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Sorry, Ritalin’s not going to make you smart
The Toronto Star: Popping pills won’t boost your brainpower if you have average or above-average intelligence, according to a new paper published by the Association for Psychological Science. “Are you going to be able to manipulate your physiology to make yourself smarter? Chances are, you’re not going to be able to,” Thomas Hills, a psychology professor at the U.K.-based University of Warwick, told the Star. “Evolution’s already created the best possible physiological environment for you if you don’t have a deficit.” And humans likely won’t get any smarter, according to the paper’s findings.
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Sound and vision work hand in hand, UCLA psychologists report
UCLA: Our senses of sight and hearing work closely together, perhaps more than people realize, a new UCLA psychology study shows. "If we think of the perceptual system as a democracy where each sense is like a person casting a vote and all votes are counted to reach a decision — although not all votes are counted equally — what our study shows is that the voters talk to one another and influence one another even before each casts a vote," said Ladan Shams, a UCLA associate professor of psychology and the senior author of the new study.
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Is this as smart as we get?
The Globe and Mail: “A provocative new paper warns that our societal effort to do whatever it takes to improve intelligence may be misguided, as any increases in thinking ability are likely to come with problems,” reports Psych Central. “In a paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, the authors looked to evolution to understand why humans are only as smart as we are and not any smarter. … To answer the question, the authors reviewed the evolutionary process and discovered that additional intelligence gains would most likely be offset by some other unintended consequence.
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Fewer teens getting driver’s licenses as more seniors retain them
Los Angeles Times: In an era of expensive gasoline and a threadbare economy, fewer young people are getting driver's licenses and more older people are holding on to them as long as possible. The data reflect big behavioral, technological and economic shifts, said Michael Sivak, research professor at the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute. "The availability of virtual contact through electronic means has reduced the need for actual contact among young people," said Sivak, who holds a doctorate in psychology.
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Stressed About Final Exams? Try Self-Compassion
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the APS 23rd Annual Convention in Washington, DC. Watch Elizabeth A. Hendriks from the University of Notre Dame present her poster session research, “Self-Compassion Buffers Negative Affect but Does Not Moderate Cortisol Following Social Stress Task.” Hendriks and her collaborator Michelle M. Wirth measured self compassion, negative affect, and cortisol in study participants who were asked to deliver a persuasive speech to a panel of trained judges. They found that participants who displayed high self-compassion experienced less negative affect than those who displayed low self-compassion.
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Ritalin and Other Cognitive-Enhancing Drugs Probably Won’t Make You Smarter
Scientific American: On Monday, I put up a post on whether we would ever be able to upload our brains into a computer, merging ourselves into the great digital Singularity that would provide us with eternal life—and virtually infinite sensory powers and intelligence. The take home: This is akin to a cargo cult-like religion. Don’t hold your breath (or freeze your brain) in anticipation.
