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La lunghezza dei telomeri influenza la nostra attenzione (The length of telomeres influence our attention)
La Stampa: Se la mente si assenta troppo spesso da ciò che accade nel presente e spazia tra pensieri e riflessioni forse è colpa dell’età che avanza. O meglio dell’invecchiamento delle cellule che accorcia la lunghezza dei telomeri. È il risultato di uno studio dell’Università della California pubblicato su Clinical Psychological Science e coordinato da Elissa Epel. La ricerca evidenza una associazione tra la capacità di attenzione e la lunghezza dei telomeri. Più corto è il telomero, più la mente sarà distratta e distante da quanto succede all’esterno. Read the whole story: La Stampa
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Don’t knock daydreamers, they could be onto something: Great ideas come after some ‘time out’, study shows
The Daily Mail: From Einstein to Newton, some of the best ideas and most important scientific breakthroughs have been dreamt up during a little 'down time'. And in news that will cheer bored office workers and pupils, it is not only the geniuses among us who find inspiration in imagination - scientists have found we could all benefit from a spot of daydreaming. A study from the University of California, Santa Barbara, showed that people who returned to a difficult task after taking a break and doing an easy task boosted their performance by around 40 per cent.
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Your Secret Weapon for More Self-Control
Women's Health: Struggling to stay on task at work? Gargle some Gatorade. Swishing a sugary beverage in your mouth can help boost your self-control, says a recent study published in the journal Psychological Science. Researchers asked 51 students to complete two self-control tasks. In each test, half of the students rinsed their mouths with lemonade and sugar, while the other half rinsed with lemonade and Splenda. Read the whole story: Women's Health
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New Research From Psychological Science
Mirta Galesic, Henrik Olsson, and Jörg Rieskamp How accurately do people assess characteristics of the general population? Participants answered questions about 10 characteristics related to their love life, financial situation, friendships, health, work stress, and education. They also estimated the distribution of these qualities in their own social group and in the larger population. Although participants were fairly accurate in judging their social group, their estimates of the population were less accurate. In addition, participants showed specific trait-dependent enhancements or deficits in the reporting of their own characteristics.
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Give And Take: How The Rule Of Reciprocation Binds Us
NPR: In 1974, Phillip Kunz and his family got a record number of Christmas cards. In the weeks before Christmas they came daily, sometimes by the dozen. Kunz still has them in his home, collected in an old photo album. "Dear Phil, Joyce and family," a typical card reads, "we received your holiday greeting with much joy and enthusiasm ... Merry Christmas and Happy New Year's. Love Lou, Bev and the children." The cards from that year came in all shapes and sizes, but the basic message was the same. The writers wanted Kunz to know that he and his family were cared for, and also they wanted to share their own news.
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Dogs Learning Words Focus on Size, Not Shape
The New York Times: Toddlers just learning to speak associate words with shape, not size or texture. Anything shaped like a telephone, for instance, might be called “phone.” But a new study suggests that dogs tend to associate words with size rather than shape. This difference makes it “very doubtful that there is a single mammalian feature in word learning,” said Emile van der Zee, a psychologist at the University of Lincoln in England and the first author of the study, which appears in the journal PLoS One.
