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Walking: Good for More than Your Waistline
Imagine you’re at a party and a new acquaintance comes over to say hello. In a blind moment of panic you realize that you’ve just met the person, but you can’t remember their name. Sound familiar? Memory is so important in our daily lives, and it can be frustrating (not to mention embarrassing) when we have trouble recalling information. But can we improve our memories? According to researchers Carlos Salas (University of Illinois at Chicago), Katsumi Minakata (California State University, Long Beach), and William Kelemen (California State University, Long Beach), the answer may be as simple as taking a short walk.
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Sweet Revenge: Gustatory Experience and Vengeful Action
In case you missed it the cameras were rolling! Jens H. Hellmann from University of Münster, Germany presented his research at the APS 24th Annual Convention in Chicago, Illinois, USA in English and German. English German: The present experiment examined whether "revenge tastes sweet": We found that the evaluation of a vengeful act was more positive when participants had a sweet (vs. neutral) taste in their mouths. Furthermore, this relatively more positive evaluation did not emerge when the motive for the evaluated action was not revenge. Jens H. Hellmann University of Münster, Germany Deborah F. Thoben Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg, Germany
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Fear of Pain Can Lead to Suffering
People go to great lengths to avoid pain. And that avoidance, ironically, may be a cause of chronic pain. When a person is injured, they begin to associate the injury with the activity that caused it, and they will avoid that activity – and other activities. In the short term, avoidance may promote healing, but over time, fear of pain may actually initiate chronic pain, leading to disability and depression. Psychological scientists in this symposium shared many approaches for investigating this surprising model of pain behavior. One technique was based on classical conditioning, in which volunteers were given a shock in response to a particular movement they performed.
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Math Creating a Division
Quick: What’s 136 divided by 17? Knowing the answer to division problems like this could help the whole country. Over the past 30 years, mathematics achievement of U.S. high school students has remained stagnant—and significantly behind many other countries, including China, Japan, Finland, the Netherlands, and Canada. Robert Siegler and his research team at Carnegie Mellon University has identified that US students' inadequate knowledge of fractions and division is one of the major sources for this gap.
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8th Annual RCIO Conference
The 8th Annual River Cities Industrial-Organizational Psychology Conference will be held October 26-27, 2012 at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Chattanooga, TN. For more information visit: www.utc.edu/Academic/Industrial-OrganizationalPsychology/RCIO2012.htm
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NITOP January 2013: There Is Still Time to Register!
Registration is still open as of December 5, 2012, for the 35th Annual National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology, January 3–6, 2013, at the TradeWinds Island Grand Resort in St. Pete Beach, Florida. For the full program, other details about the conference, and to register online, visit www.nitop.org.
