-
Man with Restored Sight Provides New Insight into How Vision Develops
California man Mike May made international headlines in 2000 when his sight was restored by a pioneering stem cell procedure after 40 years of blindness. A study published three years after the operation found that the then 49-year-old could see colors, motion and some simple two-dimensional shapes, but was incapable of more complex visual processing. Hoping May might eventually regain those visual skills, University of Washington researchers and colleagues retested him a decade later. In an article published in the April 2015 issue of Psychological Science, they report that May — referred to in the study as M.M.
-
Second International Conference on Loss, Bereavement and Human Resilience in Israel and the World
The Second International Conference on Loss, Bereavement and Human Resilience in Israel and the World will be held in Eilat, Israel, January 12–14, 2016. The conference theme is “Facts, Insights and Implications.” For more information, visit www.ovdan-eilat2016.com.
-
Brain, Behavior, and the Economy
Psychological science, once criticized for underestimating the impact of socioeconomic factors on psychological development and functioning, now plays a lead role in investigating how wealth and poverty affect thought, emotion, and action throughout our lives. Top researchers from the United States and Europe presented some of the most profound findings on cognition, brain, behavior, and development in socioeconomic contexts during the inaugural International Convention of Psychological Science (ICPS), held in March in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
-
Benchmark Project: Expert Online Survey Announcement
Expert members are invited to participate in an expert crowd-sourcing survey that seeks to establish benchmarks in working memory research. The Benchmark Project is led by Klaus Oberauer (University of Zurich, Switzerland) and Stephan Lewandowsky (University of Bristol) and seeks to identify theory-relevant benchmarks in working-memory research. To date, more than 27,000 articles have been published on short-term and working memory. The plethora of publications not only provides a huge knowledge based, but it also presents an obstacle to principled identification of the core phenomena that are essential for theorizing.
-
Q&A: Research on Educational Apps
A new report published in the April issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest provides a set of four evidence-based principles that parents, educators, and app designers can use to evaluate the quality of so-called “educational” apps. The report, “Putting Education in ‘Educational’ Apps: Lessons From the Science of Learning,” was published by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University; Jennifer M. Zosh, Penn State University, Brandywine; Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, University of Delaware; James H. Gray, Sesame Workshop; Michael B. Robb, Saint Vincent College; and Jordy Kaufman, Swinburne University of Technology.
-
OPRE Grant Announcement: Family Strengthening Scholars
The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families, US Department of Health and Human Services has recently published a discretionary research funding announcement. The full announcement for “Family Strengthening Scholars” is available online at: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/grants/open/foa/view/HHS-2015-ACF-OPRE-PD-0977. OPRE intends to award up to three grants to support dissertation research on healthy marriage/responsible fatherhood policy issues (HMRF).
