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New Research on Cognition from Psychological Science
Read about new research on cognitive processes - including processes involved in learning, theory of mind, and cognitive control - published in Psychological Science, Current Directions in Psychological Science, and Perspectives on Psychological Science. Cognitive Load Disrupts Implicit Theory-of-Mind Processing Dana Schneider, Rebecca Lam, Andrew P. Bayliss, and Paul E. Dux A recently proposed framework explaining Theory of Mind (ToM) suggests there is one system that develops early and operates implicitly and another system that develops later and depends on domain-general cognitive functions.
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Speaking Multiple Languages Can Influence Children’s Emotional Development
On the classic TV show I Love Lucy, Ricky Ricardo was known for switching over to rapid-fire Spanish whenever he was upset, despite the fact Lucy had no idea what her Cuban husband was saying. These scenes were comedy gold, but they also provided a relatable portrayal of the linguistic phenomenon of code-switching. This kind of code-switching, or switching back and forth between different languages, happens all the time in multilingual environments, and often in emotional situations.
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Who Influences Your Vote? It May Depend on How Soon the Election Is
Neighbors’ lawn signs, public opinion polls and even a conversation in the next restaurant booth can affect how people vote in an election. But it all depends on how far away the election is.
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When We Forget to Remember – Failures in Prospective Memory Range From Annoying to Lethal
A surgical team closes an abdominal incision, successfully completing a difficult operation. Weeks later, the patient comes into the ER complaining of abdominal pain and an X-ray reveals that one of the forceps used in the operation was left inside the patient. Why would highly skilled professionals forget to perform a simple task they have executed without difficulty thousands of times before? These kinds of oversights occur in professions as diverse as aviation and computer programming, but research from psychological science reveals that these lapses may not reflect carelessness or lack of skill but failures of prospective memory.
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Grin and Bear It! Smiling Facilitates Stress Recovery
Just grin and bear it! At some point, we have all probably heard or thought something like this when facing a tough situation. But is there any truth to this piece of advice? Feeling good usually makes us smile, but does it work the other way around? Can smiling actually make us feel better? In a study forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientists Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman of the University of Kansas investigate the potential benefits of smiling by looking at how different types of smiling, and the awareness of smiling, affects individuals’ ability to recover from episodes of stress.
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New Research on Memory From Psychological Science
Read about new research published in Psychological Science that examines how we represent and search for things in memory. Saved by a Log: How Do Humans Perform Hybrid Visual and Memory Search? Jeremy M. Wolfe Current theories of how humans perform concurrent visual and memory-based searches are based on very small set sizes and indicate a linear relationship between memory and visual set size and search time. However, if this linear relationship were applied to larger visual and memory set sizes, it would lead to prohibitively long search times. In several experiments, participants memorized 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, or 100 items and searched for them in displays containing 1-16 items.