Feature Channels: Psychology and Psychiatry

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Caffeine is the energy boost of choice for millions. Now, however, researchers have found another use for the stimulant: memory enhancer.

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Even before babies have language skills or much information about social structures, they can infer whether other people are likely to be friends by observing their likes and dislikes, a new study on infant cognition has found.

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Fifty years ago, the U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health prompted one of the largest public health behavior change success stories of the 20th century. Before and since this groundbreaking report’s release, psychology has been at the forefront of smoking cessation efforts.

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Mindfulness meditation programs may help reduce anxiety, depression and pain in some individuals, according to a review of medical literature by Madhav Goyal, M.D., M.P.H., of The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and colleagues.

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When inmates with severe mental illness are released from jail, their priority is finding shelter, food, money and clothes. Even needs as basic as soap and a place to bathe can be hard to come by for people leaving jail, according to a new study from Case Western Reserve University’s social work school.

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Parents and other adults heap the highest praise on children who are most likely to be hurt by the compliments, a new study finds.

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People who tell themselves to get excited rather than trying to relax can improve their performance during anxiety-inducing activities such as public speaking and math tests, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association.

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Small talk is far from "small" or trivial, says psychology professor and shyness expert Bernardo J. Carducci. It is the salve of a disconnected society -- the "cornerstone of civility." "Small talk is really, really important. It helps us connect with people, and not just at holiday gatherings," said Carducci, director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University Southeast. "If you make connections with people, it makes it much more difficult for you to treat them in an uncivil way. If you think about being kind to and connecting with people, people you engage in conversation, you're going to open a door for them, you'll let them step in front of you in line. You'll engage in more acts of kindness and fewer acts of rudeness."

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Young adults who are heavy users of the Internet may also exhibit signs of addiction, say researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology, Duke University Medical Center and the Duke Institute of Brain Sciences in a new study that compares Internet usage with measures of addiction.

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These pressures are particularly palpable during the holiday season. We often think our kids will be disappointed if we can’t measure up to their expectations at the holidays, and when we think it’s our job to keep them happy, we shudder at the thought of disappointing them. Dr. Aaron Cooper, PhD, licensed clinical psychologist at The Family Institute at Northwestern University and author of I Just Want My Kids To Be Happy (Late August Press, 2008), provides expert tips to parents as they set and manage their children’s expectations during the holidays.

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A head injury can lead immune-system brain cells to go on “high alert” and overreact to later immune challenges by becoming excessively inflammatory – a condition linked with depressive complications, a new animal study suggests.

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A UAB study shows early maturing in adolescent girls can increase aggressive and delinquent behavior.

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A new study by a movement disorder neurologist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center found that depression improved among patients with Parkinson’s disease who participated in a long-term group exercise program.

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The clinical context of the administration and dosage of antipsychotics may influence their efficacy, reported Philippe Vincent and Édouard Kouassi, from the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal and Université de Montréal.

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With evidence growing that meditation can have beneficial health effects, scientists have sought to understand how these practices physically affect the body.

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Saint Louis University nursing instructor Julie Bertram found mental health nurses lend valuable perspective in treating troubled teens in foster care.

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A new study finds that survivors of hematopoietic stem cell transplant, an aggressive treatment for blood cancers, benefited from a two-part peer support process the authors call expressive helping.

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Playing video games, including violent shooter games, may boost children’s learning, health and social skills, according to a review of research on the positive effects of video game play to be published by the American Psychological Association.

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Playing violent video games not only increases aggression, it also leads to less self-control and more cheating, a new study finds.

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Research shows companies that screen the social media accounts of job applicants alienate potential employees – making it harder for them to attract top job candidates. In some cases, social media screening even increases the likelihood that job candidates may take legal action against the offending company.

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Pacific University (Ore.) assistant professor Conor Principe is an expert in this area of research.

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Do drinking and marriage mix? That depends on who’s doing the drinking — and how much — according to a recent study by the University at Buffalo Research Institute on Addictions (RIA).

