In the June 2022 edition of the APA Monitor on Psychology is an excellent article on the psychology of traffic safety. The article features David Strayer’s “four horsemen of death”: speed, impairment, fatigue, and distraction. Given the number and breadth of psychological concepts covered, this article provides fodder for a good end-of-term assignment. It may also save the lives of your students. Note that the journalist uses the term “crash” rather than “accident.” “Crash” is the preferred term by U.S. government agencies, such as the CDC and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The word “accident” implies an incident that could not be avoided. The word “crash” does not carry that connotation. Giving the causes of traffic fatalities are due to driver decision-making, whether it be the driver of the vehicle or the driver of another vehicle, “crash” is a better descriptor than “accident.”   Ask students to read the article “Improving Traffic Safety” (Pappas, 2022), and then answer the following questions. How many people died on U.S. roadways in 2020? Speed. What percentage of the 2020 traffic fatalities were estimated to be caused by excessive speed? The article describes three ways that our environment can contribute to unsafe driving. Take a photo of a road in your area that illustrates one or more of these environmental hazards. Explain. The article also describes three ways that our environment can contribute to safe driving. Take a photo of a road in your area that illustrates one or more of these environmental benefits. Explain. In a survey of drivers at the beginning of the pandemic, researchers “saw an increase in respondents saying they were more likely to break the law because they knew they were less likely to be caught.” Explain this finding in terms of operant conditioning. With fewer people on the roads during the pandemic shut-down, researchers speculate that street racing may have increased. What Ontario law led to a reduction in street racing? Explain this effect in terms of operant conditioning. If you are primarily a driver, what can you do to reduce your chances of dying in a car crash due to speed? If you primarily a passenger, what can you do to reduce your chances of dying in a car crash due to speed? Impairment. What percentage of the 2020 traffic fatalities were estimated to be caused by impaired driving? Based on your reading of the article, describe the relationship between stress, alcohol, and driving while impaired. What Big Five personality trait is associated with a history of driving while impaired and reckless driving? Given your knowledge of this trait, why might that association exist? Fatigue. What percentage of the 2020 traffic fatalities were estimated to be caused by fatigue? Why might this number be an underestimation? Summarize what you learned in this course about the effects of sleep deprivation. Choose five effects, and for each, briefly explain how it could negatively effect driving.   According to the article, what have Australian highway authorities done to combat boredom on empty stretches of highway? Distraction. What percentage of the 2020 traffic fatalities were estimated to be caused by distracted driving? Explain how stress may contribute to distracted driving. Explain how the design of cars may contribute to distracted driving. Give at least one example. Conclusion. What was the most surprising thing you learned in this article? Explain. Identify at least one concept you learned in this course that could apply to speed, impairment, fatigue, or distraction but was not discussed in the article. Briefly describe the concept, and then explain how it could be a contributor to car crashes.   Reference Pappas, S. (2022, June). Improving traffic safety. Monitor on Psychology, 53(4), 46–55.       ... View more

Heads-up displays (HUD) have been common in airplanes for years. (See examples here, or do a Google image search for airplane HUD.) With a HUD, information of use to pilots is projected onto the window, so the pilot can see the information without having to glance down at dashboard gauges, taking their eyes off their view out the window. Automobile manufacturers are now bringing this technology to cars. With a car HUD, the driver will be able to see projected on their windshield information such as speed, speed limit, distance to the car ahead, and highlighted pedestrians. As I read about this technology, I can’t help but wonder if the attentional demands outstrip the value making driving more dangerous with a HUD. After all, pilots are highly trained. In one article about automotive HUDS, I was horrified to read, “And, of course, you should be able to display information from your phone onto the windshield” (Wallaker, 2022). We know that talking on a phone (hands-free or not) takes attention away from driving. A driver who is reading text messages or making a different music selection on their windshield would be seconds away from a crash. On the other hand, if the HUD marks the car in front as green, then we will know that we are following at a safe distance. If the car is red, we need to back off until it goes green. That’s real-time, useful information that is directly related to safe driving. We know from behavioral change research, immediate feedback is more useful than delayed feedback—or in the case of the lack of technology most of us currently drive with—no feedback at all. After covering attention, this may be a good opportunity to give your students a little practice designing experiments. Describe automotive HUD technology, including some of the information that HUDs can display. Ask students to design an experiment that would test these hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: If drivers are given driving-relevant information, such as speed and distance to vehicle in front, via a heads-up display (HUD), then they will have better driving performance. Hypothesis 2: If drivers are given driving-irrelevant information, such as the ability to read text messages or change music selections, via a heads-up display (HUD), then they will have impaired driving performance. “In your design, identify each level of the independent variable, and identify the dependent variable. You may have more than one dependent variable. Include operational definitions of each.” To help students get started, explain that researchers use driving simulators for research such as this as it would be (very!) unethical to put research volunteers behind the wheel of a real car on a real road where they could kill real people, including themselves. The additional advantage of driving simulators is that researchers have complete control over the simulated environment. They can decide what information to display, when a text message appears, and when a virtual child runs into the street. After students have had a few minutes to consider their own experimental designs, invite students to work in groups of three or four to discuss their designs with the goal of creating one design for the group. After groups appear to have settled on a design, invite one group to share their independent variable and its levels. Ask if other groups have different independent variables or different levels. As groups share, identify pros and cons of each independent variable and level. Take the best options offered. Next, ask a group to share their dependent variable(s). Invite other groups to share their dependent variable(s). Again, identify pros and cons of each, then take the best options offered. If you’d like to expand this into an assignment, ask students to dive into your library’s databases. Have any research teams done experiments like the one the class just created? If so, what did they find?   Reference Wallaker, M. (2022, February 6). How does a car HUD work? MUO. https://www.makeuseof.com/how-does-car-hud-work/   ... View more

