A comprehensive effort to find links between genetic variants and low mood comes up empty.

New models offer contrasting views of monkeys’ ability to identify frequently seen letter pairs. (p. 14)

Summaries from the conference held November 15-18 in Minneapolis. (p. 14)

A contested study suggests that poverty contracts attention and detracts from financial decisions. (p. 17)

Too much information prompted bad currency projections by international money firms, a psychologist contends, and may have blinded them to the global financial crisis. (p. 13)

In a survey, judges tended to say they would reduce sentences for criminals defended with biological evidence.

A mental feel for estimating amounts maxes out later in life and may influence math achievement.

A study out this week attempts to probe why attitudes on climate risks by some segments of the public don’t track the science all that well. Along the way, it basically debunks one simplistic assumption: that climate skeptics, for want of a better term, just don’t understand the data — or perhaps even science. “I think this is sort of a weird, exceptional situation,” says decision scientist Dan Kahan of the Yale Law School, who led the new study. “Most science issues aren’t like this.” But a view is emerging, some scientists argue, that people tend to be unusually judgmental of facts or interpretations in science fields that threaten the status quo — or the prevailing attitudes of their cultural group, however that might be defined. And climate science is a poster child for these fields.

Positive feelings may lead seniors to weigh fewer options and make poorer choices in some situations. (p. 10)