A lot of really smart people believe that video games are the key to engaging children in school. The question is can video games really teach useful, transferable subjects? The NY Times magazine just put out an issue discussing this very subject. Th …
Does eating too much fat and sugar have the same consequences as smoking? We don’t know…maybe because the answer is being covered up by the food industry. A compelling article by Brownell and Warner (2009) available here compares the tobacco industry’s …
When it comes to drug addiction, no matter how you look at it and which model you believe in, there are the transients and the ones with serious problems…
What are the risk factors for obesity? What predicts which children will become obese as adults? Here are a few psychological and behavioral risk factors that have been identified: – Diet restriction. Children who try to restrict the types and amounts …
In the last few years, fMRI and EEG have made it into the popular press as tools for reading minds (here, here, here, here and here for a sample), lie-detection (here, here and here), and telekinesis – controlling/ moving objects with our thoughts – (h …
A recent article published by the online magazine Slate.com criticized “ovulation studies,” or psychological research that examines how females’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior change when they are at the most fertile point in their menstrual cycle. T …
Thomas Friedman’s op-ed in the NY Times today underscores some of the findings of psychological research for the last few years… namely that young people in the US may be changing. Below are some of the findings from recent studies: Narcissism has go …
Why do we dream? Theory 1: Dreams express inner wishes and desires (Freud’s idea). But what about nightmares? Those can’t be wishes. Theory 2: Dreams provide solutions to problems. But then why can we only recall 1% of dreams? Dreams aren’t helpful in …
Peggy Orenstein’s recent NY Times Magazine piece on Twittering brings to the forefront many of the issues that psychologists at the CDMC@LA are concerned about. Due to the myriad of self-presentation tools that digital media such as YouTube, twitteri …
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 …
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 pa …
Physician Health Programs (PHP) are reporting an astonishing success rate when it comes to providing addiction treatment for addicted doctors: Only about 20% of doctors ever test positive after being admitted to the program within a 5 year period. More …
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 …
If we could make it so drug addicts could stop craving the substances that have brought them to their knees, would relapse rates drop and addiction-treatment success rates soar? I sure hope so! Medications that stop cravings? I’ve already written about …
Kid’s networking… we’re cited in the NY Times http://tiny.cc/09wdm
“Proposals for reform that focus solely on individuals-be it on their knowledge, willpower, or decision-making ability-will not be successful in reversing our society’s body weight trajectory. We need measures aimed at changing the context, not the ind …
Did you know that the second most popular use of mobile phones by teenagers is texting? The first… checking the time!
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. Stat …
Approximately half of all children experience the divorce of their parents (National Center for Health Statistics, 2008), and the negative impact of divorce has been widely studied and debated. While researchers generally agree that children of divorce …
Research on the treatments for ADHD suggest that even the most effective treatments may not be sufficient for improving outcomes for children with ADHD diagnoses. Current treatments have a predominately person-biased approach to conceptualizing and tre …
I have to admit that before I became an academic, I believed this phrase was true “Those that can not do, teach.” This despite coming from a family of academics. Of course, now that I am on this path, I see that there are many passionate, smart, commit …