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Study Says Lead May Be the Culprit in ADHD
ADHD, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, is among the costliest of behavioral disorders. Its combination of inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity leads to accidental injuries, school failure, substance abuse, antisocial behavior and more. Yet despite nearly a century of study, the disorder’s roots remain mysterious. Much of modern ADHD research has focused on heritability of the condition, and indeed evidence suggests that genes may account for as much as 70 percent of hyperactivity and inattention in children. But that leaves 30 percent unexplained, so recently the focus has shifted to the environment.
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Two Sides of the Same Coin: Speech and Gesture Mutually Interact to Enhance Comprehension
Your mother may have taught you that it’s rude to point, but according to new research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, gesturing may actually help improve communication. Psychological scientist Spencer Kelly from Colgate University, along with Asli Özyürek and Eric Maris from Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) were interested in the interaction between speech and gesturing and how important this relationship is for language. In this study, volunteers watched brief videos of common actions (e.g., someone chopping vegetables, washing dishes) followed by a one-second video of a spoken word and a gesture.
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Psychology, Financial Decision Making, and Financial Crises
Full Text HTML (Available to the Public) Tommy Garling, Erich Kirchler, Alan Lewis, and Fred van Raaij How could the current financial crisis have happened? While fingers have been pointing to greedy banks, subprime-loan officers, and sloppy credit card practices, these are not the only contributors to the economic downturn. A new report examines the psychology of financial decision making, including the role of risk in making economic choices, how individuals behave in stock and credit markets, and how financial crises impact people's well-being. Risk taking is a very important component of financial decision making — If we take out a big loan, will we be able to pay it back?
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Cry Me a River: The Psychology of Crying
We’ve all experienced a “good cry”—whether following a breakup or just after a really stressful day, shedding some tears can often make us feel better and help us put things in perspective. But why is crying beneficial? And is there such a thing as a “bad cry”? University of South Florida psychologists Jonathan Rottenberg and Lauren M. Bylsma, along with their colleague Ad J.J.M. Vingerhoets of Tilburg University describe some of their recent findings about the psychology of crying in the December issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Are Power and Compassion Mutually Exclusive?
The fact that many cultures emphasize the concept of “noblesse oblige” (the idea that with great power and prestige come responsibilities) suggests that power may diminish a tendency to help others. Psychologist Gerben A. van Kleef (University of Amsterdam) and his colleagues from University of California, Berkeley, examined how power influences emotional reactions to the suffering of others.
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Preference Invites Categorization
It is no secret that you know more (that is, have expertise) about things you are interested in. If you hate baseball, you are not going to spend your spare time reading up homerun statistics and debating who the best pitcher is. On the other hand, if you inadvertently tell a wine connoisseur, that you enjoy a particular wine “just because it tastes good”, it will not be long before you are being lectured on different grape varietals and schooled in the different soil compositions of neighboring vineyards. However, it is less clear how we categorize and sort all of those facts related to things that interest us.
