--Original published at Kaity Takes on Psychology

A study by researchers from Northwestern University recently published their research on how students in low socio-economic families can be influenced to work harder and overcome academic challenges when they associate doing well in school with obtaining upward mobility later in life. Basing their information from three separate studies, the data from each experiment displays a connection between a strong belief in financial success and doing well in school.

The first study evaluated a group of high school students from a low SES (socio-economic status) background based on whether they believe upward mobility is possible for them, and how motivated they are to succeed academically. Researchers found the students with a stronger belief in being successful later in life obtained higher grades than their peers with pessimistic attitudes about upward mobility.

Study two was conducted on a group of college students, who were asked to complete an academic puzzle, specifically unscramble a series of letters and attempt to form as many words as they could in three minutes. They were surveyed about their perception on upward mobility, and asked to include their family’s household income. The second study found students with lower-SES who were influenced to have a strong belief of socioeconomic mobility tried harder during the academic test than their peers with weaker beliefs.

The final study was done on high school freshmen, who were divided into three groups. Each group was given a different result of a study on economic mobility: the first study claims it is possible, the second study showed it was difficult, and the third group was given nothing so they could be a control group. The students were assessed on the grades they earned since the start of the study. Like the previous studies, the annual family income of each student was taken into consideration to determine people’s socio-economic status. The data from the third study yielded similar results to the other experiments: students of low socio-economic status were more motivated than their affluent peers when told economic mobility was a possibility for them.

My rewrite of the pop culture article included the way the experiments were done, because I personally was not a fan of the initial article for omitting the information about the studies. I think the original article would have been better if the journalist from Science Daily assessed the way the studies were done and showed the audience how the research team obtained their information and did their experiments. I feel the study was well done, but the journalist from Science Daily wrote the article with the intentions to focus on the pop culture aspect of journalism.

I left out most the fluff found in the original article. They chose all their samples based on schools who harbored many low socioeconomic families. I believe the experiment does not allow for causal claims because it was done three times in three separate scenarios. The variables were operationalized by putting participants in certain groups. I do not think the conclusions were generalized because it was done three times. The participants were randomly selected from a group of low socio-economic students.

Throughout the past semester, I was tasked with finding a pop culture article, analyzing the research from the original scholarly article, and now rewriting the pop culture article in my own words. Reading each article gave me a better sense of the various forms of writing that are necessary in the field of psychology. Pop culture articles are designed to be read and comprehended by an audience which generally does not understand jargon and technical terms in psychology. Likewise, the original research article stems from the scientific community seeking to expand our body of knowledge, and thus requires understanding certain lingo to interpret what the researchers are trying to demonstrate.

Journalists in the field of psychology seek to educate the average person by presenting the research found by professionals in the field in a way that can be easily understood by anyone. The topic of psychology has a wide umbrella of subjects, like clinical, cognitive, developmental, and behavioral psychology. Each field contains mountains of information which must be analyzed, researched, and shared in the community among scholars and students alike.

The article I have been analyzing and using as my muse for this project blends both developmental and cognitive psychology. Through implementing the idea that someone from a low SES family can be a better student by believing in economic mobility, modern society may be able to impact the lives of many folks.

--Original published at Grace's College Blog

Though the reasons why we sleep are unknown, we do know how to make our sleep the most beneficial to our bodies. In a study in the journal Current Biology, “Whole-Night Continuous Rocking Entrains Spontaneous Neural Oscillations with Benefits for Sleep and Memory,” they observed people sleeping in a rocking bed. All of the participants were already healthy sleepers and with the rocking bed, their sleeping actually improved! We know we are affected by external stimuli while sleeping because we wake up to our alarms, loud sounds, and people shaking us awake. So, it is possible for rocking to affect our sleep as well.

Rocking something when it is in distress is instinctive in humans. We do it for babies and sometimes even animals. Often for infants, parents will rock them to calm them and help them sleep. The goal of this study was to see if rocking would help adults as well. First, they had participants sleep in the bed without rocking to monitor their brain waves during a regular night of sleep. Then participants slept in the same bed while it was rocking continuously throughout the night. The study also contained a control group that only slept without the rocking.

One theory for why we sleep is for memory consolidation, rocking not only improved overall sleep, it also improved said memory. Participants were given a memory test every night and morning. Researchers also tested how reaction times were affected by pressing a button as soon as an image appeared on a screen. Overall, there was an improvement in all aspects of the study.

