--Original published at Ally'sCollegeBlog

Social media, and its affects on students, have been studied over the years. Does screen time increase the probability of depression? Is social media a good or bad thing? as well as thousands of other questions have been asked. A research team of five psychologists, have dipped their toes into the unknown waters. The team consists of Taylor Heffer, Owen Daly, and Elliott MacDonell of Brock University as well as Marie Good of Redeemer University College. Using longitudinal studies, or data collected over a period of time, the researchers were able to study a group of people for the course of two years. They took students from sixth grade to freshmen in college in Ontario, Canada, and asked them a series of questions about their social media use. The researchers used two categories for these questions. One was weekend usage and the other, weekday. They then did a mental health assessment. They studied After studying the data, the team concluded that social media does not cause depression overtime in young adults or children. Some students might have a different outcome than this because of their environment or preexisting mental health. Of course this is a new field of research so this data may be contradicted in the future. It can be very difficult to examine any unknown factors and variables.

Reflection

I always like diving deep into the subjects I research and that can be very beneficial in the long run. You can see both sides of an argument and get a more scientific outlook. Many news sites, such as buzzfeed, have short articles and the pages are filled with advertisements rather than factual information. I respect journalists because their job is so rigorous. Between having to sift through the information and trying to formulate an article in simple terms, it can be extremely difficult to come to correct conclusions and have an unbiased stance. I found the same hardship when writing my story. I tried to keep my article short and sweet because there was so much complex psychology terms and subjects that are difficult to but into simpler words. I never thought it would be that difficult but because of the word minimum, I was torn with what to include. Some information was too hard to explain, it was too scientific to understand.

I did not include specific information about the study such as how they obtained their participants. I had to excluded their search for the participants because it was too lengthy to include. I also excluded their full findings. There was a lot of mathematics and correlation studies that I left out because I thought it was too complex and not easily understandable. There were so many numbers, variables, and schematics that I did not even really understand. Other than those few pieces, I did not leave out anything super important. Of course the original study was fifteen pages I had a paragraph, but the majority of that paper is what I said I left out.

I found that this was a very difficult assignment because I like including details and expanding on things I have wrote about. I have a lot of more sympathy for journalists because it is their job to dive into the information and sift through it. I have taken a lot from this assignment. My mindset has shifted and I know understand what journalists, editors, and anyone who has to write about a lengthy subject. I am very happy that this assignment is included in our curriculum because it can shift someone’s mindset and help open the door to journalism. Without this blog post and the other previous writing assignments, I would not understand what journalists go through.

Citations-

Mikulak, Anna. Data Shows No Evidence That Teens’ Social Media Use Predicts Depression Over Time, January 30, 2019, https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-01/afps-dsn013019.php

Heffer, Taylor, et al. “The Longitudinal Association Between Social-Media Use and Depressive Symptoms Among Adolescents and Young Adults: An Empirical Reply to Twenge Et Al. (2018).” Clinical Psychological Science, 2019, pp. 1-9., doi:10.1177/2167702618812727

--Original published at Voltage Blog

A group of researchers took part in a study to figure out if rocking while sleeping helps make for a better night of sleep. Eighteen participants in their 20s were randomly selected to perform in this study. They were asked to take part in a night of stationary sleep and a night of continuous rocking with very similar environments. The study observed changes in the sleep patterns such as spindles and how quickly they were able to transition into each stage of sleep. The study found that the rocking at a 0.42hz increased the time in the deepest part of sleep and also helped with their memory. The participants were asked to complete a memory test before they fell asleep and again after they woke up. They were also asked complete a questionnaire about their sleep quality for that night. Most people will believe that having just a small little motion during their sleep will have practically no impact. The participants thought so as well until after the night of rocking. After spending a night in a stationary bed and a night in the rocking bed, the participants said they thought being in the rocking bed was one of the best nights of sleep they ever had.

By being rocked in your sleep, you will have few micro arousals. These small arousals disrupt continuous sleep and force the brain to break away from sleep even if it is just for a brief moment. Arousal density was 60% lower during the deepest part of sleep on the rocking night compared to the stationary night. These disruptions are able to add up over the whole night which disturbs your sleep cycle. The rocking also helped contribute to a shorter time transitioning into the different stages of the sleep cycle. It takes about six minutes less overall to transition into the deeper sleep while on the rocking bed. The rocking also contributed to an increase in sleep spindles. These spindles represent a particular type of brain wave that occurs during sleep, specifically during stage two of the sleep cycle. This difference between stationary and rocking may appear to be small, but this can occur multiple times a night making for a better night of sleep. Most participants woke up after the night of rocking and performed better on the written memory test than they did after the stationary night.

