New transatlantic research has discovered that sad children do better than happy children in particular educational tasks.
Psychologists at the Universities of Plymouth and Virginia have conducted experimental research that contrasts with the belief that happy children are the best learners. The findings show that where attention to detail is required, happy children may be at a disadvantage. [continue reading…]
From the series:
The Vision Series
Fatigue is one of the most common symptoms presented by people visiting health care providers. The causes include contributions from most organs and systems: for example, endocrine, musculoskeletal and nervous system. In addition, the newer concept of central fatigue identifies significant contributions from substances produced by the central nervous system. The cross-talk between the body and brain is crucial to balance potential abnormalities. One of the antidotes to fatigue is exercise and its effects on the biochemical milieu. Better understanding of this process wil help prevent and ameliorate fatigue.
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Link to watch: Â Foiling Fatigue: Can We Do It?
The Vision Series
George Mason University
Premieres: June 6 @ 2:30am, 8:30am, 2:30pm, 8:30pm (PT)
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People use eye contact in a variety of ways every minute of every day but how often do you find yourself staring into space with concentrating on an issue or problem? Psychologists now know that people who are carrying out a complex task tend to look away from anyone else who is nearby. They refer to it as ‘gaze aversion’.
Now they are finding out how to use changes in a child’s gaze aversion to understand their educational progress. A group led by Dr Gwyneth Doherty-Sneddon at the University of Stirling, and funded by Economic and Social Research Council, has looked at gaze aversion in both children and adults. [continue reading…]
The actor Sir Peter Ustinov once famously said “Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who get there first.” Psychologists now believe there is some truth to this argument. Rather than picking our friends based on intentional choice and common values and interests, our friendships may be based on more superficial factors like proximity (think neighbors) or group assignments (your department at work).
Mitja Back, Stefan Schmukle, and Boris Egloff of the University of Leipzig sought to test the notion that random proximity and random group assignment at zero acquaintance would foster friendship in the long run. The researchers investigated 54 college freshmen upon encountering one another for the first time at the beginning of a one-off introductory session and randomly assigned them a seat number in a group of chairs organized in rows.
As reported in a recent issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, sitting in neighboring seats as a result of randomly assigned seat numbers when meeting for the first time led to higher ratings of friendship intensity one year later. The same was true even if participants were merely in the same row.
The counterintuitive finding suggests that friendships may not be as deliberate we think. “In a nutshell,” write the authors, “people may become friends simply because they drew the right random number.”
Source: Association for Psychological Science
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