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The Psychological Science Behind an Oops Moment
Over the last week or so, the phrase “brain freeze” has taken on a new meaning and caused a bit of media frenzy – first over Rick Perry’s debate flub on television, followed immediately by Herman Cain’s floundering on a question. A moment like this can happen to the best of us, whether it is captured live on national television or in private. The media has focused extensively on these two politicians and their momentary lapses in memory, but perhaps it is time to examine the psychological science of these kinds of brain-freeze moments and why they occur.
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Mom-to-be's mental state may affect child's development
USA Today: A fetus is sensitive to, and can be affected by, the expectant mother's mental state, a new study suggests. University of California, Irvine, researchers recruited pregnant women and tested them for depression before and after they gave birth. The women's babies were tested after birth to assess how well they were developing. Consistency in the mother's mental state appeared to be important to a baby's well-being. Development was best in babies with mothers who were either depression-free or had depression before and after giving birth.
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Anti-Thanksgiving? Complaining can be a good thing
msnbc: If Thanksgiving weekend is a time for gratitude, let's make the weekend before the holiday a time for whining. Actually, two studies out this week explore the upside of negative thinking. Sometimes, believing that everything's the worst can ultimately be for the best, the research suggests. Fun fact 1: Complaining can help inspire people to change a bad situation. “In order to actually change the system, you’ve got to know what’s wrong with it,” says India Johnson, a graduate student at Ohio State University who helped lead a study set to appear in the journal Psychological Science.
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Bipolar Kids May Focus on Different Facial Features
U.S. News & World Report: Children with bipolar disorder and a similar condition called severe mood dysregulation spend less time looking at the eyes when trying to identify facial features, compared to children without the psychiatric disorders, researchers say. This new study finding may help explain why children with bipolar disorder and severe mood dysregulation have difficulty determining other people's emotional expressions, said the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health investigators. The researchers tracked the eye movements of children with and without psychiatric disorders as they viewed faces with different emotional expressions, such as happy, sad, fearful and angry.
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Mom-to-Be’s Mental State May Affect Child’s Development
U.S. News & World Report: A fetus is sensitive to, and can be affected by, the expectant mother's mental state, a new study suggests. University of California, Irvine, researchers recruited pregnant women and tested them for depression before and after they gave birth. The women's babies were tested after birth to assess how well they were developing. Consistency in the mother's mental state appeared to be important to a baby's well-being. Development was best in babies with mothers who were either depression-free or had depression before and after giving birth. Read the full story: U.S. News & World Report
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Taming temper tantrums: Are you doing it wrong?
Today: Research shows that 70 percent of children throw temper tantrums, according to parenting expert Michele Borba. Wait, what? Who are these 30 percent of calm children, and where can I get one? Just kidding – like most parents I’ve accepted that the occasional tantrum is going to be a kicking, screaming, brain-jarring pothole on the road to maturity. But researchers from Yale University and Kings College in the U.K. have been hard at work studying tantrums, and they say taming them is possible. It's all about proper training – for the parents, not the children. "Hold those sticker charts, fancy point systems and our pleads and threats.