COVID has changed a lot of things. (Shall we nominate this for understatement of the year?) In this particular case, I’m thinking about sleep patterns. A New York Times article got me thinking about this (Braff, 2022). For the story, the journalist interviewed a few people whose sleeping patterns changed during COVID. One mother of three reported that she would wake up at 3am and then go back to sleep for an hour around 6am. While waking up was due to her mind racing, she began to value the few hours in the middle of the night that she had to herself. For another person, he had always split his night sleep into segments. With the shift to remote work, he was able to allow himself to fall into what felt like a more natural rhythm for him: sleeping from 10pm to 2am, awake for an hour and a half to two hours, then back to sleep for another three hours. The story that really struck me, though, was that of Diana Hughes who spent a year working with physicians trying to find a solution for her middle-of-the-night insomnia. She happened upon the solution by doing her own research. What if being up for an hour, or two, or three in the middle of the night wasn’t actually a problem? Once she labeled her sleep pattern as another legitimate way to sleep, there was no longer a problem to be solved. This was a powerful reminder to me that what we say in our Intro Psych courses and how we say it matters. When we talk about sleep, are we implying that sleeping seven to nine hours straight through the night is “normal” and how we should all be sleeping? And that any wakefulness during the night is “insomnia,” and thus a problem? Insomnia questionnaires (like this one), frame waking in the middle of the night as a problem. “Please rate the current severity of your insomnia” for falling asleep, staying asleep, and waking early. The next four questions, though, address whether it is really a problem: satisfaction with sleep pattern, does the sleep pattern interfere with life, do others think it interferes, and how worried are we about it. As someone whose sleep pattern became biphasic some time in adulthood, I’ve had occasion to give this a lot of thought. I typically fall asleep between 8:30pm and 9pm, wake up around 1am, and fall back asleep between 2am and 2:30am, and then wake up for the day between 6am and 7am. My home and work life give me the luxury to follow what sure feels like my natural sleep/wake cycle. For example, I don’t have children who need tending to in the evening. I don’t have a work schedule that requires me to set an alarm for 5:30am. In looking at the sleep questionnaire, yes, I suppose I have “difficulty staying asleep,” except I don’t perceive it as a “difficulty.” I am satisfied with my sleeping pattern, it does not interfere with my life, my wife doesn’t think it interferes with my life, and I’m not worried at all about my “problem.” But let’s imagine that I did have children that required my attention in the evening and in the morning, and let’s imagine that I did have a job that required me to be on the road at 7am in order to get to wherever I needed to be on time. Suddenly, my sleep pattern has become a problem to be solved. Why must I contort my biology to fit my life? That was the preferred solution pre-COVID. “You’re not sleeping through the night? Time for you to make some changes. Exercise more. Consume less caffeine. Kick your dog off the bed. Turn down the thermostat. Wear an eye mask. Turn on the white noise.” For many people, COVID flipped the script. If children are going to school remotely and if employees are working remotely, the removal of the lengthy daily commutes (and, if we’re being honest, the removal of the need to shower and get dressed) produced at least a few more free hours during the day. For some at least, sleeping patterns changed to something that felt more normal. (For others, the anxiety created by COVID, such as income loss, health worries, death of loved ones, produced insomnia.) As we watched the Great Resignation, we have seen a lot of white-collar workers unwilling to return to their daily commute. In droves, they have left their face-to-face jobs in exchange for remote employment. Their reasons are myriad, but I have to wonder for how many is sleep quality and quantity just one more factor. The New York Times article (Braff, 2022) ends with this: “When practicing segmented sleep, insomniacs don’t have to worry about waking up in the middle of the night, as that’s the way segmented sleep works,” Mr. Savy said. “Therefore, they can adjust the schedule to their insomnia and reduce the stress associated with it.” But returning to sleep patterns from the Middle Ages isn’t for everyone, Dr. Avena said, suggesting that segmented sleep should be tried only by those who are already having sleep issues. My goodness, the assumptions. The word “insomniac” implies someone with a problem. Yes, I’m awake for an hour or two in the middle of the night, but I’m not an “insomniac.” Second, segmented sleep is not something one tries. Years ago, I did not set my alarm for 1am and stay awake for an hour just to try out a biphasic sleep pattern. I just happen to wake up naturally at 1am, I do not define it as a problem, and I fall back asleep naturally an hour or two later. Again, I don’t have “sleep issues.” My big takeaways: I need to pay close attention to the assumptions I make about what is normal or typical, and I need to carefully consider how I talk about these concepts with students.   Reference Braff, D. (2022, February 12). Meet me at 3 A.M. for a cup of coffee. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/12/style/segmented-sleep.html   ... View more

In Intro Psych, we often approach sleep deprivation as an issue faced by individuals with solutions directed at individuals. A compelling article in Science (Pérez Ortega, 2021) argues that we should also consider sleep deprivation in the context of social justice. I’ll skip over how important sleep is. Instructors of Intro Psych, on the whole, probably have a pretty good grasp of the research on sleep deprivation and its effects. After covering the importance of sleep, share these data with your students: A 2015 study in the United States found that, 43.4% of Blacks, 37.1% of Chinese Americans, 31.5% of Hispanics, and 19.3% of Whites reported sleeping an average of less than six hours per night. Ask students to consider what environmental, socioeconomic, and social factors may contribute to that disparity.   Here are some of the factors identified by researchers in the Science article: Black and Hispanic workers are more likely to work nights. Those who work the night shift are less likely to get enough sleep. Acculturation stress for immigrants contributes to sleep loss. The stress of being the target of—or fear of being the target of—prejudice and discrimination is associated with greater insomnia.  “[P]eople of color tend to reside in brighter areas, where they are exposed to approximately twice as much ambient light at night as white people” (Pérez Ortega, 2021, p. 553). “Black, Hispanic, and Asian people in the United States are also exposed to disproportionately high levels of particulate air pollution”(Pérez Ortega, 2021, p. 553). Air pollution affects how well we breathe. The more difficult it is to breathe, the more difficult it is to sleep. Black Americans are more likely to live in neighborhoods where nighttime noise is common. Conclude the discussion by asking students what we can do as society members to mitigate these environmental and social factors. As an example, there is a movement to reduce city light pollution (Payne, 2021). While much of the impetus for the movement is about energy conservation, changing city lights to softer, less intense lights should make urban sleeping a little easier, too. “For the first time, the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year included improving sleep as one of the main disease prevention goals for the next decade. [Marishka Brown, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorder Research at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, who chaired the working group that came up with sleep objectives for the project, called Healthy People 2030, is elated that improving sleep is now a national health priority. She is disappointed, however, that tackling sleep disparities wasn’t ultimately included, despite all the evidence she and others presented to decision-makers” (Pérez Ortega, 2021, p. 555). Here is the Healthy People 2030 section on sleep, for your reference.     References Payne, E. (2021, September 27). Dark skies ordinance to dim Pittsburgh’s light pollution. Carnegie Mellon University. http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2021/september/light-pollution-ordinance.html Pérez Ortega, R. (2021). Divided we sleep. Science, 374(6567), 552–555. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.acx9445     ... View more

In 2017, I wrote a blog post about an activity designed to help students see how the number of drug overdose deaths have changed since 1968 using this interactive article from the New York Times. Carolyn Brown Kramer, via the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Facebook group, asked for updated drug overdose statistics. After having your students complete the activity from that initial blog post, provide students with the most current drug overdose death data presented below. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides a “Drug Overdose Deaths” statistics dashboard that is updated monthly based on the best available data. Keep in mind that the best available data are several months old. As I write this in March 2021, the latest data are for July 2020. Line graph Each data point in the line graph is a 12-month rolling total. For example, the number of drug overdose deaths reported for July 2020 are the number of drug overdose deaths that occurred between August 1, 2019 and July 31, 2020. The number of such deaths reported for June 2020 occurred between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020. Mouse over a data point to see the numbers. In the line graph you will see both “predicted” data (circles) and “reported” data (solid line). As they explain on the dashboard page, “Drug overdose deaths often require lengthy investigations, and death certificates may be initially filed with a manner of death ‘pending investigation’ and/or with a preliminary or unknown cause of death.” For “reported” data, the investigation is complete. The “predicted” data include deaths that are “pending investigation.” Both reported and predicted data will change as those investigations are completed. Ask your students to predict how the number of drug overdose deaths have changed in your state or District of Columbia, then change the jurisdiction to your location to show students the data. Map For easy visual comparisons between states/District of Columbia, the map displays data by location based on the number of drug overdose deaths for the most recent month for which data are available compared to the data from a year earlier. At the time of this writing, the comparison is between July 2019 and July 2020. The colors depict percentage change between those two months. North Dakota and North Carolina were the only two states with a decrease in the number of reported drug overdose deaths, down 2.3% and 1.7%, respectively. Alaska reported no change. All other states reported an increase. The District of Columbia had the biggest change during that time period with an increase of 56.8% in number of reported drug overdose deaths (308 to 483). Data Tables Sortable data tables of the line graph data and the map data are available directly below the map. Whatever you have selected as the jurisdiction for the line graph, those are the data that will be displayed in the first data table. A word of caution As you cover this very important topic with your students, remember that some—perhaps many—of your students has had someone they know die from a drug overdose. Or perhaps some of your students themselves came close to dying from a drug overdose. Always remembering that I’m talking about experiences my students have had helps me use language that is sensitive to the people behind the statistics. ... View more

This is a whole new level of walking in someone else's shoes! Virtual Body Swapping With Friend Can Alter Your Sense of Self https://psychcentral.com/news/2020/08/31/virtual-body-swapping-with-friend-can-alter-your-sense-of-self?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=owned&utm_content=2021-02-24#1 ... View more

Recently the American Psychological Association published a Speaking of Psychology podcast (and transcript) about the One Mind PsyberGuide—a mental health app rating service. While I wasn’t paying attention, mental health apps have proliferated. Visiting the About One Mind PsyberGuide page, we learn “One Mind PsyberGuide now operates out of the University of California, Irvine and Northwestern University where our team consists of experts in mental health, technology, and technology delivered care. One Mind PsyberGuide is not an industry website; its goal is to provide accurate and reliable information free of preference, bias, or endorsement.” Their mental health app rating system—applied by professional reviewers—includes three main criteria: credibility, user experience, and transparency. Not all of the 196 apps in their database have complete reviews as of this writing. The following is a suggested assignment for the Intro Psych therapy chapter. ********* One challenge for consumers when looking at mental health services is determining what has good scientific evidence backing it and what is closer to quackery. The One Mind PsyberGuide is a website that provides reviews of mental health apps. Apply the CRAAP test to the One Mind PsyberGuide website. Be sure to address each bullet point under Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. In one paragraph, state whether you would recommend this website to friend who was interested in using a mental health app? Explain why or why not. Now, download one of the free apps reviewed by the site to your phone. (If you don’t have a phone, please contact your instructor for an alternative to this section of this assignment.) Apply the CRAAP test to the app. Again, be sure to address each bullet point under Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. Does your evaluation of the app match the review provided by the PsyberGuide? Explain. In one paragraph, state whether you would recommend this mental health app to a friend? Explain why or why not.           ... View more

Are you interested in sleep paralysis? If so, check out this new article: Sleep Paralysis and the Monsters Inside Your Mind - Scientific American http://ow.ly/J9E230qYF1T #psychstudentrss ... View more

