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In a Married World, Singles Struggle for Attention
The New York Times: Here’s a September celebration you probably didn’t know about: It’s National Single and Unmarried Americans Week. But maybe celebration isn’t the right word. Social scientists and researchers say the plight of the American single person is cause for growing concern. About 100 million Americans, nearly half of all adults, are unmarried, according to the Census Bureau — yet they tend to be overlooked by policies that favor married couples, from family-leave laws to lower insurance rates. That national bias is one reason gay people fight for the right to marry, but now some researchers are concerned that the marriage equality movement is leaving single people behind.
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Crime witness ID method can affect error rate: study
CNBC: Showing photographs of suspected criminals to witnesses in sequence, rather than all at once, can produce fewer mistakes in identifications, according to new research. Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State University, said presenting photos one at a time produced a lower error rate than when witnesses were shown a simultaneous array of photos. "We believe these results go a long way toward instilling greater confidence in the sequential procedure as something that improves the reliability of eyewitness identification evidence," Wells, the lead researcher, said in a conference call with journalists. Read the whole story: CNBC
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A Few Strokes of the Past in an Artist Who Lost Her Memory
The New York Times: “Can I draw something for you — what should I draw?” Lonni Sue Johnson asked, but she didn’t wait for an answer. She drew a squiggly line that became a curly halo of hair around the cheerful face of a seated man stretching one leg upward, balancing a large bird on his foot. Within minutes, she had added a cat wearing a necklace, stars and a tiny, grinning airplane. “I like this part, because you want people to be happy,” she said, beaming. “Every sheet of paper is a treat.” Ms.
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Parentology: Will the Vinci computer help babies?
Los Angeles Times: A computer for babies may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a Canadian company has just made it reality. Last month Rullingnet Corp. launched Vinci, a 7-inch touch-screen tablet that sells for $389 to $479 and is marketed exclusively for children 4 and younger. To some parents, Vinci is an exciting, if pricey, step in the future of early childhood education. For others, the idea of buying a tablet for a baby is excessive, if not downright creepy. As Rullingnet points out, this is a serious computer.
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Tasting Alcohol Helps Our Bodies Process It
It’s not just alcohol that makes us drunk — our thoughts about what we’re drinking can also influence our level of intoxication. That’s what Shepard Siegel of McMaster University concludes in a recent issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science. Siegel focuses on Four Loko, the fruity alcoholic beverage that was once caffeinated — until the addition of caffeine to alcoholic beverages was banned by the FDA. Four Loko has been linked to a spike in alcohol-related hospitalizations on college campuses, but Siegel argues that caffeine was not responsible for the beverage’s dangerous effects.
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Why Remember What You Can Find Online?
Where do you store important information? According to psychological scientist Betsy Sparrow, the answer isn’t always “in your brain.” Sparrow says that we allow ourselves to forget information that we are confident the people around us (our spouses and friends, for example) will remember. Increasingly, we rely on technology as well. This phenomenon is called transactive memory. To highlight transactive memory, Sparrow and her colleagues asked participants to type 40 facts — such as “an ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.” Half of the participants were told that the computer would save their lists and half were told it would not.