When reading research, there are five important questions to ask yourself to guarantee a true experiment:

1. How did they operationalize their variables, how did they define them? In this study they measured how “well” you slept by measuring your brain waves and memory consolidation as well as reaction times with various tests.
2. How did they select participants? Researchers selected participants who were in good health with no history of drug or alcohol abuse and reported no irregular sleep-wake cycles.
3. How did they assign participants to groups? In order to have a true experiment (that allows for the next question) you must assign participants randomly to groups. In this study they successfully assigned participants to a group with rocking beds and to a group with identical beds, without rocking.
4. Does the method used allow for causal claims, a cause and effect relationship? In order to argue a cause and effect relationship, you must have participants assigned randomly, which has been done! The researchers can argue that the rocking allowed for a better nights sleep.
5. Are the conclusions generalized to the right population? In this study, they generalized the results to all adults, when they tested young adults between the ages of 2o and 27. Though this can only be applied to healthy sleepers already.

Ask yourself these questions when you see an article about any new research study you read about. It can help you to narrow down any false generalizations and incorrect claims made.

This study was done as a follow up study to a study that experimented with rocking beds and shorter naps. Participants in that study fell asleep faster and had overall better brain activity. Another follow up study was done with researching the effect of rocking stimulation on other species, specifically mice. Studies continue to be done on sleep because the reasons are still unknown and only theories.

So want to improve your sleep? Invest in a rocking bed and sleep like a baby.

Reflection

After writing my own pop culture article about this sleep study, I understand how difficult it can be to transpose. The original study was often very confusing and difficult to read because of the terms I did not know. It was filled with information about the neuroscience of sleep and paraphrasing proved to be difficult. I understand issues that may arise for journalists when writing these articles for readers who may not have heard of anything in the original report. After critiquing the pop article, I learned how much simpler it was to understand the study after reading an article about it, rather than the original report. A lot of studying must be done and rereading of the report. I had to read the report many times when doing my scholarly article critique because it was filled with numbers, acronyms, and terms I had never heard of. I spent a lot of time looking up the definition of words related to neuroscience and sleep. After attempting to write my own pop culture summary of the study, I have a newfound respect for journalists making their articles as easily understandable as possible while still making the results of the study clear.

In my summary I chose to include most of the general ideas of the study and tried to stray away from using any terms that I did not know previously. After reading my pop culture article, I noticed it was very thorough in its description of the study and included connections to things that people reading the article could relate to. The article was over 1000 words so I felt it was important to include as much as I could. In the news article they do not mention anything about the legitimacy of the experiment with the five critical questions. Which the readers would have to find in the study report. Because of the length, I felt it important to answer those questions when reading research. I think that by including them in my article, readers may be more inclined to think of those questions next time they read a pop culture article. It also helps the reader to understand some of the important aspects of what goes into a research study.

In the news article, many connections were made between pop culture and the science behind the study. They mentioned the Mother Goose stories about rocking your baby. As well as a recent pop song called Rock-a-Bye Baby, that talks about motherhood. Making these connections in the article I thought added to the pop culture aspects of the article and drew more readers in. The article also mentioned other studies of the same caliber. A study was done previous to this with napping and one was done after, testing the same rocking motion on mice. I included the mention of these other studies because I felt it would gauge interest.

Original Report of the Study: Perrault et al., Whole-Night Continuous Rocking Entrains Spontaneous Neural Oscillations with Benefits for Sleep and Memory, Current Biology (2018)

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)31662-2?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982218316622%3Fshowall%3Dtrue#%20

News Article: “The Neuroscience of ‘Rock-a-Bye Baby’ and Rocking Adult Beds.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 26 Jan. 2019

http://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201901/the-neuroscience-rock-bye-baby-and-rocking-adult-beds.

