readings in psychology for october 30th 2010

a busy lab of researchers is a happy one!

Here are a few stories I liked for today!:

• like humans, primates tend to be right handed

“Humans are not the only species to prefer to use their right hand — chimpanzees also share the trait, according to a new study by Spanish scientists. The researchers reached their findings, published in the latest edition of the American Journal of Primatology, after observing 114 chimpanzees from two primate rescue centers, one in Spain and the other in Zambia.”

• forget about hips, fingers don’t lie!

“The brain uses two different checks to guard against sloppy copy, a new study finds. By using a doctored word processor to sneak errors into typed words and surreptitiously fix typists’ real errors, researchers teased apart the various ways people catch their own mistakes. The study, published in the Oct. 29 Science, highlights the complexity of performance monitoring.”

• dream states

“If you have seen the recent Holly­wood blockbuster Inception, a movie that does to dreaming what The Matrix did for virtual reality, you may have been holding your breath as Ariadne, an architecture student, folded the streets of Paris over herself like a blanket. This stunning sequence, an homage to M. C. Escher, is testimony to the bizarre nature of dreams. Watching it made the neuroscientist in me reflect on what dreams are and how they relate to the brain.”

• only takes one interaction to determine how a child seeks info

“Seven-year-old children only need to interact with a person once to learn who to trust and seek information from, according to a study by Queen’s University researchers.”