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Why Faking a Smile Is a Good Thing
Forbes: We think of our face as reflecting our internal emotions, but that linkage works both ways – we can change our emotional state by altering our facial expression! Pasting a smile on your face, even if you are consciously faking it, can improve your mood and reduce stress. ... A few months ago, new research was published in Psychological Science by Kansas researchers Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman. They used a rather unusual way of getting their subjects to simulate different smiles: the subjects held chopsticks in their mouth in different configurations to form smiles and neutral expressions.
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International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (ICCM)
The International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (ICCM) will be held11-14 July 2013 in Ottawa, Canada at Carleton Universitat. Papers due: 5 April 2013 The International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (ICCM) is the premier conference for research on computational models and computation-based theories of human behavior. ICCM is a forum for presenting, discussing, and evaluating the complete spectrum of cognitive modeling approaches, including connectionism, symbolic modeling, dynamical systems, Bayesian modeling, and cognitive architectures.
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New Research on Memory From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research on memory published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Modifying Memory: Selectively Enhancing and Updating Personal Memories for a Museum Tour by Reactivating Them Peggy L. St. Jacques and Daniel L. Schacter Although researchers know that memories can be modified when they are retrieved, less is known about how the properties of reactivation affect memory. Researchers sent participants on a self-guided tour of a museum with a camera that automatically took pictures of their visit.
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1st Edition of the SISSA International Summer School in Social Cognitive Neuroscience
SCoNe (July 15-28, 2013) is set up for advanced PhD students and junior post-docs and will take place in SISSA (International School of Advanced Studies), located in Trieste, Italy, a beautiful town by the Adriatic Sea. Social Cognitive Neuroscience is an emerging field with an interdisciplinary vision on human behavior in social contexts. This year’s topics will be: - NEUROSCIENCE of SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING (i.e., social judgment, empathy, stereotyping, prejudice, face perception and emotion), and - NEUROSCIENCE of REWARD (i.e., neurobehavioral mechanisms of appetitive motivation and reward, value-based decision making, and the reward value of social interaction).
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Mental Health Care Needs an ‘Anytime, Anywhere’ Model
The Huffington Post: Many routine but important medical services today are far more convenient to obtain than they were a generation ago. Home pregnancy tests, personal blood glucose test kits, and flu shots at retail pharmacies are examples of health care functions that once required a visit to the doctor. Phone and tablet applications are allowing consumers to monitor everything from calorie intake to vital signs. Nurses, nurse assistants, and pharmacologists provide services once reserved for physicians. So how could these types of conveniences transfer to mental health services? Read the whole story: The Huffington Post
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To Spot Kids Who Will Overcome Poverty, Look At Babies
NPR: Why do some children who grow up in poverty do well, while others struggle? To understand more about this, a group of psychologists recently did a study. It began in a small spare room where a series of very poor mothers and their 5-month-old babies came to watch a soothing video. Soothing the baby was the point, says Elisabeth Conradt, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University's Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk. The researchers needed to take measurements of the babies when they were calm.
