-
Anxiety Limits Our Ability to Discriminate Faces and Speech
Anxiety can impair our accuracy on face- and word-recognition tasks, providing another possible source of fallibility in eyewitness testimony, according to research presented in two reports published in Psychological Science. In the first report, participants were asked to breathe through a mask that provided normal air or a mask that provided CO2-enriched air, a reliable method of inducing anxiety. The participants were then asked to discriminate between similar sounding phonemes, or letter sounds. For instance, though the /g/ and /k/ sounds are similar in “gift” and “kift,” people generally hear “gift” because it’s a familiar word.
-
Horizons for Social Sciences and Humanities
The Lithuanian EU Presidency’s Conference “Horizons for Social Sciences and Humanities” will be held September 23–24, 2013 at Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius, Lithuania. For more information visit horizons.mruni.eu/.
-
Consolidated Standards for Reporting Trials (CONSORT)
Get involved in the development of a new reporting guideline for social and psychological interventions! An international initiative of researchers, journal editors, and stakeholders in intervention studies is working with the Consolidated Standards for Reporting Trials (CONSORT) Group to develop CONSORT-SPI: an official Extension for Social and Psychological Interventions. We are currently looking for participants for an upcoming Delphi process (starting mid-September 2013) to generate possible reporting standards for the guideline. Stakeholders involved in researching, publishing, funding, commissioning, or providing these interventions are invited to contact us to participate.
-
A Seat at the Table
Youth violence. Unemployment. Heart disease. Teen pregnancy. Climate change. Practically every challenge facing modern society is fueled in part by entrenched behaviors that science can help understand and perhaps change. Historically, the US government has relied heavily on economists to help set policies on healthcare, commerce, consumer protection, education, law enforcement, and other domains where psychological and behavioral factors play a major role. But the federal government is creating a team that will give a broader set of behavioral scientists a seat at the table in policymaking.
-
New Society Aims to Support Affective Science
Scientists who study affective phenomena will soon have a place to interact, collaborate, and share their science with colleagues. A new society — The Society for Affective Science (SAS) — has been organized for the purpose of encouraging basic and applied research on emotions, moods, and other motivational states.
-
Link Between Bipolar Disorder and Circadian Rhythm
Bipolar disorder, like most psychiatric disorders, is characterized by the frequency and severity of its symptoms. Many people may exhibit characteristics of the disorder without meeting the criteria for a diagnosis, meaning they may be
