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Psychologically distressed girls are at risk for teen childbearing and vice versa, even if the two things usually do not cause each other,” Mollborn said. “This could help educators and clinicians identify at-risk adolescents.”

One of the best ways to prevent teen pregnancy is for teens to have long-term goals and good self-esteem, Merritt added.

The model examines the looking-learning behavior of infants as young as 6 weeks through one year of age, through 4,800 simulations at various points in development involving multiple stimuli and tasks. As would be expected, most infants introduced to new objects tend to look at them to gather information about them; once they do, they are “biased” to look away from them in search of something new

an infant will linger on something that’s being shown to it for the first time as it learns about it, and that the “total looking time” will decrease as the infant becomes more familiar with it.

infants who don’t spend a sufficient amount of time studying a new object—in effect, failing to learn about it and to catalog that knowledge into memory—don’t catch on as well, which can affect their learning later on.

Sammy Perone, a post-doctoral researcher in psychology at the UI and corresponding author on the pape

To examine why infants need to dwell on objects to learn about them, the researchers created two different models. One model learned in a "responsive" world: Every time the model looked away from a new object, the object was jiggled to get the model to look at it again. The other model learned in a "nonresponsive" world: when this model looked at a new object, objects elsewhere were jiggled to distract it. The results showed that the responsive models“learned about new objects more robustly, more quickly, and are better learners in the end,

infants can familiarize themselves with new objects, and store them into memory well enough that when shown them again, they quickly recognized them

“if that’s the case, we can manipulate and change what the brain is doing” to aid infants born prematurely or who have special needs, Perone adds.

children do think before they speak.

"Dancing is universal among humans, and until recently, it was thought to be unique to humans as well," said Cook

study co-author Colleen Reichmuth, PhD, with the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California at Santa Cruz

ed by doctoral candidate Peter Cook at the Long Marine Lab at UCSC.

Apr. 1, 2013

six experiment

close personal relationships had improved

stopped making false excuses

​Spokeo​.com​/​Uncover-​Liars

ested the learning abilities of sleeping newborns by repeating tones that were followed by a gentle puff of air to the eyelids.

After about 20 minutes, 24 of the 26 babies squeezed their eyelids together when the tone was sounded without the puff of air.

The brain waves of the 24 infants were found to change, providing a neural measurement of memory updating.

While past studies find this type of learning can occur in infants who are awake, this is the first study to document it in their most frequent state, while they are asleep

Learned eyelid movement reflects the normal functioning of the circuitry in the cerebellum, a neural structure at the base of the brain. This study's method potentially offers a unique non-invasive tool for early identification of infants with atypical cerebellar structure, who are potentially at risk for a range of developmental disorders, including autism and dyslexia, she said.

Newborn infants' sleep patterns are quite different than those of older children or adults in that they show more active sleep where heart and breathing rates are very changeable," she said. "It may be this sleep state is more amenable to experiencing the world in a way that facilitates learning."

Another factor is that infants' brains have greater neural plasticity, which is the ability for the neural connections to be changed

absorb the movements that match basic sounds

first birthdays, babies start shifting back to look you in the eye again

University of Iowa psychology professor Bob McMurray, who also studies speech development.

quality face-time with your tot is very important for speech development – more than, say, turning on the latest baby DVD.

Other studies have shown that babies who are best at distinguishing between vowel sounds like "ah" and "ee" shortly before their first birthday wind up with better vocabularies and pre-reading skills by kindergarten.

babies also look to speakers' faces for important social cues about what they're hearing

So he and doctoral student Amy Hansen-Tift tested nearly 180 babies, groups of them at ages 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 months. How? They showed videos of a woman speaking in English or Spanish to babies of English speakers. A gadget mounted on a soft headband tracked where each baby was focusing his or her gaze and for how long.

They found a dramatic shift in attention: When the speaker used English, the 4-month-olds gazed mostly into her eyes. The 6-month-olds spent equal amounts of time looking at the eyes and the mouth. The 8- and 10-month-olds studied mostly the mouth.

At 12 months, attention started shifting back toward the speaker's eyes.

at 6 months, babies begin observing lip movement, Lewkowicz says, because that's about the time babies' brains gain the ability to control their attention rather than automatically look toward noise.

