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What Makes Self-Directed Learning Effective?
In recent years, educators have come to focus more and more on the importance of lab-based experimentation, hands-on participation, student-led inquiry, and the use of “manipulables” in the classroom. The underlying rationale seems to be that students are better able to learn when they can control the flow of their experience, or when their learning is “self-directed.” While the benefits of self-directed learning are widely acknowledged, the reasons why a sense of control leads to better acquisition of material are poorly understood.
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Gelfand Receives Anneliese Maier Research Award
APS Fellow Michele J. Gelfand, who studies conflict and conducts comparative cultural research, accepted the Anneliese Maier Research Award at a September 13, 2012 ceremony at Heidelberg University in Germany. The award is granted by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and includes a €250,000 prize, which will fund Gelfand’s collaboration with Klaus Boehnke and other colleagues at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany. Gelfand has been recognized for her work contrasting “tight” societies that have little tolerance for deviation from their strict social norms with “loose” societies that have a higher tolerance for deviation from their weaker social norms.
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Kurt Pawlik Honored for Contributions to Global Psychology
APS Fellow Kurt Pawlik, University of Hamburg, Germany, has received the 2012 APA Outstanding Psychologist Award for distinguished contributions to global psychology. Pawlik, who has been a professor at the University of Hamburg since March 1965, has researched a myriad of topics over his 45 year career, including the physiological psychology of learning and memory, psychological assessment, and clinical neuropsychology. During his impressive career, he has contributed over 160 publications to scientific journals, handbooks and edited volumes.
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Our Preferences Change to Reflect the Choices We Make, Even Three Years Later
You’re in a store, trying to choose between similar shirts, one blue and one green. You don’t feel strongly about one over the other, but eventually you decide to buy the green one. You leave the store and a market researcher asks you about your purchase and which shirt you prefer. Chances are that you’d say you prefer the green one, the shirt you actually chose. As it turns out, this choice-induced preference isn’t limited to shirts. Whether we’re choosing between presidential candidates or household objects, research shows that we come to place more value on the options we chose and less value on the options we rejected.
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Intelligence Is in the Genes, but Where?
You can thank your parents for your smarts—or at least some of them. Psychologists have long known that intelligence, like most other traits, is partly genetic. But a new study led by psychological scientist Christopher Chabris of Union College reveals the surprising fact that most of the specific genes long thought to be linked to intelligence probably have no bearing on one’s IQ. And it may be some time before researchers can identify intelligence’s specific genetic roots. Chabris and David Laibson, a Harvard economist, led an international team of researchers that analyzed a dozen genes using large data sets that included both intelligence testing and genetic data.
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Announcing the APSSC Student Grant Competition
Each year the APSSC Student Grant Competition recognizes and funds outstanding research in its initial stages of development. Applicants will gain valuable experience in grant writing and also receive written feedback on their work from peer reviewers. Moreover, winning an award is an outstanding accomplishment that will serve to enhance your vita. Graduate and undergraduate student affiliates from all areas of psychological science are strongly encouraged to apply. Research grant proposals must be submitted to the Graduate Advocate by November 15, 2012, at 11:59 pm.