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How To Improve Eyewitness Testimony
Wired: My latest Head Case column in the WSJ explores a forthcoming Psychological Science paper by Neil Brewer (not online yet) that shows how the flawed memories of eyewitnesses might be improved: The biggest lie of human memory is that it feels true. Although our recollections seem like literal snapshots of the past, they’re actually deeply flawed reconstructions, a set of stories constantly undergoing rewrites. Consider our collective memories of 9/11. For the last 10 years, researchers led by William Hirst of the New School and Elizabeth Phelps of New York University have been tracking the steady decay of what people recall about that tragic event.
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Childhood Stress Leaves Genetic Scars
Science: Traumatic experiences in early life can leave emotional scars. But a new study suggests that violence in childhood may leave a genetic mark as well. Researchers have found that children who are physically abused and bullied tend to have shorter telomeres—structures at the tips of chromosomes whose shrinkage has been linked to aging and disease. Telomeres prevent DNA strands from unravelling, much like the plastic aglets on a shoelace. When cells divide, these structures grow shorter, limiting the number of times a cell can reproduce. For this reason, telomeres may reflect biological age.
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Small “Neural Focus Groups” Predict Anti-Smoking Ad Campaign Success
Brain scans of a small group of people can predict the actions of entire populations, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Michigan, the University of Oregon and the University of California, Los Angeles. The findings are relevant to political advertising, commercial market research, and public health campaigns, and broaden the use of brain imaging from a diagnostic to a predictive tool.
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'Moody' Toddlers More Likely to Become Problem Gamblers, Study Suggests
LiveScience: Restless, moody toddlers are more likely than other tots to grow up to become problem gamblers, suggests a new study. Retracing the lives of more than 900 New Zealanders, researchers found that 3-year-olds with this so-called under-controlled personality were twice as likely as those with well-adjusted temperaments to be compulsive gamblers three decades later. The findings appeared online March 28 in the journal Psychological Science. Wendy Slutske of the University of Missouri and her colleagues reported they examined data from the New Zealand Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study.
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Police photo lineups challenged after series of wrongful convictions
Rock Center with Brian Williams: Ruby Session’s guests filed in slowly, clasping each other in warm, familiar embraces. Many, who were there to attend her 75th birthday, shared a harrowing history both with each other and the woman they had come to celebrate. “She didn’t adopt us. We adopted her,” said Christopher Scott, who spent 13 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
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Post-Prozac Nation: The Science and History of Treating Depression
The New York Times: Few medicines, in the history of pharmaceuticals, have been greeted with as much exultation as a green-and-white pill containing 20 milligrams of fluoxetine hydrochloride — the chemical we know as Prozac. In her 1994 book “Prozac Nation,” Elizabeth Wurtzel wrote of a nearly transcendental experience on the drug. Before she began treatment with antidepressants, she was living in “a computer program of total negativity . . . an absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest.” She floated from one “suicidal reverie” to the next. Yet, just a few weeks after starting Prozac, her life was transformed.
