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Brain-Computer Interfaces Are Changing the Way We Communicate
APS Fellow Niels Birbaumer, Professor of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen, Germany, studies brain-computer interfaces (BCI). BCIs allow communication from the brain to an external device for patients who otherwise could not communicate through muscle movements to produce speech, gestures, or eye movements. Birbaumer was awarded the Wilhelm Wundt Medal, the Helmholtz Medal as well as honorary doctorates from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena and Complutense University of Madrid. Watch Niels Birbaumer discuss his research on brain-computer interfaces in this series of interviews.
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‘Helicopter Parenting’ Discourages Kids
"Helicopter parent" is a 21st century term for parents that “hover” over their children, monitoring and micromanaging their every move. Although parents may find this hard to do, research shows that giving kids space may better motivate them. According to APS Fellow Carol Dweck, a psychological scientist at Stanford University who researches motivation and development, helicopter parenting is more likely to hold kids back. “We’ve studied parents over-praising and we are studying parents overdoing. It makes the child feel they can’t do anything without the parent.” The bottom line, she says, is that less parenting may help kids more in the long run.
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The History of Decision Making
APS Fellow Gerd Gigerenzer is the Director at the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany, where he investigates how humans and other animals make decisions and use cognitive strategies when facing uncertainty. The findings are used in training and informing law students, judges, and mangers. Gigerenzer is also the Director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany. Watch Gerd Gigerenzer discuss his research on human decision making in this series of interviews.
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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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Geraldine Dawson – New Directions in Early Detection and Intervention in Autism
Recent prospective studies of infants at risk for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have provided insights into very early development in autism and allowed clinicians to develop new screening tools for identifying infants at risk for ASD. At the same time that early screening tools are being developed, novel approaches to early intervention are being tested with infants at risk for ASD as young as 12 months of age. The hope is that, by intervening very early in life, the course of early brain and behavioral development can be modified and the core symptoms of autism can be significantly reduced, or even prevented in some cases.
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Today’s Spotlight: Robert A. Bjork
Watch APS Past President Robert A. Bjork explain his theory on long-term memory in this series of interviews. Bjork is a Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His lab, the Bjork Learning and Forgetting Lab, investigates human learning, memory, and the implications of such research on instruction. Bjork was Co-editor of Psychological Science in the Public Interest. GoCognitive is an educational website supported by the APS Teaching Fund that provides free access to tools on cognitive psychology and neuroscience. GoCognitive has an archive of video interviews of leading researchers in the field, in addition to interactive demonstrations.