On June 17, 2020, the psychological science community said goodbye to Anders Ericsson, who history will remember as the researcher who found that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert. Sort of. Ericsson, Ralf Kampe, and Clemens Tesch-Römer (1993) recruited 30 student violinists (“best,” “good,” and “music teachers”). I admit to wincing at the label “music teachers” for the least-skilled group. They wrote, “We call the students from the department of music education the ‘music teachers’ because teaching is the most likely future profession for this group.” [I had to remind myself that teaching is a skill unto itself, just not the skill they were after in this particularly study.] All 30 participants had at least 10 years of violin-playing experience, so there were no novices in the group. The students kept a diary for one week. The “best” and “good” violinists practiced an average of 24.3 hours that week. The “music teachers” practiced 9.3 hours. Where does the 10,000 hours of practice come from? Ericsson et al. asked the violinists to estimate “the average number of hours of practice alone with the violin per week for each year since they had started playing the violin.” By multiplying the number of hours per week by 52 weeks, they calculated an estimate of number of hours of practice for each year. And then they added up the yearly totals. By the age of 20, the “best” and “good” students had accumulated 10,000 hours of practice. Because they were concerned that the music academy they had been attending for the last two years would artificially inflate the number of hours of practice, they dialed back the age to 18. How many hours of practice had the violinists accumulated by age 18? The “best” students had 7,410 hours of practice. The “good students” had 5,301 hours of practice. The “music teachers” had a mere 3,420 hours of practice. For comparison, Ericsson et al. asked 10 middle-aged, accomplished, professional violinists to estimate the number of hours they practiced each week for each year they played the violin up to age 18. They estimated 7,336 hours, virtually identical to the “best” students. A follow-up study with pianists found similar results. By age 18, the “best” pianists had amassed an estimated 7,606 hours of practice. By age 20, the total was over 10,000 hours. Ericsson et al. emphasized that it’s not just quantity of practice, but quality of practice. “[W]e argue that the differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve” (Ericsson et al., 1993, p. 400). Experts have deliberately worked to improve their skills. They have not simply done the same—potentially wrong—thing hour after hour. “Does practice make perfect? ‘Practice makes perfect’—only if the practice is perfect” (Bennett, 1923, p. 49). ******** If you would like to make this an online discussion, provide the above information to your students (edit at will). While the link below goes to the NYTimes.com, consider linking to his obituary through your library’s database in case your students have exceeded the maximum number of free NYTimes.com articles for the month. Initial post Read Dr. Anders Ericsson’s obituary in the New York Times. Part A. Quote Find a quote from the obituary that you found interesting and in 100+ words of reflection, explain why. Be sure to use quotation marks for your quote; the quotation is not part of the 100+ word count. Part B. 10,000 hours (100+ words)      Having read Ericsson’s obituary and the information provided above, would you say that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to make someone an expert? Why or why not? How you would define “expert.” For example, when would you say that someone is an expert? Do think it matters at what point in life the hours of practice happens? Why or why not? Part C. Question If you had had the opportunity to ask Anders Ericsson a question, what would it have been? In 50+ words, explain why chose that question. Responses Please respond to the initial discussion posts written by at least two of your classmates. Part A. In 50+ words, respond to the quote chosen with at least two of the following: A compliment, e.g., "I like how... because...," I like that... because..." A comment, e.g., "I agree that... because...," "I disagree that... because..." A connection, e.g., "I have also thought that...," "That reminds me of..." A question, e.g., "I wonder why...," "I wonder how..."  Part B. In 50+ words, respond to the 10,000-hour reflection with at least two of the following: A compliment, e.g., "I like how... because...," I like that... because..." A comment, e.g., "I agree that... because...," "I disagree that... because..." A connection, e.g., "I have also thought that...," "That reminds me of..." A question, e.g., "I wonder why...," "I wonder how..."  Part C. In 50+ words, provide your reaction to the question to Ericsson in the initial post. Use at least two of the following: A compliment, e.g., "I like how... because...," I like that... because..." A comment, e.g., "I agree that... because...," "I disagree that... because..." A connection, e.g., "I have also thought that...," "That reminds me of..." A question, e.g., "I wonder why...," "I wonder how..."    References Bennett, H. (1923). Psychology and Self-Development. Ginn and Company. Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Romer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363 ... View more

It’s valuable for students to learn a little bit about the researchers whose names plaster the insides of their textbooks. Each researcher comes from a background that matches that of at least some of our students. We want our students to think like this: “If they can become a respected psychological scientist, so can I.” This month (June 2020) we said goodbye to William Dement. Intro Psych instructors know his name because of his important sleep research. Obituaries are mini biographies that give us an opportunity to celebrate a person’s life. This discussion invites students to read Dement’s obituary and reflect on his contributions to psychological science. In the instructions below, I provide a link to the obituary on the New York Time website. Because the NYTimes limits the number of free articles available each month, however, it would be better if you provide a link to the obituary through your library’s database. If you’re not sure how to do that, contact your institution’s friendly librarian or your equally-friendly public librarian. While this is presented as an asynchronous online discussion, it may be easily adapted as a synchronous discussion or as a stand-alone assignment. The compliment/comment/connection/question framework is courtesy of Jenn Stewart-Mitchell. **** Initial post Dr. William Dement, sleep researcher, passed away on June 17, 2020. Read his obituary in the New York Times. Part A. Quote Find a quote from the obituary that you found interesting and in 100+ words of reflection, explain why. Be sure to use quotation marks for your quote; the quotation is not part of the 100+ word count. Part B. Research After reviewing Dement’s research as provided in both the obituary and your textbook, what do you think was his most important study? In 100+ words, describe the study, then explain why you chose it as his most important. Part C. Teaching In 50+ words, would you have wanted to take his class on sleep and dreams? Why or why not? Responses Please respond to the initial discussion posts written by at least two of your classmates. Part A. In 50+ words, respond to the quote chosen with at least two of the following: A compliment, e.g., "I like how... because...," I like that... because..." A comment, e.g., "I agree that... because...," "I disagree that... because..." A connection, e.g., "I have also thought that...," "That reminds me of..." A question, e.g., "I wonder why...," "I wonder how..."  Part B. In 50+ words, respond to the research selected with at least two of the following: A compliment, e.g., "I like how... because...," I like that... because..." A comment, e.g., "I agree that... because...," "I disagree that... because..." A connection, e.g., "I have also thought that...," "That reminds me of..." A question, e.g., "I wonder why...," "I wonder how..."  Part C. In 50+ words, provide your reaction to what was written in the initial post about taking his class. Use at least two of the following: A compliment, e.g., "I like how... because...," I like that... because..." A comment, e.g., "I agree that... because...," "I disagree that... because..." A connection, e.g., "I have also thought that...," "That reminds me of..." A question, e.g., "I wonder why...," "I wonder how..."          ... View more

