--Original published at Sherika's Psych Blog

Dr. Sarah Conner along with several other researchers affiliated with The Framingham Heart Study sought to answer the age-long question that their study proposed: can memory loss be impacted by a change in the brain’s chemistry?

In order to answer this question, researchers singled out a single hormone in the brain that they wanted to focus on for the duration of the study. Cortisol, or a hormone that regulates the bodies metabolism as well as immune system. Taking a large group of participants who were related to the original participants of the Framingham Heart Study, the researchers subjected the participants to a series of mentally stimulating tests and activities that were meant to stimulate the participants minds. Afterwards, researchers subjected the participants to CAT scans in order to see if there were any noticeable changes in the structure of their brains after the experiment.

It was found that long term, high exposure of cortisol in the brain can in fact weaken memory and contributes to memory loss. Researchers further found that this condition affected women more than it did men.

Reflection:

After taking several English courses at college, it’s been hammered and honed into me that people never read the entirety of an article, or better yet that the majority of people never read the entirety of it. Along with the fact that a huge portion of Americans (often times the readership base) tend to read at a High School level. In our current climate, it’s better to take the key core components of a piece that is being summarized and keep it short as possible. So that readers can simply skim through understand why something happened and how it was resolved or concluded. It’s important to keep the language simple as well, as pointed out earlier due to the fact that a large portion of American’s read at a High School level, complex language and words are simply going to go over peoples heads.

While it’s important in psychology to answer all five critical questions for reading research to some effect not all of those questions can be answered when it comes to summarizing and keeping an article based on a lengthy psychology research brief without losing the attention span and marketable traffic revenue that readers can bring to a site. If an article is too long or uses what is considered too much fluff language or even fails to summarize the main points of the research in a short and concise manner that aids the reader’s skimming, then the site will see a decline in traffic and in turn revenue.

So when it came to this article, I decided that it’s best to keep at least one researcher’s name from the study in this article with a following description that there were other researchers. Since a reader doesn’t want to feel inclined to read through several names of varying complexity. It was also important to include the fact that this study is connected to another and using participants who are connected to the Framingham study. Other information that I deemed important to include where the research methods and conclusion. I didn’t want to keep the research methods long or go into a heavy detail about them, because again, readers have a short attention span in a world where everything is at the tips of our fingers. While there are some similarities between the summarization found here and the study it’s summarizing itself, I feel that the study goes in depth on the topic.

But, for the sake of the readership as well as keeping the article itself short enough for people to be engaged in to read, there are some sacrifices that were made. Especially when it comes to trimming information and omitting some things altogether.

In all when it came to the three parts of this assignment and writing as a journalist who’s main emphasis is in writing about psychology, I felt that there was a duality needed in order to understand how readers of this current time period read in an increasingly advancing period and the ability to understand the psychological focused pieces that are being consumed for research.

Citation:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30355700

--Original published at olivyahvanek

The article, “Holocaust Exposure Induced Intergenerational Effects on FKBP5 Methylation” researched and written by various authors researched the idea that the offspring of Holocaust survivors had inherited a type of “disability” from their parents’ trauma. This idea that children are inheriting a gene from their parents because of their trauma from the Holocaust was proved to be false, rather they are getting these mental illnesses as they get older from the way that they were raised by their parents. These children were raised differently than other children in their generation because of the trauma that their parents had experienced in their lives.

This research article focused on how the Holocaust had an effect on FKBP5 methylation in the survivors, which is a protein found in the human body that regulates the GR sensitivity. In Holocaust survivors methylation at site FKBP5 was higher than it was in people that were not impacted by the Holocaust. Although, in Holocaust offspring, methylation was lower than it was in people in the same generation that were not impacted by the Holocaust. These levels for parents and their offspring of the Holocaust were correlated, as when they were in the Holocaust the levels are higher than if they were not.

In conclusion, these researchers had found that it was not simply a gene being passed down from Holocaust survivors to their offspring, rather it was the way that the children were raised by the Holocaust survivors. If these children had suffered any physical, mental, or sexual abuse as a child, then their methylation at site FKBP5 was lower than children who had not experienced these things. This was more common in children of Holocaust survivors because of the way that they had been raised by their parents, not any type of gene that was being passed down.

Reflection:

As I was writing the summary for this research article, I had used the main ideas that were taken from the article to help and summarize it in the most simple way because their experiment had a very complicated procedure. Although from the summary, their idea seemed to be simple, it was very difficult to decide what aspects should be added into the summary, because the whole experiment was very complicated and full of the research that all of these authors had done. As I was writing the summary, I had left out more of the procedure and how this actual experiment was done because it was a more unimportant aspect to the whole research, and instead I added more about the results of their experiment because the whole procedure had many confusing parts to it and if you did not read the whole article, readers would have a hard time understanding exactly how the whole experiment was done. This article did answer the five critical questions to reading research.

The news article that lead to the research article was written in a much more simple way than the research article itself because it never went into specifics as to how their experiment was done to get to their results. The news article did provide some critical information needed for the research article, although it never went into specifics as to how their results were found. The research article then proved that the news article was false because genes cannot be passed down from trauma, like in the case of Holocaust survivors passing down their trauma genes to their offspring.

