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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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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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Cultural Ties
When a child learns to tie her shoes —perhaps using the “bunny ears” method or the “squirrel and the tree” — her parents probably don’t think of the lesson as a moment of cultural reinforcement. But in the midst of a debate over culture and cognition, a group of five psychological scientists at Northwestern University’s MOSAIC lab noticed their shoe-tying methods were as diverse as the countries they represented. The lesson: Culture permeates nearly everything we do, even mundane routines that we think are neutral. For more on culture and science, read the April 2012 Presidential Column Everything is Cultural by APS President Douglas L. Medin.
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How to Beat Bad News
There’s a lot of bad news out there, and sometimes it’s hard not to assume that the next flu pandemic, terrorist attack, or natural disaster is just around the corner. If remembering frightening, high-profile events makes you feel bad, APS Fellow David Barlow suggests that you confront your negative feelings head on. Ten years after the September 11 attacks, Barlow said that ramped-up airport security and color-coded threat assessments from the Department of Homeland Security serve as constant reminders that something terrible could happen at any moment. The consequence, he says, has been an increase in anxiety among Americans.
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Crisscrossing Senses
Ever wonder what the number 5 tastes like? What color is G sharp? Or what type of personality does January have? If you were a synesthete, you might be able to answer these questions. Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. More recently, scientists have speculated that babies are born synaesthetes and slowly lose those sensory connections as neurons are pruned as their brains develop. A recent article from Psychological Science Synaesthetic Associations Decrease During Infancy, provides some evidence for this theory.
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Driving Home the Point
When Haneen Saqer, Ewart de Visser, and Jonathan Strohl arrived at Westfield High School in Chantilly, Virginia to talk about the perils of distracted driving, they thought they would be addressing a group of 100 students. Instead, they faced an auditorium of 700 students along with reporters from ABC News and NPR. After all, the trio — who are members of the George Mason University student group Distractions n' Driving (DnD) — had just come to share their graduate research in Human Factors and Applied Cognition. Watch coverage of the program from this ABC 7 News Clip: “We were a bit overwhelmed, but we were prepared,” de Visser says. “The kids really liked it because it was very engaging.
