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Researchers: We can watch 3-D with only one eye
CNN: Humans can see 3-D images with only one eye, according to new research, suggesting a future in which the technology could become cheaper and more accessible. Simply looking through a small hole is enough to experience 3-D, says Dhanraj Vishwanath, a psychologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. His research was published in the journal Psychological Science. The 3-D technology that's currently used in movies and other media relies on two visual images, one from each eye, combining in the viewer's brain to produce 3-D's extra layer of depth. But Vishwanath's research suggests that both eyes aren't needed.
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To Call a Player’s Poker Hand, Look to the Arms
Professional poker players rely on the ability to divorce their facial expressions from their emotional state – no matter how good, or how bad, their hand is, they have to maintain an inscrutable “poker face.” But new research suggests that they may do well to focus on another body part: The arms. The research, published in Psychological Science, suggests that homing in on only the player’s arms may be the most reliable way to call a bluff. Psychological scientist Michael Slepian and colleagues had 78 undergraduate participants watch two-second video clips from the World Series of Poker.
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Stress at the Molecular Level
Traumatic stress not only affects our brains, but can also strike us at the cellular level. Iris-Tatjana Kolassa explores the biological, particularly the molecular, changes that occur after situations of extreme stress. She is also studying whether therapeutic interventions can reverse such alterations. Kolassa’s work has been of increasing influence on an international scale as it signals a paradigmatic breakthrough, creating the scientific sub-discipline of “molecular psychology,” which employs molecular biology for the advancement of psychological science.
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Growing Up Resilient
Children in densely populated and under-resourced areas often need inspiring and thoughtful teachers. Margaret Beale Spencer researches how children build resiliency, identity, and self-esteem, and how well-trained teachers can set a solid example for students. Her experiments identified that children as young as three years old learn discriminatory tendencies, but that these tendencies can be reversed with training. Spencer designed a CNN study to test racial bias in children. In addition to other major sources of recognition, she was awarded the 2006 Fletcher Fellowship, which recognized work that furthers the broad social goals of the US Supreme Court's Brown v.
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Data-Mining Our Dreams
The New York Times: ARE dreams really meaningful? Virtually every culture throughout history has developed methods to interpret dreams — most notably, in the modern era, the psychoanalytic approach. But today many people assume that this quest has failed. Science, they say, has proved that dreams are just random signals sent from primitive regions of the brain, signifying nothing, and that dream interpretation is a kind of superstition. This conclusion is premature. For many years, researchers (including me) have been using quantitative methods of analysis to study the content of dreams.
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A Sense of Belonging
Are wars, rivalries, and other conflicts an inevitable part of intergroup relations? Marilynn Brewer says no. Internationally recognized for her research on social identity, collective decision making, prejudice, and intergroup relations, Brewer showed that people attach themselves to a group not because of ill feelings toward other groups, but because they simply are looking for a place of trust and security. Brewer is particularly recognized for her theory of optimal distinctiveness, based on the idea that the conflicting costs and benefits of sustaining an optimal group size would have shaped social motives at the individual level.
