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The Perks of Being Detail Oriented
In a busy, cluttered world, it can often be difficult to find things. Luckily for us, the location of objects is often related to the context in which they are found, which means that we can learn from our exposure to repeated contexts to help us more quickly find what we’re looking for. Researchers who study this type of learning — called contextual learning — have suggested it is influenced by the way we look at and process scenes. When people view a scene, they are either biased to process it globally — focusing on the overall structure of the scene rather than the small details — or to process it locally — focusing on the smaller details rather than the bigger picture.
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Should the SAT be optional?
Quartz: Recently, several colleges and universities in the US have declared that applicants no longer need to submit their SAT or ACT scores to be considered for admission. Numerous schools have gone test optional; in fact, Bowdoin College has been test optional since 1969. However, when available, standardized test scores have been used almost uniformly in making admission decisions at most schools, with the SAT being used since 1926 and the ACT since 1959. Testing has come under intense scrutiny, and an ongoing discussion over its usefulness in college admissions has followed them to this day.
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Adverts on the road could be a distraction for drivers
The Conversation: People have to take in a lot of information when driving, including the locations of other road users, lane markings, signals, speed limits, directions and the dashboard display. It only takes a second to be distracted, so what if drivers now have to contend with adverts on the actual road surface? Councillors in Parramatta, New South Wales, recently approved a plan to allow just that – painted advertisements on the surfaces of roadways. Who could deny the appeal of the potential influx of funds that could be channelled back into the local community?
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The Eyes Are the Window to Your Potential Soul Mate
Pacific Standard: John and Stephanie Cacioppo, University of Chicago neuroscientists who are married to each other, study love. And lust. Recently, the couple wanted to find out whether people look at potential mates differently if they perceive a long-term companion as opposed to a temporary sexual partner. Their latest collaboration involved gathering 20 heterosexual college students (13 women and seven men) and showing them black-and-white photos of members of the opposite sex. The researchers used tracking software to record participants’ eye movements and asked subjects to report whether an image elicited feelings of romance or lust. Read the whole story: Pacific Standard
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An Adaptationist Theory of Trait Covariation
Although personality researchers have made great strides in discovering and describing patterns of trait covariation, very little attention has been paid to why traits — which are often psychometrically or neuroanatomically distinct — covary in the first place. In an article published in 2013 in the European Journal of Personality, author Aaron W. Lukaszewski (Loyola Marymount University) suggests that an adaptionist common calibration theory may help explain trait covariation. According to this model, personality traits are calibrated based on cues from the environment that signal the current cost or benefit of displaying each trait.
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Bad Habit? You Can Forget About It
Discovery News: Want to stop biting your nails? Forget that you learned how. New research published in Psychological Science shows that purposefully wiping your memory of learning a new habit can help undo it. Participants who got in the habit of responding to certain words by striking a key with their right or left hand were able to forget those associations when told that the computer had crashed and instructed to forget what they’d learned. Half the participants weren’t told of the crash, and didn’t forget. Read the whole story: Discovery News
