Kids speak: preferred parental behavior at youth sport events.

“News reports and scholarly research have indicated increasing concern that parent-spectator behavior at youth sport events may be problematic. Multiple strategies have been used to influence spectator behavior in youth sport contexts (e.g., “Silent Sundays”). However it is unlikely that interventions aimed at changing parent-spectator behaviors have adequately considered young athletes’ perspectives, because little is known about how children want parents to behave during youth sport events. (more…)

Customer service as a function of shopper’s attire.

“A field experiment explored whether a female shopper’s appearance would influence the customer service she received. Specifically, a female confederate dressed in formal work clothes (skirt and blouse) or informal gym clothes (tights and t-shirt) entered a series of randomly selected women’s clothing stores in a large mall and proceeded to “shop.” (more…)

Physical properties and microstructural changes during soaking of individual corn and quinoa breakfast flakes.

“The importance of breakfast cereal flakes (BCF) in Western diets deserves an understanding of changes in their mechanical properties and microstructure that occur during soaking in a liquid (that is, milk or water) prior to consumption. The maximum rupture force (RF) of 2 types of breakfast flaked products (BFP)–corn flakes (CF) and quinoa flakes (QF)–were measured directly while immersed in milk with 2% of fat content (milk 2%) or distilled water for different periods of time between 5 and 300 s. (more…)

“Inhaling helium to produce that amusing squeaky voice may not be the innocuous party trick it seems, according to emergency medicine physicians at the Wesley Center for Hyperbaric Medicine in Brisbane, Australia.

Simon Mitchell and colleagues report the case of a previously healthy 27-year-old man who inhaled helium and subsequently developed a stroke with transient blindness and radiographic evidence of cortical infarction. The man had inhaled the gas directly from a pressurized canister; most children who perform the trick—to imitate the voice of Mickey Mouse—inhale the gas from helium-filled balloons. (more…)

“An illusion produced by duplicating facial parts, which can cause an unstable feeling for many observers, was investigated. We examined factors that contribute to the unstable feeling. The results suggest that this illusion is specific to face perception, and the unstable feeling may be generated by difficulty in keeping attention directed to either of the duplicated facial parts.” (more…)

Social misdirection fails to enhance a magic illusion.

“Visual, multisensory and cognitive illusions in magic performances provide new windows into the psychological and neural principles of perception, attention, and cognition. We investigated a magic effect consisting of a coin “vanish” (i.e., the perceptual disappearance of a coin after a simulated toss from hand to hand). Previous research has shown that magicians can use joint attention cues such as their own gaze direction to strengthen the observers’ perception of magic. (more…)

Get Me Out of This Slump! Visual Illusions Improve Sports Performance

“Misperceiving a target as bigger could influence [sports] performance in one of three ways. It could disrupt performance because the observer might aim for a location that does not correspond with the target. In this case, the misperception would result in worse performance. However, actions and explicit perceptions may not be influenced by illusions to the same degree… In this case, misperceiving a target as bigger would not affect performance. A final alternative is that misperceiving a target as bigger could enhance performance. Bigger targets feel as if they should be easier to hit, so people may feel more confident when aiming for a bigger target. (more…)

Machiavellianism scores and self-rated performance of automobile salespersons.

“Machiavellianism (Mach-B) was positively correlated with self-reported number of vehicles sold and income in two samples of 80 car salespersons. The Mach-B scale showed higher internal consistency and significant relationship with sales performance. (more…)

The finer points of lying online: e-mail versus pen and paper.

“The authors present 3 experimental studies that build on moral disengagement theory by exploring lying in online environments. Findings indicate that, when e-mail is compared with pen and paper communication media (both of which are equal in terms of media richness, as both are text only), people are more willing to lie when communicating via e-mail than via pen and paper and feel more justified in doing so. (more…)

Biases in young children’s communication about spatial relations: containment versus proximity.

“Four experiments examined 3- and 4-year-olds’ ability to communicate about containment and proximity relations. One hundred twenty-eight children either described where a miniature mouse was hiding in a dollhouse or they searched for the mouse after the experimenter described where it was hiding. The mouse was always hidden with a small landmark that was either in or next to a large landmark. (more…)