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Are Impulsivity Problems Memory Problems?
Everyone seems to know at least one person who could be described as impulsive. That person whose brain — and mouth — seem to go a mile a minute, who does things without thinking them through, and who often gives up when they feel the going gets tough. Impulsivity has been associated with a host of problems including diminished cognitive abilities, vigilance, and executive functioning. No study, however, has examined the relationship between impulsivity and prospective memory. Prospective memory refers to a person’s ability to create plans for the future and then remember to execute them at the appropriate time.
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When Trauma Isn’t Traumatic
Longitudinal data collected from university students suggest that exposure to an acute trauma may be linked with an improvement in symptoms of anxiety or depression for some individuals. The research, led by Anthony Mancini of Pace University and co-authors Heather Littleton of East Carolina University and Amie E. Grills of Boston University, investigated human resilience in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting that occurred in 2007. The shooting left 33 people dead (including the shooter) and 25 others injured, making it the most deadly civilian shooting in U.S. history.
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DARPA Seeks Information on Experimental Falsifiability
Psychological scientists have called for an increased focus on replication to strengthen the reproducibility of scientific research. Now, other groups are beginning to follow suit: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), best known for developing emerging technologies for the military, has taken an interest in evaluating research in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. This month, DARPA put out a request for information (RFI) seeking tools and approaches for disconfirming models, theories, and hypotheses.
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Mischel, Other Golden Goose Awardees, to Be Honored in DC
The fourth annual Golden Goose Awards ceremony will be held Sept. 17 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., with APS Past President Walter Mischel and two other psychological scientists among the 2015 honorees. The final group of awardees was announced today. Joel E. Cohen, a mathematical population biologist, and Christopher Small, a geophysicist, are being honored for their groundbreaking work on “hysopgraphic demography” – the study of how human populations are distributed by altitude and how that exposes them to varied geophysical and biological hazards.
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Report Demonstrates Need for Improved Reproducibility in Psychological Science
Over the last several years, psychological scientists have become especially concerned about the reproducibility of studies in the field. Do peer-reviewed publications hold up under scientific scrutiny? Or are some papers that get published just lucky flukes? Until recently, researchers have relied only on intuition to estimate reproducibility. A new report published in Science, however, attempts to provide the first empirical estimate of the reproducibility of psychological science. According to this report, less than half of the psychology studies from a sample of 100 replicated.
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Developing Electrophysiology Training Resources
This event was supported by the APS Fund for Teaching and Public Understanding of Psychological Science, which invites applications for nonrenewable grants of up to $5,000 to launch new, educational projects in psychological science. Proposals are due October 1 and March 1. Cindy M. Bukach of the University of Richmond noticed a problem: The field of cognitive neuroscience relies on costly and complicated neuroimaging methodologies, creating a barrier to entry for undergraduates. An exception is the electroencephalography/event-related potential (EEG/ERP) technique, which offers inexpensive and accessible methodologies for investigating cortical dynamics during human cognition.
