Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it's good for the student. That's the conclusion of a new study published in Perspectives in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The authors show that curiosity is a big part of academic performance. In fact, personality traits like curiosity seem to be as important as intelligence in determining how well students do in school.

Intelligence is important to academic performance, but it's not the whole story. Everyone knows a brilliant kid who failed school, or someone with mediocre smarts who made up for it with hard work. So psychological scientists have started looking at factors other than intelligence that make some students do better than others. One of those is conscientiousness—basically, the inclination to go to class and do your homework. People who score high on this personality trait tend to do well in school. "It's not a huge surprise if you think of it, that hard work would be a predictor of academic performance," says Sophie von Stumm of the University of Edinburgh in the UK. She co-wrote the new paper with Benedikt Hell of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic of Goldsmiths University of London.

von Stumm and her coauthors wondered if curiosity might be another important factor. "Curiosity is basically a hunger for exploration," von Stumm says. "If you're intellectually curious, you'll go home, you'll read the books. If you're perceptually curious, you might go traveling to foreign countries and try different foods." Both of these, she thought, could help you do better in school.

The researchers performed a meta-analysis, gathering the data from about 200 studies with a total of about 50,000 students. They found that curiosity did, indeed, influence academic performance. In fact, it had quite a large effect, about the same as conscientiousness. When put together, conscientiousness and curiosity had as big an effect on performance as intelligence. von Stumm wasn't surprised that curiosity was so important. "I'm a strong believer in the importance of a hungry mind for achievement, so I was just glad to finally have a good piece of evidence," she says. "Teachers have a great opportunity to inspire curiosity in their students, to make them engaged and independent learners. That is very important."

Employers may also want to take note: a curious person who likes to read books, travel the world, and go to museums may also enjoy and engage in learning new tasks on the job. "It's easy to hire someone who has the done the job before and hence, knows how to work the role," von Stumm says. "But it's far more interesting to identify those people who have the greatest potential for development, i.e. the curious ones."

Children who are persistently aggressive, defiant, and explosive by the time they’re in kindergarten very often have tumultuous relationships with their parents from early on. A new longitudinal study suggests that a cycle involving parenting styles and hostility between mothers and toddlers is at play. The study was done by researchers at the University of Minnesota and appears in the journal Child Development.

The researchers looked at more than 260 mothers and their children, following them from the children’s birth until first grade. They assessed infants’ difficult temperament as well as how they were parented between the first week and the sixth month of life, based on both observations and parent reports. When the children were 2 and a half and 3 years old, the researchers watched mothers with their children doing tasks that challenged the children and required assistance from the parents. Finally, when the children were in kindergarten and first grade, researchers asked moms and teachers to rate the children’s behavior problems.

“Before the study, we thought it was likely the combination of difficult infant temperament and negative parenting that put parent-child pairs most at risk for conflict in the toddler period, and then put the children at risk for conduct problems at school age,” according to Michael F. Lorber, a research scientist at New York University and lead author of the paper (Lorber was previously at the University of Minnesota). “However, our findings suggest that it was negative parenting in early infancy that mattered most.” Negative parenting occurred when parents expressed negative emotions toward their children, handled them roughly, and so forth.

The researchers also found that it was conflict between moms and their toddlers that predicted later conduct problems in the children—and not just a high level of conflict, but conflict that worsened over time. And in a cyclical pattern, when moms parented their infants negatively, that resulted in their children showing high levels of anger as toddlers, which in turn caused more hostility from the moms.

By the same token, moms who parented their infants negatively also may have had angrier kids because these moms were more hostile toward their toddlers. Negative parenting in infancy appeared to set the stage for both moms and their kids being more hostile and angry during the toddler years, bringing out the worst in one another.
 
 “The results of our study move beyond descriptive findings to explain the underlying process linking how mothers parent their children in infancy and the problems children have in early elementary school,” Lorber adds. The study’s findings can inform the development of appropriate interventions that target negative parenting as early as 3 months to help prevent later conduct problems in children.
 

Urgently needed tests which could help identify the manufacturers of designer 'legal high' drugs are being developed in research led at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

The drugs, known by names such as 'ivory wave' and NRG-1" and sold labelled as bath salts, plant food and incense, mimic the effects of illegal drugs such as amphetamine, cocaine and ecstasy. Although these so-called 'designer drugs' can be dangerous, many have not yet been made illegal and are difficult to detect with current drug tests. A means of potentially tracing the source of the raw materials, and consequently providing information as to who is making the 'bath salts,' is being developed by scientists at Strathclyde and The James Hutton Institute.

The bath salts drug can cause euphoria, paranoia, anxiety and hallucinations. It often contains mephedrone, a synthetic compound structurally related to methcathinone, which is found in Khat - a plant which, like mephedrone itself, is illegal in many countries. The bath salts drug is labelled as being not for human consumption and is not illegal in the UK but its import has been banned. The term 'bath salts' is used by those who sell the drug as a way of circumventing legislation when supplying it.