--Original published at Victoria's Psych Blog

A recent study found that adults in their twenties sleep better while rocking. The University of Geneva study tested eighteen volunteer participants to sleep monitored on a stationary and .25 hertz rocking bed (Perrault et. al ). The conclusions of the study were that volunteers had better memory recall and better sleep quality with the rocking bed. Rocking movement replicates the feeling of being in the room which decreases amount of time falling asleep. With better quality sleep, memory improves because of brain working on memory storage during sleep. Although the study had unique findings, there is more action required before going out an buying an expensive rocking bed. The study was done on healthy young individuals and mimicked a previously done study on naps. It is critical to have the study repeated with specially selected people in the same manner in order to make a claim from the study. It is important to have the selected people to be random people in society to be representative of an entire population or else there can be no scientific claim for an entire society. During the study, variables were consistent through the entire thing. Each participant slept two nights in the lab, one in the stationary bed and one in the rocking bed. The volunteers were monitored for consistent sleeping patterns a week before the start of the study and spent the two nights in the lab on randomly assigned days. The experiment days were kept consistent with same about of noise, bed size and amount of rocking. Memory was tested using word pairing activities before participants fall asleep and when they wake up. Sleep quality was measured by amount of brain activity while sleeping. The amount of brain activity indicates which stage of the sleep cycle the person is in and how deep their sleep is. Study found that REM was not affected, the rest of the cycle was deeper with the rocking. This study is a significant start to more research done to help people get better quality in their daily lives.

Reflection

The research project did not really change my perspective of journalists, but it did teach me how challenging it is. Writing my own summary was challenging because I had to water my summary down so the average person could understand it. I omitted the sleep oscilations and spindles because it would most likely make the reader have to look it up. Having to do additional research would be discouraging to a lot of people. Other than making the article summary easier to understand, I thought it was easier to do. I used about half of the words my original article did and I think that is because I did not include any commentary from other professionals in the field. My perspective on journalism did not change much because I do not think many of journalists are unbiased and knowledgeable in the subject they are writing on most of the time. I know I have a very critical view on journalism, but I still have a lot of respect for journalists. They are constantly criticized by people like myself and it is really hard to write a summary for average people to understand. While I did not like Scutti’s original article on the study, I did gain some respect for her because she has a hard job to summarize a twelve-page report in 700 words and in plain English. The first part of this assignment was the easiest part for me to write because I am a very analytical person and think critically of every article I read. Reading the original report on the study was the hardest part of the project. The original report used a lot of terminology I was unfamiliar with and it was hard to understand the graphs. My new summary of the article was medium difficulty to me due to writing it in simple terms. Although the entire project as a whole was not extremely difficult, it did teach me how to use perspective and critical thinking reading a news article. I forget that news articles have a word or character count due to limited space on a newspaper. I also forget that not everyone has a good understanding on certain topics like sleep, so it is vital to make it easy to understand. I think that the project will benefit me more than just reading articles better. It will benefit my future in psychology as well because I will need to be very empathic to others and perspective plays a big part of empathy.

References

Scutti, Susan. “Adults Could Rock Themselves to Better Sleep and Memories, Study Says.”
CNN. Cable News Network, 24 January 2019. Web. Accessed 26 March 2019.

Perrault et al., Whole-Night Continuous Rocking Entrains Spontaneous Neural Oscillations with
Benefits for Sleep and Memory, Current Biology (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.12.028

--Original published at Allison's Psych Blog

Is not sleeping enough a factor in contracting Alzheimer’s Disease? Researchers did a study to determine if being sleep deprived increases levels of tau, eventually leading to being diagnosed with the disease. Tau is a cytoplasmic protein in neurons that spreads in structures such as tangles in diseases like Alzheimer’s, and it is known that neural synaptic strength is higher in wakefulness, so the study was conducted to see if wakefulness had an effect on the amount of the protein produced in the brain’s interstitial fluid (ISF) in mice and in humans. First, tau levels were measured in the hippocampal ISF of wild mice. It was found that during the period of the sleep cycle where the mice spend most of their sleeping time compared to the dark period of the cycle where they spend their time awake, ISF levels increased 2-fold in the dark period. Hours after the light period of the sleep cycle, the mice were forced to stay awake, and showed an increase in tau levels produced whereas, mice kept awake during the dark period did not show an increase in tau levels. With the results showing increasing tau levels in mice, the question remained whether this was true in humans. Sleep deprivation increased levels of tau in humans by 50%. Next, human tau was injected into mice to determine the long term effects. The mice were exposed to 28 days of sleep deprivation, and it was found that the tau was not altered in the hippocampus, but it was in fact spread to a region of the brain synaptically connected to the hippocampus. While these mice were being assessed for 28 days, a control group of mice was also being kept awake under these conditions without the injection of tau to act as a control. The conclusion was made that tau in mice and humans is strongly increased by sleep deprivation, showing that changes in the sleep-wake cycle can result in rapid changes of tau production. The conclusion answers the question that there may be a possible relationship between being sleep deprived and being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Reflection:

