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The values diet
The Boston Globe: Losing weight is hard. Wouldn’t it be nice if a simple one-time exercise could shave off several pounds over several months? Researchers asked women to write about their most important value and why it was important to them, or about a less important value and why it might be important to someone else. Two and a half months later, women who had written about their most important value had lost weight, whereas women who had written about a less important value had gained weight. The first group also had smaller waists and better cognitive performance than the second group.
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For Mental Health Boost: Take Charge Of Your Personal Story
WBUR Radio: I have a friend who, from my perspective, has a great life: fabulous job, cool wife, close family. Still, this guy sees himself as perpetually at the mercy of life’s twists and turns. When work is hard, he feels like “a failure.” When his relationship gets complicated, he becomes “unloveable.” I’ve always wondered why he perceives such ugliness looking into the mirror. Well, it appears that the stories he — that we all — tell ourselves about our lives have a huge impact on our mental health.
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Which Direction Now? Just Ask the North-Facing Map in Your Head
You’re driving from work to pick up your kids at school. The drive is familiar; you’ve done it almost every day for years. But how do you know in which direction the school is from your home? Landmarks? The sun? Animal instinct? Now, a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, yields an alternative answer that surprised even its authors, Julia Frankenstein, Betty J. Mohler, Heinrich H. Bülthoff, and Tobias Meilinger, who collaborated at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, in Tübingen, Germany.
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Infants Possess Intermingled Senses
Scientific American: What if every visit to the museum was the equivalent of spending time at the philharmonic? For painter Wassily Kandinsky, that was the experience of painting: colors triggered sounds. Now a study from the University of California, San Diego, suggests that we are all born synesthetes like Kandinsky, with senses so joined that stimulating one reliably stimulates another. The work, published in the August issue of Psychological Science, has become the first experimental confirmation of the infant-synesthesia hypothesis—which has existed, unproved, for almost 20 years. Read the full story: Scientific American
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Infants May Use Lip Reading to Learn Language
ABC News: Infants learn language not only through sound, but also through lip reading, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers say the new findings defy the conventional view that babies learn to speak through sound alone and the research may even assist in diagnosing autism spectrum disorders in the future. Scientists from Florida Atlantic University studied 89 infants ranging in age from 4 months to 12 months old. They also studied 21 adults.
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The surprising upside to hitting hard times
Today Show: It may be hard to look on the bright side when you’re mid-divorce or post-pink slip. But traumatic life events can actually benefit you in the long run, according to a new research review. Compared with people whose lives have been a cakewalk, you’re tougher if you’ve faced a few challenges, points out the study in Current Directions in Psychological Science. This resilience changes your body and mind so you’re less likely to be overwhelmed by the next stressful situation, says study author Mark D. Seery, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University at Buffalo.
