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A New Way to Study Clinical Psychological Science
Founding Editor Alan E. Kazdin wants APS’s newest journal, Clinical Psychological Science (CPS), to be a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, international publication that draws from a variety of fields and methods. “It’s not that we want diversity for diversity’s sake,” Kazdin says. “We want to solve problems, and that’s what requires the diversity.” Traditionally, clinical journals have been highly specialized. Such journals are great for finding the latest research on a specific subject, such as addiction, or personality disorders, but until recently, there has not been a single journal that collects the latest research in all areas of clinical psychology.
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Warning: This Face Is Dangerous
If you’re a little, soft-spoken guy, duking it out mano-a-mano with a tough, masculine type probably isn’t in your best interest — and a fair amount of research on threat perception and dominance explores why men perceive (and presumably avoid) threats differently. But what if you’re a little, soft-spoken gal? Christopher D. Watkins and his coauthors write in the European Journal of Personality that, similar to men, less-dominant women tend to perceive women with masculine-looking faces as more dominant than women with feminine-looking faces.
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Don’t Freak Out on Friday the 13th: Stay Positive
It’s Friday the 13th for the second time in 2012. With one more Friday the 13th coming in July, for some superstitious people this is a scary time—but stay positive. Check out this TED talk from APS Fellow and Charter Member Martin Seligman, a leader in the field of Positive Psychology. Seligman runs the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. APS Fellow David Myers of Hope College agrees. He says people are much happier than we think they are. And the good news is, we’re not born afraid of things – so maybe we can learn to overcome these fears.
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Breaking Through the Silence
“New technology has dramatically improved the quality of hearing aids in the past decade,” said Stephanie Weiss in a recent Washington Post article. “But some say an old technology could have the most profound impact in the decade to come on millions of people with hearing loss.” One possible solution to this problem: The Loop. Weiss interviewed APS Fellow, and loop advocate, David G. Myers. “Just as WiFi connects people to the Web in wired places, hearing loops — simple wires that circle a room or part of a room — can connect many hearing aids and cochlear implants directly to sound systems,” Myers told Weiss. “I visited Scotland shortly after getting new hearing aids back in 1999.
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Math Anxiety Is (Literally) in Your Head
Math can be a fun, logic puzzle for some people. But for others, doing math is a headache-inducing experience. Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have recently shown that people who experience math anxiety may have brains that are wired a little differently from those who don’t, and this difference in brain activity may be what’s making people sweat over equations. Math anxiety is an under-studied phenomenon, which still lacks formally established diagnostic criteria.
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Growing Over Showing in Math Education
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the APS 23rd Annual Convention in Washington, DC. Watch Matthew G. Mandelbaum from Fordham University present his poster session research on “Mastery, Need for Cognition, and Self-Efficacy Promote Long-Term Math Achievement in Adolescent Females.” Mandelbaum’s research shows that “growing” is better than “showing” when it comes to learning math.
