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Spatial Imagery Improves With Sight
Imagine a square box about the size of a soccer ball. Now imagine turning it over with your hands. It’s a task that’s easy for most people to do -- indeed, we use spatial imagery all the time to handle objects, plan movements, and navigate through various environments. Different sensory modalities, including vision, audition, and touch, provide information about our environment. So how can we figure out the relative importance of each modality in contributing to spatial imagery?
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Society for the Study of Human Development releases special issue of Research in Human Development
The Society for the Study of Human Development (SSHD) has released a special issue of Research in Human Development on "Emergence, Self-Organization, and Developmental Science." The issue, which includes articles such as "Self-Organization and Explanatory Pluralism: Avoiding the Snares of Reductionism in Developmental Science," can be accessed by SSHD members at www.sshdonline.org.
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Overdosing on Incentives
Stock options, gift certificates, and lump sums of cash are the tools of choice that employers use to motivate staff to strive for success. It’s widely assumed that the promise of a monetary bonus improves a worker’s drive, concentration, and performance. But a new study shows that these motivational rewards may have the opposite effect on some people. In these individuals, the potential for a bonus can send the brain’s reward centers into overdrive and interfere with their ability to process information, a team of American and European researchers has concluded. The chemical in question is dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays a variety of roles in the brain.
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Taking a Transdiagnostic Approach to Understanding Self-Injury
Millions of people are affected by self-injury, especially adolescents and young adults. Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) has been the focus of numerous studies and, yet, there is still a lot to learn about its causes and consequences. NSSI behavior, the most common of which is cutting, can have various short- and long-term consequences and research shows that NSSI is predictive of later suicide attempts. We also know that NSSI co-occurs with many other disorders, including major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and substance use and eating disorders.
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“But I Didn’t Know!” People Show Prejudice-Based Aggression When It’s Easily Deniable
A study shows the role that “plausible deniability” may in discriminatory behavior against marginalized groups.
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Making Mindfulness Work for Patients
APS Fellow Marsha M. Linehan, director of the Behavioral Research and Therapy Clinics at the University of Washington, is the recipient of a 2014 APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award. Linehan will give an award address at the 27th APS Annual Convention in 2015 in New York City. Linehan’s research focuses on employing behavioral models to study patients who develop suicidal behaviors, substance abuse issues, or borderline personality disorder. She also developed Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), originally used to treat suicidal tendencies and later modified to include the treatment of mental disorders and borderline personality disorder.