The researchers developing tests for the drug are using a technique known as isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) to reveal the course of a drug's manufacture. The research is being carried out by Dr Oliver Sutcliffe, at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, and Professor Niamh Nic Daeid and Dr Katy Savage at the Centre for Forensic Science in the Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry, in collaboration with Dr Wolfram Meier-Augenstein at The James Hutton Institute.

Dr Sutcliffe said: "The legal status of designer drugs varies around the world but they present many dangers to users and these are borne out by the Home Office's decision to ban the import of 'bath salts. The new method we have used has enabled us to work backwards and trace the substances back to their starting materials. IRMS measures the relative amounts of an element's different forms- it is successful because these relative amounts are transferred like a fingerprint through the synthesis of the drug."

Wake up refreshed with a brain-monitoring alarm clock

We all know the feeling, the short, sharp shock of waking to the sound of an alarm clock. Whether the traditional clattering metal bells, the incessant beeping of digital or the dulcet tones of today's radio news reader. Even the chance to slap the snooze button to grab a few extra moments between the sheets does not leave everyone feeling refreshed when they finally crawl out of bed. Now, researchers in India think they have the answer.

Writing in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, the researchers describe an alarm clock that monitors your brain activity and triggers its alarm within a time window you set in advance but only when your brain is in a more easily roused state rather than deep sleep. "By using such an alarm clock, the user will wake feeling much more refreshed than if they were awakened by a conventional alarm clock that rings at a set time," explains Jemina Asnoth Sylvia of Jerusalem College of Engineering in Tamil Nadu.

Sleep is a behavioral state that is a natural part of every individual's life. We spend about one-third of our lives asleep. Although the precise functions of sleep remain a mystery, sleep is important for normal motor and cognitive functions as well as growth and rejuvenation of the immune, nervous, skeletal and muscular systems. After waking naturally, we recognize changes that have occurred, as we feel rested and more alert. However, many people use an alarm clock to wake them at a set time, which is when problems occur for some of us.

The researchers point out that sleep usually involves 90-minute cycles of brain activity during which there are periods when the brain is most arousable. If a person is awakened, from a night's sleep, during such an arousable period in the cycle, they will feel more refreshed than if they are awakened during a deeper part of the sleep cycle. To take advantage of this requires putting EEG scalp electrodes on the head to monitor brain activity and to hook the output to a modified alarm clock. Once out of the experimental stage, the team envisages a head-band worn while sleeping that uses wireless electrodes.

In tests, the alarm time is set and the monitoring process is set to begin 90 seconds before the alarm time. An onboard computer determines what stage of their brain activity cycle the sleeper is in during the 90-second monitoring time. If they are in the 3rd or 4th stage of sleep, the alarm is "snoozed" automatically. However, if they are in stage 1 or 2 of sleep, the more arousable stages, the alarm is sounded to wake the sleeper.

The team adds that it is feasible to record brain activity during the night to obtain a so-called "hypnogram" to determine how well you are sleeping overall. This would allow you to adjust your alarm time so that the monitoring window coincided more often with stage 1 or 2. That might mean an earlier alarm call, up to 45 minutes earlier, but it would be a gentler more refreshed awakening. Of course, the converse would also be possible - a "snooze" or 45 minutes and an even more rested and refreshed awakening. Just don't blame the researchers if you are late for work!

Wisconsin study shows wake-sleep patterns affect brain synapses during adolescence

An ongoing lack of sleep during adolescence could lead to more than dragging, foggy teens, a University of Wisconsin-Madison study suggests. Researchers have found that short-term sleep restriction in adolescent mice prevented the balanced growth and depletion of brain synapses, connections between nerve cells where communication occurs. "One possible implication of our study is that if you lose too much sleep during adolescence, especially chronically, there may be lasting consequences in terms of the wiring of the brain," says Dr. Chiara Cirelli, associate professor in the department of psychiatry at the School of Medicine and Public Health.

Mental illnesses such as schizophrenia tend to start during adolescence but the exact reasons remain unclear. The National Institute of Mental Health funded Cirelli's study; the findings appear in the current issue of Nature Neuroscience (Advance Online Publication). "Adolescence is a sensitive period of development during which the brain changes dramatically," Cirelli says. "There is a massive remodeling of nerve circuits, with many new synapses formed and then eliminated."

Cirelli and colleagues wanted to see how alterations to the sleep-wake cycle affected the anatomy of the developing adolescent brain. Their earlier molecular and electro-physiological studies showed that during sleep, synapses in adult rodents and flies become weaker and smaller, presumably preparing them for another period of wakefulness when synapses will strengthen again and become larger in response to ever-changing experiences and learning. They call this the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis of sleep.

