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Want To Feel 5 Years Older? Just Take A Memory Test
NPR: Researchers in a memory lab at Texas A&M University noticed that all the older people coming in as volunteers were really worried about how they'd do. So the scientists decided to measure how taking a memory test affects a person's subjective sense of age. Before the test, the 22 participants felt pretty darned good. Even though their average age was 75, they said they felt about 58. Then they were given a list of 30 nouns, told to study them for two minutes, and then asked to recall as many of them as they could in three minutes. The participants did fine on the memory test.
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Hidden Metaphors Get under Our Skin
Scientific American Mind: Look around. Do you see four walls or an expansive vista? The answer could influence your ability to think creatively. A growing body of research suggests that our sensory experiences can trigger metaphorical thinking, influencing our insights and behavior without us even realizing it. New research reveals ways we might be able to harness these subconscious forces. “If you're actively touching an object with the expectation that it will change your view of a situation, it might not work right away,” explains Joshua Ackerman, a psychologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-author of the smoothness study.
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Researchers: We can watch 3-D with only one eye
CNN: Humans can see 3-D images with only one eye, according to new research, suggesting a future in which the technology could become cheaper and more accessible. Simply looking through a small hole is enough to experience 3-D, says Dhanraj Vishwanath, a psychologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. His research was published in the journal Psychological Science. The 3-D technology that's currently used in movies and other media relies on two visual images, one from each eye, combining in the viewer's brain to produce 3-D's extra layer of depth. But Vishwanath's research suggests that both eyes aren't needed.
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To Call a Player’s Poker Hand, Look to the Arms
Professional poker players rely on the ability to divorce their facial expressions from their emotional state – no matter how good, or how bad, their hand is, they have to maintain an inscrutable “poker face.” But new research suggests that they may do well to focus on another body part: The arms. The research, published in Psychological Science, suggests that homing in on only the player’s arms may be the most reliable way to call a bluff. Psychological scientist Michael Slepian and colleagues had 78 undergraduate participants watch two-second video clips from the World Series of Poker.
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Stress at the Molecular Level
Traumatic stress not only affects our brains, but can also strike us at the cellular level. Iris-Tatjana Kolassa explores the biological, particularly the molecular, changes that occur after situations of extreme stress. She is also studying whether therapeutic interventions can reverse such alterations. Kolassa’s work has been of increasing influence on an international scale as it signals a paradigmatic breakthrough, creating the scientific sub-discipline of “molecular psychology,” which employs molecular biology for the advancement of psychological science.
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Growing Up Resilient
Children in densely populated and under-resourced areas often need inspiring and thoughtful teachers. Margaret Beale Spencer researches how children build resiliency, identity, and self-esteem, and how well-trained teachers can set a solid example for students. Her experiments identified that children as young as three years old learn discriminatory tendencies, but that these tendencies can be reversed with training. Spencer designed a CNN study to test racial bias in children. In addition to other major sources of recognition, she was awarded the 2006 Fletcher Fellowship, which recognized work that furthers the broad social goals of the US Supreme Court's Brown v.
