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Northeastern researchers experiment with fear at Newton haunted house
The Boston Globe: NEWTON — A squad of elite fear specialists will descend into the slightly musty basement of a Victorian house Friday night to take up haunting positions. Their preferred instrument of terror? Insights from the science of emotion. The monsters and ghouls in this unusual haunted house are Northeastern University psychology researchers who spend their days generating emotional responses in the laboratory, to probe what’s happening in the brain when people experience visceral feelings.
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Trouble at the lab
The Economist: “I SEE a train wreck looming,” warned Daniel Kahneman, an eminent psychologist, in an open letter last year. The premonition concerned research on a phenomenon known as “priming”. Priming studies suggest that decisions can be influenced by apparently irrelevant actions or events that took place just before the cusp of choice. They have been a boom area in psychology over the past decade, and some of their insights have already made it out of the lab and into the toolkits of policy wonks keen on “nudging” the populace. Dr Kahneman and a growing number of his colleagues fear that a lot of this priming research is poorly founded.
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Brain Training Exercises Won’t Boost Intelligence, But Could Improve Memory
The Huffington Post: Brain training exercises can boost your memory, but don't expect them to make you any smarter, a new study says. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Arizona State University, Michigan State University and Purdue University found that brain training seems to improve working memory capacity (the ability to keep or quickly recall information under distraction), but doesn't seem to have any effect on general fluid intelligence (the ability to practice complex reasoning skills and solve new problems). Past research had suggested that there was a correlation between the two, with some hypothesizing that boosting one would then boost the other.
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Seeing in 3D ‘possible with one eye’, St Andrews study suggests
BBC: The effect of "vivid 3D vision" can be experienced with just one eye, a study has suggested. Researchers at St Andrews University said a method using a small circular hole could have wide implications for 3D technology. The study, published in Psychological Science, also has implications for people who have just one eye or difficulties with double-eye vision. The method was said to create 3D similar to effects used in film-making. Researchers said that current thinking was based on the need for two visual images - one from each eye - to be combined in the visual cortex, creating a sense of depth.
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How to Save More Money: It’s a Matter of Time
The Huffington Post: Americans are living precarious lives. Nearly half of all families -- many with homes and cars and jobs -- are one misfortune away from financial disaster. A medical emergency or even a temporary loss of employment could gobble up their meager savings in six months or less. One in four Americans has zero savings. Many of these people are approaching retirement age, but they will never be able to retire the way they once imagined. There are many reasons for this dire financial situation, but one important one is that Americans simply don't put enough money aside.
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Want To Feel 5 Years Older? Just Take A Memory Test
NPR: Researchers in a memory lab at Texas A&M University noticed that all the older people coming in as volunteers were really worried about how they'd do. So the scientists decided to measure how taking a memory test affects a person's subjective sense of age. Before the test, the 22 participants felt pretty darned good. Even though their average age was 75, they said they felt about 58. Then they were given a list of 30 nouns, told to study them for two minutes, and then asked to recall as many of them as they could in three minutes. The participants did fine on the memory test.
