Psychology

Adverse childhood experiences, such as being raised in poverty, can be detrimental for cognitive development often leaving children struggling in school and trapped forever in a cycle of hardship. But a study is now suggesting a innovative (and easy) way to help. The study found that children from low socioeconomic status (SES), which are raised bilingual (speaking 2 languages) have better cognitive skills than similar monolingual children, being more focused and better able to ignore distractions, all characteristic known to be crucial for the development of language, literacy and…

In the past, the stereotypes of autism often included a savant capability in some specific thing. A new look at eight child 'prodigies' suggests there may actually be a link between the children's special skills and autism.  Or, people who are really good at some things tend to develop less socially.  Of the eight prodigies they looked at, three had a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders and as a group, the prodigies tended to have slightly elevated scores on a test of autistic traits  compared to the control group. Half of the prodigies had a family member or a first- or…

In its third century, psychological science will come of age but a mature discipline carries with it responsibilities, chief among them the responsibility to maximize confidence in findings through good data practices and replication. In the recent issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science (free to read), writers reflect on the discipline's ongoing commitment to examine methodological issues that affect all areas of science — such as failures to replicate previous findings and problems of bias and error — with the goal of strengthening the discipline and contributing to the discussion…

Self-harm is rather common among young people but we tend to think of all self harm in modern times as elaborate cutting rituals and signs of mental illness.   Not so, many teenagers have at one time scratched, punctured or even cut themselves and hit their head forcefully against a wall - and it is behavior almost as common among boys as it is girls, despite the the steretotype. Labeling young people who self-harm as on a slippery slope to adult psychiatric states is not warranted.  Rather than over-diagnose, some knowledge is needed in order not to over-interpret the behavior of…

If you are a $2 billion company, people will pay for your content - if you are losing money and not making a profit, claims a paper published today in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. The New York Times has giant revenue and a reader base that knows exactly it wants and gets in its content. Over 100 million readers per year online, they say. It doesn't just own NYT, it also owns the Boston Globe, various websites attached to its newspapers and the content farm About.com.  While its advertising (and overall) revenue went down this quarter, its circulation revenue went up…

It seems that one continuously hears about individuals passing or failing the lie detector, and despite many questions regarding its veracity, people still assume that there is a scientific basis for its use. However, lie detection, or polygraphy is not based on science.  In fact it isn't based on much of anything, except psychological manipulation of the subject under the guise that taking the lie detector may cause them to confess, because they believe it is based on science. In short ... it's voodoo psychology. The first problem is in what the polygraph, or lie detector actually…

Decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of East and West Germany, one third of political prisoners of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) still suffer from sleeping disorders, nightmares and irrational fear, say professor Andreas Maercker and PD Matthias Schützwohl, who have examined the post-traumatic consequences in former political prisoners over a period of fifteen years.Maercker, Head of the Department of Psychopathology and Clinical Intervention at the University of Zurich, and Schützwohl, Group Leader at the Clinic and Polyclinic of Psychiatry…

While it makes for convenient mainstream media news pieces to draw convenient lines between cyber-bullying and suicide and thus declare that ending bullying would end suicides, it's not so simplistic, notes research from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans. Most teen suicide victims are bullied both online and in school, and many suicide victims also suffer from depression. For "Cyberbullying and Suicide: A Retrospective Analysis of 41 Cases," the researchers examined Internet reports of youth suicides where cyberbullying was implicated…

The economic downtown that began in 2008 has been hardest on the mental health of men in England - yet it isn't the actual unemployment and falling household income the authors blame. They blame the threat of losing their jobs in a society that places an unrealistic level of pressure on males to be the breadwinners. They base their findings on data taken from the national representative annual Health Survey for England for adults aged 25 to 64, between 1991 and 2010.  Response rates during the period varied from 85 per cent in 1991 to 64 per cent in 2008, and included almost 107,000…

Gamblers interpret near-misses as frustrating losses rather than near-wins, and that frustration stimulates the reward systems in the brain to promote continued gambling, which may contribute to addictive gambling behavior. Analyses to date have shown that near-misses support persistent gambling and activate brain areas that reinforce certain behaviors. If near-misses are seen as near-wins, then they should be pleasurable. If, however, near-misses are highly frustrating losses, then they should be unpleasant. Dixon and team set out to shed light on this debate. Researchers measured the…