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Brain Shows Humans Break Down Events into Smaller Units.
In order to comprehend the continuous stream of cacophonies and visual stimulation that battle for our attention, humans will breakdown activities into smaller, more digestible chunks, a phenomenon that psychologists describe as “event structure perception.” Event structure perception was originally believed to be confined to our visual system, but new research published in the May issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reports that a similar process occurs when reading about everyday events as well.
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New Research Shows Children Less Prone to False Memories than Adults, Challenging Assumptions About Eyewitness Testimony.
In the 1980’s, a spate of high profile child abuse convictions gave way to heightened concern about false memory reports given by children. Take, for example, the case of Kelly Michaels, a preschool teacher who was convicted on 115 counts of sexual abuse based on the testimony of 20 of her pupils. After serving seven years of her 47 year sentence, Michaels’ conviction was overturned after the techniques used to interview the children were shown to be coercive and highly suggestive.
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Monkeys’ Ability to Reflect on their Thoughts May Have Implications for Infants, Autistic Children
New research from Columbia’s Primate Cognition Laboratory has demonstrated for the first time that monkeys could acquire meta-cognitive skills: the ability to reflect about their thoughts and to assess their performance. The study was a collaborative effort between Herbert Terrace, Columbia professor of psychology & psychiatry, and director of its Primate Cognition Laboratory, and two graduate students, Lisa Son — now professor of psychology at Barnard College — and UCLA postdoctoral researcher Nate Kornell.
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Energy Use Study Demonstrates Power of Social Norms
Most people want to be normal. So, when we are given information that underscores our deviancy, the natural impulse is to get ourselves as quickly as we can back toward the center. Marketers know about this impulse, and a lot of marketing makes use of social norms. This is especially true of campaigns targeting some kind of public good: reducing smoking or binge drinking, for example, or encouraging recycling. The problem with these campaigns is that they often do not work. Indeed, they sometimes appear to have the opposite of their intended effect. Why would this be?
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Worry too Much? You may Die Young.
There is broad consensus today that personality traits are best described by the “Big Five”: Extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience. Each of these broad measures can be broken down into smaller ones, but in general, this taxonomy appears to take in most of what we think of as personhood. When you think of someone as “steady” or “flaky” or “gloomy” or “daring,” what you’re really doing is unconsciously taking a measure of these five traits and crunching them together. So what makes a healthy personality?
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New study shows that getting older provides positive outlook
Research conducted at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs proves not everything goes downhill when it comes to aging. Older adults exhibit a better balance than younger adults in the way they process emotional information from the environment, according to research completed by Michael Kisley, assistant professor, Psychology, along with his collaborator, Stacey Wood from Scripps College and with the assistance of students at UCCS. More than 150 participants viewed images determined to be positive (a bowl of chocolate ice cream, pretty sunsets), neutral (a chair, a fork) and negative (a dead cat in the road, a car crash).
