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Secondary Analyses and Archiving of Social and Behavioral Datasets in Aging
The National Institute on Aging (NIA) recently issued two R03 grant announcements. R03 grants support small research projects that can be carried out in a short period of time with limited resources. The announcements are soliciting applications for (1) secondary analysis of data on aging in the areas of psychology, behavioral genetics, economics, demography, or (2) archiving and dissemination of data sets. These two announcements have two separate funds of $1,000,000 each as well as separate reviews and due dates. R03 RFA AG13-004 Secondary Analyses and Archiving of Social and Behavioral Datasets in Aging (R03): Researchers can request up to $50K in direct cost per year for only one year.
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Truthiness Explained
Truthiness — it’s what satirist Stephen T. Colbert calls “the truth that you feel in your gut, regardless of what the facts support.” Now APS Member Eryn J. Newman, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, is taking a closer look at what really happens when we “think with our guts.” In research published in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Newman and her coauthors showed that when a decorative photo appeared alongside statements, such as “The liquid metal inside a thermometer is magnesium,” people were more likely to agree with the statements, even when the statements were false.
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Personality Dynamics Through the Lens of Cognitive Science
With the goal of advancing a cognitive neuroscience of personality dynamics, leading researchers from the United States and Europe gathered in Trieste, Italy on July 10, 2012 to present cutting-edge findings on the neural and evolutionary bases of intrapersonal processes and structures. The event, sponsored by the Association for Psychological Science, featured Anna Abraham, Jennifer A. Bartz, Arnaud D’Argembeau, and Robert Cloninger, and was orchestrated by Daniel Cervone, chair of the symposium. In the beautiful framework of Trieste, the event preceded the opening of the 16th European Conference on Personality, which featured more than 500 participants from about 40 countries this year.
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Perspectives Article Wins 2011 Best Paper Award
A paper published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, “The situated inference model: An integrative account of the effects of primes on perception, behavior, and motivation” was awarded the 2011 Best Paper Award from the International Social Cognition Network. In the article, authors Chris Loersch (University of Missouri, Columbia) and Keith Payne (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) introduce the situated inference model of priming, which suggests that a prime’s separate effects on judgment, action, and motivation can all be produced through the same basic process. According to Melissa Ferguson, Cornell University, the paper was selected among numerous excellent submissions.
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What Is Logical Isn’t Always True
In logic, an argument can be invalid even if its conclusion is true, and an argument can be valid even if its conclusion is false. It’s a confusing concept, and people are easily fooled when an argument’s validity and believability don’t match up, especially in the case of invalid arguments with conclusions that are believable. Psychological scientists call this phenomenon belief bias. For example, consider this argument. All psychological scientists conduct empirical research. William James conducts empirical research. Therefore, William James is a psychological scientist. All of the premises are true, and so is the conclusion, but it’s not a valid argument.
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Brain-Computer Interfaces Are Changing the Way We Communicate
APS Fellow Niels Birbaumer, Professor of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen, Germany, studies brain-computer interfaces (BCI). BCIs allow communication from the brain to an external device for patients who otherwise could not communicate through muscle movements to produce speech, gestures, or eye movements. Birbaumer was awarded the Wilhelm Wundt Medal, the Helmholtz Medal as well as honorary doctorates from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena and Complutense University of Madrid. Watch Niels Birbaumer discuss his research on brain-computer interfaces in this series of interviews.
