science wire

Jennifer Richeson, newly named as the Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology, focuses her research on social psychological phenomena that pertain to cultural diversity.

During downtime, some of us daydream while others might focus on a to-do list, or get stuck in a negative loop.

Cardiff University's pioneering social science research will be celebrated in a week-long festival this November.

ANN ARBOR'As states and the nation rush to expand public preschool programs, a University of Michigan researcher says most states and programs are not using the most effective preschool models. In a recent study, U-M professor Christina Weiland'a research partner for the past nine years in the highly regarded Boston Public Schools prekindergarten program'finds that the curriculum and educator development most commonly used in preschool models fails to align with what scientific evidence shows to be the most effective models.

'Taking the emotional feelings in animals seriously should yield more rapid understanding of human emotions,' and further work in humans could also promote development of psychiatric medicines, said Jaak Panksepp, professor of integrative psychology and neuroscience at Washington State University, speaking Oct.

Telling small lies desensitises our brains to the associated negative emotions and may encourage us to tell bigger lies in future, reveals new UCL research funded by Wellcome and the Center for Advanced Hindsight. The research provides the first empirical evidence that self-serving lies gradually escalate and reveals how this happens in our brains.

After teaching Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli middle school students in Israel that groups of people are capable of change, Stanford researchers saw significant improvements in the teens' cooperation. Jewish-Israelis and Palestinian-Israelis have spent decades in conflict over disputed territories.

Scientists in the group of Andreas Lüthi have identified two neuronal circuits that mediate the association of contextual information with emotional memories. In their publication in Cell, they describe networks of neurons that are active in the hippocampus and the amygdala, when we associate for example an unpleasant situation with a certain place.

Experts identify 14 themes of creativity The elusive and complex components of creativity have been identified by experts at the University of Sussex and the University of Kent.

This year's Swiss Human Relations Barometer focuses on the topic "loyalty and cynicism" - specifically, the tension between how employees experience and demonstrate both loyalty and cynicism, the latter being a negative, even derisive, attitude that employees develop toward their employers.

Significant numbers of people with learning disabilities, particularly very young adults, remain inappropriately incarcerated in English hospitals, say researchers.

Mental health has long been the Cinderella of healthcare: left to scrape an existence while the bulk of funding and attention goes elsewhere.

More effort is needed to reduce the global and Australian burden of mental and substance abuse disorders - the world's leading cause of disability - University of Queensland researchers say. School of Public Health researcher Professor Harvey Whiteford said a UQ team performed the mental and substance use disorder modelling used in the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 - a scientific analysis of more than 300 diseases and injuries in 195 countries.

Australian researchers have identified Ireland's same-sex marriage referendum 'No' campaign had a deeply negative impact on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and their families. Dr Sharon Dane from The University of Queensland's School of Psychology , Dr Liz Short of Victoria University and Dr Grainne Healy of Ireland surveyed 1657 LGBTI people and their families.

Mark de Rond (Cambridge Judge Business School) discusses how exposure to terrible events may only tell part of the complex story of post-traumatic stress disorder.

A charity which helps disadvantaged adults empower themselves via the arts - called the School of Hard Knocks - has had its praises sung by a University of Queensland psychology expert.

Grangetown residents seeking mental health advice can access face-to-face expertise in their community at an event organised by the University.

Girls with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are at higher risk than girls without ADHD for multiple mental disorders that often lead to cascading problems such as abusive relationships, teenage pregnancies, poor grades and drug abuse, UCLA psychologists report in the journal Pediatrics.

Studies by the University of Basel have shown that whether and how risk-taking propensity varies over a person's life span depends in part on how risk taking is measured. When subjects are asked how they assess their risk propensity, a clear reduction with age is the result. However, this reduction is not necessarily observed for specific risk-taking tasks.

Distinguishing relationships between changing images is an important part of discerning the direction in which a thrown ball or flying bird or speeding bus is headed. Photo: Jeff Miller As many as half of people are blind to motion in some part of their field of vision, but the deficit doesn't have anything to do with the eyes.

Depression in pregnancy increases the risk of behavioural and emotional problems in children, says a new review published in The Lancet Psychiatry.

Three-year-olds quickly absorb social norms. They even understand behaviors as rule-governed that are not subject to any norms, and insist that others adhere to these self-inferred 'norms', a study by LMU psychologist MarcoF.H.

Making new friends is one of the most important goals for students when they arrive at university for the first time. But which personalities are most successful at making and extending friendship groups? Now new research suggests that the most emotionally intelligent people develop more friendships in the long-run, while those with narcissistic personalities struggle to maintain their early success in making friends.

