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Psychology
  • FOR KIDS: A bird that keeps the beat
    A dancing cockatoo shows that humans aren’t the only animals with rhythm.

    Aniruddh D. Patel, John R. Iversen, Micah R. Bregman, and Irena Schulz

  • Rapid emotional swings could precede violence
    A tool from physics helps link the patterns of psychiatric patients’ symptoms and the likelihood they will commit violent acts.
  • Autism immerses 2-year-olds in a synchronized world
    By age 2, kids with autism focus on synchronized physical events, such as a person’s moving lips accompanied by sounds, rather than on eye movements and other social cues, a new study suggests.
  • Gestures speak volumes in the brain
    A new brain-imaging study suggests that an understanding of spoken language relies on changing sets of brain networks that exploit acoustic and visual cues.
  • Feelings, universal musical feelings
    Africans who spurn all things Western provide evidence that people everywhere recognize expressions of happiness, sadness and fear in music. Listen to some of the audio samples the study used.
  • Radio relief for Rwandans’ social conflicts
    Rwandans who listened to a yearlong radio soap opera developed increased tolerance for dissent, a greater sense of cooperation and more acceptance of marriage across ethnic lines.
  • Playing for real in a virtual world
    Preteen boys and girls interacting in a virtual world display the same contrasting play styles that have been observed in real-world settings.
  • Taking age stereotypes to heart
    A long-term investigation indicates that young and middle-aged adults who hold negative attitudes about the elderly are more likely to have heart ailments and strokes later in life.
  • Don’t worry, get attention training
    New studies suggest that a short course of attention training offers as much relief to sufferers of two common anxiety disorders as psychotherapy or medication.
  • Fatal fallout of financial failure
    Using population data, researchers have linked a widespread Asian economic crisis in 1997 to an abrupt increase in suicide rates the following year in hard-hit places.
  • The Dating Go Round
  • Parenting shapes genetic risk for drug use
    A three-year study of black teens in rural Georgia finds that involved, supportive parenting powerfully buffers the tendency of some genetically predisposed youngsters to use drugs.
  • When giving gifts, the price is wrong
    Gift givers expect that expensive presents will be appreciated by gift receivers more than inexpensive presents, but three new investigations suggest that that’s not the case.
  • Recovering memories that never left
    New research suggests that some people who recover memories of childhood sexual abuse are prone to false recall, while others are likely to have forgotten earlier recollections of actual abuse.
  • Brain reorganizes to make room for math
    New research suggests that, as children learn arithmetic, the brain reorganizes dramatically as it shifts from handling only estimates of quantities to attaching precise quantities to symbolic numerals.
  • This is the teenager’s brain on peer pressure
    Research shared during the fourth day of the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting remained diverse: What happens in the brain when teenagers feel peer pressure, a study in mice suggesting a new way to treat depression, the best way to relearn walking after a stroke, and the long lasting effects of disrupted sleep.
  • Your body is mine
    Scientists have developed a technique for inducing an illusion of having swapped one’s own body with someone else’s body, providing a new means for investigating self-identity and body-image disorders.
  • Itch
  • A genetic pathway to language disorders
    Researchers suspect a newly uncovered regulatory link between two genes contributes to language impairments in a range of developmental disorders.
  • Body In Mind
  • Core calculations
    Number words may serve as mental tools for expanding on basic, nonverbal numerical knowledge rather than as determinants of such knowledge.
  • Sick and down
  • Lie defectives
    A new analysis challenges the view that a few people with special experience can detect others’ lies with great accuracy.
  • Woman knob twists
    People nonverbally impose a specific order on descriptions of witnessed events, a tendency that may influence the structure of new languages, a new study suggests.
  • Wave of resilience
    Indian survivors of the devastating Asian tsunami employed spiritual and community coping strategies to regain emotional balance
  • Worth the cooties
    Boys who attend preschool classes with a majority of girls do better developmentally than other boys.
  • Numbers beyond words
    New research with Amazonian villagers suggests that their language lacks number words but that they still comprehend precise quantities of objects.
  • Symbolic snacks
    Capuchin monkeys can reason with tokens as they do with different foods, demonstrating a basic capacity for thinking symbolically.
  • Courting both ways
    Some extra dopamine, and male fruit flies like boys too.
  • Mondo bizarro
    Psychiatrists measuring the degree of similarity between dreams and psychotic ruminations report some strange features common to both.
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