From these three assignments I have learned a lot about journalists’ writing. From the pop culture assignment, I learned that research can be done and supported, but then found to be false even though the researchers that did the experiment think that it was correct. This taught me that no matter how well researchers prevent their data, it is not always correct. From the research article critique I learned that it takes way more than a couple researchers to create a study and prove it to be correct, and although it seems easy to create a study, it takes a lot of time and research to make it become real and reliable. From this assignment, the media production project, I learned that being a journalist can be hard, as writing from the top of your head and creating and coming up with information from other people’s work can take a lot of effort, to find the correct information to share with your readers.

These three assignments made me have a new appreciation for journalists, because their job is not as easy as it seems to be. It takes a lot of hard work and time to get to the point of creating a piece of work that is able to be published, without getting any criticism. I enjoyed doing all of these assignments and learning more about how trauma can affect people and also more about the writing of a journalist.

Citations

Thomson, Helen. Study of Holocaust Survivors Finds Trauma Passed on to Children’s Genes. 2015, www.mail-archive.com/unponkiidoep@googlegroups.com/msg01256/gene_epigenetic_inheritance-_Holocaust_Survivor_Trauma,_GuardUK_20150821.pdf.

Yehuda, R., Daskalakis, N., Bierer, L., Bader, H., Klengel, T., Holsboer, F., & Binder, E. (2017). Faculty of 1000 evaluation for Holocaust exposure induced intergenerational effects on FKBP5 methylation. F1000 – Post-publication Peer Review of the Biomedical Literature, 372-380. doi:10.3410/f.725812844.793527864

--Original published at Noah'sPSY105blog

For a significant amount of time, individuals of all ages have stated that the mobile phone has had more of a negative impact on our society than it has a positive one. But, are there any signs that this is actually the case? Many scientists with numerous and diversity backgrounds in different fields of study set out to see if there was any truth behind these beliefs or if they were just people not adapting to the shift in technology.

The particular study that I have investigated, was a study conducted to see whether or not phone usage could cause a decline in the user’s mental capacity. Although experimenting with such a touchy and quite frankly an unethical subject, so the researchers decided to see if they could find any correlation between the way an individual uses a cell phone and a decline in memory by splitting individuals into groups by the way they use their cell phones, and see if there was any variance between these groups. The criteria they used to organize these groups were as follows: which side they hold their phone up to when they are making a call, if they used hands-free devices, and how long they tend to use their devices at a given time.

The results from the experiments that they had conducted, showed that there was a correlation between individuals who made calls on the right sides of their heads and a decline in mental capacity. The study also found that individuals who just used their phones to send texts, play games, or browsing the internet did not show any adverse effects to their memory.

Reflection: Throughout the time that I took writing this post on the particular article that I had read, I made sure that I kept the five critical questions in the back of my mind to help pull the article apart. This article tried to convey the information that was outlined within the study without going into too much detail. It may be understandable to quickly summarize the main points within a research report but I think that the journalist may have been able to strengthen this piece by providing a bit more information from the research report. However, they did make sure to provide a link to the original publication, which I found extremely helpful to understand the nature of the research that was completed.

https://www.euronews.com/2018/07/23/new-study-reveals-smartphone-use-may-affect-teenagers-memory

--Original published at JVershinski's Blog

Getting recommendations from someone is not something we put a lot of thought into. You’re looking for a suggestion to see if anyone else knows someone or something that could help to solve some kind of problem you have. Some people value others’ suggestions, and some people wave them aside. However, it is now being tested that a machine may give better suggestions than other people. New research indicates that machines do indeed give better recommendations in a field that is usually very human-like area, humor.

Participants in this study were given a series of jokes and asked to rate them on a scale from -10 to 10, with -10 being the least funny and 10 being the most funny. However, each experiment in this overall study had a slight difference in how the assessment was made as well as what additional questions were asked. For example, one of the experiments allowed the participants to know whether the recommendations they were being given were human or machine, while a different study told the participants the opposite source of where the joke truly came from. (Ex. If the joke came from a machine, the participants were told it came from a human and vice versa)

Participants from this study were selected from two different locations: the Museum of Science and Industry or Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk. Participants were randomly selected, but some of the participants responses were dropped due to various reasons including: incomplete responses, failure to comply with instructions, failure to pass manipulation check, or giving the same rating to every joke. In total, there were about 3,750 participants recruited to partake in the study, but only 3,647 of the responses were recorded.

These results should have the ability to be applied to the general public because the participants were selected from the general public. I do not think that these results should be specified to only those from the museum or from the Turk because the people there are no different from the everyday person.

The results of all of the studies were quite interesting. First, it was determined that computer algorithms can generate better recommendations than actual people. This was based off of personal preference of the subjects. Second, the computer generated recommendations can be created from very little information. In the study, the computers that were generating the recommendations did not have any personal information about the person, beyond the ratings which they gave to the jokes. Finally, it was concluded that people preferred human recommendations over machine generated ones, despite the accuracy of the machines being higher. People seem to value human recommendations higher, which influences their opinion of the recommendation. This goes to show that even though it may not be as accurate as a machine, there could still be some value to human recommendations.