If you've ever been lost in a radio drama, caught up in a film or transfixed by a play, you've probably not stopped to ask why. Yet, humanity's fascination with fiction is an evolutionary enigma. Now, Oxford arts and sciences researchers have found that stories that arouse our emotions trigger the same mechanisms as other forms of bonding.

King's College London is joining a major new initiative aiming to reduce the mental health gap by engaging global and community leaders across private, public and philanthropic organisations.

The 21st Century Cures Act has been both lauded and criticized, but one thing about it is for sure - the bill was a landmark achievement for receiving bipartisan support in an era when bipartisanship is scarce.

Children who enter reception with poor English language skills - whether it's their first language or an additional language - are more likely to have social, emotional and behavioural difficulties in later years, finds a new study co-authored by UCL and Royal Holloway and funded by Wellcome. The research, published today in Child Development , found the cognitive advantages of bilingualism tend to help with academic achievement only if English skills are sufficient at school entry for the child to be fully engaged.

Study points out how important follow-ups are to evaluate patients? psychological well-being after gastric bypass surgery.

You may have noticed that women are more prone to sleep disturbances than men. They are, for instance, up to twice as likely to suffer from insomnia than men.

New Stanford research shows that aging adults play critical roles in the lives of young people, especially the most vulnerable in society.

When people suffer from Combat PTSD, there may be major changes in behavior and personality with no outward change in their appearance.

University of Sussex Rudd Centre set to host adoption symposium A symposium featuring the latest research to improve the outcomes of adopted children and their families has been confirmed to take place at the University of Sussex on Tuesday 15th November 2016. Aimed at policy makers, national and local government, charities, and social care practitioners the symposium will review the very latest research examining family relationship processes and child and adolescent mental health outcomes, with a core focus on highlighting recent practice and policy developments in this area.

The winners of the Women's Mental Health (WMH) 2016 Youth Award in Health Research and Science Communication spent two days in the Section of Women's Mental Health in August 2016.

One of the most important social and policy issues facing the UK - the migration crisis in Europe - will be examined by academics from the UK and mainland Europe in a symposium in Cardiff.

By Shilo Rea / 412-268-6094 / shilo [at] cmu (p) edu With more than 205 trillion ways to teach and learn , it's easy to understand why going back to school can be overwhelming for students and their instructors.

In understanding war-related post-traumatic stress disorder, a person's cultural and professional context is just as important as how they cope with witnessing wartime events, which could change the way mental health experts analyse, prevent and manage psychological injury from warfare. This understanding of the connection between PTSD and the context of those who suffer from it could change the way mental health experts analyse, prevent and manage psychological injury from warfare.

Researchers are looking at better ways of helping grieving people let go of emotionally-charged digital content after the death of loved ones or the break-up of relationships.

New research from Cornell's School of Hotel Administration (SHA), which evaluated a variety of diversity training programs offered by business organizations and institutions, sheds some light on developing training that has a significant impact in addressing stereotyping and other biases in work environments.

ANN ARBOR?Smokers with serious mental illness have their lives cut short by about 15 years, compared with people who have never smoked and who do not have serious mental illness, research from the University of Michigan shows.

More than 30 years ago I published a paper that examined violent incidents involving African American and white patients in an inpatient psychiatric facility.

Study shows that integrating behavioral health and primary care also reduces emergency room visits Veronique de Turenne A collaborative care system developed at UCLA Health benefits patients and reduces costs by merging two areas of health care that often have often not been well-integrated: primary care and mental health services.

David Greenberg (Department of Psychology) discusses the problems of labeling music by genre. It's hard to pinpoint the exact time in history when genre labels were used to classify music, but the fact is that over the past century, and certainly still today, genre labels dominate.

In a fascinating study of J M Barrie's classic works for children, Dr Rosalind Ridley (Newnham College) reveals that the creator of Peter Pan, and a panoply of other characters, had a deep understandi

Walk into any daycare center and you're sure to see almost every personality represented in the tiny humans inside.

The biodiversity of animals, plants, and protists, and their morphological and behavioral adaptations to life on the rocky shores, in pelage, in the sediment, in eelgrass meadows and salt marshes, es

Living a YOLO (you only live once) lifestyle doesn't mean abandoning any sense of consequence, but it does mean seizing opportunities for self-improvement.

Although driving is now more commonly associated with road-rage than relaxation - at least in congested urban areas - research into the ways in which the concentration required for driving can positively direct and structure thought raises interesting questions for a 'driverless' future.