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Hi Baby, What are you Looking at?
Babies are so much more capable than we give them credit for. The analogy that young children’s minds are like sponges overlooks the active role infants play in their development. But what tools are at their disposal that facilitates this active participation? Long before infants can walk or talk, they use vision as a key…
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Hello My Name is L. acidophilus
Did you ever make a decision based on gut feelings? See, you’ve been experiencing the gut-brain connection this entire time!
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10 Pieces of Advice for Graduate School Interviews
The interview process is different at every school, for every department, and no two students have the same experience. However, there are some basic pieces of advice that apply to a wide range of Ph.D. Psych interview weekends.
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MythBusters: Highlighting helps me study
You have a test this week, so you lay out your set of highlighters, open your textbook (for what may be the first time), and embark on your mission to know every important detail for your test. This is a common experience and everyone seems to think that highlighting ‘key points’ in the text is…
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@B.F.SkinnyMan: Why B.F. Skinner Would Love Food Snapchats and Instagram Fitness Culture
Our brains haven’t evolved to reward us for eating healthy foods or exercising. Can we engineer our own positive feedback loops to promote these behaviors using social media?
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No such thing as a “positive” stereotype: Consequences of the Model Minority Myth
While Asian Americans are typically depicted as intelligent, high-achieving, and law-abiding, such stereotypes may not be as innocuous as you think. The Model Minority Myth has several consequences for the mental health, academic achievement, and institutional support (e.g., school and governmental programs) available to this population.
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Chronotype and Adolescence: Why being an “evening person” as a teenager is disadvantageous
Adolescents who are evening-types tend to report several negative outcomes on a variety of measures compared to their morning-type counterparts.
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PIA at Explore Your Universe!
“I don’t believe my brain!” Guests of all ages were shocked by the tricks their brains played on them during PIA’s Psychology and the Brain exhibition at UCLA’s 9th annual Explore Your Universe (EYU) science festival. The event brought in over 7,000 Los Angeles community members eager to see science come to life through hands-on…
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Social Cognition and Language
Humans and non-human animals alike have to process and respond to specific information about their social environments in order to navigate the social world. But language seems to shape how we process and respond to such information. So are certain forms of social cognition uniquely human?
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MythBusters: Big Words Make You Sound Smart!
Somewhere along the way, we all started believing that if we want to come off as intelligent, we need to use big and flowerly language, and use it often. However, psychological research has investigated this assumption, and the results are surprising.