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‘Halfalogue’: Overheard Cell-Phone Conversations Are Not Only Annoying but Reduce Our Attention
"Yeah, I'm on my way home." "That's funny." "Uh-huh." "What? No! I thought you were – " "Oh, ok." Listening to someone talk on a cell phone is very annoying. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds out why: Hearing just one side of a conversation is much more distracting than hearing both sides and reduces our attention in other tasks. Lauren Emberson, a psychology Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University, came up with the idea for the study when she was taking the bus as an undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
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Perception of Emotion Is Culture-Specific
Want to know how a Japanese person is feeling? Pay attention to the tone of his voice, not his face. That's what other Japanese people would do, anyway. A new study examines how Dutch and Japanese people assess others' emotions and finds that Dutch people pay attention to the facial expression more than Japanese people do. "As humans are social animals, it's important for humans to understand the emotional state of other people to maintain good relationships," says Akihiro Tanaka of Waseda Institute for Advanced Study in Japan.
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False Memories of Self-Performance Result From Watching Others’ Actions
Psychological scientists have discovered all sorts of ways that false memories get created, and now there’s another one for the list: watching someone else do an action can make you think you did it yourself.
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Poignancy and loyalty: The ‘midnight ride’ effect
With the country on the verge of civil war, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a patriotic poem about Paul Revere, a little-known Massachusetts silversmith and minor hero of the Revolutionary War. “Paul Revere’s Ride” played fast and loose with the facts of the now famous 1775 events, but the narrative had the psychological effect the author intended. It got Americans wondering how history might have turned out differently without that heroic act—and how the country might never have come to exist. By focusing on the nation’s precarious origins, the poem bolstered nationalism at a time when it was sorely needed. “What if” thinking is always a bit tricky.
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Child’s ‘Mental Number Line’ Affects Memory for Numbers
As children in Western cultures grow, they learn to place numbers on a mental number line, with smaller numbers to the left and spaced further apart than the larger numbers on the right. Then the number line changes to become more linear, with small and large numbers the same distance apart. Children whose number line has made this change are better at remembering numbers, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Remembering numbers is an important skill—in life, which is full of social security numbers, temperatures, locker combinations, and passwords, as well as in school. For this study, Clarissa A.
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Education More Important Than Knowledge in Stopping Spread of HIV in Africa
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Simply teaching people the facts about how to protect themselves from HIV may not be enough to prevent the spread of AIDS in Africa, a new study suggests. Researchers found that villagers in Ghana who had higher levels of cognitive and decision-making abilities – not just the most knowledge -- were the ones who were most likely to take steps to protect themselves from HIV infection. These cognitive abilities are what people develop through formal education, said Ellen Peters, lead author of the study and associate professor of psychology at Ohio State University.
