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Preschool Has Big Advantages for the Disadvantaged
It may seem obvious that preschool helps kids perform better in later grades. But most studies to date have produced limited conclusions about how the preschool environment impacts a child’s academic success. A recent Psychological Science study has filled in some of those gaps. In the study, Elliot Tucker-Drob analyzed a data set that included 1,200 fraternal and identical twins from 600 families. The focus on twins allowed Tucker-Drob to fully account for family-to-family variation as well as genetic influences. He also evaluated each child at two, four, and five years of age to make sure that achievement gaps attributed to preschool didn’t already exist before the preschool years.
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The Photos That Make Us Feel
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the APS 23rd Annual Convention in Washington, DC. Watch Kathleen E. Hazlett from Marquette University present her poster session research on “Self Selected Pictures Are More Effective than IAPS for Inducing Positive Emotion.” According to Hazlett, your own photo album (or Facebook timeline, or Flickr account) might be the best pick-me-up when you’re feeling down. Personal photos could also be the best way for researchers to elicit positive emotions in the lab.
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Stumped by a Problem? This Technique Unsticks You
Stuck solving a problem? Seek the obscure, says Tony McCaffrey, a psychology PhD from the University of Massachusetts. “There’s a classic obstacle to innovation called ‘functional fixedness,’ which is the tendency to fixate on the common use of an object or its parts. It hinders people from solving problems.” McCaffrey has developed a systematic way of overcoming that obstacle: the “generic parts technique” (GPT), which he describes in the latest issue of Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science. The article also reports on McCaffrey’s test of GPT’s effectiveness.
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Hungry people ‘have clearer picture of food-related words’
Yahoo! India: Famished people tend to see food-related words more clearly than people who've just eaten, a new study has revealed. The study finds that this change in vision happens at the earliest, perceptual stages, before higher parts of the brain have a chance to change the messages coming from the eyes. Psychologists have known for decades that what's going on inside our head affects our senses. For example, poorer children think coins are larger than they are, and hungry people think pictures of food are brighter.
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Red Dress Effect: Women In Red Deemed Open To Sexual Advances, Study Of Men Shows
Huffington Post: Red dresses muddle men's minds, just ask The Matrix's Neo. In a scene from the 1999 sci-fi film, the hero is famously ambushed after becoming distracted by a woman on the street wearing a slinky red outfit. Now, a new study shows how such duds attain their sway. Men rate women wearing red clothing as being more interested in sex, hinting that humans may be conditioned to associate the color with fertility. The pull of red is nothing new. Women have donned pinkish blush and bright lipstick for nearly 12,000 years. And, if you're lucky enough to get a Valentine's Day card, it will probably come decorated in tiny red hearts.
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Stress turns men into risk-takers, while women play it safe
Toronto Star: Stress increases the differences in how men and women think about risk, according to a newly published article in Current Directions in Psychological Science. The article reviewed a number of previous studies that looked at how stress affects people when they’re making a decision. It seems that stress affects the way people assess risk and reward. When it comes to stress and gender there are some surprising differences, said Mara Mather, a professor of gerontology and psychology at the University of Southern California who co-wrote the paper with Nichole R. Lighthall, a PhD student in her lab.