Veiled testimony
Observers are better able to tell if a veiled witness is telling the truth compared with an unveiled witness, according to research in Law and Human Behavioropens in new window. In experiments with more than 500 participants in Canada, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, researchers asked observers to watch women who had been instructed to either lie or tell the truth. One group of these women wore a face-covering veil (niqab), one group wore a headscarf (hijab) and one wore no head covering. The researchers found that, contrary to popular belief, the observers were better able to judge the veiled witnesses' truthfulness compared with the unveiled witnesses, possibly because the observers were paying more attention to verbal and other cues.
Old pathways, new concepts
Human beings understand abstract physics concepts by repurposing the same neural pathways that have long been used by the species to process basic information about the environment, according to a study in Psychological Scienceopens in new window. The researchers scanned the brains of nine advanced physics students as they considered 30 complex topics such as entropy, inertia and electrical current. They found that neural patterns associated with these thoughts were the same for each student, and that they correlated with brain responses to more concrete stimuli. So, for example, the neural activity associated with thinking about something periodic like "wavelength" was the same as that activated when people listened to a rhythmic pattern like a horse's gallop.
Dads' influence
Fathers' stress levels can affect their young children's cognitive and language development, suggests research in Infant and Child Developmentopens in new window. The researchers examined data from 730 families at 17 Head Start locations around the country, and found that children whose fathers had higher levels of parenting stress scored lower on a series of cognitive tests, and among boys, on tests of language development as well. The researchers say that these results point to the need for parenting research and interventions to focus on fathers as well as mothers.
Interrupted sleep
Diagnosed sleep disorders increased sixfold among U.S. military veterans between 2000 and 2010, rising from 1 percent to 6 percent in that population, according to a review of nearly 10 million Department of Veterans Affairs medical records, published in the journal SLEEPopens in new window. In addition, 16 percent of veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder also had a co-morbid sleep disorder, the researchers found. The most common sleep disorders were sleep apnea (47 percent) and insomnia (26 percent).
Discordant sound
Western listeners' preference for consonant rather than dissonant sounds in music is cultural, not innate, suggests research published in Natureopens in new window. The researchers asked 100 members of a remote Amazonian tribe in Bolivia to rate how much they liked or disliked one consonant and one dissonant chord. They found that the tribe members showed no preference for the consonant chord. In contrast, a group of city-dwelling Bolivians — who had more exposure to Western music — preferred the consonant chord, and a group of American participants preferred it even more strongly.
Making memories
Middle-aged adults' seeming memory loss may occur because they focus on different things during memory encoding than younger adults do, not because of brain decline, suggests research published in Neuroimageopens in new window. Researchers used fMRI to image the brains of 112 adults, ages 19 to 76, as they showed them a series of photos of faces on a display, and then asked them to recall when and where on the display they had seen particular faces. During this task, the middle-aged and older participants had less activity than young adults in the visual cortex, and more activity in the medial prefrontal cortex. The researchers say this suggests that the older adults may be focusing less on external visual details during the memory-encoding process than younger adults do, and more on their internal thoughts.
Art works
A short-term group art therapy intervention could help ease symptoms of trauma, depression and anxiety among Syrian refugee children, according to a pilot study in the journal Vulnerable Children and Youth Studiesopens in new window. The researchers enrolled 64 7- to 12-year-old Syrian refugee children, all living in Turkey, in a five-day group art therapy intervention. The program used visual art, music and dance to help the children identify and express their emotions and learn problem-solving and other skills. After the intervention, the children showed significantly reduced signs of trauma, depression and trait anxiety.
Leadership styles
Companies do better when they have a CEO with a leadership style at odds with the company's overall culture, according to a study in the Journal of Applied Psychologyopens in new window. The researchers interviewed 114 CEOs and 324 members of those CEOs' management teams. They found that companies with a relationship-oriented culture (one focused on teamwork and communication) did better when they had a task-oriented CEO (focused on external measures, such as solving customers' problems). Conversely, companies with a task-oriented culture did better with a relationship-oriented CEO. The researchers used the companies' return on assets as a measure of company success. The results suggest that a CEO's style can fill a gap in an organization's culture.
Pink toys, blue toys
Babies as young as 9 months old show gender-based preferences for toys, finds a study published in Infant and Child Developmentopens in new window. Researchers observed 101 children in three age groups — 9 to 17 months, 18 to 23 months and 24 to 32 months— as they played with stereotypically "boy" toys, like a ball and a car, and stereotypically "girl" toys, like a cooking pot and a doll. The researchers found that children as young as 9 to 17 months showed a preference for the toys stereotyped for their gender, which suggests both biological and environmental factors may influence toy choice. It is possible that girls are more predisposed biologically toward toys that involve fine motor skills and faces, while boys are predisposed to toys that involve spatial processing, say the researchers.
