Adolescence is widely thought to be a time when the brain trims away excess neural connections, refining circuits through synaptic pruning. New research now suggests this view may be incomplete.
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A new way to detect life beyond Earth without knowing what life looks like
A research team of Specially Appointed Associate Professor Harrison B. Smith of Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo and Specially Appointed Associate Professor Lana Sinapayen of National Institute for Basic Biology has developed a new approach to detecting life beyond Earth that does not rely on identifying specific biological markers. Instead, the study suggests that life may be detectable through patterns emerging across groups of planets, offering a new framework for astrobiology in situations where traditional biosignatures are ambiguous or unreliable.
New psychology research reveals your face might determine how easily people remember your name
Have you ever struggled to remember the name of someone you just met? A recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition suggests that the natural stickiness of a person’s face plays a key role in whether you will recall their name. The findings indicate that highly memorable faces help people remember associated names, but this memory-boosting effect does not happen when names are paired with memorable photographs of places.
For decades, scientists studying human memory have focused on how the mental effort we spend processing a fact determines how well we will retain it. However, memory also depends on natural qualities belonging to the object or event itself. Some items possess an intrinsic memorability, meaning they tend to be consistently remembered better by different people regardless of how much effort is put into learning them.
“I was fascinated by the idea that some things in our environment are naturally more memorable than others, meaning most people will remember or forget the same images regardless of their individual memory skills,” explained Andrew Cook, a visiting assistant professor of psychology at Hamilton College. Cook and his colleagues designed a series of experiments to test whether seeing a memorable image would provide evidence for enhanced recall of an associated name. “We wanted to know if memorability is ‘sticky,’” Cook said.
Feeling angry makes people more likely to share news from low-credibility sources
The second experiment involved 116 university students and focused specifically on comparing moral anger and moral disgust. Participants read 18 false news headlines that described minor or severe moral violations. This time, the headlines were presented as coming from either a highly credible source or a low credibility source.
The scientists wanted to see how different emotional states influenced the sharing of these headlines. They asked the students to rate their current feelings of anger, their feelings of disgust, or their neutral attention. After this emotional prompt, the students rated their willingness to share the news.
The researchers found that participants prompted to feel anger were significantly more willing to share headlines from low credibility sources compared to the disgust and control groups. The disgust prompt did not increase sharing willingness compared to the neutral control group. This suggests that moral anger actively reduces a person’s reliance on credibility when deciding to share information.
