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The neuroscience of inequality: does poverty show up in children’s brains?
The Guardian: With its bright colours, anthropomorphic animal motif and nautical-themed puzzle play mat, Dr Kimberly Noble’s laboratory at Columbia University in New York looks like your typical day-care centre – save for the team of cognitive neuroscientists observing kids from behind a large two-way mirror. The Neurocognition, Early Experience and Development Lab is home to cutting-edge research on how poverty affects young brains, and I’ve come here to learn how Noble and her colleagues could soon definitively prove that growing up poor can keep a child’s brain from developing. Read the whole story: The Guardian
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There are 3 types of smile – reward, affiliation, dominance
Wired: There are three distinct types of smile, a new study has revealed. People switch between 'reward', 'affiliation' and 'dominance' smiles, using different facial muscle combinations to make them, according to researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ... "When distinguishing among smiles, both scientists and laypeople have tended to focus on true and false smiles," said Paula Niedenthal, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Read the whole story: Wired
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: What's Worth Talking About? Information Theory Reveals How Children Balance Informativeness and Ease of Production Colin Bannard, Marla Rosner, and Danielle Matthews Greenfield's principle of informativeness suggests that children comment on things they find uncommon or uncertain rather than on things that are constant or can be assumed. The researchers quantified this tendency by performing a series of experiments in which 3-year-old children heard an experimenter describe images using noun-adjective combinations (e.g., bumpy road, old woman). The adjectives differed in their informativeness and unexpectedness.
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Believing the Future Will Be Favorable May Prevent Action
Findings from a series of studies show that people tend to believe others will come around to their point of view over time, a trend that holds across various contexts and cultures.
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Turning Up the Heat on Prosocial Behavior
Studies dating back to the 1940s have shown that the temperature can shape emotions and perception.
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Guess What? We’re All Born With Mathematical Abilities
NPR: As an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, Kristy vanMarle knew she wanted to go to grad school for psychology, but wasn't sure what lab to join. Then, she saw a flyer: Did you know that babies can count? "I thought, No way. Babies probably can't count, and they certainly don't count the way that we do," she says. But the seed was planted, and vanMarle started down her path of study. The person who made that flyer, Karen Wynn, became her mentor and they have since co-published several studies together. ... We know now that numeracy at the end of high school is a really strong and important predictor of an individual's economic and occupational success.
