This broadcast is available only until March 12th 2013

It is a common held belief that men can’t multi-task and women can.

In fact Professor Nick Chater shows in the first of a weekly six-part series called The Human Zoo on BBC Radio Four that neither sex are very good at doing more than one thing at a time.

The Warwick Business School professor reveals that when doing something routine and well-practised humans can do two things at once, like driving and talking.

But when anything non-routine is introduced then multi-tasking is just not possible for the human mind.

Professor Chater said: “Most of the things that we find that are reasonably challenging we can only do one at a time. We think we are multi-tasking but in fact we are interleaving from one task to the next quite rapidly, something we don’t have to do if we practice. If we practice we get very fluent at something and it requires almost no mental effort, like driving and listening to the radio.”

When something difficult is added then any semblance of doing two things at once is ended as Professor Chater showed with a simple experiment, like asking what is the capital of Tanzania? That question forced presenter Michael Blastland to stop walking to consider the answer.

“When you are trying to strain your memory or when we have to do something remotely difficult we have to stop doing something else,” said Professor Chater, who is a Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School. “Mental and physical energy is more connected than you imagine.

“We can’t keep mental processes entirely separate from each other. If we are doing routine things that is fine, but if we do something non-routine suddenly other parts of the brain start to engage and interfere with routine things like walking.”

Professor Chater, who is head of the Behavioural Science group at Warwick Business School, reveals how this link between mental and physical energy has real implications. A study of a parole board in Israel showed how their decisions were affected by taking a break and having some food.

Even recognising several people or objects at once seems to be beyond the capability of the human mind.

Professor Chater said: “There are some very interesting demonstrations that suggest that we can’t do that. Some of my colleagues at Warwick Business School have set up some demos on ‘change blindness’ – a phenomenon that suggests we are very limited in our ability to recognise people or objects more than one at a time.”

Listeners can take part in the online ‘change blindness’ experiment by going to http://www.weblab.wbs.ac.uk/experiment/1.

Source: Warwick Business School

New research reveals heaping on the praise on your child doesn’t necessary lead to happiness down the road

 
Praising children, especially those with low self-esteem, for their personal qualities rather than their efforts may make them feel more ashamed when they fail, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.
 
“This type of personal praise may backfire. What may seem like common sense can sometimes lead adults astray in their attempts to help children with low self-esteem feel better about themselves,” said lead researcher Eddie Brummelman, MS, of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. The study was published online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
The study found that children with low self-esteem often received praise for their personal qualities, and that type of praise can trigger greater feelings of shame from failure and may lead to a diminished sense of self-worth.
 
In one experiment, 357 parents in the Netherlands, ranging in age from 29 to 66, read six descriptions of hypothetical children — three with high self-esteem (e.g., “Lisa usually likes the kind of person she is,”) and three with low self-esteem (e.g., “Sarah is often unhappy with herself”). The participants were told to write down the praise they would give the child for completing an activity, such as drawing a picture. On average, the parents gave children with low self-esteem more than twice as much praise directed at personal qualities (e.g., “You’re a great artist!”) than they gave to children with high self-esteem. They also were more likely to praise children with high self-esteem for their efforts. (e.g., “You did a great job drawing!”)
“Adults may feel that praising children for their inherent qualities helps combat low self-esteem, but it might convey to children that they are valued as a person only when they succeed,” Brummelman said. “When children subsequently fail, they may infer they are unworthy.”
 
A second experiment illustrated that point. The researchers recruited 313 children (54 percent girls) ranging in age from 8 to 13 from five public elementary schools in the Netherlands. Several days before the experiment, the students completed a standard test that measures self-esteem. For the experiment, the children were told they would play an online reaction time game against a student from another school and that a webmaster would be monitoring their performance via the Internet. In reality, the computer controlled the outcome of the game, and the children were divided into winners and losers, including groups that received praise for themselves, praise for their efforts, or no praise.
In the group where the children were praised for their personal qualities, the webmaster wrote, “Wow, you’re great!” after the students completed one round of the game, whereas the children whose actions were praised were told, “Wow, you did a great job!” The group that received no praise served as a control. After a second round, the children were told they either won or lost the game, and they completed a survey about their feelings of shame. Children who lost the game experienced a sharp increase in shame if they had been praised for their personal qualities, especially if they had low self-esteem, compared to the other groups.
The researchers theorized that children who are praised for their efforts may not associate their self-worth with success, so failure is viewed as a temporary setback or a lack of effort rather than a flaw in their character. Brummelman said the study results may apply generally to children from most Western countries, including the United States, but the results may be less applicable to Eastern countries, such as China, where adults may use different approaches for praising children.
 
