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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Practice Does Not Make Perfect: No Causal Effect of Music Practice on Music Ability Miriam A. Mosing, Guy Madison, Nancy L. Pedersen, Ralf Kuja-Halkola, and Fredrik Ullén How essential is practice to achieving an expert level of performance? To answer this question, the authors asked monozygotic and dizygotic twins who play an instrument or sing how often they had practiced during four different age intervals (0-5 years, 6-11 years, 12-17 years, and 18 years till the time of measurement). The twins' music ability was assessed using a test of pitch, melody, and rhythm discrimination.
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Group Identity Emphasized More by Those Who Just Make the Cut
People and institutions who are marginal members of a high-status or well-esteemed group tend to emphasize their group membership more than those who are squarely entrenched members of the group, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Research has long shown that people prefer to be in groups that are thought to have higher status or cultural value as a way of boosting self-image and projecting an impressive image to others.
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Anticipating Experience-Based Purchases More Enjoyable Than Material Ones
To get the most enjoyment out of our dollar, science tells us to focus our discretionary spending on trips over TVs, on concerts over clothing, since experiences tend to bring more enduring pleasure than do material goods. New research shows that the enjoyment we derive from experiential purchases may begin before we even buy. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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New Research From <em>Clinical Psychological Science</em>
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: Madeline Lee Pe, Katharina Kircanski, Renee J. Thompson, Laura F. Bringmann, Francis Tuerlinckx, Merijn Mestdagh, Jutta Mata, Susanne M. Jaeggi, Martin Buschkuehl, John Jonides, Peter Kuppens, and Ian H. Gotlib In this study, the authors used a network approach to examine whether people with major depressive disorder (MDD) have a denser, and thus less flexible, emotion network -- something that is thought to be associated with psychopathology.
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Children’s Drawings May Indicate Later Intelligence
How 4-year-old children draw pictures of a child is an indicator of intelligence at age 14, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Researchers studied 7,752 pairs of identical and non-identical twins (a total of 15,504 children) from the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS), funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) in the UK, and found that the link between drawing and later intelligence seemed to be influenced by genes. At the age of 4, children were asked by their parents to complete a ‘Draw-a-Child’ test, i.e. draw a picture of a child.
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Visual ‘Gist’ Helps Us Figure Out Where a Crowd Is Looking
Have you ever seen a crowd of people looking off into the distance, perhaps toward a passing biker or up to the top of a building? There’s a good chance you looked there, too, instantly, even without paying attention to the individuals in the group. How can we tell where a crowd is looking with so little effort? Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Denver have discovered that we rely on a specialized visual process known as “ensemble coding” to perceive where a crowd is looking.
