Posts archived in Miscellaneous
Over the last few years the BBC has broadcast an excellent series on research studies that have changed our understanding of the human mind, presented by Claudia Hammond (some of you may have heard her speak at a recent student conference in London). The BBC has now decided to make them all available for download here. Topics covered include Bandura’s Bobo doll study, Rosenhan’s Pseudo-patient study, Kohlberg’s Heinz dilemma, The Hawthorne effect, Mary Ainsworth’s research. In total there are 15 programmes each 28 minutes in length. On Sunday 17 April there is a new series starting with a programme on Elizabeth Loftus and Eyewitness Testimony.
If you’re a student currently using the Psychology AS & A2 Complete Companion series we’d like to hear your thoughts on a new publishing proposal to add some new resources to the series.
All who complete this survey by 7th February 2011 will go into a prize draw to win £100 worth of Amazon vouchers.
Here’s a link to the survey… (sorry the link didn’t work but it does now)
A small study of Canadian infants and toddlers found that those who slept most at night were making significantly more progress in executive functions than those who slept less at night, even if the latter group also had daytime sleep. These functions include impulse control, memory and mental flexibility. The researchers controlled for parents’ education and income and children’s general cognition, but the link between night-time sleep and development of cognitive skills remained. These finding support similar research findings on schoolchildren.
Might this also apply to older childern and adults? That would be interesting to know!
Annie Bernier, Stephanie M. Carlson, Stéphanie Bordeleau, Julie Carrier. Relations Between Physiological and Cognitive Regulatory Systems: Infant Sleep Regulation and Subsequent Executive Functioning. Child Development, 2010; 81 (6)
This has got to be the most fantastic collection of Psychology textbook covers ever…..
The Doctor Who episode ‘Vincent and The Doctor’, which saw the Doctor team up with Vincent Van Gogh to fight an invisible turkey, has been nominated for a Mind Mental Health Media Award.
The awards ‘celebrate the best portrayal of mental distress and reporting of mental health in broadcast media’.
The full shortlist is here and it provides a wide range of potential material for classroom discussion.
“It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it” seems to have a lot of truth as research is showing a strong though probably unconscious effect that a person’s accent has on the listener. In an American study an accent which is very different from the listener’s was perceived to be less trustworthy and less reliable than one which was similar. Possibly the difficulty for native Americans in understanding the unfamiliarly accented non-native speakers’ speech was misinterpreted as the speaker having less credibility rather than the true cause being the extra processing needed to gain understanding. Bestelmeyer’s UK study supports this, as the Scottish participants reported similar findings when listening to Scottish speakers compared to American or English speakers. MRI scans showed that words spoken with familiar accents are processed more quickly and effortlessly than other accents even when the language is native to all speakers. It is suggested that these processing difficulties may be the basis or origin of prejudice, as in one’s own accent identifying the ingroup, and other accents identifying outgroups.
Bestelmeyer et al. (2010) Society for Neuroscience. “Listeners’ Brains Respond More to Native Accent Speakers; Imaging Study Suggests Accents Are Subtle ‘Insider’ or ‘Outsider’ Signal to the Brain.” ScienceDaily, 18 November 2010.
Lev-Ari et al. (2010) Why don’t we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.05.025
Talking of luxuriant hair, I’ve only just learnt that’ Lord of The Rings’ star Viggo Mortensen is to play Freud in a movie, opposite Keira Knightley…
A quick google image search found a picture of him sporting a beard and it looks like it might just work doesn’t it?
