Brain Twister

BrainTwister is a cross-platform application (for Macintosh and Windows*) consisting of several cognitive training tasks in different variants. The training paradigms that are available in BrainTwister are based on various research projects carried out by the Department for Experimental Psychology and Neuropsychology at the University of Bern, Switzerland. The training tasks can be used for participants over the whole lifespan in either a single or in a group setting. There are no requirements of computer-related skills in order to train with these tasks. BrainTwister generates detailed training data for each training task and allows to visualize and print the obtained training results.

Division of Experimental Psychology and Neuropsychology

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Positive Is Negative

Suggested by Pocholo Peralta (Plato On-line)

Despite what all those self-help books say, repeating positive statements apparently does not help people with low self-esteem feel better about themselves. In fact, it tends to make them feel worse, according to new research.

In one of their studies involving 32 male and 36 female psychology students, the researchers found that repeating the phrase did not improve the mood of those who had low self-esteem, as measured by a standard test. They actually ended up feeling worse, and the gap between those with high and low self-esteem widened.

By Shankar Vedantam (Science Digest:Washington Post)

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The Time Emotion Paradox

Time flies when you’re having fun, but why? It’s curious if you think about it. Someone whose visual perception was affected by enjoyment would seem rather unusual but the fact that our ability to judge time changes dramatically when we enjoy ourselves seems perfectly unremarkable.

A recent article in the scientific journal Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society attempts to answer exactly this question by reviewing the evidence for the curious link between emotion and time perception.

“One of the greatest paradoxes in the field of time psychology is the time–emotion paradox. Over the last few decades, an increasing volume of data has been identified demonstrating the accuracy with which humans are able to estimate time. Confronted with this amazing ability, psychologists have supposed that humans, as other animals, possess a specific mechanism that allows them to measure time…”

By Mind Hacks

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Also follow the article: The Time Emotion Paradox By Silvie Droit-Volet and Sandrine Gil. (Scribd)

The present manuscript discusses the time–emotion paradox in time psychology: although humans are able to accurately estimate time as if they possess a specific mechanism that allows them to measure time (i.e. an internal clock), their representations of time are easily distorted by the context.  Indeed, our sense of time depends on intrinsic context, such as the emotional state, and on extrinsic context, such as the rhythm of others’ activity. Existing studies on the relationships between emotion and time suggest that these contextual variations in subjective time do not result from the incorrect functioning of the internal clock but rather from the excellent ability of the internal clock to adapt to events in one’s environment. Finally, the fact that we live and move in time and that everything, every act, takes more or less time has often been neglected. Thus, there is no unique, homogeneous time but instead multiple experiences of time. Our subjective temporal distortions directly reflect the way our brain and body adapt to these multiple time scales.

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Attentional Blink and the Stream of Consciousness

A very interesting article suggested by Pocholo Peralta (Plato On-line):

Just how frequent these cracks are is demonstrated by a classic study which was the first in the psychological literature to report the phenomenon of ‘attentional blink’ (Broadbent and Broadbent, 1987; PDF). These researchers were inspired by unpublished reports that participants in psychology studies, after focusing their attention on a particular target, showed a strange gap in their attention — a kind of blind spot.

By Psyblog

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Training the Mind Changes the Brain

Whenever we talk about positive interventions, we are assuming that people are malleable. William James wrote about intentional activity to change habits in ways that make life better. That’s the premise of books like The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky: that research has shown that people can make lasting changes in their level of happiness, but it requires action, effort and persistence.

By Kathryn Britton (Positive Psychology News Daily)

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The Story of the Mind

This is a list of interesting articles relating to psychology and the mind:

The Story of the Mind

1. The Science of the Mind – Psychology
2. What Our Minds Have In Common – Introspective Psychology
3. The Mind of the Animal – Comparative Psychology
4. The Mind of the Child – Child Psychology
5. The Connection of Body with Mind – Physiological Psychology – Mental Diseases
6. How We Experiment On the Mind – Experimental Psychology
7. Suggestion In Children And Adults – Hypnotism
8. The Training of the Mind – Educational Psychology
9. The Individual Mind and Society – Social Psychology
10. The Genius and His Environment

By James Mark Baldwin (E Not Alone)

Thoughts on unconscious perception

Modern studies of consciousness actually date back to the last quarter of the nineteenth century when the comparatively new science of psychology started to emerge from its roots in philosophy and physiology.

By  John Cowley (Helium)

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