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Early Diagnosis and Intervention for Autism Spectrum Disorder
Geraldine Dawson’s research has contributed greatly to the growing body of evidence about autism spectrum disorder (ASD), especially in young children. Dawson has approached ASD from all angles, from conducting studies of early brain and behavioral development to genetic research. She pioneered the use of event-related potentials to study early brain function in very young children with ASD. Her main focus, however, lies in early diagnosis and intervention. She was one of the first researchers to demonstrate that autism symptoms could be recognized in young infants.
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Yes, It Is Possible To Be Happy With Spending Less
Business Insider: Increased consumer spending has become an obsession with the economic-recovery crowd. Such spending accounts for 70 percent of the U.S. economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, or GDP. Therefore, the thinking goes, consumer spending must rise if the economy and stubbornly high unemployment rate are to recover. Some pundits even muse about consumer spending being a particularly American form of patriotism. Read the whole story: Business Insider
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Human Motivation
Elliot Aronson is perhaps best known for his experiments refining the theory of cognitive dissonance, which states that people will change their attitudes or behaviors to reduce cognitive discomfort caused by performing actions that are inconsistent with their beliefs. He is also recognized for his work seeking to understand and reduce intergroup and racial conflict -- leading to the creation of the Jigsaw Classroom intervention program. Aronson is known for applying theory and research to real-world problems, and for challenging researchers to adapt their findings for use in everyday life.
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Powerful People Feel Taller Than They Are
After the huge 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the chairman of BP referred to the victims of the spill as the “small people.” He explained it as awkward word choice by a non-native speaker of English, but the authors of a new paper published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, wondered if there was something real behind it. In their study, they found that people who feel powerful tend to overestimate their own height—they feel physically larger than they actually are. “Maybe there’s a physical experience that goes along with being powerful,” says Jack A. Goncalo of Cornell University, who cowrote the paper with Michelle M.
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How Our Brains Navigate the City
The Atlantic: To navigate certain parts of New York City — namely Queens and much of Manhattan — all you need to be able to do is count. In Manhattan neighborhoods like the West Village, and most of Brooklyn, things get a good bit trickier. You can no longer depend on the logical numbered progression of streets and avenues, and must instead rely on some other picture inside your head. For a while now psychologists have debated just what that picture looks like. Some believe we need to orient ourselves by local reference points. Under this theory, we're lost until we see that certain street or certain landmark, at which point the rest of the grid emerges in our minds.
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Religious People Have Higher Self-Esteem But Only In Some Countries, Study Shows
Huffington Post: Are religious people happier? Studies have shown that God-fearing folks tend to have higher self-esteem than nonbelievers, but new research published in the January issue of Psychological Science adds some nuance. It shows that religious belief is linked to high self-esteem only in countries that emphasize religious belief. Researchers at three European universities looked at the religious beliefs and self-esteem of users of an online dating service across 11 countries, from the devoutly Catholic Poland to the world's least religious country, Sweden. The analysis showed that in religious countries, self-esteem was higher among believers than nonbelievers.
