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Study Suggests Buddhist Deity Meditation Temporarily Augments Visuospatial Abilities
Meditation has been practiced for centuries, as a way to calm the soul and bring about inner peace. According to a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, there is now evidence that a specific method of meditation may temporarily boost our visuospatial abilities (for example, the ability to retain an image in visual memory for a long time). That is, the meditation allows practitioners to access a heightened state of visual-spatial awareness that lasts for a limited period of time. Normally when we see something, it is kept in our visual short-term memory for only a brief amount of time (images will begin to fade in a matter of seconds).
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Why You May Lose That Loving Feeling After Tying the Knot
Dating couples whose dreams include marriage would do well to step back and reflect upon the type of support they’ll need from their partners when they cross the threshold, a new Northwestern University study suggests. Will the partner who supports your hopes and aspirations while you are dating also help you fulfill important responsibilities and obligations that come with marriage? The answer to that question could make a difference in how satisfied you are after tying the knot. Believing a partner is there to help you grow into the person you aspire to be predicted higher relationship satisfaction for both dating and married couples, the study showed.
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Financial Barriers to Attending College Affect Academic Goals in Young Students
Most young students do not enjoy homework. However, after being told that good grades will help them get into college and lead to a better life, most students eventually buckle down and start studying. But what if college is not an option? If a student thinks they won’t be able to afford a higher education – if the path towards college feels closed to them — they may conclude that studying and homework are a waste of time. Psychologists Mesmin Destin and Daphna Oyserman from the University of Michigan wanted to know at what age this thinking starts to set in and found out that this mentality and lack of motivation towards school occurs in children as young as 11 years of age.
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The Price of Pain and the Value of Suffering
During these trying financial times, the cost of healthcare and how much we are willing to pay for it is at the top of our economic concerns. The financial value of pain has a wide ranging influence, affecting drug prices and injury compensation. But what about on an individual level — is it possible to place a value on our health, to prevent pain and suffering? University College London psychologists Ivo Vlaev and Nick Chater, and neuroscientists Ben Seymour and Raymond J. Dolan were interested in just how much money volunteers were willing to pay to avoid pain and discomfort.
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Eye Spy: Study Reveals We Seek New Targets During Visual Search, But Not During Other Visual Behaviors
When we look at a scene in front of us, we need to focus on the important items and be able to ignore distracting elements. Studies have suggested that inhibition of return (in which our attention is less likely to return to objects we’ve already viewed) helps make visual search more efficient – when searching a scene to find an object, we have a bias toward inspecting new regions of a scene, and we avoid looking for the object in already searched areas. Psychologists Michael D.
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Imagine This: Study Suggests Power of Imagination is More Than Just a Metaphor
We’ve heard it before: “Imagine yourself passing the exam or scoring a goal and it will happen.” We may roll our eyes and think that’s easier said than done, but in a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologists Christopher Davoli and Richard Abrams from Washington University suggest that the imagination may be more effective than we think in helping us reach our goals. A group of students searched visual displays for specific letters (which were scattered among other letters serving as distractors) and identified them as quickly as possible by pressing a button.
