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Baltimore scientists search for cause, treatment for hoarding
Los Angeles Times: The table in Jack Samuels' Fells Point office is piled two feet high with books, papers, scientific journals and grant applications. Samuels' wife likes to tease him that he has a hoarding problem, just like the people he studies. In reality, those stacks of paper might hold a remedy. Samuels, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Medicine, is the go-to guy nationwide for researchers seeking to understand the biological basis of hoarding — an intense, irrational drive to collect items in vast quantities, coupled with an inability to discard even objects that are worthless or broken. Read more: Los Angeles Times
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This Is Your Brain. And this Is Your Brain on Gossip.
Boston Magazine: Late last month, smack in the middle of the DiMasi trial and right around the time we learned of Arnold's infidelity, a Science study out of Northeastern University popped into the world and promptly landed itself in headlines across the blogosphere. The title, "The Visual Impact of Gossip,” pretty much explains its popularity off the bat.
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psychological-scientists
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Teaching Scientific Methodology
Although we construct and justify scientific knowledge on the basis of experimental evidence, the way we do this is much more interesting, and much more problematic, than science textbooks suggest. The suggestion of these textbooks that to adopt a scientific method is to adopt a simple routine fails to do justice to the sophisticated skills which scientists use when they experiment and when they reason from evidence. -Gower, 1997, p. 11 In 1960, F. J. McGuigan published a groundbreaking methodology text that set the mold for practically all subsequent methodology texts in psychology.
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Anger Primes, Task Difficulty, and Effort-Related Cardiac Reactivity
I'm Laure Freydefont from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and I presented my research at the APS 23rd Annual Convention in Washington, DC. In French: This 2 (prime: anger vs. sadness) x 2 (task difficulty: easy vs. difficult) experiment found that anger primes moderate objective task difficulty’s effect on effort-related cardiac response similarly as happiness primes. Anger leads to higher effort on a difficult task, but to lower effort on an easy task.
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The Need to Text Now: Delay Discounting of Texting in Younger Adults
I'm Paul Atchley from the University of Kansas, and I presented my research at the APS 23rd Annual Convention in Washington, DC. This study examined the seemingly addictive nature of texting in younger adults by looking at their willingness to delay texting for a monetary reward. Compared to the willingness to wait for a larger, later monetary reward, participants were less likely to further delay their opportunity to text. Choices Theme Poster Session - Board: - 033 Saturday, May 28, 2011, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM Columbia Hall Paul Atchley University of Kansas Amelia Warden University of Kansas