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Hormonal Contraception Alters Stress Hormone Response
The cameras were rolling at the APS 24th Annual Convention in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Watch as Shawn Nielsen, University of California, Irvine, describes her research. Most people remember emotionally arousing material better than neutral material partly due to the body’s natural stress response. But stress responses in women can vary during their menstrual cycle. Because ovarian sex hormone levels are commonly manipulated via hormonal contraception, Shawn Nielsen and Larry Cahill, at the Cahill Laboratory at the University of California, Irvine, hypothesized that contraceptive use would influence stress/sex hormone interactions and emotional memory.
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24th APS Annual Convention in Pictures
With a record number of attendees, this year’s APS Convention in Chicago was a hit! Relive your convention memories and check out some of the pictures from our 24th Annual Convention on our Facebook page. Have your own convention pictures? We'd love to see them! Share them on Facebook or email them to [email protected]
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Let the Games Begin! Will Olympians Choke Under Pressure?
Paying too much attention can hurt athletic performance — researchers are finding ways to prevent athletes from ‘choking’ when it matters.
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George A. Miller: Remembering a Pioneer
The human mind works a lot like a computer: It collects, saves, modifies, and retrieves information. George A. Miller, one of the founders of cognitive psychology, was a pioneer who recognized that the human mind can be understood using an information-processing model. His insights helped move psychological research beyond behaviorist methods that dominated the field through the 1950s. In 1991, he was awarded the National Medal of Science for his significant contributions to our understanding of the human mind. Miller, who passed away on July 22, 2012, was also a leader in the study of short-term memory and linguistics.
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Fans Fooled by the “Hot-Hand Fallacy”
Which countries and athletes will rise to the top? To make predictions, many people will look for athletes who are on a “hot streak,” such as US Women’s National Team forward Alex Morgan who scored 2 goals yesterday, resulting in a 2-to-4 win over France. Sports provide numerous opportunities to collect statistics, but biases such as the “hot-hand fallacy” can skew a spectator's decision making when it comes to predicting sports outcomes. Peter Ayton, a researcher from City University London, UK, investigates how people make judgments and decisions under conditions of risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity. One way he studies decision making is through sports.
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Journal Alert: Current Directions 21:4 Now Available Online
Current Directions in Psychological Science Volume 21, Number 4 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Prospective Memory in Workplace and Everyday Situations R. Key Dismukes Forgetting to perform intended actions -- also known as failure of prospective memory(PM) -- can have serious consequences, especially at work. Dismukes says that workplace PM failures are likely to occur when a critical set of steps is interrupted, when highly practiced habitual tasks are disrupted, when one step in a procedure is replaced with a different step, or when people are asked to multi-task. Dismukes provides tips for avoiding PM failures, such as creating reminder cues for upcoming tasks.
