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Can’t go anywhere without your sat-nav? You might be wiping out your memory
The Daily Mail: They are supposed to make getting around easier. But over-reliance on sat-navs could leave us completely lost, a study has suggested. Scientists think our memory for places is like a mental map which we have learnt from looking at a real map of where we live. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany tested 26 residents of a town, all of whom had lived there for at least two years. Read the whole story: The Daily Mail
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Math Gender Gap Not Result of Girls’ Low Self-Esteem, Researchers Say
The Huffington Post: Are girls bad at math? From a talking Barbie doll saying "Math class is tough" to Larry Summers, the ex-President of Harvard University, speaking on the "different availability of aptitude," it's an issue that's seen plenty of controversy. As one of the most sensitive topics in education today, there's plenty of research on it, and even a body of research on the research. A study to be published in Review of General Psychology, falls into the latter category.
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Study: Powerful think they’re taller than they are
USA Today: Powerful people truly do stand tall, at least in their own minds. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Cornell University found through a series of three experiments that powerful people feel taller than they really are. Results are published in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science. Read the whole story: USA Today
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Primed by expectations – why a classic psychology experiment isn’t what it seemed
Discover Magazine: In the early 20th century, the world was captivated by a mathematical horse called Clever Hans. He could apparently perform basic arithmetic, keep track of a calendar and tell the time. When his owner, Wilhelm von Osten, asked him a question, Hans would answer by tapping out the correct number with his hoof. Eventually, it was the psychologist Oskar Pfungst who debunked Hans’ extraordinary abilities. He showed that the horse was actually responding to the expectations of its human interrogators, reading subtle aspects of their posture and expressions to work out when it had tapped enough. The legend of Hans’ intellect was consigned to history.
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Why We Get Happier with Age
Yahoo: When you imagine a happy adult, the first picture that pops to mind might be a 25-year-old basking in the glow of youth, health, and beauty. Yet research suggests that a beaming 65-year-old might be a more accurate image. In study after study, older adults report having more positive emotions and fewer negative ones than younger adults do. At first blush, that might seem a bit counterintuitive. After all, the older we get, the more losses and disappointments we’ve racked up, and the more likely we are to have a chronic disease or disabling condition. Read the whole story: Yahoo
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Study: Challenging seniors’ brains can also change their personality
CNN Health: We’ve all heard the adage “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks." But new research reveals that you CAN teach an older adult how to improve their brain skills, with the added effect of changing a personality trait, making them more open to new experiences. Using subjects from a study designed to improve brain skills of older people, the researchers hypothesized that improving cognitive skills might also increase participants openness - a personality trait that allows a person to be receptive to new experiences or being engaged by novel ideas such as an intellectual challenge.
