Monthly Archives: December 2016

In the News

The controversy over famous patient Henry Molaison — a.k.a. H.M. — is #7 on the Guardian’s list of top science news stories of 2016. In brief: Luke Dittrich has accused memory researcher Suzanne Corkin of several ethical breaches — including



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The Nurture Effect: How the Science of Human Behavior Can Improve Our Lives and Our World by Anthony Biglan, PhD

What if there existed a secret recipe for curing nearly all of our most serious societal ills? Dr. Anthony Biglan, a Senior Scientist at the Oregon Research Institute and an expert on the prevention of problematic behaviors in children and



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Does Internet Use “Rewire Adolescent Brains”?

Our very own Kathryn Mills says: we’ve got a lot of anecdotes, but not a lot of evidence, suggesting that internet use is meaningfully changing — much less damaging — adolescent brains. For example: one study that Mills cites tracks



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Dreaming of a Snowy Holiday Season?

This trippy video from TedEd gives some insight into the neural process of imagination.



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Thinking VERY Slowly about “Thinking, Fast and Slow”

Five years later, economics blogger Jason Collins rereads–and rereviews–Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow.



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Teacher Evaluations: Your Thoughts?

A report by the non-partisan Brookings Institute says that teacher evaluations are “a waste of time and money.” Your thoughts?



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Home News: Congratulations, Stephanie!

Our very own Stephanie Sasse is a co-author of a just-published paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology–General. Quick summary: adolescents are different! Stephanie’s summary? See her blog article next month…



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Drifting Away: The Cognitive Benefits—and Perils—of Mind-Wandering

You’re in the middle of a meeting or driving to work and your mind drifts off to… …chores on your to-do list, or …a recent argument with a friend, or …the grand possibilities of your future life. You may not



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Power Poses: Meh

This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education explains many reasons to doubt much-hyped research into–among other things–the “Wonder Woman Pose.”



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Research Morsel: Gender Differences in Math (Again)

The journal Intelligence recently published an interesting study [1] analyzing gender differences in cognitive abilities in the US and India. The question hovering in the background is—as it so often is—“are there innate gender differences in cognitive abilities?” That is: we



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