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Like Humans, Monkey See, Monkey Plan, Monkey Do
How many times a day do you grab objects such as a pencil or a cup? We perform these tasks without thinking, however the motor planning necessary to grasp an object is quite complex. The way human adults grasp objects is typically influenced more by their knowledge of what they intend to do with the objects than the objects' immediate appearance. Psychologists call this the “end-state comfort effect,” when we adopt initially unusual, and perhaps uncomfortable, postures to make it easier to actually use an object. For example, waiters will pick up an inverted glass with their thumb pointing down if they plan to pour water into the glass.
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Got Sugar? Glucose Affects Our Ability to Resist Temptation
New research from a lab at Florida State University reveals that self-control takes fuel — literally. When we exercise it, resisting temptations to misbehave, our fuel tank is depleted, making subsequent efforts at self-control more difficult. Florida State psychologist Roy F. Baumeister and his colleagues Kathleen D. Vohs, University of Minnesota, and Dianne M. Tice, Florida State, showed this with an experiment using the Stroop task, a famous way of testing strength of self-control. Participants in this task are shown color words that are printed in different-colored ink (like the word red printed in blue font), and are told to name the color of the ink, not the word.
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Proportion of Kindergarten Classmates with Day Care Experience Matters, Study Shows
The debate over the effects of putting young children into child care outside the home has been brewing for years. Previous studies on the impact of child care report mixed findings. Children who are taken care of by nonfamily members at an earlier age, and remain in their care longer, are more aggressive and disobedient when they reach kindergarten. However, children who receive quality child care also are better prepared for formal schooling and have better language and thinking skills than their peers when they reach school age. What happens when children with different early childhood experiences finally reach school age and are grouped together in their first kindergarten classes?
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What’s in a Name? Initials Linked to Success, Study Shows
Do you like your name and initials? Most people do and, as past research has shown, sometimes we like them enough to influence other important behaviors. For example, Jack is more likely to move to Jacksonville and marry Jackie than is Philip who is more likely to move to Philadelphia and marry Phyllis. Scientists call this phenomenon the “name-letter effect” and argue that it is influential enough to encourage the pursuit of name-resembling life outcomes and partners. However, if you like your name too much, you might be in trouble.
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From Terror to Joy: Faced with Death, Our Minds Turn to Happier Thoughts
Philosophers and scientists have long been interested in how the mind processes the inevitability of death, both cognitively and emotionally. One would expect, for example, that reminders of our mortality--say the sudden death of a loved one--would throw us into a state of disabling fear of the unknown. But that doesn't happen. If the prospect of death is so incomprehensible, why are we not trembling in a constant state of terror over this fact? Psychologists have some ideas about how we cope with existential dread. One emerging idea--"terror management theory" --holds that the brain is hard-wired to keep us from being paralyzed by fear.
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Study on Joint Attention Has Implications for Understanding Autism
A hallmark of human nature is the ability to share information and to comprehend the thoughts and intentions of others. This capability involves social cognition (the cognitive processes involved in social interaction) and makes a significant contribution to the foundations for language development, as well as social competence. It also sets us apart from other primates. However, before infants have developed social cognition and language, they communicate and learn new information by following the gaze of others and by using their own eye contact and gestures to show or direct the attention of the people around them.