One of the perennial challenges in teaching Intro Psych is helping students understand that knowing that two variables are, say, positively correlated does not tell us anything about what causes that relationship. Discussion of this study would work during your coverage of correlations or during your coverage of circadian rhythms as an opportunity to revisit correlations. The 6.5-year study of 433,268 British adults (Knutson & von Schantz, 2018) provides us with an illustrative example. The researchers asked each person “Do you consider yourself to be definitely a morning person [27%], more a morning than evening person [35%], more an evening than morning person [28%], definitely an evening person [9%].” “Increased eveningness, particularly definite evening type, was associated with increased prevalence of a wide variety of diseases or disorders, including dia- betes, psychological, neurological, respiratory and gastrointestinal/abdominal disorders.” If your Intro Psych students are like most people, they want to jump to the conclusion that being a night owl will cause a number of health problems that will eventually lead to an early death. The lead author of this study, Kristen Knutson, thinks the root of the problem is really that of a mismatch. Many of our societies are geared toward the morning chronotype. If you have an evening chronotype but are trying to work, say, 9am to 5pm, you’re fighting against your own internal clock (Khan, 2018).   Ask students to work in pairs or small groups to generate a list of factors that are associated with good health. Perhaps their list includes things like exercising, getting good sleep, eating well, and developing and maintaining strong social ties. Now ask students to consider why these things may be more difficult for night owls than morning larks. For example, how many recreational sports teams compete at 11pm? How many spin or yoga classes are offered at midnight? How easy is it to find a restaurant with healthy fare at 10:30pm? How hard is it to get enough sleep when you don’t get sleepy until 2am but have to be up at 7am to be a work by 9am? Maintaining social ties is difficult for night owls who want to hang out at 10pm when most of their friends are headed to bed (Clark, 2019). The cause of the correlation between chronotype and health may be due to this whole host of third factors. What if night owls were allowed to be night owls? Would a night owl yoga instructor, for example, teaching at 11pm have night owl students? Would night owls get more sleep if they worked, say, 2pm to 10pm? If time allows, ask volunteers to share their chronotypes and how they’ve adjusted their schedules to fit that chronotype. Or, if their schedules don’t fit, to share why that’s a struggle. In closing this activity, reiterate that knowing that there is a relationship between two variables tells us nothing about why two variables are related.    References Clark, B. (2019, May 23). No, night owls aren’t doomed to die early. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/smarter-living/no-night-owls-arent-doomed-to-die-early.html Khan, A. (2018, April 11). Bad news for night owls. Their risk of early death is 10% higher than for early risers, study finds. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-night-owl-death-20180412-story.html Knutson, K. L., & von Schantz, M. (2018). Associations between chronotype, morbidity and mortality in the UK Biobank cohort. Chronobiology International, 35(8), 1045–1053. https://doi.org/10.1080/07420528.2018.1454458     ... View more

No, your students will not be texting or talking/listening to a phone in a crosswalk! Instead, they will be observing others who are. A recent study (Alsaleh, Sayed, & Zaki, 2018)* found that people who were on their phones – either looking at their screens or talking/listening to their phone – took longer to cross the street. This is dangerous for a number of reasons. For example, distracted pedestrians are not on the lookout for distracted motorists. When distracted pedestrians and distracted motorists meet, distracted pedestrians always lose. Since distracted pedestrians spend more time in the crosswalk, they have a greater chance of being hit by a distracted motorist. How much time does it take? In urban areas, lanes should be 10 feet (3 meters) wide (National Association of City Transportation Officials, n.d.). That makes a four-lane road 40 feet (12 meters) wide. In the distraction study (Alsaleh et al., 2018), non-distracted pedestrians walked at a rate of 1.66 meters/second. That means it took them about 7 seconds to cross a four-lane road. In contrast, researchers found that phone-distracted pedestrians walked at a rate of about 1.5 meters/second, taking about 8 seconds to cross a four-lane road. The activity The researchers used observers on the ground to determine whether and how pedestrians were using their phones and used cameras to determine walking speed. For this activity, all measures will be done by observers. Divide students into groups no smaller than three students. One student will determine if the pedestrian is distracted by their phone or not. Since the researchers found no difference in walking speed between looking at the phone and talking/listening, let’s keep this simple and not ask students to make the distinction. One student will be the timer. Using a stopwatch app on their own phone, the student will time how long it takes the pedestrian to cross the street. The third student will be the recorder – recording whether the pedestrian was distracted and recording the time it took the pedestrian to cross the street. Students will need to make some decisions before heading out. If you would like to compile the data across groups, then you should have this discussion as a class. If you would like to discuss how each group’s decisions affected their results afterwards, then let each group decide these on their own. Consider these as starter questions. When students return from the activity, they may have other issues that should have been considered in advance. That is a great opportunity to talk about the importance of pilot studies and their role in helping sort out these issues before investing time in a larger study. Where are they going to do their observations? Ideally, it will be a street with a lot of pedestrian traffic. The wider the street, the easier it will be see differences in the time it takes to cross. If there is a group of people waiting to cross the street, how will students determine who to time? The first person to cross? The right-most person? How will the students identify the person to each other to make sure that the student noting the phone behavior and the student doing the timing are looking