Reading emotional cues
People who rely on systematic, rational thought rather than on intuition are better at identifying another person's emotional state, according to a series of experiments published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychologyopens in new window. In one experiment, researchers gave 72 participants a test that measured the participants' propensity to solve problems via intuition versus rational thinking. They found that people who scored higher on rational thinking were better able to infer the emotions of a stranger during a three-minute conversation than those who relied more on intuition.
Don't trip!
A portion of the human visual system is optimized to react to small vertical barriers such as curbs, suggests research in Neuropsychologiaopens in new window. Researchers used fMRI to image the brains of 12 people as they viewed an object on a flat mat, as well as a mat bounded by a wall and one surrounded by a low curb. They found that part of the visual cortex, called the parahippocampal place area, reacted just as strongly to a barrier only an inch or two high as it did to a full wall, while another area, called the retrosplenial complex, reacted more strongly to a full barrier.
Brain development
In infant mice, spikes in neuronal activity don't correspond to an increase in blood flow in the brain, as they do for adult mice (and humans), according to research in the Journal of Neuroscienceopens in new window. Brain-imaging technologies like fMRI rely on blood flow as a proxy for neuronal activity. But using a new imaging technique that simultaneously measured neuronal activity and blood flow, the researchers found that stimulating the hind paw of newborn mice caused an increase in the first, but not the second. The study suggests further research is needed to understand how the brain learns to "feed itself" as it grows from infancy to adulthood.
Memory consolidation
The autonomic nervous system (ANS), which controls such functions as breathing and heart rate, also plays a role in memory consolidation during sleep, suggests research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesopens in new window. Researchers found that a 90-minute nap improved participants' recall on a primed-word task, relative to a control group that watched a 90-minute video. Statistical analyses indicated that 46 percent of the improvement could be explained by REM sleep, the researchers found. But in a novel finding, the researchers also monitored participants' heart-rate variability, a proxy for ANS activity, and observed that together, REM sleep and heart-rate variability could explain 73 percent of the improvement in performance.
Classroom stress
Teacher burnout and student stress are linked in the classroom, suggests a study in Social Science & Medicineopens in new window. The researchers tested the morning cortisol levels of more than 400 elementary school students, then surveyed those students' teachers about their level of burnout, or emotional exhaustion. They found that teachers with more burnout had students with higher cortisol levels—an indicator of stress. The study results do not indicate whether student stress is the cause or the result of teacher burnout, and in fact, the two may reinforce each other in a vicious cycle, the researchers note.
Prone to PTSD?
It's possible to spot emergency workers who are more likely to develop depression and PTSD early in their training, according to a study in Psychological Medicineopens in new window. The researchers gave 400 new paramedics assessments of their cognitive styles, coping behaviors, psychiatric history and personality traits, then conducted follow-up interviews every four months during the paramedics' first two years on the job. Even accounting for past psychiatric history, paramedics were more likely to experience PTSD if they said that they tended to dwell on past stressful events, and were more likely to experience depression if they had lower self-rated resilience to trauma.
Drugs and moral reasoning
Stimulant drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine can harm users' ability to make moral judgments, suggests research published in Psychopharmacologyopens in new window. The researchers used fMRI to image the brains of 211 prison inmates—131 of whom had a history of stimulant use—as the inmates decided whether or not a set of described actions was morally wrong. During this moral decision task, participants with a history of drug use had less activity in the amygdala (which is involved in emotion) and the anterior cingulate cortex (which is involved in decision-making) than participants who had not used drugs.
Weight and substance use
Overweight girls are more likely to begin using alcohol, marijuana and cigarettes at younger ages, but the same doesn't hold true for boys, and the effects vary by race and ethnicity, finds research published in Drug and Alcohol Dependenceopens in new window. Researchers examined data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which included 1,448 Hispanic, 2,126 black, and 3,304 non-Hispanic white respondents ages 10 and older. They found that among Hispanic girls, being overweight as a child was associated with earlier alcohol and marijuana use; among white girls, it was associated with earlier cigarette and marijuana use. Among black girls, however, there was no correlation.
Dirty work
Working in an unclean environment, or in an unstimulating job, is associated with reduced cognitive function, according to research published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicineopens in new window. Researchers analyzed data from almost 2,000 adults who participated in the Midlife in the United States study. They found that among both men and women, people who worked in a "dirty" job with exposure to such hazards as mold, lead and loud noise had lower scores on tests of episodic memory and executive function. Also among both men and women, working in a more cognitively complex job was associated with better self-perceived memory; among women, a complex job was associated with higher scores on tests of episodic memory and executive functioning as well.
Shame barrier
Self-stigma keeps people from seeking mental health help, even in private or anonymous settings, finds a study in the Journal of Counseling Psychologyopens in new window. Researchers asked 370 college students about their levels of psychological distress and of self-stigma (with questions like, "If I went to a therapist, I would be less satisfied with myself.") Then the students were given the opportunity to click on a website for more information about counseling. Among students with high levels of psychological distress, only 8.5 percent of those also high in self-stigma clicked on the link for counseling information. Among those with lower self-stigma, 17.5 percent did.
