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Resistance is Reminding the World that Autism Isn’t The Problem

In the latest issue of Scientific American there was a fascinating article on Neandertal DNA in the modern human genome and its effects on neurodevelopment. At least one of the author’s is an #Actu…

Brain structure and connectivity linked to financial ability in middle-aged and older adults

Scientists have uncovered that strong brain circuits—particularly those behind language and arithmetic—may empower seniors to manage finances and fend off scams.

Adolescents with authoritarian leanings exhibit weaker cognitive ability and emotional intelligence

Teens with lower intelligence and emotional abilities are more likely to support authoritarian beliefs, whether left- or right-wing, suggesting shared psychological traits underpin rigid, authority-driven ideologies across the political spectrum.

Genetics, not shared environments, drives parent-child similarities in cognitive ability

Cognitive ability is primarily inherited through genes, with little influence from shared family environments, according to new research.

Are comparable studies really comparable? Suggestions from a problem-solving experiment on urban and rural great tits - Animal Cognition

Performance in tests of various cognitive abilities has often been compared, both within and between species. In intraspecific comparisons, habitat effects on cognition has been a popular topic, frequently with an underlying assumption that urban animals should perform better than their rural conspecifics. In this study, we tested problem-solving ability in great tits Parus major, in a string-pulling and a plug-opening test. Our aim was to compare performance between urban and rural great tits, and to compare their performance with previously published problem solving studies. Our great tits perfomed better in string-pulling than their conspecifics in previous studies (solving success: 54%), and better than their close relative, the mountain chickadee Poecile gambeli, in the plug-opening test (solving success: 70%). Solving latency became shorter over four repeated sessions, indicating learning abilities, and showed among-individual correlation between the two tests. However, the solving ability did not differ between habitat types in either test. Somewhat unexpectedly, we found marked differences between study years even though we tried to keep conditions identical. These were probably due to small changes to the experimental protocol between years, for example the unavoidable changes of observers and changes in the size and material of test devices. This has an important implication: if small changes in an otherwise identical set-up can have strong effects, meaningful comparisons of cognitive performance between different labs must be extremely hard. In a wider perspective this highlights the replicability problem often present in animal behaviour studies.

Being overly optimistic may be linked to poor decision-making

A new paper suggests that excessive optimism may be linked to poor-decision making skills and low cognitive ability compared to people who are more realistic or pessimistic.

A Perfect Argument for Remote Work: Considerable Research Shows Noise Negatively Impacts Productivity and Cognitive Ability

Even a small increase in noise--music, conversations, ambient, etc.--can significantly decrease cognition and overall performance.