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Cognition and perception

Out of this world

A special feature on aliens and space travel, including an interview with Douglas Vakoch, clinical psychologist and Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

21 September 2015

What would you say to an alien?

Editor Jon Sutton meets Doug Vakoch, clinical psychologist and the Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Psychology in deep space
Nick Kanas considers issues and countermeasures.

Eye on Fiction: The alien in us all
We asked for your favourite alien entity, and what their depiction says about our own psychology. Alan Redman, Catherine Pugh, Heath Matheson, Ellen Migo, Tom Stafford and Ian Hocking share their choices.

Close encounters of the psychological kind
Christopher C. French considers explanations of UFO sightings, alien encounters and even abductions

Encountering extraterrestrial intelligence
Albert Harrison looks to lessons from history

See also, from the archive, 'New horizons' - Christian Jarrett takes psychology into space.