at the same pedestrian? When will the timing start? When the target pedestrian lifts a foot to step off the curb? When the foot first hits the street? When will the timing stop? When the target pedestrian lifts a foot to stop onto the curb? When the last foot leaves the pavement? How will the recorder record the data? How many columns will be in the data sheet? To how many decimal places will the stopwatch times be recorded? How long will they collect data? Or how many pedestrians should they time? What if all of the pedestrians are on a phone? When students return with their data, either that same class period or the next class period, have the recording student enter their data in a shared Google spreadsheet, for example. One column should be the first and last initials of each member of the group, one column is for non-distracted times, and one column is for distracted times. Calculate means for the non-distracted and distracted pedestrians. If you’d like, conduct a t-test if you want to talk about statistical significance. If some groups seem to have much slower or longer times than other groups, discuss the methodology they used. Give each group an opportunity to share with the class what they would do differently if they were to conduct this observational research study again. Conclusion To conclude the activity, explain that if the class were to submit this study for publication, the authors would summarize the research related to this topic, explain in detail how the study was conducted, reveal the results, and finally explain what the findings mean, how they add to the body of research on this topic, and identify what could be done differently or better next time. Now is also a good time to explain the peer review process and the importance of replication.   References Alsaleh, R., Sayed, T., & Zaki, M. H. (2018). Assessing the effect of pedestrians’ use of cell phones on their walking behavior. Transportation Research Record, Advance online publication. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/0361198118780708 National Association of City Transportation Officials. (n.d.). Lane width. Retrieved August 17, 2018, from https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/street-design-elements/lane-width/   *Note: The full article by Alsaleh et al. is available through ResearchGate. ... View more

It’s well-established that: brain cells survive for a time after cardiac arrest and even after declared death. some people have been resuscitated after cardiac arrest— even hours after, if they were linked to blood-oxygenating and heart-massaging machines. a fraction of resuscitated people have reported experiencing a bright light, a tunnel, a replay of old memories, and/or out-of-body sensations. For some, these experiences later enhanced their spirituality or personal growth. Recently, I enjoyed listening to and questioning a university physician who is launching a major multi-site study of cardiac arrest, resuscitation, and near-death experiences. As a dualist (one who assumes mind and body are distinct, though interacting), he is impressed by survivors’ reports of floating up to the ceiling, looking down on the scene below, and observing efforts to revive them. Thus, his study seeks to determine whether such patients can—while presumably separated from their supine body—perceive and later recall images displayed on an elevated, ceiling-facing iPad. Care to predict the result? My own prediction is based on three lines of research: Parapsychological efforts have failed to confirm out-of-body travel with remote viewing. A mountain of cognitive neuroscience findings link brain and mind. Scientific observations show that brain oxygen deprivation and hallucinogenic drugs can cause similar mystical experiences (complete with the tunnel, beam of light, and so forth). Thus, I expect there will be no replicable evidence of near-death minds viewing events remote from the body. Setting my assumptions and expectations aside, I asked the physician-researcher about some of his assumptions: For how long do you think the mind would survive clinical death? Minutes? Hours? Forever? (His answer, if I understood, was uncertainty.) When resuscitated, the mind would rejoin and travel again with the body, yes? When the patient is wheeled to a new room, the mind rides along? (That assumption was not contested.) What about the Hiroshima victims whose bodies were instantly vaporized? Are you assuming that–for at least a time—their consciousness or mind survived that instant and complete loss of their brain and body? (His clear answer: Yes.) That made me wonder: If a mind could post-date the body, could it also predate it? Or does the body create the mind, which grows with it, but which then, like dandelion seeds, floats away from it? The brain-mind relationship appeared in another presentation at the same session. A European university philosopher of mind argued that, in addition to the dualist view (which he regards as “dead”) and the reductionist view (Francis Crick: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons”), there is a third option. This is the nonreductive physicalist view—“nonreductive” because the mind has its own integrity and top-down causal properties, and “physicalist” because the mind emerges from the brain and is bound to the brain. The 20th century’s final decade was “the decade of the brain,” and the 21st century’s first decade was “the decade of the mind.” Perhaps we could say that today’s science and philosophy mark this as a decade of the brain-mind relationship? For these scholars, there are miles to go before they enter their final sleep—or should I say until their body evicts their mind? Addendum for those with religious interests: Two of my friends—British cognitive neuroscientist Malcolm Jeeves and American developmental psychologist Thomas Ludwig—reflect on these and other matters in their just-published book, Psychological Science and Christian Faith. If you think that biblical religion assumes a death-denying dualism (a la Plato’s immortal soul) prepare to be surprised. ... View more

As if cell phone use in cars isn’t bad enough, car manufacturers are building distractions into our automobiles, which I affectionately call Built-in Automotive Driving Distraction Systems TM . Automakers now include more options to allow drivers to use social media, email and text. The technology is also becoming more complicated to use. Cars used to have a few buttons and knobs. Some vehicles now have as many as 50 buttons on the steering wheel and dashboard that are multi-functional. There are touch screens, voice commands, writing pads, heads-up displays on windshields and mirrors and 3-D computer-generated images (Lowy, 2017). In an attempt to save lives, I have been hammering pretty hard on our inability to multi-task in my Intro Psych course. While this topic comes up in greater detail when I cover consciousness, I also embed examples of attention research in my coverage of research methods. Correlation example After I introduce the concept of correlations, I give my students 5 correlations, and ask them to identify the correlation as positive, negative, or no correlation. One of those correlations comes from a 2009 Stanford study reported by NBC News: people who multitask the most are the worst at it (“memory, ability to switch from one task to another, and being able to focus on a task”) (“Multitaskers, pay attention -- if you can,” 2009). Experiment example In talking about experimental design, I discuss David Strayer’s driving simulation research at the University of Utah. His lab’s research is easy for students to understand and the results carry a punch. I give this description to my students and ask them to identify the independent variable and the dependent variables. In an experiment, "[p]articipants drove in a simulator while either talking or not talking on a hands-free cell phone." Those who were talking on a cell phone made more driving errors, such as swerving off the road or into the wrong lane, running a stoplight or stop sign, not stopping for a pedestrian in a crosswalk, than those who were not talking on a cell phone. Even more interestingly, those who were talking on a cellphone rated their driving in the simulator as safer as compared to those who weren't talking on a cellphone. In other words, those talking on the cellphone were less likely to be aware of the driving errors they were making (Sanbonmatsu, Strayer, Biondi, Behrends, & Moore, 2016).   