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Which Direction Now? Just Ask the North-Facing Map in Your Head
You’re driving from work to pick up your kids at school. The drive is familiar; you’ve done it almost every day for years. But how do you know in which direction the school is from your home? Landmarks? The sun? Animal instinct? Now, a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, yields an alternative answer that surprised even its authors, Julia Frankenstein, Betty J. Mohler, Heinrich H. Bülthoff, and Tobias Meilinger, who collaborated at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, in Tübingen, Germany.
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Infants Possess Intermingled Senses
Scientific American: What if every visit to the museum was the equivalent of spending time at the philharmonic? For painter Wassily Kandinsky, that was the experience of painting: colors triggered sounds. Now a study from the University of California, San Diego, suggests that we are all born synesthetes like Kandinsky, with senses so joined that stimulating one reliably stimulates another. The work, published in the August issue of Psychological Science, has become the first experimental confirmation of the infant-synesthesia hypothesis—which has existed, unproved, for almost 20 years. Read the full story: Scientific American
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Infants May Use Lip Reading to Learn Language
ABC News: Infants learn language not only through sound, but also through lip reading, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers say the new findings defy the conventional view that babies learn to speak through sound alone and the research may even assist in diagnosing autism spectrum disorders in the future. Scientists from Florida Atlantic University studied 89 infants ranging in age from 4 months to 12 months old. They also studied 21 adults.
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The surprising upside to hitting hard times
Today Show: It may be hard to look on the bright side when you’re mid-divorce or post-pink slip. But traumatic life events can actually benefit you in the long run, according to a new research review. Compared with people whose lives have been a cakewalk, you’re tougher if you’ve faced a few challenges, points out the study in Current Directions in Psychological Science. This resilience changes your body and mind so you’re less likely to be overwhelmed by the next stressful situation, says study author Mark D. Seery, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University at Buffalo.
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Writing the Pounds Away the Right Way
Shape Magazine: We all know that tracking your food and workouts is proven to help with weight loss , but what about journaling what's important to you? Can the simple act of writing down what matters to you most in life help you to live a healthier life? Values and weight may not seem related but they might just be, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study looked at 45 women with a body mass index (BMI) of 23 or higher, with a little more of half of them considered overweight or obese.
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Lads’ mags, sexism, and research in psychology: an interview with Dr. Peter Hegarty (part 2)
Scientific American: In this post, I continue my interview with Dr. Peter Hegarty, a social psychologist at the University of Surrey and one of the authors of ” ‘Lights on at the end of the party’: Are lads’ mags mainstreaming dangerous sexism?”, which was published in The British Journal of Psychology in December. My detailed discussion of that paper is here. The last post presented part 1 of our interview, in which Dr. Hegarty answered questions about the methodology of this particular research, as well as about some of the broader methodological differences between research in psychology and in sciences that are focused on objects of study other than humans.
