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Exposure to More Diverse Objects Speeds Word Learning in Tots
Two toddlers are learning the word “cup.” One sees three nearly identical cups; the other sees a tea cup, a sippy cup and a Styrofoam cup. Chances are, the second child will have a better sense of what a cup is and—according to a new University of Iowa study—may even have an advantage as he learns new words. Published this month in the journal Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, the research showed that 18-month-olds who played with a broader array of objects named by shape—for example, groups of bowls or buckets that were less similar in material, size or features—learned new words twice as fast as those who played with more similar objects.
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Imitating Someone’s Accent Makes It Easier to Understand Them
In conversation, we often imitate each other’s speech style and may even change our accent to fit that of the person we're talking to. A recent study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that imitating someone who speaks with a regional or foreign accent may actually help you understand them better. "If people are talking to each other, they tend to sort of move their speech toward each other," says Patti Adank, of the University of Manchester, who cowrote the study with Peter Hagoort and Harold Bekkering from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. People don't only do this with speech, she says.
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Fear of Being Envied Makes People Behave Well Toward Others
It's nice to have success—but it can also make you worry that the jealous people will try to bring you down. New research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, has found that the fear of being the target of malicious envy makes people act more helpfully toward people who they think might be jealous of them. In previous research, Niels van de Ven of Tilburg University and his colleagues Marcel Zeelenberg and Rik Pieters had figured out that envy actually comes in two flavors: benign envy and malicious envy.
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Walter Mischel Wins 2011 Grawemeyer Award for Psychology
Good things come to those who wait. A scientist who showed that willpower can be learned—and that it carries lifelong benefits—has won the 2011 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Psychology. Walter Mischel, psychology professor and Niven professor of humane letters at Columbia University, will receive the $100,000 annual award. Taking the mystery out of the eternal challenge of resisting temptation, APS Fellow and former APS president Mischel created a scientific method to study human self-control, demonstrate its importance and explain the psychological processes that enable people to delay gratification.
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Social Support Is Most Effective When Provided Invisibly
New research by University of Minnesota psychologists shows how social support benefits are maximized when provided “invisibly”—that is without the support recipient being aware that they are receiving it. The study, “Getting in Under the Radar: A Dyadic View of Invisible Support,” is published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science. In the study, graduate student Maryhope Howland and professor Jeffry Simpson suggest there may be something unique about the emotional support behaviors that result in recipients being less aware of receiving support. “While previous research has frequently relied solely on the perceptions of support recipients, these findings are notable…
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Motivation to End Racism Relies on ‘Yes We Can’ Approach
If you’re trying to end racism, it’s not enough to get people to understand that racism is still a problem. You also have to make them feel like they can do something about it, according to a study published in Psychological Science.