Class demo When Yana Weinstein of LearningScientists.org posted a link to a blog she wrote on a task switching demo (Weinstein, 2017) to the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Facebook page, I thought, “Now this is what my research methods lecture was missing!” I encourage you to read Weinstein’s original demo once you’re done reading mine.   I randomly divided my class into two groups. To do that I used a random team generator for Excel, but use whatever system you’d like. Weinstein does this demo with a within subjects design which, frankly, makes more sense than my between subjects design, but in my defense I’m also using this demo to help students understand the value of random assignment.   One group of students recited numbers and letters sequentially (1 to 10 and then A to J). The other group recited them interleaved (1 A 2 B 3 C, etc.). In your instructions, be clear that students cannot write down the numbers/letters and just read them. That’s a different task! Students worked in small groups. While one student recited, another student timed them with a cellphone stopwatch app. (You don’t have to know anything about cellphone stopwatch apps. Your students can handle it.) I didn’t bother dividing students into groups by task. In one group, there might have been three students who recited sequentially and a fourth student who recited interleaved. I asked students to write down their times, and then I came around to each group and asked for those times. I just wrote the times on a piece of paper, and displayed the results using a doc camera. Almost everyone in the sequential condition recited the numbers/letters in under 6 seconds. Almost everyone in the interleaved condition took over 13 seconds. In addition to talking about the independent variable (and experimental and control conditions) and the dependent variable, we talked about the value of random assignment. I had no idea who could do these tasks quickly or slowly. If 20% of them could do these tasks quickly, then random assignment would likely create two groups where the percentage of fast-task participants would be the same in each group. Is it possible that all of the fast-task participants ended up in the sequential task condition? Yep. And that’s one reason replication is important. Oh. And when you’re studying or writing a paper, students, this is why you should keep your phone on silent and out of sight. If you keep looking at your phone for social media or text notifications, it’s going to take you a lot longer to finish your studying or finish writing your paper. Perhaps even twice as long. And driving? As you switch back and forth from driving to phone (or from driving to Built-in Automotive Driving Distraction Systems TM ), it’s not going to take you twice as long to get to your destination. You’re traveling at the same speed, but you’re working with half the attention. That increases the chances that you will not get to your destination at all.   A lot of what we cover in Intro Psych is important to the quality of students’ lives. Helping students see our inability to multitask is important in helping our students – and the people they are near them when they drive – stay alive.   References Lowy, J. (2017, October 5). Technology crammed into cars worsens driver distraction. The Seattle Times. Seattle. Retrieved from https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/new-cars-increasingly-crammed-with-distracting-technology-2  Multitaskers, pay attention -- if you can. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.nbcnews.com/id/32541721/ns/health-mental_health Sanbonmatsu, D. M., Strayer, D. L., Biondi, F., Behrends, A. A., & Moore, S. M. (2016). Cell-phone use diminishes self-awareness of impaired driving. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 23(2), 617–623. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-015-0922-4 Weinstein, Y. (2017). The cost of task switching: A simple yet very powerful demonstration. Retrieved from http://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2017/7/28-1  ... View more

I confess that for many years in my Intro Psych course I didn’t cover sleep or stress. In retrospect, I’m sorry that I didn’t use that opportunity to give those students that information they could use to live better lives. While I can’t go back and change the past, I can make sure that the students I have today – and hopefully, my students’ families and friends – have this information.   The cover story to the March 2017 Monitor on Psychology is on “how smartphones are affecting our health and well-being, and points the way toward taking back control.” The article cites 2015 data from the Pew Research Center that said 72% of U.S. adults have a smartphone (Weir, 2017). In 2016, that number jumped to 77%. If you’re between 18 and 29, 92% of your cohort has one. For those of us 50 to 64, 74% of our peers have one – last year, only 59% of people in this age group owned a smartphone (Smith, 2017). Ask your students to raise their hands if they own a smartphone. After almost all of the hands go up, ask students to take a couple minutes to jot down a few ways in which their phones help them and a few ways in which their phones interfere with their lives. Ask students to share their lists in pairs or small groups, adding other ideas as they come up. Ask groups to identify one student as the recorder. After a few minutes of discussion, starting on one side of the room, ask the recorder from each group to share one benefit their group identified. If it was a benefit other groups had on their list, they should cross it off. List the benefits on the board/computer screen. Repeat this process for the ways smartphones interfere with their lives. One of the interferences cited in the article is lack of sleep – due to blue light disrupting the circadian rhythm, due to getting worked up reading email and text messages before bed, due to waking up to answer phone calls or respond to text messages. Lack of sleep can cause all sorts of problems, including making it harder to cope with stress or poorer school or work performance thus upping stress levels. As a clicker question, ask students: Imagine that you didn’t have your phone for an hour. How freaked out would you be? I’d be fine. A little nervous. Pretty anxious. Totally freaked out. As a research methods booster, describe Nancy Cheever, Larry Rosen, and colleagues’ quasi-experiment (2014) described in the Monitor article. They asked participants to estimate how much time they spent each day on their phones doing various activities, e.g., “send and receive email,” “play video games.” I’m not sure how good any of us are at making such estimates. Given that the range of responses they got was from 1 hour a day to 64.5 (?!) hours a day, I’m even less confident in our ability to make such ratings. (If time allows, give students a few minutes to brainstorm other ways phone usage could be estimated or tracked.) The researchers soldiered on and divided participants into three groups: low smartphone usage (1 to 7 hours a day), moderate usage (7,5 to 16.5 hours a day), and heavy usage (17 or more hours a day). And then the researchers took away the participants’ phones. Participants completed the State/Trait Anxiety Inventory after 10 minutes, after 35 minutes, and after 60 minutes. The low usage participants were fine the entire time. The moderate users were fine after 10 minutes, but by 35 minutes they were a little anxious, and they were still just as anxious after an hour. The high users though were already anxious by the 10-minute mark, and their anxiety continued to climb through 35 minutes and was even higher by 60 minutes. Ask students to take a look at the benefits and interference lists you have on the board/screen, and invite students to hypothesize why the heavy smartphone users would be so freaked out.   