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What are the Areas of Study within Psychology?
The field of psychology had its modern origin just over 100 years ago, and yet interest in the field has grown rapidly. Researchers with broad and varied interests have expanded the field, and as a result there are many different subdisciplines. Highlighted here are several key areas of psychology. Biological psychologists apply biological principles to…
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ADHD and Memory: Differences in What is Remembered
Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD (formerly known also as ADD) are classically seen as the kids in class who have trouble staying in their seats and paying attention during long lessons. Underlying these problematic behaviors is a confluence of factors, with evidence pointing to genetics, neural function, and environmental factors (including parenting…
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Is ADHD a real disorder?
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence that approximately 5 percent of children have a specific deficit in attention compared to children of their same age and sex, many people still question whether ADHD (and some still call it it’s former name: ADD) is a real disorder. A recent article in the New York Times takes on this…
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Women’s Health and Perceptions of Gender
For many pressing health issues, including HIV/AIDS, cancer (in particular lung cancer), and suicide completion, women have lower rates than men. Women are the minority at birth, but the number of women (in the national surveys) far surpass men in survival rates across the lifespan, with a broad gender difference easily noticed when visiting my…
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Pre-Maternity Leave Requested!
The upcoming article by Christine Dunkel Schetter outlines a number of difficulties that may negatively impact the infant’s birth weight and duration of the pregnancy. The sources of stressors outlined in the article are broad, including financial stressors, problems in ones romantic relationships, family responsibilities, employment conditions, and pregnancy-related concerns. Both episodic and chronic stressors…
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Childhood Sexual Assault: Impacts are broad, but not for all victims?
Psychologists often rely on grouping participants together based on shared characteristics (e.g., are girls better than boy in reading ability). The goal is to broadly understand the relationships between potential causes and effects, and, ideally learn from them. In the first example above, perhaps reading interventions targeting boys may be an effect if the study…
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The Origins of Mental Disorders
The recent article in the New York Times outlining research on the preschool-age depression has raised public interest in the origins of mental disorders. Many non-scholars and even some psychologists are skeptical about the emergence of psychological problems in very young children. The stability of temperament (personalities traits such as extraversion and introversion) is now…
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Stress during Childhood
In an exciting new article in Slate.com, top researchers discuss the various negative impacts of stress during childhood. Among many points the authors make, stress consists not only of severe physical and sexual abuse, but even negative interaction patterns where parent’s yell at or criticize their children can cause harm. The burgeoning field of connecting…
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Remembering how we learned about forgetting
Perhaps the most influential and important leader in the burgeoning field of psychology was the German psychologist/philosopher Hermann Ebbinghaus. Ebbinghaus was without the status and resources to conduct his experiments on memory using a large pool of random subjects. This is much different than the current system where even undergraduate researchers have access to the…
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Marijuana as a Treatment for PTSD?
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has received wave of criticism over the department’s prohibition on providing prescriptions for medical marijuana to patients, even for patients living in the 14 states that have legalized medical marijuana. State and federal political differences appear to be playing a role in the decision, as the Drug Enforcement Agency…