Summarizing these articles was a challenge, as there is so much information in the studies that should be said to let the reader know exactly what is going on and being studied. There were parts in both articles that had information vital to the hypothesis, but were only mentioned one time with their results, and not looked at again throughout the writing. The parts mentioned talked about how there was another protein called amyloid that also spread with sleep deprivation, but was only mentioned once or twice, and did not seem vital to the research, as tau was the essential protein being studied. I also chose to not mention the five critical questions in my summary. Reading both of the articles, I noticed that there was no mention of some of the questions at all. The population studied for the research, besides the rats, was not expressed as to how the researchers chose them. This is critical in a research study, not only to find out who was studied, but for the reader to possibly connect to the research, if those chosen have qualities the reader may have. The groups were also not defined when it came to the human subjects. It was not mentioned whether there was a control, or if different types of injections were used, whether it be tau or amyloid. Because of this, the article did not allow for causal claims and does not seem to generalized to the right audience, due to not knowing who their population was that was being tested. Overall, writing a summary of two very in depth articles is a very hard thing to do, by picking what to say out of everything, you are what the reader is relying on. Journalists have a very important job to get all of the information across as possible without making the article to long or too hard for someone to understand. Fitting it all into one small summary is definitely difficult, and makes me appreciate writers a little bit more.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190124141536.htm

file:///Users/allison/Downloads/For%20Allison%20V%20(1).pdf

--Original published at Olivia's College Blog

1 in 4 children enrolled in school showed deficits and delays in motor skills and communication. Time spent on digital media could be the source of this delay in children, according to a new study by JAMA pediatrics. The study found that children between the ages of 2 and 3 who were exposed to more screen time scored lower on development tests at milestone ages of 3 and 5 years old.

The first 5 years of life are critical for a child to stay on track with normal growth and development. JAMA pediatrics explains that the deficits that are associated with too much screen time may be caused children replacing important opportunities for learning and growth with the screens. Screen time may also be replacing interaction time with the caregiver.

2,441 mothers and children were recruited for the study between 2008 and 2010. Between 2011 and 2016, children’s development was self-reported by mothers on the Ages and Stages Questionnaire at 2, 3, and 5 years old. Mothers also reported amount of screen usage for different mediums of technology, like phone, tablet, computer, or TV screen.

The child’s development score on the ASQ was representative of their current ability in communication, motor skills, problem solving, and personal-social skills. A low sum of the three scores on the ASQ was indicative of poor development. The research found that more screen time at 24 months produced lower development scores at 36 months, and more screen time at 36 months produced lower development scores at 60 months.It is estimated that children should not exceed one hour per day of screen time, according to the AMA. Today, 98% of US children aged 0-8 spend an average of over 2 hours a day. Dr. Sheri Madigan, lead researcher of the study, explains the harm in too much screen time at a young age: “excessive screen time has been associated with a number of deleterious physical, behavioral, and cognitive outcomes.”

Children of ages 2, 3, and 5 were found to have an average of 2.4, 3.6, and 1.6 hours of screen time daily. While results show a directional association between screen time and poor development, it does not produce causation. The data showed that more screen time was linked to lower ASQ development test scores. The data did not support the obverse relationship of poorer development being related to more screen time.

Like any study, there were numerous possible limitations. It is likely there are other factors that contribute to the effects we see in development from more time spent on screens.  Not all children are equally affected by the same amounts of screen time and these differences were not all accounted for, Dr. Madigan explains. Examples she gave of this included gender of the child, maternal depression, and how regularly the child was read to. Any of these factors could have been the cause of poorer development but is shown as a trend that is tied to screen time. There were also few outliers of children who had higher screen time but also showed high scores of developments. One last limitation listed was the focus directed to the screen time. The amount of attention directed to screens during ‘screen time’ could cause these findings to be misinterpreted. There is no guarantee that mothers used the same criteria when reporting amounts of screen time. While the data showed an overall negative correlation between increased screen time and poorer development, it is possible that other factors could have applied a hidden pressure to the results.

This study is one of the first to provide evidence of a directional association between screen time and poor development in children. The good news is that this information can be used proactively to make we are doing our part to make sure our children are not spending too much time on screens.

Psych in the Media Reflection

I found this assignment to be the trickiest portion of our Psych in the Media Project yet. For me, the difficulty of the task came from condensing the loads of data in the findings into one short article. I approached the assignment by considering what the audience would gain the most from reading. I sorted through the research and located the numbers and information that were necessary to include for understanding the basic findings of the research. Then, once I had a rough idea of what I would include, I summarized it. It was good practice to take the information and present it with less jargon for a broader audience. I am majoring in psychology and spend a lot of time in my methods class dissecting research papers. It was nice to step outside of that practice and learn how to present the information to anyone who may not understand specific terms of psychology.  