Reflection

As I went through the article and wrote my summary of it, I decided to include some of the 5 critical questions, but not all of them. I thought it would be important to include the first two questions about selecting participants and operationalizing values because I thought that it would be useful information the reader should know. However, because the groups chosen were already the groups that would be partaking in the study, there was nothing to write about how the individuals were separated into groups. I also decided to not include whether or not the study allows for causal claims, because I think that based off of the information given, that answer can be figured out by the reader. Finally, I did include the ability of the study to generalize to the public. I think that this is important because it was not included in the study, but it is important because machine recommendations are already working their way into the life of millions of people, so I thought that it was important to point out.

Compared to the article, I think that my summary shares the most prevalent of the 5 critical questions. Both my summary and the article talk about how the study operationalized the values for the subjects, but that was the only question that was included in both. I decided to also share how the study could be generalized to the right population as well as how the participants were selected because I thought it was important in the study. Neither my summary or the article talked about how the participants were split into groups or if the study allowed for causal claims. I think this was a good move because the reader can determine from the information given the answer to both of those questions.

The pop culture article was written with what seemed to be the reader in mind. It had a small intro that allowed for a smooth transition between the topic of the research and the research itself. The scholarly article seemed to be written with the research in mind, and the reader secondary. It focused on the research very thoroughly and was not written to be read for entertainment. My summary was more like the pop culture article I think. I think I wrote my summary to tell the reader about the study, but also to be a little entertaining. It was more a strict summary of the research so that the reader could read my summary, and know what the study was about and the results of it. Three different approaches for the same study, but each with their own unique way of conveying the information across for different purposes.

Sources:

“Why Ask a Machine for a Recommendation?” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, http://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/choice-matters/201905/why-ask-machine-recommendation.

Yeomans, M., Shah, A., Mullainathan, S., & Kleinberg, J. (2019). Making sense of recommendations. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2118

--Original published at Courtney's College Blog

Summary:

In 1973, John M. Darley and C. Daniel Batson published the study, “‘From Jerusalem to Jericho’: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior.” This study was based off the Good Samaritan Bible story and used Princeton University seminary students as participants. First, the participants took questionnaires to determine their reasons for pursuing priesthood. This determined three categories: intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and a quest for the meaning of life. Then, the students were told to prepare a speech about the possible jobs seminary students could pursue. Half of the students were told the story of the Good Samaritan prior to the next step. After the students had their speeches prepared, they individually walked to another building to continue the study. The independent variable had three groups depending on how much of a rush they were in to get to the second building. They encountered a fallen individual, with his head down, groaning, and coughing. The participants were graded on a scale from zero to five on how helpful they were to the troubled man. When they got to the second building, they were asked several questions about helping the needy, in order to validate the results. The results determined the amount of hurry to be the factor in determining the helpfulness of the participants. The presence of the Good Samaritan story and the motivation for priesthood had no effect. This determined that situational factors are more important than dispositional ones.

Reflection:

I decided to include all of the main points in my summary. The independent variables were stated along with how they were measured. I also included some background information about the study. I chose to include these details because I wish they were included in Glenn Geher’s “My Favorite Psychology Study.” I read this popular culture article before I read the scientific journal article. After I read the journal article, I noticed some details that should have been added, so I included them in my summary.

I included how the variables were operationalized. The independent variables were clearly stated, and the summary included how data collection was done. The participants were all seminary students at Princeton University, as stated at the beginning of the summary. The participants were assigned to several groups throughout the study, as clearly shown in the study. One of the groups were determined by personal motivations, and the others by random assignment. The independent variable that made a difference utilized random assignment, so it is credible. The method does not allow for causal claims because the independent variables are unrelated. The conclusions of this post are generalized to the correct population because it educates the class about a particular study. Although I do not have a degree in psychology (yet), it is acceptable because a blog post is casual way of conveying information.

The study, as published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, was much more detailed than Geher’s post. The journal had more sophisticated diction. The popular culture article stuck with a casual tone and defined terms that scientists would know. This is expected because a scientific journal attracts a scholarly audience, while a popular culture article targets the general population. The scientific journal answered all five of the critical questions. The popular culture article only answered a few. It described how variables were operationalized, how participants were selected, and how the participants were assigned to groups. They are similar because they explained the study in a chronological manner and conveyed the same conclusions.

Through analyzing the differences between the scientific journal and the website article, I noticed several differences between the style of writing. Scientists, as learned from the scientific journal, are more attentive to detail and explain the entire study. While analyzing the popular culture article, I noticed that these articles focus only on the important parts of the study, while using simple diction and defining complicated terms. In my blog post, I used a mixture of both styles. I made this decision because this post is not as scholarly as a scientific journal, but is still used for educational purposes.

Sources:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/201703/my-favorite-psychology-study

Darley, J. M., & Batson, C. D. (1973). ‘From Jerusalem to Jericho’: A study of
     situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior [PDF].
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.