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Parents’ Math Anxiety Can Undermine Children’s Math Achievement
If the thought of a math test makes you break out in a cold sweat, Mom or Dad may be partly to blame, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. A team of researchers led by University of Chicago psychological scientists Sian Beilock and Susan Levine found that children of math-anxious parents learned less math over the school year and were more likely to be math-anxious themselves—but only when these parents provided frequent help on the child’s math homework. Lead study author Erin A. Maloney is a postdoctoral scholar in psychology at UChicago. Gerardo Ramirez and Elizabeth A.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Capacity for Visual Features in Mental Rotation Yangqing Xu and Steven L. Franconeri Despite researchers' interest in mental rotation -- the ability of people to rotate the visual representation of objects in their mind -- there is still much we don't know about it. To learn more about this ability, the researchers performed a series of studies, some including eye tracking, in which participants were asked to mentally rotate simple objects with four differently colored parts. Participants were able to keep track of only one of the color-location feature links during the rotation task.
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Look Into My Pupils: Pupil Mimicry May Lead to Increased Trust
People often mimic each other’s facial expressions without even knowing it, but research shows that they also mimic the size of each other’s pupils.
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New Research in Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Genes Unite Executive Functions in Childhood Laura E. Engelhardt, Daniel A. Briley, Frank D. Mann, K. Paige Harden, and Elliot M. Tucker-Drob Research has shown that the covariation among abilities in different executive function (EF) domains -- represented by a higher-order factor -- is almost 100% heritable in adults; however, it is not known whether this genetic influence is in place in childhood. Third- through eighth-graders who were part of the Texas Twin Project -- a registry of twins and triplets living in the U.S.
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Illuminating Mechanisms of Repetitive Thinking
The ability to engage in mental time travel -- to delve back into past events or imagine future outcomes -- is a unique and central part of the human experience. And yet this very ability can have detrimental consequences for both physical and mental well-being when it becomes repetitive and uncontrolled. A special series of articles in the July 2015 issue of Clinical Psychological Science (CPS) investigates this kind of repetitive thinking, exploring the core psychological processes that underlie maladaptive thought processes like worry and rumination.
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At What Age Does Hard Work Add a Shine to Lousy Prizes?
Putting in a lot of effort to earn a reward can make unappealing prizes more attractive to kindergartners, but not to preschoolers, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for
