Future Focus Can Help Couples Ease Conflict

New research finds that thinking about the future helps couples focus on their feelings and reasoning strategies.

“When romantic partners argue over things like finances, jealousy, or other interpersonal issues, they tend to employ their current feelings as fuel for a heated argument. By envisioning their relationship in the future, people can shift the focus away from their current feelings and mitigate conflicts,” said researcher Alex Huynh.

Huynh is a doctoral candidate in psychology and lead author of the study published online in Social Psychological and Personality Science. Drs. Igor Grossmann from the University of Waterloo, and Daniel Yang from Yale University also contributed to the research.

Previous research has shown that taking a step back, and adopting a distanced fly-on-the-wall-type of perspective can be a positive strategy for reconciliation of interpersonal struggles.

For example, prior research by Grossmann and colleagues suggests that people are able to reason more wisely over issues of infidelity when they are asked to do so from a third-person perspective. Huynh and his collaborators investigated whether similar benefits in reasoning and relationship well-being can be induced by simply stepping back and thinking about the future.

Study participants were instructed to reflect on a recent conflict with a romantic partner or a close friend. One group of participants were then asked to describe how they would feel about the conflict one year in the future, while another group was asked to describe how they feel in the present.

The team examined participants’ written responses through a text-analysis program for their use of pronouns such as I, me, she, he.

These choices of pronouns were used to capture participants’ focus on the feelings and behavior of those involved in the conflict. Written responses were also examined for beneficial reasoning strategies; for example, forgiveness and reinterpreting the conflict more positively.

The researchers found that thinking about the future affected both participants’ focus on their feelings, and their reasoning strategies. As a result, participants reported more positivity about their relationship altogether.

In particular, when study participants extended their thinking about the relationship a year into the future, they were able to show more forgiveness and reinterpret the event in a more reasoned and positive light.

Responding to conflict is a critical skill for relationship maintenance.

“Our study demonstrates that adopting a future-oriented perspective in the context of a relationship conflict — reflecting on how one might feel a year from now — may be a valuable coping tool for one’s psychological happiness and relationship well-being,” said Huynh.

The research also has potential implications for understanding how prospection, or future-thinking, can be a beneficial strategy for a variety of conflicts people experience in their everyday lives.

Source: University of Waterloo

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Brain Stimulation During Sleep May Help Memory

Memory impairment can be a devastating disorder that limits the ability to have a normal everyday life. The inability to retrieve memory is especially devastating for those with neurological conditions.

Since sleep is known to be a time when the brain stores and consolidates information a person learned during the day, new research investigated the benefits of using transcranial alternating current stimulation, or tACS, to target a specific kind of brain activity during sleep and strengthen memory.

University of North Carolina School of Medicine researchers believe the intervention can offer a non-invasive method to potentially help millions of people with conditions such as autism, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and major depressive disorder.

Their findings appear in the journal Current Biology.

Sleep research has been ongoing for several decades. Scientist have learned that electrical brain activity oscillates or alternates during sleep with the action presenting as waves on an electroencephalogram (EEG). These waves are called sleep spindles, and scientists have suspected their involvement in cataloging and storing memories as we sleep.

“But we didn’t know if sleep spindles enable or even cause memories to be stored and consolidated,” said senior author Flavio Frohlich, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry and member of the UNC Neuroscience Center.

“They could’ve been merely byproducts of other brain processes that enabled what we learn to be stored as a memory. But our study shows that, indeed, the spindles are crucial for the process of creating memories we need for every-day life. And we can target them to enhance memory.”

This marks the first time a research group has reported selectively targeting sleep spindles without also increasing other natural electrical brain activity during sleep. This has never been accomplished with tDCS – transcranial direct current stimulation – the much more popular cousin of tACS in which a constant stream of weak electrical current is applied to the scalp.

During Frohlich’s study, 16 male participants underwent a screening night of sleep before completing two nights of sleep for the study.

Before going to sleep each night, all participants performed two common memory exercises – associative word-pairing tests and motor sequence tapping tasks, which involved repeatedly finger-tapping a specific sequence.

During both study nights, each participant had electrodes placed at specific spots on their scalps. During sleep one of the nights, each person received tACS – an alternating current of weak electricity synchronized with the brain’s natural sleep spindles. During sleep the other night, each person received sham stimulation as placebo.

