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OCD Linked With Broad Impairments in Executive Function
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), characterized by intrusive and persistent thoughts that are often accompanied by repetitive or ritualized acts, is a serious clinical disorder that can significantly impact a person’s ability to function and go about daily life. Neuroimaging data have hinted at a link between OCD and brain areas that contribute to executive function (EF), a group of critical cognitive abilities that regulate lower-level cognitive processes.
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These Are Twitter’s Biggest Secrets
TIME: What makes us follow, fave, share and—most importantly—keep coming back When I choose someone new to follow, when I compose a new tweet, when I share and favorite an update, I seldom think about the why. My following sessions would probably seem haphazard to an outsider, and my favoriting technique comes and goes from one strategy to another. ... I’ve hit more than my fair share of Twitter wormholes—minutes that turn to hours as I find more and more tweets to read and share. Does that sound familiar to you, too? I figured there was a psychological reason behind the draw of Twitter.
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Poco sonno induce falsi ricordi (Little sleep inducing false memories)
La Stampa: La vita frenetica vi costringe a dormire sempre meno? Sappiate che stanchezza, debolezza e nervosismo potrebbero non essere gli unici problemi cui potreste incappare.Secondo una recente ricerca pubblicata su Psychological Science – una rivista della Association for Psychological Science – non dormire a sufficienza potrebbe aumentare la probabilità di avere falsi ricordi.Per arrivare a tali conclusioni, lo psicologo Steven J. Frenda della University of California ha privato del sonno un centinaio di volontari che hanno partecipato allo studio.
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Brains At Play
NPR: This week at NPR Ed, our series Playing To Learn will explore questions about why people play and how play relates to learning. Why do we humans like to play so much? Play sports, play tag, play the stock market, play duck, duck, goose? We love it all. And we're not the only ones. Dogs, cats, bears, even birds seem to like to play. What are we all doing? Is there a point to it all? The scientist who has perhaps done more research on brains at play than any other is a man named Jaak Panksepp. And he has developed a pretty good hypothesis. In a nutshell, he, and many others, think play is how we social animals learn the rules of being social.
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Is Musical Talent Rooted in Genes?
LiveScience: Practice doesn't always make perfect when it comes to becoming the next Mozart, a new study suggests. Researchers compared pairs of identical twins, and found that no matter how hard one twin had practiced up until that point in their life, the other twin who had practiced much less still had an equal level of ability in certain musical skills. This may be because some aspects of musical talent are built into the genes, the researchers said. Read the whole story: LiveScience
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Young Children Bet on Their Numerical Skills: Metacognition in the Numerical Domain Vy A. Vo, Rosa Li, Nate Kornell, Alexandre Pouget, and Jessica F. Cantlon Although metacognition has been identified as an important factor in learning, it is still unclear how this skill emerges and develops in early childhood. Children 5 to 8 years old completed a number-discrimination task and an emotion-discrimination task. After each comparison, the children indicated the confidence they had in their answer.
