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Emotional Cues Alter Perceptions of Time and Number
Emotionally charged information dilates our perception of time and interferes with our numerical intuition, though it does so in different ways. Previous findings on how we process time and numbers have been mixed -- some studies propose a common mechanism, while others suggest that the two domains are distinct. Psychological scientists Laura Young and Sara Cordes of Boston College sought to further investigate this issue by having 38 participants observe emotionally charged stimuli -- in this case, angry, happy, or neutral faces -- and then estimate either the number of dots that appeared or the amount of time that an oval was shown on a screen.
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From the Mouths of Babes and Birds
The New York Times: Babies learn to speak months after they begin to understand language. As they are learning to talk, they babble, repeating the same syllable (“da-da-da”) or combining syllables into a string (“da-do-da-do”). But when babies babble, what are they actually doing? And why does it take them so long to begin speaking? Insights into these mysteries of human language acquisition are now coming from a surprising source: songbirds.
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Why Healthy Eaters Fall for Fries
The New York Times: LAST Tuesday, Connor Moran, a limit-the-red-meat, increase-the-greens, eat-salad-for-lunch kind of guy, stopped into a Bronx Dunkin’ Donuts for his usual black coffee, no sugar, no cream. He walked out with a sandwich of egg and bacon between two halves of a glazed doughnut. Such is the puzzle of the food industry: American consumers, even otherwise healthy ones, keep choosing caloric indulgences rather than healthy foods at fast-food restaurants. Public health officials have been pushing fast-food restaurants to offer more nutritious foods to help combat excess weight in the United States, where more than one-third of American adults are obese.
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Teens’ Self-Consciousness Linked With Specific Brain, Physiological Responses
Teenagers are famously self-conscious, acutely aware and concerned about what their peers think of them. A new study reveals that this self-consciousness is linked with specific physiological and brain responses that seem to emerge in adolescence. “Our study identifies adolescence as a unique period of the lifespan in which self-conscious emotion, physiological reactivity, and activity in specific brain areas converge and peak in response to being evaluated by others,” says psychological scientist and lead researcher Leah Somerville of Harvard University.
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Senior Moment? Ageist Stereotypes Can Hurt — Or Help — Older Adults’ Memory
Of the many negative stereotypes that exist about older adults, the most common is that they are forgetful, senile, and prone to so-called “senior moments.” In fact, while cognitive processes tend to decline with age, new research reveals that simply reminding older adults about ageist ideas actually exacerbates their memory problems. The new findings are forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Do You Wanna Know a Secret?
The New York Times: The revelation that the National Security Agency has been secretly amassing huge amounts of data about Americans’ phone and Internet use has sparked a lively debate about the proper role of secret information in a free and open society. The crux of the debate is whether the value of secret information justifies the sacrifice of personal privacy. If secret information yields valuable intelligence that can be used to protect Americans, the reasoning goes, then it is worth sacrificing privacy for security. But there is a major problem with evaluating information labeled “secret”: people tend to inflate the value of “secret” information simply because it is secret.