Each morning, researchers had participants perform the same standard memory tests. Frohlich’s team found no improvement in test scores for associative word-pairing but a significant improvement in the motor tasks when comparing the results between the stimulation and placebo night.

“This demonstrated a direct causal link between the electric activity pattern of sleep spindles and the process of motor memory consolidation.” Frohlich said.

Caroline Lustenberger, PhD, first author and postdoctoral fellow in the Frohlich lab, said, “We’re excited about this because we know sleep spindles, along with memory formation, are impaired in a number of disorders, such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s.

We hope that targeting these sleep spindles could be a new type of treatment for memory impairment and cognitive deficits.”

Frohlich said, “The next step is to try the same intervention, the same type of non-invasive brain stimulation, in patients that have known deficits in these spindle activity patterns.”

Frohlich’s team previously used tACS to target the brain’s natural alpha oscillations to boost creativity. This was a proof of concept.

It showed it was possible to target these particular brain waves, which are prominent as we create ideas, daydream, or meditate. These waves are impaired in people with neurological and psychiatric illnesses, including depression.

Source: University of North Carolina

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Screenagers

“Babe, can you put your phone away for a minute? I am trying to talk to you.”

We have probably said this. We have all probably had this said to us. Some of us are digital natives — we grew up glued to a screen. Some of us are digital immigrants, awkwardly attached to our devices like scrambling-to-keep-up voyeurs.

If we took a Google picture of Earth from space at any time of day, we would see millions of stick figures hunched over tiny flickering boxes, as if their lives depended on it.

The once evolutionary imperative for humans to walk upright is now solidly threatened. Follow this hunched bending pose for centuries and we most certainly will become large-headed, folded-up creatures, with eye features, or apparatus, built to stare into tiny, incessant glare. All of this is in the name of being more rapidly connected to everyone, at all times.

There is no doubt that our devices have brought us previously inconceivable delights: instant information, free international contact, selfies, endless streaming arts and music and stories, human rights activism, and dazzling computation and creativity. The costs, however, cannot even be properly calculated. Our engagement is so frenzied and metastatic that we cannot possibly pace observation and research to keep up with the dizzying growth of usage and multiplying types of use.

What we know for sure is that as a society, we are fatter, lonelier, substantially more medicated, more self-harming, suffering more neck and back pain, and more anxious or depressed. What we know for sure is that our attention spans are shrinking.

Screenagers ages 11-18, who have been nursed with screens in their parent’s free hand, demonstrate what I would call a “remote participation” in their own and each other’s lives. It is as if everything that happens to them or others is viewed on a flat screen and evaluated as “ready for posting.” This produces teens and adults too who are hyperaware of being watched and watching. This often translates into a particularly heightened self-involved consciousness mediated by a constant analysis of “net worthiness.” What are the consequences of young people who grow up being “snapped” for every occasion?

The other day I was facilitating a teen group and one of the teens shared a horrific assault that had just happened. I was astonished to see that not one of the other 15 teenagers reached out to respond. Their reactions looked much like a group photo of folks watching a disturbing movie: mouths were in varying degrees of open and eyes stretched wide.

There was no offering of hugs or Kleenex. There were no guttural sounds of empathy or even any words of support. The thought hit me that they would know just what emoji or acronym to use if they could be texting their response. When I queried them, it wasn’t that they did not have empathy or feeling for their peer, it was that they just couldn’t access it without a “screen in between.” Their social instincts had atrophied from lack of in-person use.

The good news is that teens are flocking to our programs at AHA! (www.ahasb.org) where the screens are put away and the entire curriculum focuses on social and emotional skills and genuine contact. They are actually yearning for this type of presence and interaction.

Recently, after one of our exercises in authentic contact and sharing, Malcolm, age 15, said, “I don’t even know how to describe this feeling I am having. It is like feeling really alive for the first time.”

Stalling the rampant expansion of “The Machine” may prove futile; however, we can support a parallel movement to put away the devices and truly connect with one another. It’s not too late to offer an alternative to being plugged in, but massively numb and disconnected. Let’s teach ourselves and our children to stand up straight again, to look at each other kindly with both our hearts and our eyes. Let’s create a world in which a screen doesn’t create a barrier between living a full, meaningful life and ourselves.

