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Steven Pinker on the Colbert Report
Appearing on “The Colbert Report,” psychological scientist Steven Pinker discusses his book The Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window Into Human Nature.
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Alison Gopnick on The Colbert Repert
Appearing on “The Colbert Report,” psychological scientist Alison Gopnik discusses her book The Philosophical Baby.
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Brenda Milner Awarded Pearl Meister Greengard Prize
APS Fellow and Charter Member Brenda Milner, the Dorothy J. Killam Professor at McGill University’s Montreal Neurological Institute will be honored with the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize Thursday, November 3, 2011 for her work in the field of cognitive neuroscience. The Pearl Meister Greengard Prize was founded by Nobel laureate Paul Greengard and his wife to recognize outstanding female scientists and researchers. The honor comes with a $100,000 award. Milner is best known for her work with a famous patient named Henry Gustav Molaison (a.k.a., HM), who had parts of his left and right medial temporal lobes removed.
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Turn That Frown Upside Down
How can you make your day better? Turn that frown upside down. As corny as that phrase is, science can back it up. As part of the Wall Street Journal's "Is It True" video series, Christina Tsuei interviewed APS member George Bonanno about whether smiles really do improve your mood. Bonanno, author of “The Other Side of Sadness,” talked about the benefits of a spontaneous joy-filled smile. The video below also references a 2010 study published in Psychological Science, Cosmetic Use of Botulinum Toxin-A Affects Processing of Emotional Language.
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Protective Behavioral Strategies as a Mediator and Moderator in Alcohol-Related Outcomes
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the APS 23rd Annual Convention in Washington, DC. Watch Gabrielle D'Lima from Old Dominion University present her research on “Protective Behavioral Strategies as a Mediator and Moderator in Alcohol-Related Outcomes.” With coauthors Matthew R. Pearson (Old Dominion University) andMichelle L. Kelley (Old Dominion University), Gabrielle D'Lima investigated the role of protective behavioral strategies as a possible mediator and moderator of the relationship between self-regulation and alcohol-related outcomes in first-year undergraduates. Self-regulation, in general, has been found to predict alcohol consequences.
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Why Does That Conductor Look So Creepy?
Several movies have tried and failed to generate lifelike animations of humans. For example, the lifeless faces in Polar Express made people uncomfortable because they tried to emulate life but didn’t get it quite right. “There’s something fundamentally important about seeing a face and knowing that the lights are on and someone is home,” says Thalia Wheatley of Dartmouth College. Humans can see faces in anything—the moon, a piece of toast, two dots and a line for a nose—but we are much more discriminating when it comes to deciding what’s alive and what’s not.
