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Math Careers Just Don’t Add Up For Women
LiveScience: Having skills suited for a variety of careers helps explain why few women pursue math and science jobs, new research finds. A study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Michigan revealed that women may be less likely to want careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) because they have more career choices, not because they have less ability.
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Damned Spot: Guilt, Scrubbing, and More Guilt
Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most complex characters, and by far the bard’s most obsessive. Immorally ambitious, she prods her husband to murder Scotland’s king, and then deludes herself into believing that “a little water will clear us of this deed.” But for all of her repeated hand washing, the ritual cannot cleanse her of her consuming guilt, and by Act V the stubborn blood stains have driven the illegitimate queen to madness and suicide. Cruel fate. But Lady Macbeth has recently enjoyed something of a second career, this one in the field of psychological science.
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Brief Mindfulness Training May Boost Test Scores, Working Memory
College students who underwent mindfulness training showed improved working memory and verbal reasoning scores.
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Do Superior Abilities Keep Women Out of STEM?
Science: Researchers seeking to explain why women are less likely than men to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers long focused on females' purported inferior mathematical prowess. But new research suggests a very different explanation: women's superior abilities in other areas. In "Not Lack of Ability but More Choice: Individual and Gender Differences in Choice of Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics," published in Psychological Science, psychologists Ming-Te Wang, Jacquelynne S.
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Arguments in the Home Linked With Babies’ Brain Functioning
Being exposed to arguments between parents is associated with the way babies’ brains process emotional tone of voice, according to a new study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study, conducted by graduate student Alice Graham with her advisors Phil Fisher and Jennifer Pfeifer of the University of Oregon, found that infants respond to angry tone of voice, even when they’re asleep. Babies’ brains are highly plastic, allowing them to develop in response to the environments and encounters they experience.
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Des distractions pour aider la mémoire des seniors (Distraction Can Reduce Age-Related Forgetting)
Le Figaro: La mémoire est de moins en moins fiable avec l'âge, même s'il existe de grandes variations entre les individus. Autre inconvénient, peut-être moins connu, le fait que l'on se laisse plus facilement distraire à 70 ans qu'à 20 ans. Pourtant, il serait possible de contourner ces handicaps inhérents au vieillissement. Lynn Hasher, professeur de psychologie à l'Université de Toronto (Canada), mène depuis plus de trente ans des recherches sur l'évolution de l'attention avec l'âge.
