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Take Photos to Remember Your Experiences? Think Again
NPR: Kicking off a series that explores the relationship between human memory and photography in the age of smartphone cameras, Audie Cornish talks to psychologist Linda Henkel about whether photographs impair our memory. "As soon as you hit click on that camera, it's as if you've outsourced your memory," Henkel says. "Anytime we kind of count on these external memory devices, we're taking away from the kind of mental cognitive processing that might help us actually remember that stuff on our own." Read the whole story: NPR
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A Captive African Elephant (Loxodonta Africana) Calf Exhibits Precocious Social Relationships
African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in their native habitats live in groups of 2 to 50 elephants called family units, usually containing genetically related adult females and calves and juveniles of both sexes. A calf spends most of its time near its mother. Older calves increase the time they spend with other members of the family unit. “Allomothers,” usually young female relatives, assist in rearing a calf by providing comfort and safety. The dominant animal in the group (the “matriarch”) plays a critical role in group dynamics and survival.
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Memory Strategies Are Not Created Equal
Jacqueline J. Juett, Butler University, presented her research on "Memory Strategies Are Not Created Equal: Older and Younger Adults' Strategy Beliefs" at the 2014 APS Annual Convention in San Francisco.
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Does Growing Up in a Recession Make You Nicer? Study Says People Who Enter Adulthood During a Downturn are Less Self-Obsessed
Daily Mail: Children who grow up in a recession are more likely to become well-rounded adults than those who enjoy an easy start to life, a psychological study has found. Analysis of the characteristics of 35,000 people found that those who entered adulthood during economic downturns were less likely to be self-obsessed. Growing up in hard times dampens narcissism and a sense of entitlement, US psychologists believe. Read the whole story: Daily Mail
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What’s In A Grunt — Or A Sigh, Or A Sob? Depends On Where You Hear It
NPR: And I'm Robert Siegel. Hear a laugh, you know someone's happy. Hear a sob, you know someone is sad. Or are they? It's been thought that no matter where you live in the world, people express emotions using the same repertoire of sounds. But NPR's social science correspondent, Shankar Vedantam, reports on new research on how emotions are expressed and understood around the globe. For a long time, scientists have assumed there is a universal grammar when it comes to emotional sound. Languages differ, cultures differ, but emotional sounds carry the same meaning everywhere you go. There's good evidence for this theory.
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Studies Show Cat People Are Smarter Than Dog People
Time: Have you ever suspected that people who hang out with slinky, clever, moody cats are actually smarter than everyone with a goofy, friendly-to-everyone dog? Your hunch was likely correct, according to a new study carried out by Carroll University in Wisconsin. The study looked for personality traits in 600 college students that coincided with choices in pet ownership. Dog lovers tended to be more lively, but cat owners were “non-conformists” who preferred expediency to following the rules. Cat lovers also scored higher on intelligence over all. So is the cat educating you, or do you just have to be smart to adequately care for such a mercurial animal? Read the whole story: Time
