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Men Often Misread Women’s Sexual Cues: Study
U.S. News & World Report: Men often have difficulty accurately reading a woman's level of interest in them, a new study finds. In what should come as no surprise to any woman who's spent time in the dating world, a certain type of guy tends to think all women want him, while other guys just can't seem to pick up on the cues. The study included 96 male and 103 female U.S. college undergraduates who took part in a "speed-meeting" exercise that involved talking for three minutes to each of five members of the opposite sex. Before the exercise, the participants rated their own attractiveness and were assessed for their desire for a short-term sexual encounter.
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Iris Kolassa
University of Ulm, Germany www.uni-ulm.de/en/in/psy-paed/professuren/klinbiopsy/staff/prof-dr-iris-tatjana-kolassa.html What does your research focus on? I have two research interests: First, the consequences of (traumatic) stress on the brain, the mind, and one’s molecular biology. Second, changes in the brain in aging and mild cognitive impairment as well as Alzheimer's disease and the role of physical exercise and cognitive trainings in preventing age-related cognitive decline. What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you?
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Jeffrey D. Karpicke
Purdue University, USA http://learninglab.psych.purdue.edu/ What does your research focus on? Research in my laboratory sits at the interface between cognitive science and education. Our research has been especially focused on the importance of retrieval processes for learning. My goal is to identify effective strategies that promote long-term meaningful learning and comprehension. What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you? There is a significant need now for research that integrates the theoretical tools and methods from cognitive science with the content and learning goals in education.
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Bridgid Finn
Washington University, USA http://sites.google.com/site/bridgidfinn2/ What does your research focus on? My research is focused on the cognitive processes that are involved in regulating memory and learning. Much of my research targets how metacognition is used to guide learning. Specifically, I’m interested in identifying the biases that affect how people make assessments about their knowledge, and how these biases affect decisions about learning. Recently, I have been working on understanding the mechanisms involved in memory retrieval, and in particular the role that reconsolidation and post retrieval processes may play in strengthening memory after retrieval.
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Greg Walton
Stanford University www.stanford.edu/~gwalton/home/Welcome.html What does your research focus on? One of my main interests involves how the important contents of people’s selves — like their interests, motivations, and emotions — which people tend to think of as defining of or as originating in themselves, in fact derive from the social context, especially from others they know or are socially connected to. With my collaborators, I’ve looked at this in the context of academic motivation and achievement. We’ve shown, for example, that even subtle cues of social connection or disconnection to others in a field of study can have a large effect on intrinsic motivation for that field.
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Families cling to hope of autism ‘recovery’
Los Angeles Times: In 1987, Ivar Lovaas, a charismatic UCLA psychology professor, published what remains the most famous study on the treatment of autism. Lovaas had broken down the basic skills of life into thousands of drills, such as pointing, identifying colors and reading facial expressions. For 40 hours a week on average, the therapists he trained used rewards and punishments, ranging from food treats to slaps on the thigh, to instill those abilities in 19 autistic youngsters under the age of 4. When the study began, most of the children didn't speak and were considered mentally retarded.
