Director of MA Program

See my statistics texts.

Research

Why do we tend to move our lips or even talk out loud when we are trying to think under very distracting circumstances? Why does it sometimes seem as though we can't control our thoughts as much as we'd like, and we can never seem to stop thinking completely? There is a good deal of experimental evidence that suggests we may use our bodies as part of the thinking process -- in particular, our motor systems. In fact, it is reasonable to suppose that thinking evolved from explicit behavior that, as adults, we learn to hide from others -- activating certain muscles so slightly that the changes in muscle tension can only be detected with sensitive electronic amplifiers. Recently, I have studied eye movements, as well as muscle tension changes, as markers of specific cognitive activity. I am also interested in the general effects of mental effort, meditation, and relaxation on various physiological systems, and in theories of emotion. However, in the last few years, I have devoted my attention to the publication of educational materials for the teaching of statistics to psychologists. Presently, I am planning a book on the different pathways for becoming a psychotherapist.

Biography

Education

PhD, New York University, 1983 (experimental psychology)
MA, City University of New York at Queens College, 1975 (psychology)
BS, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1970 (physics)

Affiliations

Fellowships

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Selected Publications

Cohen, B.H. (2007). Explaining Psychological Statistics. 3rd edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Welkowitz, J., Cohen, B. H., & Ewen, R. B. (2006). Introductory Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences (6th ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Cohen, B.H. & Lea, R.B. (2003). Essentials of Statistics for the Social and Behavioral Sciences. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Cohen, B.H. (2002). Calculating a factorial ANOVA from means and standard deviations. Understanding Statistics, 1, 191-203. [pdf]

Demarais, A. & Cohen, B.H. (1998). Evidence for image-scanning eye movements during transitive inference. Biological Psychology, 49, 229-247.

Cohen, B.H., et al. (1992). Muscle tension patterns during auditory attention. Biological Psychology, 33, 133-156.

Cohen, B.H. (1986). The Motor Theory of Voluntary Thinking. In R.J. Davidson, G.E. Schwartz, and D. Shapiro (Eds.), Consciousness and self-regulation (Vol. 4). New York: Plenum Press. [pdf]

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Address

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