When Haneen Saqer, Ewart de Visser, and Jonathan Strohl arrived at Westfield High School in Chantilly, Virginia to talk about the perils of distracted driving, they thought they would be addressing a group of 100 students. Instead, they faced an auditorium of 700 students along with reporters from ABC News and NPR. After all, the trio — who are members of the George Mason University student group Distractions n’ Driving (DnD) — had just come to share their graduate research in Human Factors and Applied Cognition.
Watch coverage of the program from this ABC 7 News Clip:
In 2009, 1 in 5 injury crashes involved distracted driving*. This trend is more prominent among teen populations. Of fatal crashes involving drivers under the age of 20, 16%were distracted while driving*. Devices designed for communication, entertainment and productivity are now rapidly becoming driving hazards. Increasingly, driver use of mobile technologies (cell phones, navigation systems, music devices) while operating vehicles result in crashes and injuries.
Beginning 2010, psychology graduate students from George Mason University’s Arch Lab sought to educate young drivers on the dangers of distracted driving. By explaining the basic human factors principles involved in driving, reviewing the current research findings on distracted driving, and demonstrating these dangers via an interactive simulation, the Distractions N Driving team has reached thousands of students.
Serotonin is a brain chemical that carries signals across the synapse, or gap between nerve cells. The supply of serotonin is regulated by the serotonin transporter (SERT).
In 2005, a team of researchers from Vanderbilt University led by Randy Blakely and James Sutcliffe identified rare genetic variations in children with ASD that disrupt SERT function.
In a new study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers report the creation of a mouse model that expressed the most common of these variations.
The change is a very small one in biochemical terms, yet it appears to cause SERT in the brain to go into overdrive and restrict the availability of serotonin at synapses.
“The SERT protein in the brain of our mice appears to exhibit the exaggerated function and lack of regulation we saw using cell models,” said Blakely, director of the Vanderbilt Silvio O. Conte Center for Neuroscience Research.
“Remarkably, these mice show changes in social behavior and communication from early life that may parallel aspects of ASD,” noted first author Jeremy Veenstra-VanderWeele, assistant professor of psychiatry, pediatrics and pharmacology.
The researchers conclude that a lack of serotonin during development may lead to long-standing changes in the way the brain is wired. [continue reading…]
March 20th marks the birthday of famed behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, who would have turned 108 today. Besides Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner was the most famous and perhaps the most influential psychologist of the 20th century. But his own “radical behaviorism”—the idea that behavior is caused solely by environmental factors, never by thoughts or feelings—made him a magnet of controversy, which grew even more intense with the publication of his best-known book, Beyond Freedom & Dignity.
“He was looked at as beyond the pale by a lot of other psychologists, including me,” says Dean Keith Simonton, a psychologist at the University of California Davis, who was a graduate student at Harvard when Skinner taught there. Some even called Skinner a fascist for his radical views of human malleability. But, says Simonton, “people who knew him would also say, ‘You really should talk to Skinner, because he’s a much broader, more open person than you think.’”
Who was B.F. Skinner? University of Oslo psychologists Geir Overskeid and Cato Grønnerød, along with Simonton, used a variety of source material plus an instrument that scores people on five major personality factors, to describe him and compare him with other eminent scientists. The study, which appears in Perspectives in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, reveals a complex man—but nothing like the monster his detractors called him. [continue reading…]
Many Norwegian women postpone pregnancy until they have completed their education and are well established on their career path. This may make them more vulnerable to postpartum depression.
“There are some indications that older, first-time mothers are vulnerable to postpartum depression (PPD), perhaps because they are used to being in control of their own lives: they have completed a long education and established a career before they have children. But you can’t control a baby; on the contrary, you have to be extremely flexible. Several of the women I interviewed said themselves that this contributed to the huge feeling of letdown when things did not turn out as they had planned,” says Silje Marie Haga, who recently defended her doctoral thesis Identifying risk factors for postpartum depressive symptoms: the importance of social support, self-efficacy, and emotion regulation.
International studies have found that teenage mothers are at increased risk of postpartum depression, and previously this group has received extra attention. But in Norway this is a small group. Haga therefore believes that initiatives should now be targeted towards the much larger group of older mothers.
“Having very clear expectations and a great need for control is a risk factor. Those who prepare themselves to a very high degree for how life with the child will be have a hard time when things do not go as planned. So it’s not the need for control in itself, but rather the failure to achieve specific expectations that can trigger a depression. In contrast, women who take a more relaxed approach to motherhood with more undefined expectations cope better with unexpected challenges,” Haga observes.
She stresses that she is not warning women against postponing pregnancy, but that she believes it is vital to be aware of this correlation. This gives an opportunity to launch initiatives targeted towards this group of women so that they acquire more realistic expectations of what lies ahead. [continue reading…]
