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The Unreal World: ‘Homeland’ and bipolar disorder
Los Angeles Times: Sgt. Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) returns as a hero to the U.S. after spending eight years as a prisoner of war in Afghanistan. Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) is a mentally unstable CIA officer who is convinced that Brody is an agent of Al Qaeda. She gets antipsychotic medication and lithium from her sister, psychiatrist Maggie Mathison (Amy Hargreaves), but she fears she'll lose her job if she gets medical treatment through normal channels. In this episode, Carrie is hospitalized after being burned and bruised in a briefcase bomb explosion. She hasn't taken her medication in several days and is becoming increasingly manic.
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Men Often Misread Women’s Sexual Cues: Study
U.S. News & World Report: Men often have difficulty accurately reading a woman's level of interest in them, a new study finds. In what should come as no surprise to any woman who's spent time in the dating world, a certain type of guy tends to think all women want him, while other guys just can't seem to pick up on the cues. The study included 96 male and 103 female U.S. college undergraduates who took part in a "speed-meeting" exercise that involved talking for three minutes to each of five members of the opposite sex. Before the exercise, the participants rated their own attractiveness and were assessed for their desire for a short-term sexual encounter.
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Families cling to hope of autism ‘recovery’
Los Angeles Times: In 1987, Ivar Lovaas, a charismatic UCLA psychology professor, published what remains the most famous study on the treatment of autism. Lovaas had broken down the basic skills of life into thousands of drills, such as pointing, identifying colors and reading facial expressions. For 40 hours a week on average, the therapists he trained used rewards and punishments, ranging from food treats to slaps on the thigh, to instill those abilities in 19 autistic youngsters under the age of 4. When the study began, most of the children didn't speak and were considered mentally retarded.
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The ability to love begins earlier than you think
Woman's Day: The ability to trust, love and resolve conflict with loved ones starts much earlier than you think. In fact, a new review of the literature in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, found that these abilities start in early childhood. Psychologist Jeffry A. Simpson, one of the authors of the paper from the University of Minnesota, said the first 12 to 18 months of a child's life are crucial to this development. "Your interpersonal experiences with your mother during the first 12 to 18 months of life predict your behaviour in romantic relationships 20 years later," he said. Read the full story: Woman's Day
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Does Team Training Save Lives? A New Science Gives It a Rigorous Evaluation
Whether the task is flying a plane, fighting a battle, or caring for a patient, good teamwork is crucial to getting it done right. That’s why team-building and training courses are big business in the U.S., and have been for decades. But lately something has changed: “There’s a demand for evaluations—an emphasis on showing that team training makes a difference in safety, decision-making, communication, clinical outcomes—you name the ultimate criteria the industry has,” says Eduardo Salas, an organizational psychologist at the University of Central Florida.
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Les gènes de l’intelligence remis en question
Le Monde: Avec l'explosion des analyses génétiques, de nombreux travaux ont associé des variations dans plusieurs gènes impliqués dans le fonctionnement du cerveau avec le niveau d'intelligence. Prochainement publiée par la revue Psychological Science, une étude internationale revient sur ces "gènes de l'intelligence" : elle a essayé de retrouver leur lien avec le QI en utilisant trois jeux de données indépendants qui totalisent presque 10 000 personnes. En bref, ces chercheurs ont suivi le traditionnel et indispensable chemin de la science : répliquer l'expérience pour voir si l'on aboutit au même résultat. Read the full story: Le Monde
