-
In Reading Facial Emotion, Context Is Everything
In a close-up headshot, Serena Williams’ eyes are pressed tensely closed; her mouth is wide open, teeth bared. Her face looks enraged. Now zoom out: The tennis star is on the court, racket in hand, fist clenched in victory. She’s not angry. She’s ecstatic, having just beaten her sister Venus at the 2008 U.S. Open. “Humans are exquisitely sensitive to context, and that can very dramatically shape what is seen in a face,” says psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett of Northeastern University and Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard School of Medicine.
-
How Your Brain Reacts To Mistakes Depends On Your Mindset
“Whether you think you can or think you can’t—you’re right,” said Henry Ford. A new study, to be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people who think they can learn from their mistakes have a different brain reaction to mistakes than people who think intelligence is fixed. “One big difference between people who think intelligence is malleable and those who think intelligence is fixed is how they respond to mistakes,” says Jason S. Moser, of Michigan State University, who collaborated on the new study with Hans S. Schroder, Carrie Heeter, Tim P. Moran, and Yu-Hao Lee.
-
fMRIs Show That Dyslexia Isn’t A Matter of IQ
A brain-imaging study challenges a common understanding of dyslexia, showing that the reading difficulties associated with dyslexia are not related to IQ.
-
What Do Infants Remember When They Forget?
Six-month-old babies are severely limited in what they can remember about the objects they see in the world; if you hide several objects from an infant, they will only remember one of those objects with any detail. But a new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that when babies “forget” about an object, not all is lost.
-
As Minds Get Quicker, Teenagers Get Smarter
Adolescents become smarter because they become mentally quicker. That is the conclusion of a new study by a group of psychologists at University of Texas at San Antonio. “Our findings make intuitive sense,” says lead author Thomas Coyle, who conducted the study with David Pillow, Anissa Snyder, and Peter Kochunov. But this is the first time psychologists have been able to confirm this important connection. The study appears in the forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science. “Our research was based on two well-known findings, Coyle continues. “The first is that performance on intelligence tests increases during adolescence.
-
Rethinking Gifted Education Policy – A Call to Action
Children with extraordinary academic talents should receive the kind of coaching and training opportunities that are typically reserved for performance and athletic abilities, researchers argue.