Part of what may be driving that anxiety is FOMO – a fear of missing out. “What are my friends texting me? Are they thinking I’m mad at them because I’m not responding? What’s happening on Facebook? On Instagram? On Twitter? On Snapchat?” That gives you a good opportunity to revisit operant conditioning. The Monitor article notes that checking one’s phone provides instant reinforcement. If you check your phone to relieve anxiety, phone-checking is negatively reinforced. If you check your phone to see a loving text message from your sweetie, then your phone-checking is positively reinforced. The stress chapter in your Intro Psych textbook likely talks about the importance of feeling like we have control over our lives. Have our smartphones taken over control? Notifications tell us to look now (discriminative stimulus – “If you look now, I’ll reinforce your looking behavior with a new text message, information about who liked your most recent Facebook status update, or that you have a new life in that game that you started playing”). Can we resist the buzz, the blinking lights, the special text notification sound we assigned to our new love? Constantly ducking into our phones takes time and cognitive energy. If we’re reading, writing, or studying, every time we check the latest buzz, we take our minds away from what we’re doing. When we are done with the phone, it takes time to figure out what we had been doing and refocus… only for another buzz to take us away. While this may interfere with our productivity, greatly increasing how long it takes to do what we need to do, at least it’s not going to kill us. But when we engage in exactly that same behavior when driving, it may very well kill us or cause us to kill someone else. “A newly released survey shows that cell phone use is the greatest cause of distracted driving in Washington state and that fatalities from distracted driving have increased dramatically over a one-year period” (KOMO Staff, 2017). This is not just a Washington state problem. “After steady declines over the last four decades, highway fatalities last year [2015] recorded the largest annual percentage increase in 50 years. And the numbers so far this year are even worse. In the first six months of 2016, highway deaths jumped 10.4 percent to 17,775, from the comparable period of 2015” (Boudette, 2016). Also, as a bonus, if a driver is sleep deprived because of the phone interrupting their sleep, they don’t need to check a phone while driving to get killed. They can fall asleep while driving. Since we know that dramatic stories or footage are a more powerful persuasive tool than mere statistics, here are some car crashes. The view out the car window is on the left, and the view of the driver is on the right. Point out to students how little time it takes for a crash to happen. Video Link : 1947 While the video shows drivers looking at their phones instead of the road, the distracted driving research makes it clear that mentally doing something else while driving, like talking on the phone, is just as dangerous. If your mind is not on driving, you’re at risk of crashing. Crashing. Not having an accident, but crashing. An accident makes it sound like something that could not be avoided, after all, accidents happen. Crashes, however, can be avoided. This change in terminology, recommended by the National Traffic Safety Administration, is to help drivers take more responsibility for the havoc they can cause (Richel, 2016). I don’t know that there are any data to support this, but here’s a blog post by a linguist that explains why it should make a difference. Conclude this activity by asking students to take a minute to reflect on what they can do to regain control from their phones. Ask students to share in pairs or small groups, then ask volunteers to share some of their suggestions. Here are seven suggestions from the Monitor on Psychology article. “Make choices.” Decide what you are going to use your phone for. I know several people who have uninstalled the Facebook app from their phones specifically because it was sucking up too much of their time. “Retrain yourself.” Gradually wean yourself off habitual phone-checking. Don’t look at it first thing in the morning or the last thing at night. “Set expectations.” Let everyone know that you’re not going to respond to their text message or email immediately. Assure them that it’s about you, not about them. “Silence notifications.” If you don’t need to know NOW, turn off the notifications. Push notifications for my work email are turned off between 6pm and 8am and all day on the weekend. I made that change the night I was at a play and during intermission I was reading work email. I thought, “What am I doing?!” I changed the notifications then and there. “Protect sleep.” My phone automatically sets itself to silent between 9pm and 8am. When I still couldn’t resist the urge to check it when I woke up in the middle of the night, I started leaving it in a different room. “Be active.” When on social media, participate. That’s more likely to make us feel connected to others. “And, of course, don’t text/email/call and drive.” If you can’t stay off your phone, lock it in the trunk. References Boudette, N. E. (2016, November 15). Biggest spike in traffic deaths in 50 years? Blame apps. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/business/tech-distractions-blamed-for-rise-in-traffic-fatalities.html Cheever, N. A., Rosen, L. D., Carrier, L. M., & Chavez, A. (2014). Out of sight is not out of mind: The impact of restricting wireless mobile device use on anxiety levels among low, moderate and high users. Computers in Human Behavior, 37, 290-297. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.05.002 KOMO Staff. (2017, February 13). New survey: Distracted driving deaths up 32 percent; cell phone use a key factor. Retrieved from http://komonews.com/news/local/new-survey-distracted-driving-deaths-up-32-percent-cell-phone-use-blamed Richtel, M. (2016, May 22). It's no accident: Advocates want to speak of car 'crashes' instead. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/science/its-no-accident-advocates-want-to-speak-of-car-crashes-instead.html Smith, A. (2017, January 12). Record shares of Americans now own smartphones, have home broadband. Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/12/evolution-of-technology Weir, K. (2017, March). (Dis)Connected. APA Monitor on Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/03/cover-disconnected.aspx ... View more