-
Eye Movements Reveal Readers’ Wandering Minds
It's not just you…everybody zones out when they're reading. For a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, scientists recorded eye movements during reading and found that the eyes keep moving when the mind wanders—but they don't move in the same way as they do when you're paying attention. Erik Reichle, a psychological scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, is interested in how the brain controls eye movements. "The goal is to understand how things like word comprehension and visual attention control eye movements," he says.
-
Naming Tools Is a Hands-On Task
You don't just need your eyes to think of the name of a tool; your hands get involved, too. A new study finds that people are slower to identify a picture of a tool if its handle is pointed toward a hand that is busy squeezing a ball. Brain imaging studies have shown that when you identify a tool by name, the part of your brain that's involved in manipulating the tool also turns on. Jessica K. Witt, of Purdue University, heard about some of this research and wanted to know whether it's possible to slow down the process of coming up with the name by making the hands busy.
-
The pursuit of happiness: Buying time
When the late U.S. Senator Paul Tsongas was diagnosed with cancer in 1984, he resigned his Senate seat with these words: "Nobody on his death bed ever said, 'I wish I had spent more time at the office.'" Wise words, yet despite the sentiment, Tsongas remained conflicted about time and money. In 1992, he returned to politics for an unsuccessful presidential run, and two years later tried unsuccessfully to form a third political party. He died of liver failure in 1997, at the age of 56. Most Americans are similarly torn about time and money.
-
Study Suggests Oxytocin Makes People Trusting, but Not Gullible
Oxytocin (OT) is a hormone that plays an important role in social behavior—it has even been nicknamed "the love hormone" and "liquid trust." Increased levels of OT have been associated with greater caring, generosity, and trust. But does OT increase people's trust in just anybody or does it act more selectively? Psychological scientist Moïra Mikolajczak from the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and her colleagues investigated just how trusting OT can make us. In this experiment, volunteers received either a placebo or OT nasal spray.
-
Sign Language Speakers’ Hands, Mouths Operate Separately
When people are communicating in sign languages, they also move their mouths. But scientists have debated whether mouth movements resembling spoken language are part of the sign itself or are connected directly to English. In a new study on British Sign Language, signers made different mistakes in the sign and in the mouthing—which means the hand and lip movements are separate in the signer's brain, not part of the same sign. David P. Vinson, of University College London, and his colleagues Robin L. Thompson, Robert Skinner, Neil Fox, and Gabriella Vigliocco planned to do basic research on how signers process language.
-
People With “Fused” Identities Are Willing to Die for Their Social Group
People who are "fused" with a group—a bond even stronger than group identification—will take extreme actions to protect other group members, but not outsiders, conclude researchers in a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. This intense bond to a group may help explain the actions of suicide bombers. Psychological scientist William B. Swann, Jr., of the University of Texas, came up with the concept of identity fusion when talking with a graduate student and a Spanish colleague about terrorism. "We started talking about terrorists and what can cause somebody to engage in terrorism.
