A new study published today in Science reports that humans have distinctive social skills. Esther Herrmann, lead author of the study, answers Scitizen’s questions.

Apes bite and try to break a tube to retrieve the food inside while children follow the experimenter’s example to get inside the tube to retrieve the prize, showing that even before preschool, toddlers are more sophisticated in their social learning skills than their closest primate relatives, according to a report published in the 7 September issue of the journal Science.

This innate proficiency allows them to excel in both physical and social skills as they begin school and progress through life.

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In a recent survey of American physicians (see also here) it was found that the least religious of all medical specialties is psychiatry. It was also found that religious physicians, especially Protestants, are less likely to refer patients to psychiatrists, and more likely to send them to members of the clergy or religious counselors. As co-author Farr Curlin claims:

“Something about psychiatry, perhaps its historical ties to psychoanalysis and the anti-religious views of the early analysts such as Sigmund Freud, seems to dissuade religious medical students from choosing to specialize in this field,”

SCR comment: Another possibility is that psychiatrist, contrary to other medical specialities, see the direct consequences of how both therapeutic (as well as recreational) drugs can alter the mind. It would be interesting to know whether the runner-up on the atheist scoreboard is the group of neurologists. This could suggest that these groups are more likely to view the mind as a product of the brain, and that other medical specialist groups may still operate (e.g. implicitly) with a view that allows a distinction between a physical body and a non-physical mind.

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Nature has an interesting report from Marc Raichle‘s laboratory that studies the resting states in monkeys. This study not only demonstrates that resting states occur in non-human primates, but that it is possible to find such activity during unconscious states.

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Do your thoughts stray from your work or studies? Do you catch yourself making to-do lists when your attention should be elsewhere? Welcome to the club.

College students reported mind-wandering almost one-third of the time in their daily lives, according to a new study led by faculty and graduate students at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The study will be published in the July issue of Psychological Science.

The study followed 124 undergraduates, who carried personal digital assistants for a week. The PDAs signaled the students eight times a day between noon and midnight to report whether their thoughts were wandering away from what they were doing and to answer multiple-choice questions about their current activity, surroundings and state of mind.

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There is an interesting article in TIME, by Steven Pinker, about the study of consciousness. From the article:

As every student in Philosophy 101 learns, nothing can force me to believe that anyone except me is conscious. This power to deny that other people have feelings is not just an academic exercise but an all-too-common vice, as we see in the long history of human cruelty. Yet once we realize that our own consciousness is a product of our brains and that other people have brains like ours, a denial of other people’s sentience becomes ludicrous. “Hath not a Jew eyes?” asked Shylock. Today the question is more pointed: Hath not a Jew–or an Arab, or an African, or a baby, or a dog–a cerebral cortex and a thalamus? The undeniable fact that we are all made of the same neural flesh makes it impossible to deny our common capacity to suffer.

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ABC Radio National in Australia has an excellent podcast on a talk by Jane Goodall , an English primatologist, ethologist and anthropologist, who is well known for conducting a forty-five year study of chimpanzee social and family life.

In her talk, Goodall addresses the issue of animal personality and animal minds. It is a powerful reminder of how much this issue has been a scientific taboo for not too long ago.

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In what way does money change the way people think and act? According to a new study reported in Science, adding monetary motivation and reminders made people act more self-sufficient.

Interestingly, being reminded of the money did not even have to be done consciously. Priming had the same effect on self-sufficient behaviour versus requests for help from others.

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The reality of a complete Neanderthal genome draws near, as two papers report the sequencing of large amounts of Neanderthal DNA. The results help answer some central questions on human evolution. This novel trend in gene research opens up a new research field that by some is called “ancient genomics”. The question is, when will we see a gene sequencing of Homo Erectus or Homo Habilis.

Nature.com (requires subscription) Full Text | PDF | Editor’s summary

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Women tend to be influenced by their ovulation status when they pick their clothes. “Near ovulation, women dress to impress, and the closer women come to ovulation, the more attention they appear to pay to their appearance,” said Martie Haselton, the study’s lead author and a UCLA associate professor of communication studies and psychology. “They tend to put on skirts instead of pants, show more skin and generally dress more fashionably.”
You can get the PDF version of the article here.

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In a new theory published in New Ideas in Psychology, consciousness is suggested to be the result of discourse. In other words, consciousness is socially constructed. It would be interesting to know how the author avoids a circularity in how the learning of a common thought, e.g. in development. For example, a child pointing at something which is later named by the caregiver already presupposes a conscious thought. This problem is also known for theories of thought as the internalization of speech, e.g. in the early work of Lev Vygotsky.

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Childhood is perhaps the defining feature of humanity. But how did it evolve? And when? Apart from Neanderthals, growth patterns of prehistoric humans are rarely studied because of the dearth of fossils that combine evidence from the head as well as the body.

This is why the 3.3-million-year-old juvenile partial skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis — the earliest known juvenile hominid skeleton of any kind — is so important.

This Nature Web Focus looks at what we know about the evolution of human development, and features exclusive video interviews with the scientists behind this discovery alongside current research, features and analysis, and an archive of related palaeontological finds.

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