Research roundup

• Taking a nap may help curb impulsive behavior and boost tolerance for frustration, finds research led by Jennifer Goldschmied, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Michigan. The study's 40 participants, ages 18 to 50, maintained a consistent sleep schedule for three nights, and then completed tasks on computers and answered questions about sleepiness, mood and impulsivity. The researchers then randomly assigned participants to either take a 60-minute nap or watch a nature video, and then had them complete the questionnaires and tasks again. The researchers found that those who napped spent more time trying to solve a task than the non-nappers, who were less willing to endure frustration in order to complete the task. The nappers also reported feeling less impulsive than the nature-video watchers (Personality and Individual Differences, online June 24).
• Smartphones can be used to replace analytic thinking, suggests a study co-authored by Gordon Pennycook, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Waterloo. In three studies involving 660 participants, researchers investigated individuals' thinking styles — whether they were "intuitive thinkers" who tended to avoid effortful reasoning when making decisions or "analytical thinkers" who often engaged in such reasoning — and tracked their smartphone habits. The researchers found that intuitive thinkers were more likely than analytical thinkers to use their device's search engine to find information (Computers in Human Behavior, Julyopens in new window).
• A person's physical health and cognitive functioning significantly affect the quality of life of his or her spouse, suggests a study led by Kyle Bourassa, a University of Arizona doctoral student in clinical psychology. Bourassa and his colleagues analyzed data from more than 8,000 married couples over age 50, collected at three intervals over six years. They found that husbands' and wives' quality of life was equally negatively affected by their spouse's physical health. They also found that wives' cognitive functioning had as much of an effect on husbands' quality of life as the husbands' own cognitive abilities, though wives' quality of life was not as strongly affected by their husbands' cognition. The results suggest that decreases in one spouse's life quality over time parallels changes in his or her partner. (Psychology and Aging, Juneopens in new window).
• Early life stress affects cognitive functioning in low-income children, according to research with 201 low-income mother-child pairs. In the study, led by Jennifer Suor, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Rochester, researchers observed the children playing with their mothers when they were 2 years old, and collected information about families' experiences, including adversities the family had faced. They assessed the children's levels of cortisol, a stress-related hormone, at ages 2, 3 and 4, and measured their cognitive abilities at age 4. Children who had experienced family instability and insensitive interactions with their mothers had abnormal cortisol levels as well as lower cognitive abilities at age 4 (Child Development, online June 17opens in new window).
• Children appear to learn general facts so effortlessly that they often can't tell that they learned anything new at all, finds research co-authored by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign psychology doctoral student Shelbie Sutherland. In the study, researchers presented 440 4- to 7-year-old children with novel categorical facts, such as "opossums make their homes in foliage," and individual-specific facts, such as "this opossum makes his home in foliage," and then asked the children if they knew this information before. The researchers found that the children often thought they had known the categorical facts, and were better able to recognize that the individual-specific fact was something they hadn't known before. This difference was present in the youngest children in the study, and its magnitude did not decrease with age (Developmental Psychology, online July 6opens in new window).
• Brief delays in feedback can help people anticipate others' movements, according to a study co-led by University of Cincinnati psychology doctoral student Auriel Washburn. Researchers divided 22 people into pairs and asked them to take part in an arm movement task in which they controlled dots on a screen using hand-held motion tracking sensors. One member of each pair was the leader and produced complex movements. The follower was asked to reproduce and synchronize with the leader's movements. After introducing a small feedback delay between when the follower would physically move and when their dot moved on the screen, the researchers found that — contrary to traditional thinking that a feedback delay would be a hindrance to coordination — the delay allowed the follower to better anticipate the movements of the leader. These results could improve future research into such areas as the development of robotics, the authors suggest, noting that the addition of small feedback delays might enable those systems to better anticipate human behavior (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, online June 1opens in new window).

—Amy Novotney