Makes sense
Learning one’s genetic risk changes physiology independent of actual genetic risk
Bradley Turnwald et al.
Nature Human Behaviour, forthcoming
Abstract:
Millions of people now access personal genetic risk estimates for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cancer and obesity. While this information can be informative, research on placebo and nocebo effects suggests that learning of one’s genetic risk may evoke physiological changes consistent with the expected risk profile. Here we tested whether merely learning of one’s genetic risk for disease alters one’s actual risk by making people more likely to exhibit the expected changes in gene-related physiology, behaviour and subjective experience. Individuals were genotyped for actual genetic risk and then randomly assigned to receive either a ‘high-risk’ or ‘protected’ genetic test result for obesity via cardiorespiratory exercise capacity (experiment 1, N = 116) or physiological satiety (experiment 2, N = 107) before engaging in a task in which genetic risk was salient. Merely receiving genetic risk information changed individuals’ cardiorespiratory physiology, perceived exertion and running endurance during exercise, and changed satiety physiology and perceived fullness after food consumption in a self-fulfilling manner. Effects of perceived genetic risk on outcomes were sometimes greater than the effects associated with actual genetic risk. If simply conveying genetic risk information can alter actual risk, clinicians and ethicists should wrestle with appropriate thresholds for when revealing genetic risk is warranted.
It takes me back: The mnemonic time-travel effect
Aleksandar Aksentijevic et al.
Cognition, January 2019, Pages 242-250
Abstract:
Given the links between motion and temporal thinking, it is surprising that no studies have examined the possibility that transporting participants back mentally towards the time of encoding could improve memory. Six experiments investigated whether backward motion would promote recall relative to forward motion or no-motion conditions. Participants saw a video of a staged crime (Experiments 1, 3 and 5), a word list (Experiments 2 and 4) or a set of pictures (Experiment 6). Then, they walked forward or backwards (Experiments 1 and 2), watched a forward- or backward-directed optic flow-inducing video (Experiments 3 and 4) or imagined walking forward or backwards (Experiments 5 and 6). Finally, they answered questions about the video or recalled words or pictures. The results demonstrated for the first time that motion-induced past-directed mental time travel improved mnemonic performance for different types of information. We briefly discuss theoretical and practical implications of this “mnemonic time-travel effect”.
Temporal Proximity Links Unrelated News Events in Memory
Mitchell Uitvlugt & Karl Healey
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Some memories are linked such that recalling one can trigger the retrieval of another. What determines which memories are linked? Some models predict that simply occurring close together in time is sufficient for links to form between memories. A competing theory suggests that temporal proximity is generally not sufficient, and existing evidence for such links is an artifact of using chainlike lists of items in artificial laboratory tasks. To test these competing accounts, we asked subjects to recall news stories that they had encountered over the past 2 years (Experiment 1) or 4 months (Experiment 2). In both experiments, subjects showed a strong bias to successively recall stories that appeared in the news within days of each other — even after accounting for the fact that stories that occur close in time tend to be semantically related. By moving beyond laboratory tasks, this research solidifies the foundation of contemporary memory theory.
Picture this! Effects of photographs, diagrams, animations, and sketching on learning and beliefs about learning from a geoscience text
Jennifer Wiley
Applied Cognitive Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many studies have demonstrated that illustrating expository science texts with images that are interesting, but irrelevant for understanding the causal relations underlying scientific phenomena, can cause seduction effects which can reduce understanding from text. The term “seduction effects” refers to the influence that images are thought to have on readers, seducing them away from deeply processing important information. The present study explores whether images relevant for instructional goals may also show some seduction effects. In this study, the presence of irrelevant photographic images negatively impacted understanding compared to the presence of relevant animations or instructing students to sketch a drawing during reading. However, the results showed that both irrelevant photographic images and relevant animations could lead to illusions of understanding, while sketching did not. The results suggest that even images that are relevant for instructional goals may sometimes result in seduction effects that deceive readers when judging their own understanding.
Are Bigger Brains Smarter? Evidence From a Large-Scale Preregistered Study
Gideon Nave et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
A positive relationship between brain volume and intelligence has been suspected since the 19th century, and empirical studies seem to support this hypothesis. However, this claim is controversial because of concerns about publication bias and the lack of systematic control for critical confounding factors (e.g., height, population structure). We conducted a preregistered study of the relationship between brain volume and cognitive performance using a new sample of adults from the United Kingdom that is about 70% larger than the combined samples of all previous investigations on this subject (N = 13,608). Our analyses systematically controlled for sex, age, height, socioeconomic status, and population structure, and our analyses were free of publication bias. We found a robust association between total brain volume and fluid intelligence (r = .19), which is consistent with previous findings in the literature after controlling for measurement quality of intelligence in our data. We also found a positive relationship between total brain volume and educational attainment (r = .12). These relationships were mainly driven by gray matter (rather than white matter or fluid volume), and effect sizes were similar for both sexes and across age groups.