leave a comment here or email me at [email protected].

Substack subscription form sign up