Reflection

While writing this blog post, I felt that it was considerably more difficult trying to translate the research document into a more suitable form for the general public. I thought that it was hard to not write every little detail about the research that I could. I did not write about all the values of everything they found in their data. At first I thought this was very needed information for a research article, but now I find it pretty irrelevant when trying to explain a whole research study to a general audience. If I had included these values all over my post, I think that the reader would have gotten lost very quickly and not have known what I was talking about. I kept in mind the five critical questions about a research study while I wrote this post. My thoughts about authors writing about research studies has changed after having to write one myself. I have more empathy towards them now then when I first read the article. Having to read through the study and trying to understand everything they were talking about was hard enough. Having to translate it into simpler terms was even harder. The most difficult part was trying to pick out the most relevant information about the study without it being too specific. Trying to keep it simple and understandable was a challenging, but if I did not, then the audience would lose interest in reading the rest of the article very quickly. When I first read through the article and critiqued on it earlier in the year, I felt that the article was lacking in a lot of crucial data. I was questioning the authenticity of the whole article and was wondering where all the actual data was. By not including any values, it makes it easier to understand and easier to get hooked into the article. Most, if not all journalists, have to stick to a specific format and have only a small space to work with when writing any type of article. After reading through the source material though, I discovered that the author had to make a lot of tough choices and be very concise on what words they used for the article. Understanding what journalists have to deal with on a daily basis will be very helpful when reading articles in the future. I will think more about the study that they are writing about and look for the five critical questions of a study.

--Original published at Ben's PSY105 Blog

New Study Finds Possible Link Between Blood Pressure Treatment and Preventing Dementia

In today’s world, almost everyone has had their life impacted by dementia. Dementia is the severe mental decline lots of people experience as they get older. Whether it be a parent, grandparent, friend, or neighbor dementia has touched almost everyone in one way or another. Watching someone you know slowly fade away and become a shell of themselves is devastating. About 9.9 million people develop dementia every year. As of now, there is no cure for dementia. For the most common form of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, there is no treatment to even slow the development. This new study has given a glimmer of hope of finding a possible preventative treatment for dementia.

The Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) study aimed to see how lowering a patient’s systolic blood pressure (the top number) to a more intensive target of 120 mm Hg rather than the standard 140 mm Hg affected the patient’s cardiovascular health as well as mental health. The study involved over 9,300 patients over 50 with hypertension, which is defined as systolic blood pressure over 130 mm Hg, and no history of stroke or diabetes. According to the American Heart Association, over 100 million Americans have high blood pressure. The patients were randomly assigned to the treatment groups. The study took place over five years from 2010 to 2015. The study found the more intensive treatment lowered the risk of cardiovascular events by 25% and the risk of death by 27%.

The cognitive portion of the study, SPRINT Memory and Cognition IN Decreased Hypertension (SPRINT MIND), looked at how the intensive treatment affected patients’ cognitive functioning after the treatment ended. Over 8,500 of the patients participated in at least one cognitive follow-up assessment. The study aimed primarily to see if the intensive treatment had any impact on the development of “probable dementia” in the patients. Of the 4,278 patients treated with the intense treatment, 149 had developed probable dementia. In the group treated with the standard treatment, 176 out of 4,285 had developed probable dementia. While there were fewer in the intensive group, it was not a statistically significant amount.

The secondary outcome of the SPRINT MIND study looked at the development of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) in patients. While MCI is not considered to impact the daily life of someone who has it, it often leads to dementia later in life. Up to 60% of patients diagnosed MCI went on to develop dementia within ten years, and everyone who has dementia had MCI first. The researchers used a series of progressive tests to determine whether the patient had MCI. The results of the study showed 287 patients in the intensive treatment group had developed MCI while 353 patients in the standard treatment group developed MCI.  Based on these results, the researchers concluded the patients treated with the intensive treatment were 19% less likely to develop MCI. While this was only applicable to the patients over 50 with hypertension and no history of stroke or diabetes, it is still promising since preventing MCI is effectively preventing dementia.

