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The Unexpected Influence of Stories Told at Work
Harvard Business Review: Growing up on a Missouri farm, Walt Disney developed a love for drawing after his neighbor, a retired doctor known as “Doc” Sherwood, paid him to draw pictures of his horse. Disney later became a newspaper cartoonist and commercial artist, where he learned how to make commercials from cutout animations. His fascination with animation inspired him to establish his own cartoon studio and eventually become the face of the golden age of animation. I heard this story during my onboarding process when I worked as a research consultant at Disney Imagineering a few years ago.
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Disseminating International Resources on the Teaching of Psychological Science
This event was supported by the APS Fund for Teaching and Public Understanding of Psychological Science, which invites applications for nonrenewable grants of up to $5,000 to launch new, educational projects in psychological science. Proposals are due October 1 and March 1. Support for excellence in the teaching of psychology in the United States is stronger than anywhere else in the world, say psychological scientists Dana Castro (L’Ecole des Psychologues Praticiens [EPP], France) and APS Fellow Douglas Bernstein (University of South Florida).
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From Lab to Learning
Do research findings from a controlled lab setting hold up in a classroom? Psychological science often suggests promising principles that may improve learning. However, many of these findings have not been translated to educational contexts or designed into easy-to-implement teaching interventions. A new grant program from the APS Fund for Teaching and Public Understanding of Psychological Science encourages the development of evidence-demonstrated interventions that apply well-established principles to improve the teaching of psychological science.
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Obama Administration Elevates Role of Behavioral Science in Government Services
Behavioral science will have an increasingly integral role in the way the US government operates and provides services under a new set of actions by the White House. President Obama signed an executive order September 15 directing federal agencies to inject more behavioral science into their activities and services. That order also formally establishes a federal Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST), a group of experts in behavioral science tasked with translating scientific findings into improvements in federal programs.
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Are Impulsivity Problems Memory Problems?
Everyone seems to know at least one person who could be described as impulsive. That person whose brain — and mouth — seem to go a mile a minute, who does things without thinking them through, and who often gives up when they feel the going gets tough. Impulsivity has been associated with a host of problems including diminished cognitive abilities, vigilance, and executive functioning. No study, however, has examined the relationship between impulsivity and prospective memory. Prospective memory refers to a person’s ability to create plans for the future and then remember to execute them at the appropriate time.
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Do Babies Know When They’re Skyping?
The Atlantic: Long before most babies toddle or talk, they begin to make sophisticated inferences about the world around them. By as young as 3 months old, newborns can form expectations based on physical principles like gravity, speed, and momentum. Scientists at several universities told me they now have evidence, to the likely delight of far-flung grandparents everywhere, that infants can also tell the difference between, say, a broadcast of Mister Rogers and a video call with their actual grandfather.
