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Marjorie Rhodes
Marjorie Rhodes New York University http://psych.nyu.edu/cdsc/home.php What does your research focus on? I am interested in how the human mind acquires, organizes, and uses abstract knowledge. In particular, my research aims to identify the basic conceptual organization that underlies our understanding of the social world and to discover how these concepts develop. Classifying people into categories (e.g., girls, babies, doctors) is a fundamental component of how we make sense of our social experiences. Thus, one of my key goals is to discover how social categories develop across childhood. What drew you to this line of research and why is it exciting to you?
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Ruchika Prakash
The Ohio State University http://freud.psy.ohio-state.edu/lab/CNL/The_Lab.html What does your research focus on? I am involved in several lines of research, all of which are aimed at examining the effects of lifestyle factors on facets of emotional and cognitive control, the corresponding neural circuitry involved in these interrelated processes, as well as the overall functional neuroarchitecture of the brain.
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Elizabeth Page-Gould
University of Toronto Scarborough Professional Website: http://page-gould.com Lab Website: http://embodiedsocialcognition.com What does your research focus on? Generally, I research how social interactions with other people — both friends and strangers — affect our understanding of the social world. More specifically, I focus on how friendship with people from different social groups (“cross-group friendship”) impacts intergroup processes. This is a relatively old question within the field of intergroup relations, but I have been examining it anew by applying or developing experimental paradigms that can test the causal role of diverse friendships on intergroup experience.
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Christin M. Ogle
Duke University What does your research focus on? The focus of my research is on developmental factors that influence memory for traumatic life events and trauma-related psychopathology. What drew you to this line of research and why is it exciting to you? My professional interest in memory developed during my second year at Reed College while working under the mentorship of Dr. Daniel Reisberg. Dr. Reisberg and I worked on a project in collaboration with the Portland police bureau that was designed to examine local policy concerning procedures used to obtain eyewitness identifications.
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Brief Mindfulness Training May Boost Test Scores, Working Memory
College students who underwent mindfulness training showed improved working memory and verbal reasoning scores.
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Arguments in the Home Linked With Babies’ Brain Functioning
Being exposed to arguments between parents is associated with the way babies’ brains process emotional tone of voice, according to a new study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study, conducted by graduate student Alice Graham with her advisors Phil Fisher and Jennifer Pfeifer of the University of Oregon, found that infants respond to angry tone of voice, even when they’re asleep. Babies’ brains are highly plastic, allowing them to develop in response to the environments and encounters they experience.