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Study: Discriminating Fact from Fiction in Recovered Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse
A decade or so ago, a spate of high profile legal cases arose in which people were accused, and often convicted, on the basis of “recovered memories.” These memories, usually recollections of childhood abuse, arose years after the incident occurred and often during intensive psychotherapy. So how accurate are recovered memories? The answer is not so clear. In fact, this question has lead to one of the most contentious issues in the fields of psychology and psychiatry.
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Smoking on the Silver Screen: New Study Shows Exposure to Smokers in Movies Increases Likelihood of Smoking in the Future
A new study appearing in the July issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reports that watching an actor smoke on the big screen may make smokers more likely to continue smoking in the future, and make nonsmokers more favorably disposed toward smoking. Sonya Dal Cin, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center of Dartmouth Medical School, and colleagues from the University of Waterloo and Central Michigan University, assessed the level to which identification with a protagonist on film alters our implicit associations between the self and smoking.
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It’s Not all the Parent’s Fault: Delinquency in Children Now Linked to Biology
How do sweet children turn into delinquents seemingly right before our eyes? A unique study appearing in the June issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that, in children, a highly reactive autonomic nervous system, which regulates our cardiovascular, digestive and respiratory functions, paired with a stressful family environment leads to increased instances of maladaptive personality change. Rutgers University psychologist, Daniel Hart, and colleagues Nancy Eisenberg and Carlos Valiente of Arizona State University, used a Skin Conductance Response (SCR) test to assess 138 elementary school aged children.
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The Roots of Grammar: New Study Shows Children Innately Prepared to Learn Language
To learn a language, a child must learn a set of all-purpose rules, such as “a sentence can be formed by combining a subject, a verb and an object” that can be used in an infinite number of ways. A new study shows that by the age of seven months, human infants are on the lookout for abstract rules – and that they know the best place to look for such abstractions is in human speech.
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Study Offers Clues into Rumination, Symptoms of Severe Depression
One of the most difficult and paradoxical symptoms of depression is obsessive thinking about the disease itself. Many people suffering from depression describe not only an inability to banish sad memories, but also a preoccupation with the origins and nature of disabling melancholy. Psychologists call this rumination. People with such obsessive thinking have more frequent bouts of depression, and the episodes tend to be more severe and more long-lasting. As a result, psychologists are very interested in knowing just what is happening in the brain during depressive rumination. Why can’t severely depressed people move on to healthier, happier thoughts?
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Infants Able to Distinguish Positive/Negative Parenting, Study Shows
Nearly half a century ago, psychiatrist John Bowlby proposed that the instincts underpinning infants’ attachment to their mother are accompanied by “internal working models,” which help them to better understand the world around them. These mental models mediate infants’ ability to use their caregiver as a buffer against the stresses of life, and help facilitate the development of important self-regulatory and social skills. Yet no research has ever directly assessed internal working models of attachment in infancy.
