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Remembering to Remember Supported by Two Distinct Brain Processes
You plan on shopping for groceries later and you tell yourself that you have to remember to take the grocery bags with you when you leave the house. Lo and behold, you reach the check-out counter and you realize you’ve forgotten the bags. Remembering to remember — whether it’s grocery bags, appointments, or taking medications — is essential to our everyday lives. New research sheds light on two distinct brain processes that underlie this type of memory, known as prospective memory. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Trading Places
Hide-and-seek: child’s play, or an important developmental tool that teaches children how to work together? British scientists Alex Gillespie and Beth Richardson think it might be both. Gillespie, at the University of Stirling, and Richardson, at Lancaster University, are interested in perspective exchange — switching social positions as children do when they play hide-and-seek; as a game of hide-and-seek progresses, seekers become hiders, and hiders become seekers. Perspectives switch. The researchers think perspective exchange might play an important role in cooperative activities that require people to work together across distinct points of view and distinct social demands.
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Visualized Heartbeat Can Trigger ‘Out-of-Body Experience’
A visual projection of human heartbeats can be used to generate an “out-of-body experience,” according to new research to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The findings could inform new kinds of treatment for people with self-perception disorders, including anorexia. The study, conducted by Jane Aspell of Anglia Ruskin University in the UK and Lukas Heydrich of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, is novel in that it shows that information about the internal state of the body — in this case, the heartbeat — can be used to change how people experience their own body and self.
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People Prefer Products That Help Them ‘Save Face’ in Embarrassing Moments
People who are feeling embarrassed are more likely to choose items, such as sunglasses or 'restorative' lotion, that hide or ‘repair’ the face, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research indicates that feelings of embarrassment can be alleviated by using so-called ‘restorative’ products -- effectively helping people to “save face.” “Previous research on embarrassment mainly documents that embarrassed individuals are motivated to avoid public exposure,” explains Ping Dong, a doctoral student at the University of Toronto and lead author of the new research.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science. Seeing in 3-D With Just One Eye: Stereopsis Without Binocular Vision Dhanraj Vishwanath and Paul B. Hibbard Researchers have long thought that stereopsis -- the sense of depth and immersive space -- is a byproduct of binocular vision, but can stereopsis also be induced by monocular vision? In a series of studies, the researchers determined that observers report the same characteristics for monocular and binocular stereopsis. They also found no support for several standard theories used to explain variations in stereopsis under different viewing conditions.
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2013 APS Award Address: Scott O. Lilienfeld
In his James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award Address, Scott Lilienfeld examines the importance, prevalence, and sources of public and political skepticism of psychology — and offers individual and institutional recommendations for enhancing the perception of psychology as a scientific discipline in the public eye.