The information that I chose to leave out included most of the statistical data and figures. These results are crucial in presenting findings that lead to published work. However, when presenting the findings as news, it is important to present it in a compelling and attractive way. I liked the flow of the original article, so I aimed to include most of the same information in my version. This assignment would have been even harder if we had to rewrite the article without having to read through the original publication. It was much easier to avoid plagiarizing in our assignment because I had an entire research publication to dissect for new information.

I have always had an appreciation for writers, journalists, and publicists. They are almost like the middle man between the information and the public. This series of assignments has made me view journalists in a new light. They have a lot of power in their hands, and from this assignment, I really do see how most of the information we receive is coming from a secondary source. I never thought about it in that way before, so I appreciate this assignment for making me more skeptical of what I come across in daily news. Many journalists and sources of news may have great content and spread accurate awareness, but it is also alarmingly easy to present the public with false or skewed information. I tried my best to avoid making those mistakes in my article submission, to make the most of the findings of the research on development by JAMA pediatrics.

Work Cited

Howard, J. (2019, January 28). More Screen Time for Toddlers is Tied to Poorer Development a Few Years Later, Study Says. Retrieved January 30, 2019, from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/28/health/screen-time-child-development-study/index.html

Madigan, S. (2019, March 01). Association Between Screen Time and Child Development. Retrieved from https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2722666?guestAccessKey=879c6c87-141e-48f8-8c95-4d684600a644

News Article:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/28/health/screen-time-child-development-study/index.html

Research Publication:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2722666?guestAccessKey=879c6c87-141e-48f8-8c95-4d684600a644

--Original published at MaddieHinson

Researchers noticed that using acupressure to relieve symptoms for breast cancer survivors has not been considered as a substantial treatment. The focus of this article was to study women who have breast cancer who deal with symptoms of anxiety, pain, and depression. These women are randomly assigned to participate in three different forms of treatment: Standard care, relaxing acupressure, and stimulating acupressure. Acupressure incorporates elements of shiatsu massage as well as acupuncture, however, with these experiments the patients were able to apply this treatment to themselves. Researchers were hypothesizing that these symptoms would be decreased because of this treatment and could improve the lives of people with this disease. The study was done over a ten week trial with 288 women.

The participants in this study were randomly selected women who had stage zero to stage three breast cancer and had done standard treatments in the last year along with experiencing the symptoms listed earlier. These women were also not allowed to be on another treatment plan, or currently have an actual disorder that was untreated so as to not be outliers in the study. Since most people do not know how to give acupressure to themselves, these women were instructed by a certified acupuncturist. To ensure that these women were doing the treatment correctly over the ten week study, they were assessed at the beginning and again at the end of the trial.

The researchers used different scales for each symptom to measure the progress. For example, when measuring fatigue, they used a scale from 1-10 in which the patients would be asked nine questions and depending on what score they received in the end is what determines whether or not their fatigue improved. The other symptoms being monitored in the study were examined through similar scales, based off the patients responses.

The results showed that overall, stimulating acupressure, which is the more intense therapy, improved these symptoms more than standard care did. There were some instances where standard care and relaxing acupressure resulted similarly. Interestingly enough, when it came to depressive symptoms, relaxing acupressure had more impact than stimulating acupressure. These different types of treatments can become confusing, but from this ten week study, there is a general consensus that this therapy shows overall improvements from these symptoms compared to standard care. However, because every patient is different, this treatment can not be clinically prescribed.

Reflection

One of the reasons that I chose this article was because my best friend had past away about a year ago from breast cancer. She was someone who was always looking for alternate forms of treatment. To read about a therapy that is not harmful to the body and could possibly improve someone who is living with cancers’ symptoms or quality of life is important.

Trying to decide what is crucial to the article I found to be difficult. I thought of the five critical questions while writing this piece, which helped guide me through the organization of my paper. In my summary, I included only one variable measurement which was a decision I pondered about. I came to the conclusion that the scales used in the actual article varied and it made the article too complex. In both my summary and the original article we discussed the participants restrictions as well as them being randomly assigned to their treatment groups. The original article did not specifically discuss this experiment as being “True” and neither did I, although based on the explanations that were given through both papers, it meets the criteria for one. In both my summary as well as the original article there are explanations that describe generalization as well. I thought it was important to add that to the end of my paper so as not to give false information that this type of treatment would be guaranteed.

