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AAA Study Says Hands-Free Texting Is Still Distracting for Drivers
TIME: Using voice commands to send text messages and emails from behind the wheel, which is marketed as a safer alternative for drivers, actually is more distracting and dangerous than simply talking on a cellphone, a new AAA study found. Automakers have been trying to excite new-car buyers, especially younger ones, with dashboard infotainment systems that let drivers use voice commands do things like turning on windshield wipers, posting Facebook messages or ordering pizza. The pitch has been that hands-free devices are safer because they enable drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road.
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2013 SRA and RISE Winners and Honorable Mentions
Student Research Award The APS Student Research Award (SRA) serves a dual purpose: to provide students with experience of the peer review process (both as submitters and reviewers) and to recognize outstanding research conducted by students. This year’s competition received 260 submissions, representing all areas of psychological science. The quality of submissions was exceptionally high, and competition was stiff. In response to record growth in the contest’s popularity over the last few years, this year’s contest featured a lengthier application process to provide additional information for our peer reviewers. Four overall winners and eight honorable mentions were selected.
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People Attribute Minds to Robots, Corpses That Are Targets of Harm
As Descartes famously noted, there’s no way to really know that another person has a mind -- every mind we observe is, in a sense, a mind we create. Now, new research suggests that victimization may be one condition that leads us to perceive minds in others, even in entities we don’t normally think of as having minds. This research, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that people attribute minds to entities they perceive as being targets of harm, even when the entity in question is a robot or a corpse.
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Race/Ethnicity Moderates Associations Between Childhood Weight Status and Early Substance Use
Identification of risk-factors for early drinking, smoking, and illicit drug use is essential for targeted substance abuse prevention. Few studies have examined associations between weight during childhood and early substance use, with mixed results. Some research has linked childhood obesity to higher rates of alcohol, cigarette, and/or cannabis use during adolescence, while others have found no associations. The present study examined the role of race/ethnicity as a potential moderator of relationships between childhood weight status and early use (by age 15) of alcohol, cigarettes, and cannabis.
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So Damn Superior: Parsing Partisan Politics
A new Gallup poll shows that Americans’ confidence in the Congress is at an all-time low. A measly 10 percent of citizens express confidence in lawmakers, and most say they have little or no confidence. That is the worst rating of any American institution—including the military, HMOs and labor unions—since this polling began in 1973. A lot of this disaffection has to do with the extreme partisanship that has seemingly paralyzed Capitol Hill. Today’s is not the first political stalemate in American history, but it is certainly one of the most maddening. Lawmakers—and the country itself—appear locked into extreme ideological positions that allow little if any room for compromise.
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Le donne hanno una migliore memoria fotografica (Women may have better memory for faces)
La Stampa: Le donne godrebbero di una naturale migliore memoria fotografica rispetto agli uomini. Non si tratterebbe di pigrizia mentale o scarsa attenzione da parte dei maschi, ma di una capacità innata, e spesso inconsapevole, tipica delle femmine di studiare le caratteristiche di un volto nuovo. A decretare che sul fronte memoria fotografica vincono le donne è un nuovo studio della McMaster University di Hamilton, in Canada, e pubblicato su Psychological Science.
