Neuroscience
In the absence of formal tuition, deaf children invent their own signs. 'I have been able to follow children in Nicaragua who are not near a special education school and accordingly continue developing their homesigns independently,' said Marie Coppola (University of Chicago). Coppola thinks the spontaneous signing she's observed in children is what underlay the development of Nicaraguan Sign Language. This system was developed independently in the 1970s by children at a school for the deaf in the country's capital after they were encouraged to read lips and speak rather than use sign.
Brain scans of twenty-three undergraduate students have pointed to the possibility that abnormal brain activity can contribute to feelings of loneliness. The students were shown images of people in either pleasant or unpleasant settings. Relative to non-lonely students, those students who were lonely showed reduced reward-related activation in the ventral striatum in response to the positive images, and reduced empathy-related activity in the temporal-parietal junction in response to the unpleasant images. Whilst loneliness may cause these differences, John Cacioppo (University of Chicago) and colleagues said it's also possible that the direction of causation is the other way around.
Players of internet-based fantasy games like Everquest II can play with other gamers across the globe and yet they mostly choose to play with people who live nearby. 'It's not creating new networks. It's reinforcing existing networks,' said Noshir Contractor (Northwestern University). 'Individuals 10 kilometres away from each other are five times more likely to be partners than those who are 100 kilometres away from each other.' Other findings to emerge from the study, which involved 60 tetrabytes of data and 7000 participants, were that players underestimated the time they spent playing and were more likely than average to suffer from depression.
A walk in the park can improve the concentration of children with ADHD with the benefit being of the same magnitude as that reported for drug treatments. Frances Kuo (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and colleagues tested children with ADHD on a concentration task after either a walk in the park or in an urban environment. Kuo said this was just the latest in a series of studies pointing to the psychological benefits of natural environments. 'So when people say: “As a scientist, would you say that we now know nature is essential to optimal functioning in humans?” I say: “As a scientist I can’t tell you. I’m not ready to say that”,' Kuo admitted. ‘But as a mother who knows the scientific literature, I would say, “Yes”.’
Baboons and even pigeons are able to perform a cognitive feat that was previously considered a uniquely human ability – that is, to think about the relations between relations. This is the ability, when comparing A with A, to recognise that they are the same and that their relation to each other is therefore different from the relation shared between A and B, which are different to each other. 'What we're really trying to understand is the extent to which cognition is general throughout the animal kingdom,' Ed Wasserman (University of Iowa) explained. 'The evidence that we collect constantly surprises us, suggesting that we're not alone in many of these cognitive abilities.'
- We Underestimate The Benefits Of Nature
Ottawa parkway and skylinePeople underestimate the psychological benefits of spending time in nature. That's according to Elizabeth Nisbet and John Zelenski who say the consequence is that people spend less time outside in green spaces than they would...
- Children With Tourette's Show Superior Grammatical Ability
Children with Tourette's syndrome, the motor disorder characterised by involuntary tics, are more skilled than healthy control children at processing certain forms of grammar. That's according to Matthew Walenski at the Brain and Behaviour Lab...
- Musical Training Changes Children's Brains
Psychologists have discovered that musical training not only changes the way young children’s brains respond to sounds – it also boosts their memory performance. Takako Fujioka and colleagues looked at how the brains of 12 children aged between 4...
- Helping Children By Teaching Them To Look Away
Teaching young children to look away while they are thinking could help improve their problem-solving abilities. Fiona Phelps and colleagues at Stirling University recruited 20 five-year-old children and videoed them while they answered a range of verbal...
- Attention Training For Young Children Has Noticeable Benefit
Just five days of computer-based training over a few weeks can boost the attentional abilities of four-year-old children by an amount equivalent to half the increase in ability typically seen between the ages of four and six years of age. The finding...
Neuroscience
Psychological titbits from the Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting, Chicago, 12-16 Feb
In the absence of formal tuition, deaf children invent their own signs. 'I have been able to follow children in Nicaragua who are not near a special education school and accordingly continue developing their homesigns independently,' said Marie Coppola (University of Chicago). Coppola thinks the spontaneous signing she's observed in children is what underlay the development of Nicaraguan Sign Language. This system was developed independently in the 1970s by children at a school for the deaf in the country's capital after they were encouraged to read lips and speak rather than use sign.Brain scans of twenty-three undergraduate students have pointed to the possibility that abnormal brain activity can contribute to feelings of loneliness. The students were shown images of people in either pleasant or unpleasant settings. Relative to non-lonely students, those students who were lonely showed reduced reward-related activation in the ventral striatum in response to the positive images, and reduced empathy-related activity in the temporal-parietal junction in response to the unpleasant images. Whilst loneliness may cause these differences, John Cacioppo (University of Chicago) and colleagues said it's also possible that the direction of causation is the other way around.
Players of internet-based fantasy games like Everquest II can play with other gamers across the globe and yet they mostly choose to play with people who live nearby. 'It's not creating new networks. It's reinforcing existing networks,' said Noshir Contractor (Northwestern University). 'Individuals 10 kilometres away from each other are five times more likely to be partners than those who are 100 kilometres away from each other.' Other findings to emerge from the study, which involved 60 tetrabytes of data and 7000 participants, were that players underestimated the time they spent playing and were more likely than average to suffer from depression.
A walk in the park can improve the concentration of children with ADHD with the benefit being of the same magnitude as that reported for drug treatments. Frances Kuo (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and colleagues tested children with ADHD on a concentration task after either a walk in the park or in an urban environment. Kuo said this was just the latest in a series of studies pointing to the psychological benefits of natural environments. 'So when people say: “As a scientist, would you say that we now know nature is essential to optimal functioning in humans?” I say: “As a scientist I can’t tell you. I’m not ready to say that”,' Kuo admitted. ‘But as a mother who knows the scientific literature, I would say, “Yes”.’
Baboons and even pigeons are able to perform a cognitive feat that was previously considered a uniquely human ability – that is, to think about the relations between relations. This is the ability, when comparing A with A, to recognise that they are the same and that their relation to each other is therefore different from the relation shared between A and B, which are different to each other. 'What we're really trying to understand is the extent to which cognition is general throughout the animal kingdom,' Ed Wasserman (University of Iowa) explained. 'The evidence that we collect constantly surprises us, suggesting that we're not alone in many of these cognitive abilities.'
Link to AAAS meeting website.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- We Underestimate The Benefits Of Nature
Ottawa parkway and skylinePeople underestimate the psychological benefits of spending time in nature. That's according to Elizabeth Nisbet and John Zelenski who say the consequence is that people spend less time outside in green spaces than they would...
- Children With Tourette's Show Superior Grammatical Ability
Children with Tourette's syndrome, the motor disorder characterised by involuntary tics, are more skilled than healthy control children at processing certain forms of grammar. That's according to Matthew Walenski at the Brain and Behaviour Lab...
- Musical Training Changes Children's Brains
Psychologists have discovered that musical training not only changes the way young children’s brains respond to sounds – it also boosts their memory performance. Takako Fujioka and colleagues looked at how the brains of 12 children aged between 4...
- Helping Children By Teaching Them To Look Away
Teaching young children to look away while they are thinking could help improve their problem-solving abilities. Fiona Phelps and colleagues at Stirling University recruited 20 five-year-old children and videoed them while they answered a range of verbal...
- Attention Training For Young Children Has Noticeable Benefit
Just five days of computer-based training over a few weeks can boost the attentional abilities of four-year-old children by an amount equivalent to half the increase in ability typically seen between the ages of four and six years of age. The finding...