Duke University cognitive neuroscientist Greg Appelbaum

Extensive and unusual loss of memory pertaining to personal information another feature of DID

Differential diagnosis generally involves ruling out the effects of chemical substances and medical (as opposed to psychological) conditions. When evaluating children, it is also important to ensure that symptoms are distinguishable from imaginary play (American Psychiatric Association, 2000).

In clinical populations, the estimated prevalence of DID ranges from 0.5 to 1.0% (Maldonado, Butler, & Spiegel, 2002). In the general population, estimates of prevalence are somewhat higher, ranging from 1-5% (Rubin & Zorumski, 2005). Females are more likely to receive a diagnosis of DID, at a ratio of 9:1 (Lewis-Hall, 2002

High percentages of individuals with DID have comorbid diagnoses of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorde

DID commonly have a previous diagnosis of Schizophrenia. However, this most likely represents a misdiagnosis rather than comorbidity, du

Other possible comorbid disorders involve substance abuse, eating disorders, somatoform disorders, problems of anxiety and mood, personality disorders, psychotic disorders, and organic mental disorders (ISSD, 2005), OCD, or some combination of conversion and somatoform disorder

Other factors influencing a poor prognosis include remaining in abusive situations, involvement with criminal activity, substance abuse, eating disorders, or antisocial personality features

the average age of diagnosis is thirt

One study found that the risk of developing a dissociative disorder (DD) increased seven times with a child’s exposure to trauma.

Dissociative Identity Disorder is linked to childhood abuse in 95-98% of the cases

Studies on genetic factors contributing to DID present mixed findings. However, one study involving dyzogotic and monozygotic twins found that considerable variance in experiences of pathological dissociation could be attributed to both shared and non-shared environmental experiences, but heritability appeared to have no effect (Waller & Ross, 1997).

Treatment most commonly follows a framework of “1) safety, stabilization and symptom reduction, 2) working directly and in depth with traumatic memories, and 3) identity integration and rehabilitation” (p. 89).

A study involving 280 outpatient participants (98% DID diagnosis) from five different races (Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, Asian, and Other) demonstrated the effectiveness of a similar five-phase model in reducing symptoms of dissociation.

McNally, a professor in the Department of Psychology

In addition to raising the public profile of the disorder, the book also marked the first suggestion that alternate personalities were created as a way to wall off traumatic memories of physical or sexual abuse, and that those memories could be recovered with the help of a therapist.

The idea at the time was that the mind locks these memories away, but with the help of a therapist, and through hypnosis or the use of drugs like Sodium Pentothal, these memories could become accessible,

Called a “concealed information task,” the test’s goal is ostensibly simple: identify words as they flash on a computer screen. If one of a small set of randomly selected “target” words appears, press yes. For all other words, press no. The catch, McNally said, is that while many of the words hold no meaning for the patients, a small subset of the non-target words are taken from two autobiographical questionnaires patients fill out at the start of the test — one while inhabiting one personality, the second in another.

When one of those personally relevant words — such as a best friend’s name, favorite food, or favorite sport — appears on screen, McNally said, most patients’ first impulse is to press the yes button. Within moments, however, they realize the word doesn’t appear on the target list, and they eventually give the “correct” answer by pressing no.

All participants showed a nearly identical lag for words that were relevant to their alternate personalities, McNally said, suggesting that the information wasn’t locked away in a separate identity.

Lavender scent has been found to help reduce stress and relieve pain (possibly).

“Once Mischel began analyzing the results, he noticed that low delayers, the children who rang the bell quickly, seemed more likely to have behavioral problems, both in school and at home. They got lower S.A.T. scores. They struggled in stressful situations, often had trouble paying attention, and found it difficult to maintain friendships. The child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.” - Jonah Lehrer from his piece in the New Yorker, “Don’t”

“The future is always ideal: The fridge is stocked, the weather clear, the train runs on schedule and meetings end on time. Today, well, stuff happens.” - Hara Estroff Marano in Psychology Today

Interestingly, these results suggest that although almost everyone has problems with procrastination, those who recognize and admit their weakness are in a better position to utilize available tools for precommitment and by doing so, help themselves overcome it. - Dan Ariely, from his book “Predictably Irrational”