Psychology News and Research

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Psychology is the study of human mental functions, behavior and processes.

70% of Quebecers gamble

The initial findings of a survey on the prevalence of gambling in Quebec have been released. The study also deals with behavior problems associated with gambling. The study reveals that nearly 70 percent of Quebec adults report having bet or spent money on gambling during the previous 12 months. It also found Quebecers spend an average of $483 annually on gambling activities.

11 Nov 2010

Students perceive beer cans packaged and displayed in university colors as less dangerous

Underage and heavy drinking on college campuses continue to be issues for college administrators. While some campuses, such as the University of Missouri, have made strides in efforts to reduce heavy drinking on campus, administrators are continually trying to educate students about the risks of excessive drinking. Now, two MU psychologists have found that students who viewed images of beer cans packaged and displayed in university colors believed that drinking beer was less dangerous than those students who saw images of regular beer cans.

11 Nov 2010

Performance in a coalition depends on genes

How well a person performs in a coalition is partly hereditary, according to a recent study.

11 Nov 2010

Neural learning appears to be independent of conscious visual processing

A team of researchers from the University of Minnesota's College of Liberal Arts and College of Science and Engineering have found that an early part of the brain's visual system rewires itself when people are trained to perceive patterns, and have shown for the first time that this neural learning appears to be independent of higher order conscious visual processing.

11 Nov 2010

FSU and Denver VA Medical Center awarded $17M grant to establish Military Suicide Research Consortium

American soldiers are taking their own lives in the largest numbers since the military began keeping records, and the Department of Defense has enlisted the help of The Florida State University in waging the war against suicide.

11 Nov 2010

Bed rest may not delay preterm births, says Frances Payne professor

Despite lack of evidence about bed rest's effectiveness, doctors annually prescribe it for roughly 1 million pregnant women to delay preterm births.

11 Nov 2010

Depression associated with molecular-level disturbance in body's 24-hour clock

Depression appears to be associated with a molecular-level disturbance in the body's 24-hour clock, new research suggests.

11 Nov 2010

Psychologists find stress is taking physical and emotional health toll on family and children

Findings from the American Psychological Association's (APA) newly released 2010 Stress in America survey raise red flags about the long-term impact that chronic stress could have on our physical and emotional health and the health of our families, psychologists said today.

10 Nov 2010

Parents' talk about numbers improves young children's math skills

The amount of time parents spend talking about numbers has a much bigger impact on how young children learn mathematics than was previously known, researchers at the University of Chicago have found.

10 Nov 2010

Stressed out Americans

The American Psychological Association’s (APA) have released the results of the 2010 Stress in America survey that shows up the long-term impact that chronic stress could have on physical and emotional health and the health of the families. The survey was conducted by Harris Interactive in August 2010. It showed some worrying trends of stress among parents as well as children.

9 Nov 2010

Hypernetworking and hypertexting bad for kids in more ways than one: Study

According to a new study adolescents who text excessively or who are hooked on social networking sites are more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors like smoking and binge drinking than their peers who are not similar users. Scientists at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine surveyed 4,257 high school students from an urban county in the Midwest to look at the health effects of communications technology usage.

9 Nov 2010

Psychologists discover that social interaction influences individual's sensitivity to physical pain

Psychologists at the University of Toronto have shown that the nature of a social interaction has the ability to influence an individual's sensitivity to physical pain. The discovery could have significant clinical implications for doctor-patient relationships and the general well-being of an individual on a daily basis.

9 Nov 2010

Positive adult interactions during childhood guard against personality disorders later in life

Learning a hobby or other complex task in childhood with assistance from a trusted adult may help guard against the emergence of a personality disorder (PD) later on in life, reports a study in the current issue of the journal, Development and Psychopathology.

9 Nov 2010

Children of deployed parents more likely to suffer mental health problems

The New York Times: "Young children in military families are about 10 percent more likely to see a doctor for a mental difficulty when a parent is deployed than when the parent is home, researchers are reporting Monday in the most comprehensive study to date of such families' use of health insurance during wartime."

9 Nov 2010

Laparoscopic surgery safe and effective for removing bowel tumours

Laparoscopic or 'keyhole' surgery is a safe, effective way of removing bowel tumours and should be offered to all patients undergoing surgery for colorectal cancer, according to researchers from the University of Leeds.

8 Nov 2010

Prolonged separation from mother increases risk of breast cancer in young mice

Young mice that experienced the psychosocial stress of prolonged separation from their mothers had a higher incidence and faster onset of breast tumors compared with young mice who did not experience this stressful life event. Specifically, neonatal mice separated from their mothers for a prolonged period of time developed mammary tumors twice as fast as mice that experienced short or no maternal separation.

8 Nov 2010

Adolescent drinking: Laws tighten

Latest study findings show that adolescents offered alcohol by someone other than their parents are six times more likely to drink to excess. The research comes from Deakin University and has made the Australian Drug Foundation tighten laws across Australia, making it illegal to give children alcohol without their parents' permission.

7 Nov 2010

'Phantom' images brain keeps for visual comparisons stored in brain's neural network

Brain research over the past 30 years has shown that if a part of the brain controlling movement or sensation or language is lost because of a stroke or injury, other parts of the brain can take over the lost function - often as well as the region that was lost.

4 Nov 2010

Volunteering benefits older adults with functional limitations

Volunteering is known to provide health benefits to the person doing the volunteering. Now, a new study finds that older adults with functional limitations (trouble conducting daily tasks like cooking meals) in particular appear to reap the benefits from helping others.

4 Nov 2010

Study links positive well-being to higher telomerase activity

Positive psychological changes that occur during meditation training are associated with greater telomerase activity, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of California, San Francisco. The study is the first to link positive well-being to higher telomerase, an enzyme important for the long-term health of cells in the body.

4 Nov 2010