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Self-Control May Not Be Limited After All

Emerging research challenges the notion that using self-control on one task diminishes the ability to exert self-control on a subsequent task.

The new findings, which involved 24 labs and 2100 participants, is surprising as over the last 20 years, numerous studies have provided evidence supporting the idea that our capacity for self-control is finite. But recent analyses have challenged the strength of this so-called ego depletion effect.

The findings are published as part of a Registered Replication Report (RRR) in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Gaining a clearer understanding of the ego depletion effect is important given that our ability to override impulses is critical to everyday functioning and has been implicated in long-term outcomes related to health, achievement, and well-being.

To investigate the strength of the ego depletion effect, Drs. Martin S. Hagger and Nikos L. D. Chatzisarantis of Curtin University in Australia proposed a Registered Replication Report (RRR) in which researchers from multiple labs use the same methods and procedure to conduct independent replications of an experiment.

Researchers replicated a study from a 2014 article. Computerized tasks were performed in succession to test the ego depletion effect, which meant that the procedure could be standardized and implemented across multiple labs.

Hagger and Chatzisarantis developed the protocol for the RRR in close consultation with the authors of the 2014 study, using the tasks and procedure from the original study.

A total of 24 labs — from countries including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Indonesia, Sweden, and the United States — completed independent replications with a combined total of 2141 participants. Each lab’s implementation plan was vetted to ensure consistency with the protocol.

As in the original study, RRR participants completed a computer task that involved pressing a button when the letter “e” appeared in words presented onscreen. Those who were randomly assigned to the depletion condition were asked to refrain from pressing the button if the “e” was near a vowel.

This task was thought to deplete self-control because it required participants to inhibit a tendency to respond. Participants in the control condition did not have to withhold responses.

Participants then completed a digit task: A set of three digits appeared on screen and participants had to press the number key that corresponded to the digit that differed from the other two. On some trials, the value and position of the target digit were congruent (i.e., 121); in other trials, the value and position were incongruent (i.e., 112).

The original 2014 study showed an ego depletion effect. That is, participants in the depletion group on the letter “e” task performed worse than those in the control group on the subsequent digit task. But the combined results of the independent replications failed to reproduce this effect.

“Do the current results suggest that the ego-depletion effect does not exist after all? Certainly the current evidence does raise considerable doubts given the close correspondence of the protocol to the standard sequential-task paradigm typically used in the literature, and the tightly-controlled tasks and protocol across multiple laboratories,” Hagger and Chatzisarantis write in their report.

The authors of the original study acknowledge that the RRR does not replicate their earlier findings, but urge caution in interpreting the results too broadly. They note that tasks used to measure ego depletion vary considerably across studies and may depend on somewhat different underlying mechanisms.

“Caution is thus required in drawing implications from the results of this RRR for the phenomenon of ego depletion writ large,” they write in a commentary accompanying the RRR.

In a separate commentary, psychological scientists Roy F. Baumeister (University of Florida) and Kathleen D. Vohs (University of Minnesota), who have conducted several studies investigating self-control as a limited resource, question whether the procedure used in the original study and subsequent RRR effectively target the psychological processes thought to be involved in ego depletion.

Hagger and Chatzisarantis agree that further research is needed to draw broader conclusions about the ego depletion effect. “The current replication provides an important source of data with regard to the effect given it is based on a preregistered design with data from multiple labs, but we recognize it is only one source.”

“We have outlined possible avenues as to how the research community can move the field forward in providing additional data for the depletion effect and exploring the possibility of converging evidence from multiple replication efforts across different depletion domains.”

Source: Association for Psychological Science

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UL Research finds that dialysis patients who smoke are less likely get a kidney transplant and die earlier

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Dialysis patients who smoke are much less likely to receive a life-saving kidney transplant and much more likely to die sooner according to researchers from the Health Research Institute (HRI) at...

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Stanford study identifies brain areas altered during hypnotic trances

Your eyelids are getting heavy, your arms are going limp and you feel like you're floating through space.

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Final 12 hours to join 2016 SharpBrains Virtual Summit at very early bird rates

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Just a quick heads-up: Very early-bird rates are ending today, August 1st. Please consider registering early to benefit from these heavily discounted rates and help us shape the Summit Agenda!

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