From doing the pop article critique, I learned that what is written on the surface, is not the whole story and that I need to ask questions before coming to any conclusions about a topic. Reading the actual scholarly article, although somewhat challenging, was eye-opening to the actual research and methods used. For this assignment, there were times where I had to look up words or concepts, as well as reread sentences. Being a journal writer can be difficult because you are trying to convey a message on something you have done many months of research on, whereas the reader might know nothing on the subject. I found the data that was in the middle of this article to be difficult to interpret and could have been replaced with other valuable results.

Works Cited

Zick, Maria, S., Ananda, Hassett, Luevano, A., Andrew, . . . Edmund, R. (2019, January 16). Impact of Self-Acupressure on Co-Occurring Symptoms in Cancer Survivors. Retrieved from https://academic.oup.com/jncics/article/2/4/pky064/5288407

Medicine, M. (2019, January 16). Acupressure relieves long-term symptoms of breast cancer treatment, study finds. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190116140631.htm

--Original published at Maddy Vingom's PSY105 Blog

When shopping at their local grocery store shoppers are immersed into a world of marketing with advertisements around every corner. One marketing tactic customers see in within grocery stores is the placement of snacks in the checkout line. Often times people impulse buy these unhealthy snacks while waiting in line to pay for their items, this has become a major health concern when it comes to the impact of product placement on the decisions shoppers make. Five psychologists from the United Kingdom completed two longitudinal studies, in which they observed the habits of shoppers, and found by removing unhealthy snacks from the checkout line shoppers purchase less unhealthy food items. 

  Stores around the United Kingdom began to voluntarily remove candy, potato chips, and chocolate from their checkout lines in 2013 to promote healthier lifestyles. Researchers used this as an opportunity to observe how peoples shopping habits were impacted by the change. Participants in the study were regular customers of the chosen grocery stores. Psychologists believe this sample fairly represents the overall population of the United Kingdom, due to their diversity in many different areas including occupation, location, social status, age and gender. Participants were not assigned to groups due to the observational nature of both studies. Researchers of the first study accessed the data bases of six different stores and tracked purchases from 30,000 households in the United Kingdom one year before and one year after the policy regarding the removal of unhealthy snacks in the checkout line was implemented. The researchers found that these shoppers purchased 17% less unhealthy food immediately after the change was made, this number slightly decreased to 15% by the end of the study. From the years 2016 to 2017 the researchers completed an additional study in which they asked 7,500 regular shoppers if to complete a survey about snacks they purchased and ate before returning home. The surveys showed 76% less unhealthy snacks were purchased by these participants over the course of the year. Both studies show a correlation between the removal of unhealthy snacks in the checkout line and shoppers purchasing less unhealthy food within United Kingdom grocery stores. Additional research must be completed to determine whether the removal of candy, potato chips, and chocolate from checkout lines was the true cause of the change in shopping habits. 

The psychologists hope through this research they are able to promote healthier lifestyles for citizens of the United Kingdom. Providing the results to shoppers can help them to gain an understanding how marketing influences their decisions and may help them to be more aware of their tendency to purchase these unhealthy snacks. Their ultimate goal is to send their results to government agencies, in an attempt to persuade them to become more actively involved in helping to ensure the good health of their citizens.

Reflection:

The psychology in the media project has helped me to realize that often times information that we see portrayed in news articles is times not completely accurate to the actual research. It is important to read through the original source to ensure the news article is providing accurate information to readers. As I learned through this assignment journalists are typically restricted by word limits and are forced to leave out important information as a result. In order to ensure that my readers are able to understand the original study I incorporated how the researchers conducted the experiment to give readers the background of where the data came from within my summary. I also kept the five critical questions for reading research in mind to ensure that each one could be answered. I was forced to leave out certain details that were not necessarily important for the reader to comprehend the results of the study. 

 The pop culture article greatly differed from mine as a result of Ben Renner having the opportunity to speak with two out of the five researchers involved in the study. His article mainly focused on their thoughts and perspectives on the experiment, whereas mine focused on data and research methods. The summary I wrote lacks the attention-grabbing words the pop culture article contained as a result of being more data focused, resulting in a less interesting article to read. Ben Renner failed to address all five critical questions for reading research, such as how the researchers operationalized their variables and that researchers are unable to make causal claims due to the observational nature of the study. However, as previously stated, I ensured that readers could easily locate all five them within my summary.            