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UCLA researchers have shown that teenagers with anxiety disorders show increased activity in a specific part of the brain, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), when they are interpreting a neutral situation negatively. Ultimately, the mPFC may serve as a biomarker for illness.

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Grammar and syntax have been thought for decades to be automatic and untouchable by other brain processes and that everything else — the sex of the speaker, their dialect, etc. — is stripped away as our brains process the sound signal of a word and store it as an abstract form. A University of Kansas study suggests that even higher-level processes – in this case – grammar - are affected by information about the speaker.

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Just as fragments of ancient pottery and bones offer valuable information about human history, music can also reveal clues about the past, according to new research from an international team led by McMaster University psychologist Steven Brown.

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Liberals tend to underestimate the amount of actual agreement among those who share their ideology, while conservatives tend to overestimate intra-group agreement, researchers in NYU’s Department of Psychology have found.

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Even as the rate of diagnosis has reached 11 percent among American children aged 4 to 17, neuroscientists are still trying to understand attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). One classic symptom is impulsivity — the tendency to act before thinking.

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Pregnant women may transmit the damaging effects of stress to their unborn child by way of the bacteria in their vagina and through the placenta, suggest new findings from two animal studies presented by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania at Neuroscience 2013, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

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The amount of gun violence shown in PG-13 films has more than tripled since 1985, the year the rating was introduced.

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The use of personality tests in hiring is both common and controversial. Such tests consistently predict later job performance, though not with sufficient accuracy. Binghamton University’s Seth Spain, an industrial psychologist, says employers should look beyond the characteristics these tests focus on — and consider the power of the dark side.

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Personality research shows outright requests, rather than the Door-in-the-Face strategy may be more effective for fundraisers.

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Expert adolescent psychologist Dr. Hollie Sobel, PhD, discusses the psychological ways in which teens experience online bullying versus face-to-face conflict.

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In On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind, Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis of the University of Arkansas explores the psychology of repetition in music, across time, style and cultures.

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There’s good news and there’s bad news. Which do you want to hear first? That depends on whether you are the giver or receiver of bad news, and if the news-giver wants the receiver to act on the information, according to researchers at the University of California, Riverside.

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It is the first study to show that mindfulness training can be used in combination with cognitive behavioral therapy to protect attentional functioning in high-risk incarcerated youth.

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Patients who are unrealistically optimistic about their personal health risks are more likely to take preventive action when confronted with news that is worse than expected, while unrealistic pessimists are less likely to change their behavior after receiving feedback that is better than expected.

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A new study by UNL psychologists Sarah Gervais and Mike Dodd used eye-tracking technology to map the visual behavior of men and women as they looked at images of women with different body types.

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More than 1 in 10 Americans take antidepressants, but these medications can take weeks—and for some patients, months—before they begin to alleviate symptoms. Now, scientists from the University of Chicago have discovered that selectively blocking a serotonin receptor subtype induces fast-acting antidepressant effects in mice, indicating a potential new class of therapeutics for depression. The work was published Oct. 29 in Molecular Psychiatry.

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Children are more apt to believe a nice, non-expert than a mean expert according to researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas. In the study published in Developmental Science, the authors examine how preschoolers decide whom to believe when provided with two conflicting pieces of information given by a nice or mean adult.

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Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified changes in the brains of children growing up in poverty. Those changes can lead to lifelong problems like depression, learning difficulties and limitations in the ability to cope with stress. But the study showed that the extent of those changes was influenced strongly by whether parents were attentive and nurturing.

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The language a child speaks affects the rate at which they learn number words, and hearing number words in natural conversation – not just in counting routines – is a critical part of learning the meaning of numbers.

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Halloween have you avoiding black cats, bats and more? A psychologist says superstitions are behaviors that people perform in an attempt to affect or control their future.

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University of Delaware sociologist Joel Best became skeptical about Halloween sadism when he was a graduate student. Now with over 50 years of data, he still hasn't found a documented case of a child who was seriously harmed by a contaminated Halloween treat.

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Psychology researchers find people with similar personality types are so likely to cluster in certain areas of the United States.

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Poverty coupled with stress have long-lasting effects on brain function, according to a study published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.