Psychology
- Health & Medicine
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.
- Health & Medicine
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.
- Psychology
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.
- Humans
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.
- Humans
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.
- Health & Medicine
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.
- Psychology
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.
- Psychology
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.
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- Health & Medicine
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.
- Humans
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.
- Psychology
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.