Through this assignment I was able to gain a better understanding of journalism, writing, and what it takes to complete a psychological study. Writing a news article about scientific research is an extensive process that requires the complete comprehension of the study and the ability to determine what information is vital for readers to understand the research and results. It is essential for an author to include answers to all five critical questions to show the credibility of the information. The balance between making a news article factual and enjoyable for the reader is difficult to achieve within the restrictions that journalists are given. I also came to the realization that it is equally important for readers to compile their own research to ensure they are getting accurate information and are able to formulate their own judgements regarding the study. 

Works Cited

Ejlerskov, K. T., Sharp, S. J., Stead, M., Adamson, A. J., White, M., & Adams, J. (2018). Supermarket policies on less-healthy food at checkouts: Natural experimental evaluation using interrupted time series analyses of purchases. PLOS Medicine. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002712

Renner, Ben. “Removing Sweets from Grocery Store Checkout Lines Leads To ‘Dramatic’ Drop in Unhealthy Purchases.” Study Finds, 2 Jan. 2019, www.studyfinds.org/removing-sweets-grocery-store-checkout-aisles-fewer-unhealthy-snacks/.

Links:

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/articleid=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002712https:/

/www.studyfinds.org/removing-sweets-grocery-store-checkout-aisles-fewer-unhealthy-snacks/

--Original published at NataliesCollegeBlog

As growing up in the world we live in today, the words “make a good first impression” is put in the back of everyone’s head. We present ourselves by dressing up nice for interviews and practice how to be talkative or friendly; yet, there are a lot of stereotypes and judgements made at first glance. It is common people make judgements off race and facial expressions, but what about body shape? Is it really true that people associate body figure to someone’s personality traits?

Ying Hu, a psychological scientist, and other researchers from the University of Texas questioned if stereotypes pertaining to body shape affect how someone judges and interacts with strangers. In the study, there were 76 undergraduate students participants from the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas. 140 simulated bodies created by CAESAR data set laser scans created 70 women and 70 men for the study.  There was also a personality trait list that consisted of 30 trait words from each of the 5 domain types (extraversion conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness and neuroticism) with 3 positive and 3 negative words within each category. The participants would see an image from two views: frontal and at a 45° angle. Each participant was randomly assigned to rate one of the two sets of bodies by seeing 30 traits. The study would randomly assign each student to two different groups that had 35 female bodies and 35 male bodies, which were also randomly assigned.

After the research team collected all of the data, the study was able to conclude there are wide ranges of personality traits for every body shape. Also, personality interferences are formed from physical features in someone’s body shape. Overall, there is evidence that people tend to associate personality traits based on a person’s body shape. No matter where you go, how you look automatically gives you a reputation whether it is true or not. As a society, we are already body shaming people enough and it is shown through this research too. The fear that having a certain body type affects if a person gets a job over someone else is something that we should all be aware of and fix all together.

Reflection

Once I wrote a pop culture newsletter article myself, there were a lot of things that I learned about. I now understand how hard it is for journalists to encapture data from research, and make the newsletter entertaining at the same time. Although my newsletter obtained the most important information from the study, it lacked the attention grabbing words and phrases that the original pop culture article had. In the article, I left out the smaller details of the study that talked about the Shape-To-Trait Regression Results. Although this is quality information, it is not necessary in the newsletter for the reader to understand the purpose of the experiment.

Comparing my summary to the news article, there were many things that were different. The article that I wrote about consisted more about the facts and data in the study, while the pop culture article used more direct quotes from the experimenter, Ying Hu, himself. The article was more conversational and kept the reader guessing compared to how the article I wrote was straight to the point. The news article also would add a sentence of entertainment in between the facts to make the reader keep reading. It makes the reader want to find out if they are being judged without even knowing. My article had attention grabbing sentences in the beginning but included the facts and covered all of the 5 critical questions, while the pop culture article did not.

After writing this article, I now have a better appreciation for journalists and writers. It can be very difficult at times to convey every single piece of data in an article when trying to make an attention grabbing storyline. I learned that it takes a lot of time to make something stand out and become published in the first place. This is possibly why certain details from research may not be included because of certain guidelines that need to be met by the organization that is publishing the article. It is hard to make an article entertaining without slang and informal terms. Although I now understand how tough it is to be entertaining and have data/hard facts, I still think that any good journalist would be able to provide both. Overall, this made me understand that writing articles based off research accurately is tough, which is why when reading articles everyone should look at the research too. It is just as important to read the research study that is provided along with the original article. This way the reader is able to make their own judgements by looking at multiple sources, rather than believing the first article is completely accurate.

