Favorite music makes teens drive badly

"Drivers in general are not aware that as they get drawn-in by a song, they move from an extra-personal space involving driving tasks, to a more personal space of active music listening."



Favorite music makes teens drive badly: Teen driver music preferences increase errors and distractibility

Violent video games increase aggression long after the game is turned off, study finds

Violent video games increase aggression long after the game is turned off, study finds

Human brains are hardwired for empathy, friendship

"Perhaps one of the most defining features of humanity is our capacity for empathy -- the ability to put ourselves in others' shoes. A new study strongly suggests that we are hardwired to empathize because we closely associate people who are close to us -- friends, spouses, lovers -- with our very selves. "


Human brains are hardwired for empathy, friendship

Depressive Realism!

Professor Kornbrot : "Our findings may help to shed a little light on how people with depression can be treated. People with depression are often encouraged to check themselves against reality, but maybe this timing skill can help in the treatment of mildly-depressed people. These findings may also link to successful mindfulness based treatments for depression which focus on encouraging present moment awareness."

Aug. 22, 2013 — People with mild depression underestimate their talents. However, new research led by the University of Hertfordshire shows that depressed people are more accurate when it comes to time estimation than their happier peers.

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Depressed people often appear to distort the facts and view their lives more negatively than non-depressed people. Feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and worthlessness and of being out of control are some of the main symptoms of depression. For these people time seems to pass slowly and they will often use phrases such as "time seems to drag" to describe their experiences and their life. However, depressed people sometimes have a more accurate perception of reality than their happier friends and family who often look at life through rose-tinted glasses and hope for the best.

Professor Diana Kornbrot, Research Professor of Mathematical Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, said: "The results of our study found that depressed people were accurate when estimating time whereas non-depressed peoples' estimations were too high. This may be because mildly-depressed people focus their attention on time and less on external influences, and therefore have clarity of thought -- a phenomenon known as 'depressive realism'."

In the study, volunteers gave verbal estimates of the length of different time intervals of between two and sixty-five seconds and they also produced their own time intervals. For non-depressed people, their verbal time interval estimations were too high; while their own production of times in the same range were too low. In contrast, the mildly-depressed people were accurate in both their verbal time estimates and also their own production times.

When do we understand Competition? at around 4!

Will to Win Forms at Four Years Old

"younger children seem to lack a developed understanding that people's intentional actions reflect their perspective (beliefs) on how best to accomplish their goals."

Aug. 15, 2013 — New research suggests children don't understand competitive behaviour until around the age of four.

A team of researchers from the University of Warwick and University of Salzburg found most children under 4 did not have a developed understanding of other people's perspectives -- specifically, of the fact that what someone intentionally does depends on their take on the situation.

Johannes Roessler, from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, and his co-authors Beate Priewasser and Josef Perner from the Department of Psychology at the University of Salzburg, tested 71 children aged between 3 and 5 years old.

They first tested the children to assess whether they understood that people sometimes act on the basis of false beliefs.

Roessler said: "In the classical 'false belief task', children watch a boy put some chocolate in a drawer and go off to play. Someone comes along and moves the chocolate to the cupboard. The experimenter then asks children where the boy will go to retrieve his chocolate. Children under the age of 4 tend to predict that he will go straight to the cupboard, because that is where the chocolate now is -- even though the boy had no means of knowing this!

"Older children tend to predict that he will go to the drawer, which is the correct answer because the boy believes the chocolate to be in the drawer. Thus younger children seem to lack a developed understanding that people's intentional actions reflect their perspective (beliefs) on how best to accomplish their goals."

The researchers wanted to explore how much young children's understand other people's goals: do they understand that an actor's goals reflect his or her perspective on what's desirable?

The team set up a game for the children. They each had a vertical stand and were told they had to throw a die and then put the corresponding number of beads on their stand. The aim of the game was to be the first to fill their stand with beads, taking them either from the central basket or from other players' stands.

Roessler said they wanted to see if the children would take beads from the basket (neutral move) or from another player (a competitive or 'poaching' move). The point of taking beads form another player's stand is of course not just to further one's own goal (to fill one's stand) but also to foil the other player's attempt to reach his or her goal (to fill his or her own stand). The intentional use of poaching moves then, may be expected to show an understanding that the two players have different, and conflicting, goals, i.e. different perspectives on which outcome is desirable.

The results showed that very few children who failed the false belief task showed any tendency to engage in competitive poaching moves. This was so even when these children suffered from their opponent's poaching moves: they would not 'retaliate'. This last finding was especially significant. If children understood the goal informing the other's poaching moves, one would expect them, at least occasionally, to respond in kind.

"The 'four years of age' rule isn't hard and fast. What's important is not the absolute age of the child, but the fact that those who do not understand how intentional action can be informed by false beliefs also tend to struggle with the idea of competition."

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Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided byUniversity of Warwick.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Beate Priewasser, Johannes Roessler, Josef Perner.Competition as rational action: Why young children cannot appreciate competitive games. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2012; DOI:10.1016/j.jecp.2012.10.008

Please consider your kids brains! Is a sport worth TBI?

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Did You Know that Adult Romantic Relationship.......?

"Although Bowlby was primarily focused on understanding the nature of the infant-caregiver relationship, he believed that attachment characterized human experience from "the cradle to the grave." It was not until the mid-1980's, however, that researchers began to take seriously the possibility that attachment processes may play out in adulthood. Hazan and Shaver (1987) were two of the first researchers to explore Bowlby's ideas in the context of romantic relationships. According to Hazan and Shaver, the emotional bond that develops between adult romantic partners is partly a function of the same motivational system--the attachment behavioral system--that gives rise to the emotional bond between infants and their caregivers. Hazan and Shaver noted that the relationship between infants and caregivers and the relationship between adult romantic partners share the following features:

both feel safe when the other is nearby and responsive

both engage in close, intimate, bodily contact

both feel insecure when the other is inaccessible

both share discoveries with one another

both play with one another's facial features and exhibit a mutual 

fascination and preoccupation with one another

both engage in "baby talk"

On the basis of these parallels, Hazan and Shaver argued that adult romantic relationships, like infant-caregiver relationships, are attachments, and that romantic love is a property of the attachment behavioral system, as well as the motivational systems that give rise to caregiving and sexuality."

This is the most direct and simple explanation from Chris Fraley from University of Illinoise