individual differences

Easy Solution for Test Anxiety

January, 2011

New research has come up with a very easy remedy for those who sabotage themselves in exams by being over-anxious — spend a little time writing out your worries just before the test.

It’s well known that being too anxious about an exam can make you perform worse, and studies indicate that part of the reason for this is that your limited working memory is being clogged up with thoughts related to this anxiety. However for those who suffer from test anxiety, it’s not so easy to simply ‘relax’ and clear their heads. But now a new study has found that simply spending 10 minutes before the exam writing about your thoughts and feelings can free up brainpower previously occupied by testing worries.

In the first laboratory experiments, 20 college students were given two math tests. After the first test, the students were told that there would be a monetary reward for high marks — from both them and the student they had been paired with. They were then told that the other student had already sat the second test and improved their score, increasing the pressure. They were also they’d be videotaped, and their performance analyzed by teachers and students. Having thus upped the stakes considerably, half the students were given 10 minutes to write down any concerns they had about the test, while the other half were just given 10 minutes to sit quietly.

Under this pressure, the students who sat quietly did 12% worse on the second test. However those who wrote about their fears improved by 5%. In a subsequent experiment, those who wrote about an unrelated unemotional event did as badly as the control students (a drop of 7% this time, vs a 4% gain for the expressive writing group). In other words, it’s not enough to simply write, you need to be expressing your worries.

Moving out of the laboratory, the researchers then replayed their experiment in a 9th-grade classroom, in two studies involving 51 and 55 students sitting a biology exam. The students were scored for test anxiety six weeks before the exam. The control students were told to write about a topic that wouldn’t be covered in the exam (this being a common topic in one’s thoughts prior to an exam). It was found that those who scored high in test anxiety performed poorly in the control condition, but at the level of those low in test anxiety when in the expressive writing condition (improving their own performance by nearly a grade point). Those who were low in test anxiety performed at the same level regardless of what they wrote about prior to the exam.

One of the researchers, Sian Beilock, recently published a book on these matters: Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To

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Women's brains grow after giving birth

November, 2010

A small study indicates that nurturing mothers and increased reward centers in the brain go hand-in-hand — although the jury’s still out on which comes first.

The issue of “mommy brain” is a complex one. Inconsistent research results make it clear that there is no simple answer to the question of whether or not pregnancy and infant care change women’s brains. But a new study adds to the picture.

Brain scans of 19 women two to four weeks and three to four months after they gave birth showed that grey matter volume increased by a small but significant amount in the midbrain (amygdala, substantia nigra, hypothalamus), prefrontal cortex, and parietal lobe. These areas are involved in motivation and reward, emotion regulation, planning, and sensory perception.

Mothers who were most enthusiastic about their babies were significantly more likely to show this increase in the midbrain regions. The authors speculated that the “maternal instinct” might be less of an instinctive response and more of a result of active brain building. Interestingly, while the brain’s reward regions don’t usually change as a result of learning, one experience that does have this effect is that of addiction.

While the reasons may have to do with genes, personality traits, infant behavior, or present circumstances, previous research has found that mothers who had more nurturing in their childhood had more grey matter in those brain regions involved in empathy and reading faces, which also correlated with the degree of activation in those regions when their baby cried.

A larger study is of course needed to confirm these findings.

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Extraverts more vulnerable to effects of sleep deprivation after social interaction

November, 2010

A small study suggests that social activities are more tiring for extraverts than introverts, and that this personality trait may influence the effect of sleep loss on attention.

A study involving 48 healthy adults aged 18-39 has found that extraverts who were deprived of sleep for 22 hours after spending 12 hours in group activities performed worse on a vigilance task that did those extraverts who engaged in the same activities on their own in a private room. Introverts were relatively unaffected by the degree of prior social interaction.

The researchers suggest that social interactions are cognitively complex experiences that may lead to rapid fatigue in brain regions that regulate attention and alertness, and (more radically) that introverts may have higher levels of cortical arousal, giving them greater resistance to sleep deprivation.

Reference: 

Rupp TL; Killgore WDS; Balkin TJ. Socializing by day may affect performance by night: vulnerability to sleep deprivation is differentially mediated by social exposure in extraverts vs introverts. SLEEP 2010;33(11):1475-1485.

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Career choice may determine where frontotemporal dementia begins

October, 2010
  • An international review of patients with frontotemporal dementia has revealed that the area of the brain first affected tends to be the hemisphere least used in the individual’s occupation.

A review of brain imaging and occupation data from 588 patients diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia has found that among the dementias affecting those 65 years and younger, FTD is as common as Alzheimer's disease. The study also found that the side of the brain first attacked (unlike Alzheimer’s, FTD typically begins with tissue loss in one hemisphere) is influenced by the person’s occupation.

Using occupation scores that reflect the type of skills emphasized, they found that patients with professions rated highly for verbal skills, such as school principals, had greater tissue loss on the right side of the brain, whereas those rated low for verbal skills, such as flight engineers, had greater tissue loss on the left side of the brain. This effect was expressed most clearly in the temporal lobes of the brain. In other words, the side of the brain least used in the patient's professional life was apparently the first attacked.

These findings are in keeping with the theory of cognitive reserve, but may be due to some asymmetry in the brain that both inclines them to a particular occupational path and renders the relatively deficient hemisphere more vulnerable in later life.

