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Individual Brain Activity Predicts Tendency to Succumb to Daily Temptations
Activity in areas of the brain related to reward and self-control may offer neural markers that predict whether people are likely to resist or give in to temptations, like food.
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People Rely on What They Hear to Know What They’re Saying
You know what you’re going to say before you say it, right? Not necessarily, research suggests. A study from researchers at Lund University in Sweden shows that auditory feedback plays an important role in helping us determine what we’re saying as we speak. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Our results indicate that speakers listen to their own voices to help specify the meaning of what they are saying,” says researcher Andreas Lind of Lund University, lead author of the study.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Task-Focused Behavior Mediates the Associations Between Supportive Interpersonal Environments and Students' Academic Performance Noona Kiuru, Eija Pakarinen, Kati Vasalampi, Gintautas Silinskas, Kaisa Aunola, Anna-Maija Poikkeus, Riitta-Leena Metsäpelto, Marja-Kristiina Lerkkanen, and Jari-Erik Nurmi Does providing students with a supportive environment help them learn, and if so, how? Participating children were followed from the 1st through the 4th grades. Measures of parental authoritative behavior, teacher support, and peer acceptance were collected for children when they were in the 1st grade.
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Take Notes by Hand for Better Long-Term Comprehension
Data suggest that taking notes by hand beats typing notes on a laptop for remembering conceptual information over time.
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ADHD Drug May Help Preserve Our Self-Control Resources
Methylphenidate, also known as Ritalin, may prevent the depletion of self-control, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Self-control can be difficult -- sticking with a diet or trying to focus attention on a boring textbook are hard things to do. Considerable research suggests one potential explanation for this difficulty: Exerting self-control for a long period seems to “deplete” our ability to exert self-control effectively on subsequent tasks. “It is as if self-control is a limited resource that ‘runs out’ if it is used too much,” says lead researcher Chandra Sripada of the University of Michigan.
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Speed-Reading Apps May Impair Reading Comprehension by Limiting Ability to Backtrack
To address the fact that many of us are on the go and pressed for time, app developers have devised speed-reading software that eliminates the time we supposedly waste by moving our eyes as we read. But don’t throw away your books, papers, and e-readers just yet -- research suggests that the eye movements we make during reading actually play a critical role in our ability to understand what we’ve just read. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
