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How To Use Deliberate Confusion To Learn Faster
Business Insider: We all know that confusion doesn't feel good. Because it seems like an obstacle to learning, we try to arrange educational experiences and training sessions so that learners will encounter as little confusion as possible. But as is so often the case when it comes to learning, our intuitions here are exactly wrong. ... That's the finding of Travis Proulx and Steven J. Heine, researchers who published their results in the journal Psychological Science. If you're about to engage in any sense-making activity, from analyzing data to solving word problems, you may want to try delving into material that doesn't make much sense first. Read the whole story: Business Insider
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Predicting Sexual Crime: Are the Experts Biased?
Leroy Hendricks had a long history of sexually molesting children, including his own stepdaughter and stepson. When he was 21, he was convicted of exposing himself to two girls, and he continued to prey on kids until he was sent to prison at age 50 for molesting two 13-year-old boys. He served ten years of his 5- to 20-year term, with time off for good behavior, and then was set free. Except that the state of Kansas did not want him to be free. Under its Sexual Violent Predator Act, and based on expert mental health evaluation, the state decided that Hendricks remained a public menace and a threat to public safety.
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Congratulations to the 2013 APS Student Grant Competition Winners
Three graduate students have been named winners of the APSSC Student Grant Competition, sponsored by the APS Student Caucus. Each winner will receive $500 to be used for research that is currently in its initial stages of development. The winning research proposals are outlined below. Jason A. Oliver 6th year Doctoral Student in Clinical Psychology University of South Florida and Moffitt Cancer Center, FL Contemporary theories of smoking behavior typically emphasize the role of nicotine in enhancing the reward derived from cigarettes, but animal research suggests nicotine withdrawal also suppresses the value of alternative rewards.
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The Oscar Pistorius Trial: Psychologists Predict How a Jury Would Decide
The Huffington Post: 'Are Celebrities Charged with Murder Likely to be Acquitted?' is the title of a unique psychology experiment, inspired by boasts of a famous US lawyer, Eric Dubin, who claimed practically unbeatable court room strategies for representing celebrities, accused of committing serious crimes. Dubin helped win in 2005 a $30million jury verdict in the wrongful death lawsuit against actor Robert Blake, accused of murdering his wife. Blake, had become famous, ironically enough, for his TV portrayal of Tony Baretta, an undercover police detective.
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Does Having Children Make You Happier?
NPR: There's been a debate raging in academic circles for years. Does having children really make one happier? Most parents say their kids absolutely make them happy, but some researchers have come to question that. One of the questions he asked was: How happy are you when you're taking care of your kids? I spoke with Sonja Lyubomirsky, she's at the University of California at Riverside, and she told me that 2004 study and found that parents really weren't very happy. "When they sort of ranked the different activities on happiness, they found that taking care of children was read it, you know, fairly low.
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Where’s the Beef? Obama’s Valentine to Early Education
The Huffington Post: We are starting to think that all good things start in Chicago. First, President Obama makes statements about the importance of preschool for our nation's children in his State of the Union address. Did you hear the collective jaw drop from people who study children for a living (like us) and educators? A president who understands the importance of early education for America's children? Are we dreaming? ... In a recent article in Perspectives on Psychological Science, aptly entitled, "How to Make a Young Child Smarter," scholars at New York University reviewed 16 studies with a total of 7,370 participants in which poor children were enrolled in preschool.
