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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.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: Self-Distancing From Trauma Memories Reduces Physiological but Not Subjective Emotional Reactivity Among Veterans With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Blair E. Wisco, Brian P. Marx, Denise M. Sloan, Kaitlyn R. Gorman, Andrea L. Kulish, and Suzanne L. Pineles Self-distancing (i.e., taking a third-person perspective) has been shown to reduce emotional and physiological reactivity during self-reflection. In this study, veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were instructed to recount and analyze their worst traumatic event from either a first-person or a third-person perspective.
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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.
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Finding the Way to a Better Sense of Direction
Some people just seem to have an innate sense of direction; they never need to ask how to get somewhere or forget where they parked. Then there’s those of us who would be utterly lost in our own neighborhood without the help of GPS and turn-by-turn directions. A team of psychological scientists from Tufts University and the U.S. Army may have found one way to improve a shaky sense of direction: applying an electric current to the brain. The research team, led by Tad T.
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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.
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CEOs Perceived as Moral Rally More Support
Some economists argue that a business leader’s primary responsibility is to maximize company profits and that the pursuit of any other goal, including contributing to the broader welfare, is just bad business. Consider a CEO’s plan to provide employees with free, healthy meals. On the one hand, the CEO could justify the policy on the basis of a moral obligation to care for employees’ health. On the other hand, the CEO could use a pragmatic explanation; the availability of meals will motivate employees to work longer hours. To get this plan off the ground the CEO must decide on the best way to justify this decision to stakeholders.