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Cultural differences & developmental changes in working memory

January, 2010

A comparison of Ugandan and Senegalese children has found differences in which working memory system is dominant. This may be a product of literacy training.

‘Working memory’ is thought to consist of three components: one concerned with auditory-verbal processing, one with visual-spatial processing, and a central executive that controls both. It has been hypothesized that the relationships between the components changes as children develop. Very young children are more reliant on visuospatial processing, but later the auditory-verbal module becomes more dominant. It has also been found that the two sensory modules are not strongly associated in younger (5-8) American children, but are strongly associated in older children (9-12). The same study found that this pattern was also found in Laotian children, but not in children from the Congo, none of whom showed a strong association between visual and auditory working memory. Now a new study has found that Ugandan children showed greater dominance of the auditory-verbal module, particularly among the older children (8 ½ +); however, the visuospatial module was dominant among Senegalese children, both younger and older. It is hypothesized that the cultural differences are a product of literacy training — school enrolment was much less consistent among the Senegalese. But there may also be a link to nutritional status.

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Face recognition ability inherited separately from IQ

January, 2010

Providing support for a modular concept of the brain, a twin study has found that face recognition is heritable, and that it is inherited separately from IQ.

No surprise to me (I’m hopeless at faces), but a twin study has found that face recognition is heritable, and that it is inherited separately from IQ. The findings provide support for a modular concept of the brain, suggesting that some cognitive abilities, like face recognition, are shaped by specialist genes rather than generalist genes. The study used 102 pairs of identical twins and 71 pairs of fraternal twins aged 7 to 19 from Beijing schools to calculate that 39% of the variance between individuals on a face recognition task is attributable to genetic effects. In an independent sample of 321 students, the researchers found that face recognition ability was not correlated with IQ.

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Zhu, Q. et al. 2010. Heritability of the specific cognitive ability of face perception. Current Biology, 20 (2), 137-142.

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Those less motivated to achieve will excel on tasks seen as fun

January, 2010

Telling students to strive for excellence may not always be the best strategy.

You may think that telling students to strive for excellence is always a good strategy, but it turns out that it is not quite as simple as that. A series of four experiments looking at how students' attitudes toward achievement influenced their performance on various tasks has found that while those with high achievement motivation did better on a task when they also were exposed to subconscious "priming" that related to winning, mastery or excellence, those with low achievement motivation did worse. Similarly, when given a choice, those with high achievement motivation were more likely to resume an interrupted task which they were told tested their verbal reasoning ability. However, those with high achievement motivation did worse on a word-search puzzle when they were told the exercise was fun. The findings point to the fact that people have different goals (e.g., achievement vs enjoyment), and that effective motivation requires this to be taken account of.

Reference: 

[730] Hart, W., & Albarracín D.
(2009).  The effects of chronic achievement motivation and achievement primes on the activation of achievement and fun goals..
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 97(6), 1129 - 1141.

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The age you feel is more important for cognition than the age you are

February, 2010

More data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States has revealed that cognitive abilities reflect to a greater extent how old you feel, not how old you actually are.

More data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States has revealed that cognitive abilities reflect to a greater extent how old you feel, not how old you actually are. Of course that may be because cognitive ability contributes to a person’s wellness and energy. But it also may reflect benefits of trying to maintain a sense of youthfulness by keeping up with new trends and activities that feel invigorating.

Reference: 

[171] Schafer, M. H., & Shippee T. P.
(2009).  Age Identity, Gender, and Perceptions of Decline: Does Feeling Older Lead to Pessimistic Dispositions About Cognitive Aging?.
The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences. 65B(1), 91 - 96.

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Factors predicting conversion of mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s identified

March, 2010

New analysis reveals the most important factors for predicting whether amnestic-MCI would develop into Alzheimer’s within 2 years were hyperglycemia, female gender and having the Alzheimer's gene.

An analysis technique using artificial neural networks has revealed that the most important factors for predicting whether amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI-A) would develop into Alzheimer’s within 2 years were hyperglycemia, female gender and having the APOE4 gene (in that order). These were followed by the scores on attentional and short memory tests.

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Tabaton, M. et al. 2010. Artificial Neural Networks Identify the Predictive Values of Risk Factors on the Conversion of Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 19 (3), 1035-1040.

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Experiencing different cultures enhances creativity

July, 2010

Being reminded of multicultural experiences helps you become more creative in solving problems.

Three experiments involving students who had lived abroad and those who hadn't found that those who had experienced a different culture demonstrated greater creativity — but only when they first recalled a multicultural learning experience from their life abroad. Specifically, doing so (a) improved idea flexibility (e.g., the ability to solve problems in multiple ways), (b) increased awareness of underlying connections and associations, and (c) helped overcome functional fixedness. The study also demonstrated that it was learning about the underlying meaning or function of behaviors in the multicultural context that was particularly important for facilitating creativity.

Reference: 

[1622] Maddux, W. W., Adam H., & Galinsky A. D.
(2010).  When in Rome ... Learn Why the Romans Do What They Do: How Multicultural Learning Experiences Facilitate Creativity.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 731 - 741.

Full text is available free for a limited time at http://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/36/6/731

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