The differences between praising a person and praising his or her efforts may be very subtle, but those differences can have a big impact on children’s self-esteem, said study co-author Brad Bushman, PhD, a communication and psychology professor at The Ohio State University. Therefore, parents and teachers should focus on praising children for their efforts rather than their personal qualities, he added.
“In general, it is better to praise the behavior rather than the individual,” Bushman said. “If you praise the individual and he fails, it can cause shame and may inadvertently send the message, ‘I am a bad person.’”
 
ᔥAmerican Psychological Association

Article: “On Feeding Those Hungry for Praise: Person Praise Backfires in Children With Low Self-Esteem,” Eddie Brummelman, MS, Utrecht University; Sander Thomaes, PhD, Utrecht University and University of Southampton; Geertjan Overbeek, PhD, Bram Orobio de Castro, PhD, and Marcel A. van den Hout, PhD, Utrecht University; and Brad J. Bushman, PhD, The Ohio State University and VU University Amsterdam; Journal of Experimental Psychology: General; online Feb. 26, 2013.
Full text of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office and at
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-ofp-brummelman.pdf

Image: istockphoto

Out lesbians, gays, and bisexuals are in better mental and physical health than others

Coming out is no longer a matter of popular debate but a matter of public health

– lead author Robert-Paul Juster

Lesbians, gays and bisexuals (LGBs) who are out to others have lower stress hormone levels and fewer symptoms of anxiety, depression, and burnout, according to researchers at the Centre for Studies on Human Stress (CSHS) at Louis H. Lafontaine Hospital, affiliated with the University of Montreal. Cortisol is a stress hormone in our body. When chronically strained, cortisol contributes to the ‘wear and tear’ exerted on multiple biological systems. Taken together, this strain is called “allostatic load”. “Our goals were to determine if the mental and physical health of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals differs from heterosexuals and, if so, whether being out of the closet makes a difference. We used measures of psychiatric symptoms, cortisol levels throughout the day, and a battery of over twenty biological markers to assess allostatic load,” explained lead author Robert-Paul Juster. “Contrary to our expectations, gay and bisexual men had lower depressive symptoms and allostatic load levels than heterosexual men. Lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals who were out to family and friends had lower levels of psychiatric symptoms and lower morning cortisol levels than those who were still in the closet.”

Montrealers of diverse sexual orientations were invited to the laboratory of Dr. Sonia Lupien, Director of the CSHS. Lupien’s team recruited eighty-seven men and women, all of whom were around twenty-five years of age. Over the course of several visits, the researchers collected psychological questionnaires, asked participants to provide saliva samples to measure cortisol over two days, and calculated allostatic load indices using results from blood, saliva, and urine samples. “Chronic stress and misbalanced cortisol levels can exert a kind of domino effect on connected biological systems,” Lupien said. “By looking at biomarkers like insulin, sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure, adrenalin, and inflammation together, an allostatic load index can be constructed and then used to detect health problems before they occur.”

Stigma-related stress might force LGBs to develop coping strategies that make them more effective at managing future stressors. “Coming out of the closet is a major milestone in lives of LGBs that has not been studied extensively using interdisciplinary approaches that assess stress biomarkers” said co-author Dr. Nathan Grant Smith. These exciting findings underline the role self-acceptance and disclosure has on the positive health and wellbeing of LGBs. In turn, this has important implications for ongoing political debates. “Coming out might only be beneficial for health when there are tolerant social policies that facilitate the disclosure process” said Juster. “Societal intolerance during the disclosure process impairs one’s self-acceptance that generates increased distress and contributes to mental and physical health problems.”

“As the participants of this study enjoy progressive Canadian rights, they may be inherently healthier and hardier,” Juster said. “Coming out is no longer a matter of popular debate but a matter of public health. Internationally, societies must endeavour to facilitate this self-acceptance by promoting tolerance, progressing policy, and dispelling stigma for all minorities.”

ᔥThe research was published in Psychosomatic Medicine on January 29, 2013. The University of Montreal