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Online search engines may be affecting memory, studies say
Washington Post: Search engines may be changing the way our brains remember information, according to research released Thursday. In a series of experiments, Columbia University psychologist Betsy Sparrow and her colleagues produced evidence that people are more likely to remember things they do not think they can find online and will have a harder time remembering things they think they’ll be able to find online. In addition, people are better at remembering where to look for information on the Internet than they are remembering the information itself, the studies found. Read the whole story: The Washington Post
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Heat wave: Four things that will rise with the temperatures
The Christian Science Monitor: Slowing down because of rising heat is the expected response in any summer heat wave. But in a week like this one, where high temperatures fanned across the country, sizzling toward 100 degrees F. from Texas to Boston, some things also go up. Here are four things to expect to rise along with our desire to stay indoors and beat the heat. Malls are high on the list of places where people frequent for free air conditioning outside the home. So it’s not a surprise that retail sales jump during heat waves, especially on goods related to keeping cool.
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When The Brain Decides
Every day we have to make decisions that involve evaluating or choosing between options, often without much information to go on. So how we do it? How do we prevent analysis paralysis? Psychological theory suggests that we often rely on the recognition heuristic, choosing the option that we recognize over the one we don’t. So, as psychological scientist Christian Frings points out, if we have to predict whether Roger Federer or Michael Berrer will win a tennis match, we’ll probably stick with Federer because he’s a well-known name.
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Pursuing Non-Conscious Goals
You’re at dinner with your date’s family and you’re already feeling slightly nervous, anxious and wondering what type of an impression you will make. All of a sudden, your date’s little nephew comes running up to you and hands you bits of food from his mouth. How disgusted would you feel? In a new article to be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, authors Ran Hassin and Daniella Shidlovski from The Hebrew University suggest that if you subconsciously want to impress the family, and taking the food would help you do so, you will be less disgusted than if you didn’t have such non-conscious motivation.
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Goalkeepers of losing teams dive to right, study says
BBC News: A study of penalty shoot-outs in World Cup matches from 1982 to 2010 showed keepers usually had an even chance of going left or right to defend the goal. But the higher pressure of a losing position pushed them more to the right. The study, to be published in Psychological Science, suggests humans' "right-oriented" brains are to blame. Read more: BBC News
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Toys May Shape Language Development
Yahoo News: Toddlers who play with different-shaped objects learn new words twice as fast as those who play with objects that have similar shapes, a new study finds. University of Iowa researchers worked with 16 children who were 18 months old and knew about 17 object names at the start of the study. Some children were taught the names of objects by playing with toys that were nearly identical, while others played with toys that were significantly different. Read more: Yahoo News