Work Cited

Hu, Y., Parde, C. J., Hill, M. Q., Mahmood, N., & O’Toole, A. J. (2018). First Impressions of

Personality Traits From Body Shapes. Psychological Science, 29(12), 1969–1983.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618799300

Marquette, T. (2019, January 25). Study: Your Body Shape Leads People To Make

Assumptions About Your Personality Traits. Retrieved February 11, 2019, from

https://www.studyfinds.org/body-shape-leads-people-assumptions-about-personality-traits/

--Original published at Jess Principe's Blog

By: Jessica Principe

Researcher have looked at the possible benefits of Brief Behavioral Therapy (BBT) over assisted referral mental health care (ARC) for youth with mental health disorders. In an original study conducted by V. Robin Weersing, David A. Brent, Michelle S. Rozenman, Araceli Gonzalez, Megan Jeffreys, John F. Dickerson, Frances L. Lynch, Giovanna Porta, and Satish Iyengar, for JAMA Psychiatry, were researching to see if the BBT therapy group showed significant mental health improvements compared to the youth recipients of ARC therapy group.

Depression and Anxiety affect about 30% of youth, but remain as two of the most under treated mental health disorders today (JAMA network, 2017). The researchers were attempting to gather evidence that the BBT therapy, which is more targeted therapy in a pediatric setting, showed superior results compared to the traditional outpatient community mental health care referral (JAMA network, 2017). Although JAMA Psychiatry states that more repeated studies will need to be done in order to increase their sample size and obtain more evidence that the BBT can be more successful in improving mental health disorders than ARC, their first study did show significant results.

The JAMA Psychiatry study recruited 95 participants from San Diego, California to the BBT group and 90 to the ARC group. The participants were not randomly selected, they were referred to by pediatricians if the patients met the requirements of a baseline test to then be placed into either the BBT or ARC group. Both groups underwent the therapy of their group for 8-12 weeks of 45 minute sessions. The results indicated that in the BBT group, 56.8% improved on a scale used to assess improvement across both anxiety and depression, and In the ARC group, only 28.2% improved (JAMA network, 2017). The Hispanic youths of the study were also observed as an additional element. The article’s results claimed that Hispanic youths had a stronger rate of improvement to their disorders in the BBT group, in which 76.5% improved, compared to the ARC group, where only 7.1% improved (JAMA network, 2017). Although it is obvious through their research that this was a smaller study, with a small sample size, and early data, the results lead the researchers to believe that their study provided significant data to expand their research.

Reflection:

The pop culture article does well in describing the results of the study, the reasons for why the study was conducted, and makes it clear that additional studies need to be done to strengthen that results of the data found. I aimed to include all of that in my summary as well. A weakness is the five critical questions are not answered well in the pop culture article, they do not discuss how the participants were selected and divided into groups like the scholarly article does. I discussed this in my summary, but also in a way that would be easy for a general audience to understand. I did not direct that results to a specific audience because the study was conducted with non randomly selected participants only from San Diego, California, therefore the results can not be generalized to any population at this time. I did not include to generalize my results to any population in my article summary nor discuss why, because a general audience reading my article may not know the correlation between random sample and generalizing results to a specific audience.

During this process, I recognize that in order to make an article, especially a science based one, easy to understand for a general audience, the study must be concise, reveal the purpose, results, and discussion accurately. One element I see is essential is to include the five critical questions, even in a pop culture article, because it makes the source more credible to advance readers such as psychologists, doctors, or professors, for example, in the case of this essay. The scholarly article does very well in including all of these elements, however, the scholarly article also includes a very detailed analysis of all the research found, making it harder for a general audience to understand compared to what is summarized in the pop culture article. For the media production assignment, I aimed for a healthy medium between the two, attempting to efficiently summarize the goals, data, and results of the research in a way that a general audience could easily understand and interpret.

References:

Weersing, V. R. (2017, June 01). Brief Behavioral Therapy for Pediatric Anxiety and Depression

in Primary Care. Retrieved March 18, 2019, from

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2618261?resultClick=1

“Pediatrics-Based Brief Therapy Outdoes Referral for Youths with Anxiety and Depression.”

National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 31

May 2017,

www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2017/pediatrics-based-brief-therapy-outdoes-refer

ral-for-youths-with-anxiety-and-depression.shtml.