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Insights From the Youngest Minds
The New York Times: CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Seated in a cheerfully cramped monitoring room at the Harvard University Laboratory for Developmental Studies, Elizabeth S. Spelke, a professor of psychology and a pre-eminent researcher of the basic ingredient list from which all human knowledge is constructed, looked on expectantly as her students prepared a boisterous 8-month-old girl with dark curly hair for the onerous task of watching cartoons. The video clips featured simple Keith Haring-type characters jumping, sliding and dancing from one group to another.
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The Future of Focus Groups: My Brain Knows What You Like
Forbes: Sometimes what you don’t know you know is where the action is. With lessons about both personal humility and the future of focus groups, first of its kind research used brain data from a small group to predict behavior in the general public. In a research report just published online in Psychological Science, public health officials used activity in a very specific region of the brain to predict which would be the most effective of three different anti-smoking ad campaigns. Rather than focus group self-reports, or even the predictions of experts, the useful information was found to be in brain activity not represented in consciousness.
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Moody toddlers at risk for gambling issues, study bets
CTV: Parents who dismiss a toddler's foot-stomping and tantrum-throwing as ordinary growing pains may want to revisit that idea. Defiant, impulsive behaviour in preschool could hint that a child is at risk of developing a gambling problem later on in life. At least that's the takeaway from a recent study published in Psychological Science linking "under-controlled" temperament in childhood to compulsive gambling. If accurate, the report's authors say the findings could have far-reaching implications on the way we approach problems related to self-control and emotional regulation.
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Why do you have to sell your privacy to win?
Chicago Tribune: When you heard about that southern Illinois couple winning a $218 million lottery prize — and keeping it a secret for weeks — did you think about what you would have done? Would you have tried to keep it a secret? I thought, yes, sure, Betty and I wouldn't tell a soul, not if I wanted to keep writing the column and keep our lives just about the same. With that cash, we wouldn't have to worry about bills or retirement or sending our boys off to college, but we'd have to worry about our lives changing forever. Perhaps you would have hoped to keep it a secret too, and perhaps it doesn't matter when you win such a sum. But Americans have a right to privacy.
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Psychology and Its Discontents
The Wall Street Journal: In his long and distinguished career, Jerome Kagan, now emeritus professor of psychology at Harvard, has written numerous books for general audiences on major discoveries and controversies in his field, particularly in his specialty of child development. In works such as "Three Seductive Ideas" (1998), he developed a style of discussing three or four different topics in a series of essays, interweaving each with data and observations across psychology, history and culture, and tying them together with an overarching theme. Or not. Mr.
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Effective Ad? Ask Your Brain
Science: Companies and health organizations spend millions of dollars on surveys, polls, and focus groups trying to suss out what people will like, buy, or do. But research shows that these techniques aren't all that accurate. Can brain scans do any better? It's possible, according to a new study that finds that a neural activity predicts people's responses to a public service ad about cigarette smoking better than simply asking a focus group.