Using a two-photon microscope, researchers indirectly followed the growth and retraction of synapses by counting dendritic spines, the elongated structures that contain synapses and thus allow brain cells to receive impulses from other brain cells. They compared adolescent mice that for eight to 10 hours were spontaneously awake, allowed to sleep or forced to stay awake.

The live images showed that being asleep or awake made a difference in the dynamic adolescent mouse brain: the overall density of dendritic spines fell during sleep and rose during spontaneous or forced wakefulness. "These results using acute manipulations of just eight to 10 hours show that the time spent asleep or awake affects how many synapses are being formed or removed in the adolescent brain," Cirelli says. "The important next question is what happens with chronic sleep restriction, a condition that many adolescents are often experiencing." The experiments are under way, but Cirelli can't predict the outcome. "It could be that the changes are benign, temporary and reversible," she says, "or there could be lasting consequences for brain maturation and functioning."

Growing up in a poor neighborhood significantly reduces the chances that a child will graduate from high school, according to a study published in the October issue of the American Sociological Review. And, the longer a child lives in that kind of neighborhood, the more harmful the impact.

The study, by University of Michigan sociologists Geoffrey Wodtke and David Harding and University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologist Felix Elwert, is the first to capture the cumulative impact of growing up in America's most disadvantaged neighborhoods on a key educational outcome -- high school graduation. "Compared to growing up in affluent neighborhoods, growing up in neighborhoods with high levels of poverty and unemployment reduces the chances of high school graduation from 96 percent to 76 percent for black children," says Wodtke, a Ph.D. student who works with Harding at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). "The impact on white children is also harmful, but not as large, reducing their chances of graduating from 95 percent to 87 percent."

In contrast to earlier research that examined neighborhood effects on children at a single point in time, the new study uses data from the ISR Panel Study of Income Dynamics to follow 2,093 children from age one through age 17, assessing the neighborhoods in which they lived every year. "We found that black and white children had starkly different patterns of exposure to bad neighborhoods over the long term," says Wodtke. "Black children were about seven times more likely than white children to experience long-term residence in the most disadvantaged 20 percent of neighborhoods in the country."

For the study, the researchers defined disadvantaged neighborhoods as those characterized by high poverty, unemployment, and welfare receipt; many female-headed households; and few well-educated adults. "Our results indicate that sustained exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods has a much greater negative impact on the chances a child will graduate from high school than earlier research has suggested," says Wodtke. "The current findings demonstrate the importance of neighborhoods throughout childhood, and resonate with evidence from several other studies suggesting that residence in disadvantaged neighborhoods may have a negative effect on the cognitive development of children many years or even generations later," says Harding. "And, while our study does not speak to the efficacy of specific policy interventions needed to improve communities that have suffered decades of structural neglect, it seems likely that a lasting commitment to neighborhood improvement and income desegregation would be necessary to resolve the problems identified in our study."

According to a new study published in Pain®

If a patient is not likeable, will he or she be taken less seriously when exhibiting or complaining about pain? Reporting in the October 2011 issue of Pain®, researchers have found that observers of patients estimate lower pain intensity and are perceptually less sensitive to the patients' pain when the patients are not liked.

40 study participants (17 men and 23 women) were preconditioned by viewing pictures of six different patients tagged with simple descriptions that ranged from negative (egoistic, hypocritical, or arrogant) to neutral (true to tradition, reserved, or conventional) to positive (faithful, honest, or friendly). After this preconditioning process, participants observed short videos of the patients undergoing a standardized physiotherapy assessment. The six patients observed were experiencing shoulder pain and eight short video fragments (2 seconds in duration) of each were selected, resulting in 48 different fragments. After each video fragment, the participants were asked to rate the severity of pain of the patients on a scale of "no pain" to "pain as bad as could be." Afterwards, the participants were also asked to judge the patients to be negative or positive, disagreeable or agreeable, and unsympathetic or sympathetic.

Investigators found that participants rated patients associated with negative traits as less likeable than patients associated with neutral traits. They rated patients associated with neutral traits as less likable than patients associated with positive traits. Further, pain of disliked patients expressing high intensity pain was estimated as less intense than pain of liked patients expressing high intensity pain. Furthermore, observers were less perceptually sensitive toward pain of negatively evaluated patients than to pain of positively evaluated patients, i.e. they were less able to discriminate between different levels of pain expressed by the disliked patients.

"Identifying variables that influence pain estimation by others is relevant as pain estimation might influence crucial actions concerning pain management both in the professional context as well as in the everyday environment," commented lead investigator Liesbet Goubert, PhD, assistant professor of Health Psychology and co-investigator Geert Crombez, PhD, head of the Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium. "Our results suggest that pain of disliked patients who express high pain is taken less seriously by others. This could imply less helping behavior by others as well as poorer health outcomes."