The study showed the results the researchers were after in the cardiovascular portion of the study but not the cognitive portion. Despite not having significant results in the cognitive portion, they were still able to find hope of reducing dementia. Dr. Jeff Williamson, the lead researcher, has begun offering intensive treatment to his patients because of the cardiovascular benefits and the 19% decrease in the likelihood of MCI. Dr. Kristine Yaffe, a neurology professor at the University of California, on the other hand, is not ready to replace the standard treatment with then intensive method yet. She acknowledged the hope it gives to one day find an effective treatment or prevention method for dementia, but she wants to see more research done on the cognitive impact of intensive blood pressure treatment.  Thanks to funding from the Alzheimer’s Association, the SPRINT MIND study will continue for two more years. The researchers hope the results will be more significant by the end since dementia takes a long time to develop.

Reflection

In writing this article, the most difficult part was simplifying the terminology into a vocabulary which could be more easily understood by the general public. The medical jargon used in the academic paper made sense but only with background knowledge of the terms being used. For example, most people wouldn’t be able to tell you what their systolic blood pressure is, but if you ask them for the top number of their blood pressure, they would be more likely to be able to give an answer. Lots of people have a general knowledge of their personal health, but not many people have the experience to understand what their numbers mean. Along with simplifying the language, I also had to decide which information was the most necessary to include. To do so I looked for information that pertained directly to how the results of the study matter. The scientific paper featured a lot of the logistics of the study. I had to put enough information to satisfy the critical questions in reading research but not too much to overwhelm the reader with nothing but numbers. Even trying to make the research more accessible, I still had to try to make sure to answer the five critical questions for reading research studies.

Along with simplifying the academic paper into a more accessible language, I also cut out some filler from the NYTimes article. A sizable portion of the article was commentary from Dr. Jeff Williamson, the lead researcher of the SPRINT study, and Dr. Kristine Yaffe, a neurology professor at the University of California. The pair shared an opinion on the findings offering hope for finding a treatment or preventative method for dementia. The pair disagreed, however, on how the results should impact current treatment methods. Dr. Yaffe believes there is still a lot of research to be done before making the intensive treatment the standard method of blood pressure reduction. Dr. Williamson has begun offering his patients the intensive method, telling them it lowers the chance of mild cognitive impairment by 19%. It was important to have the expert opinions, but the NYTimes article focused on the commentary almost as much as the results of the study.

This assignment made me respect journalists more. Until this, I never considered the amount of work which goes into writing an article reporting on a scientific journal. I always felt like they were easy, based on the typical brevity. I took the condensing of the information for granted. Deciding what needs to be in the articles and what should be cut is a difficult task. Adding to the work of getting expert opinions on the findings makes it even more impressive. In the future, I will make sure to keep all of this in mind when critiquing news articles.  

Sources

Belluck, P. (2019, January 28). Study Offers Hint of Hope for Staving Off Dementia in Some People. New York Times. Retrieved February 2, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/health/dementia-blood-pressure-cognitive-impairment.html

The SPRINT MIND Investigators for the SPRINT Research Group. Effect of Intensive vs Standard Blood Pressure Control on Probable Dementia: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2019;321(6):553–561. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.21442

--Original published at JanellesCollegeBlog

It is known by many that a common problem among college students is the amount of sleep they get. Students are encouraged to be involved in sports, clubs, and other activities on campus, but this involvement can cause students to not get the proper amount of sleep. Involvement in activities takes time away from doing homework and studying. If students choose to be involved in activities and therefore stay up late to get school work done this can be a problem. The question is, how big of a problem is it?

According to a study done by Monica E. Hartmann and J. Roxanne Prichard, there is a 10% increase in the chance of dropping a course for each additional night per week a student experiences sleep problems. The baseline chance of dropping a course was not included in the research article. The study also showed a student’s overall GPA decreases by 0.02 for each additional night a week that they have sleep problems. This means just one night a week with sleep problems could have a tremendous effect on a college student’s overall success. Therefore, students should not spend one night a week, let alone every night, as some do, staying up late to study or get work done.

