readings in psychology for february 4 2011

I had an opportunity to travel to San Francisco a while back to watch a presentation that my daughter Karen was giving. Here I met her advisor Dr. Palanchar. Funny, I look serious here when it was actually a fun conversation!

Here is what I am reading today:

• why animals and humans have a handedness preference

“When a Southpaw shakes hands, his left eye and the right portion of his brain are working hard to process the other individual, suggests a new study. The research helps to explain why hand and limb preferences exist across numerous species. The predisposition, as it turns out, are tied to ocular dominance, or the tendency to prefer visual input from one eye over the other, according to the study, published in the latest Royal Society Biology Letters.”

• co-ed vs. single sex ed?

“Chicago’s Urban Prep Academy boasts of some remarkable statistics: In 2006, only 4 percent of the inaugural freshman class at the school — a public all-male, predominantly black high school located in one of the city’s most beleaguered neighborhoods — could read at grade level. Yet in May, 100 percent of the school’s seniors had been accepted to four-year colleges or universities, many on full academic scholarships.”

• electric thinking cap?

“Are we on the verge of being able to stimulate the brain to see the world anew — an electric thinking cap? Research by Richard Chi and Allan Snyder from the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney suggests that this could be the case.”

• oogled women do less well in math?

“Women who are looked at as sexual objects not only react as sexual objects, they also exhibit less proficiency with math, according to a new study published in the March 2011 issue of the journal Psychology of Women Quarterly.”