Episode 14: Science News

Kidding around
Research released this week from LaTrobe Uni shows that Children with imaginary friends are better at learning to communicate than other children. The appropriately named psychologist,b Dr Evan Kidd, looked at 44 children, 22 of which had imaginary friends. Those with imaginary friends were better able to get their point across than were children of the same age who did not have one. Why? Dr. Kidd reckons that Children with imaginary friends have a lot of practice at inventing interactions between their imaginary friends and themselves. Dr Kidd further established that the benefits of imaginary companions are long lasting. University students with an imaginary friend in childhood were more creative, more achievement oriented, and more emotionally responsive than students who didn’t have one.

Bright eyes
Our mood changes the way that we see, says a study from the University of Toronto. Adam Anderson, professor of psychology says that good and bad moods change the way our visual cortex operates.When we are happy our visual cortex takes in more information, while negative moods lead to tunnel vision. The study appears in the Journal of Neuroscience. They found this out using fMRI to scan how the visual cortex in the brain processes sensory information in different moods.
Taylor W. Schmitz, Eve De Rosa, and Adam K. Anderson. Opposing Influences of Affective State Valence on Visual Cortical Encoding. Journal of Neuroscience, 2009; 29 (22): 7199 DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5387-08.2009

Weak sounds
Evolutionary psychologist John Neuhoff in Ohio asked participants were asked to listen to a tone moving toward them and press a button when they thought the sound had was directly in front of them. Nearly everyone pushed the button too early, but individuals with greater upper body strength and/or stronger cardiovascular systems waited longer to push the button. In general, women pushed the button sooner than their typically larger, stronger male counterparts-- though both groups perceive receding sounds equally.