The research study obtained information from randomly selected college students at several universities who were undergraduates and under the age of twenty-five. Variables such as whether students had learning disabilities, how much time they spent working, and whether they had a psychological disorder diagnosis were controlled in the study. There were some limitations to the study, which means there were some components of the study that could have affected the results. The information used in the study was self-reported by the participants. This means some people may have reported higher amounts of sleep than they typically get, while others may have reported less. People’s definitions of sleep problems could also vary widely. Another limitation was participants in the study were heavily female, and overall academically more successful students.

The participants were asked four specific questions to get an idea about their sleep habits, and possible sleep problems. These questions included things such as when they fell asleep, how they slept throughout the night, and how they felt throughout the next day based on the amount of sleep they got the night before.

Information collected in the study showed poor sleep can have a negative effect on student’s performance in school, specifically their GPA and chances of dropping a course, but not getting enough sleep can lead to other problems as well. Examples of possible problems include an increased chance of getting sick, psychological disorders becoming noticeable, and a greater chance of partaking in possibly dangerous situations such as substance use and unprotected sex.

Many universities focus on other issues such as drug use and binge drinking, but do not focus on sleep problems. Sleep problems can have the same or greater effects on academic performance as these more publicized issues. This is a problem because student’s may be doing all they can to not engage in the dangerous activities that are focused on, while they do not know their sleep habits are having a poor effect on their performance as well. Despite students wanting the opportunity to learn about sleep problems on their campuses, many schools do not provide students with this information. It is critically important for first-year students to get this information as the chances of them dropping a course are 40% greater than other undergraduates. If universities can give students information about sleep as soon as they come to campus it could eliminate problems that these students have later in their college career due to poor sleep.

Reflection

Overall, I found it difficult to summarize the whole research article and follow the word count restriction. Although all the information in the original research article is important for readers of pop culture sources to know, I as the journalist, had to determine what was most important. I chose to include more specific details that related to the five critical questions. I left out information that seemed to be filler information which could be said in a shorter summary than was presented in the research article.

One of my main focuses when writing my summary of the research article was answering the five critical questions as these are important to readers. Regarding the first critical question, I did define what a college student was in the study, while the pop culture article did not. Although I defined this variable I did not define sleep problems very specifically, and this could lead to some confusion by readers. I think even among participants this could be a vary widely interpreted variable. Another difference between my summary and the news article was that I explained how participants were randomly selected from several colleges and the news article did not. I could have been more specific about the colleges where students were chosen from, but I felt that this was a detail that I could omit. According to the five critical questions though, I believe I should have included this detail to clarify the information for readers. The participants of the study were not assigned to groups and therefore, neither my summary nor the news article could answer the question of how participants were assigned to groups. Another similarity between my summary and the pop culture news article was that they do not allow for causal claims. It is not apparent in either article that random assignment was used because as was mentioned before, it does not seem as though participants were assigned to groups. Findings discussed in my summary could be generalized to students at the universities included in the study because I included how random selection was used in the study. Readers of the news article could not generalize conclusions to any population. Another similarity between my summary and the NY Times article is that they both include specifically selected details to keep the length to a minimum.

After writing my own summary of the research article for the media production project I understand how hard it is for journalists covering psychology research to write a short article about a long, and sometimes complicated research study. I also understand why pop culture articles cannot include all information that is necessary for readers to answer the five critical questions. Before completing the media production project, I thought it was foolish of the journalist of the NY Times article to not include answers to so many of the critical questions. I felt as though she was not telling the whole story, but now I understand she probably tried to get across what she felt was most important for readers to know. From the scholarly article critique I know that research articles contain answers to many more of the five critical questions than do pop culture sources. I learned if you need more information on a topic that you read about in a popular source it is important to go back to the original source because the information you are looking for can probably be found there. After completing these three assignments I now have much more respect for the work that journalists do summarizing large psychology research studies.

Works Cited

Brody, Jane E. “An Underappreciated Key to College Success: Sleep.” The New York Times. 13 Aug. 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/well/an-underappreciated-key-to-college-success-sleep.html.

Hartmann, Monica E., and J. Roxanne Prichard. “Calculating the Contribution of Sleep Problems to Undergraduates Academic Success.” Sleep Health, vol. 4, no. 5, Oct. 2018, pp. 463–471., doi:10.1016/j.sleh.2018.07.002.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326819586_Calculating_the_contribution_of_sleep_problems_to_undergraduates’_academic_success

--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