Nonverbal signals can create bias against larger groups

If children are exposed to bias against one person, will they develop a bias against that person's entire group? The answer is yes, according to new research from University of Georgia social psychologist Allison Skinner. The study's results are the first to demonstrate that nonverbal signals can produce new biases that generalize to entire groups and classes of people.

"Our findings indicate that the process of acquiring bias based on nonverbal signals -- and extending that bias to a larger group -- is already in operation in early childhood, prior to the start of first grade," said Skinner, first author and assistant professor of psychology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. "Exposure to biased nonverbal signals may be an important process through which group biases are rapidly and unintentionally transmitted within our culture."

Her study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, explores bias generalization in preschoolers aged 4 and 5.

With co-authors Kristina R. Olson and Andrew N. Meltzoff (both University of Washington), Skinner tested whether preschool children seeing one individual receive more positive nonverbal signals than another would lead them to develop bias in favor of that individual's group -- and whether such biases would be generalized to large classes of people, for example, those of the same nationality.

In the experiments, children watched video in which an adult actor displayed positive nonverbal signals -- appearing warm and friendlier -- toward an unknown adult from one fictitious place and negative nonverbal signals toward an unknown adult from another place. The preschoolers were then asked questions to assess their biases toward the adults in the videos and toward other people of their "nationality."

"Children's biases went beyond simply preferring people from one place relative to another," Skinner said. "They were more likely to imitate the words and actions demonstrated by the target of positive nonverbal signals, and they preferred to interact with members of that individual's group."

This study follows on the heels of her previously published work on the role of nonverbal signals in spreading attitudes and biases among adults. In a study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Skinner found that adults formed conscious attitudes toward an individual based on witnessing positive or negative nonverbal signals displayed toward that person. They also formed unconscious attitudes, but they were likely to misattribute the cause, according to Skinner.

"People were more likely to attribute their attitude to how the individual behaved, rather than how the individual was treated by others," she said. "It didn't matter if the individual responded neutrally. If people treated him as if he was behaving like a jerk, then that was their inference."

Impostor syndrome is more common than you think; Study finds best way to cope with it

The impostor syndrome, a phenomenon that manifests when people feel like frauds even if they are actually capable and well-qualified, affects people both in the workplace and in the classroom. A new study reveals that perceptions of impostorism are quite common and uncovers one of the best -- and worst -- ways to cope with such feelings.

Findings of the study, co-authored by Brigham Young University professors Jeff Bednar, Bryan Stewart, and James Oldroyd, revealed that 20 percent of the college students in their sample suffered from very strong feelings of impostorism. The researchers conducted interviews with students in an elite academic program to understand the various coping mechanisms students used to escape these feelings, but one particular method stood out above the rest: seeking social support from those outside their academic program.

The findings of their interview study suggest that if students "reached in" to other students within their major, they felt worse more often than they felt better. However, if the student "reached out" to family, friends outside their major, or even professors, perceptions of impostorism were reduced.

"Those outside the social group seem to be able to help students see the big picture and recalibrate their reference groups," said Bednar, a BYU management professor and co-author on the study. "After reaching outside their social group for support, students are able to understand themselves more holistically rather than being so focused on what they felt they lacked in just one area."

Along with seeking social support, the study also uncovered negative ways students coped with impostorism. Some students tried to get their mind off schoolwork through escapes such as video games but ended up spending more time gaming than studying. Other students tried to hide how they really felt around their classmates, pretending they were confident and excited about their performance when deep down they questioned if they actually belonged.

In a second study, the researchers surveyed 213 students to confirm what was revealed in their interview study about seeking social support: reaching out to individuals outside the major proved to be more effective than reaching in to individuals within the major.

Surprisingly, the study also reveals that perceptions of impostorism lack a significant relationship with performance. This means that individuals who suffer with the impostor syndrome are still capable of doing their jobs well, they just don't believe in themselves. Researchers also explain that social-related factors impact impostorism more than an individual's actual ability or competence.

"The root of impostorism is thinking that people don't see you as you really are," said Stewart, an accounting professor at BYU and co-author on the study. "We think people like us for something that isn't real and that they won't like us if they find out who we really are."

Outside the classroom, researchers believe that implications from this study can and should be applied in the workplace as well. "It's important to create cultures where people talk about failure and mistakes," Bednar said. "When we create those cultures, someone who is feeling strong feelings of impostorism will be more likely to get the help they need within the organization."

Brain anatomy changes with maturation to adolescence

In a first-of-its-kind study, Children's Hospital Los Angeles researchers piece together a road map of typical brain development in children during a critical window of maturation. The study shows how a "wave of brain maturation" directly underlies important social and behavioral changes children develop during the transition from childhood to adolescence.

As children mature, many aspects of their lives shift in preparation for adulthood. Academic and social environments intensify during this time, requiring increasing mastery of thoughts, emotions, and behavioral control. Very little is known about what is going on neurologically during this important transition. A group of researchers at CHLA examined anatomical and behavioral changes during the finite window of neurological development in a group of 9-12 year old children. A more detailed understanding of typical brain development could give scientists and clinicians a better framework to help care for children who may be developing atypically or facing developmental challenges.

"We know that children are growing substantially in their ability to self-regulate during this time," says Mary Baron Nelson, PhD, RN, the first author on this publication. "Among many other changes, their attention spans are expanding and they are learning social norms such as gauging appropriate responses or behaviors." Because these are cognitive processes, the research group hypothesized that measurable changes could be occurring in brain structure and function. This is precisely what they found.

The team of scientists, led by Bradley Peterson, MD, of the Institute for the Developing Mind at CHLA, examined anatomical, chemical, and neuropsychological measures to determine what changes could be occurring in a group of 234 healthy children, aged 9-12 years. "We used brain imaging, measured multiple chemicals and metabolites, and took cognitive and neuropsychological scores," says Dr. Baron Nelson.

Using imaging and measuring brain metabolites, the group observed what Dr. Baron Nelson refers to as a "wave of maturation" sweeping through the brain. White matter tracts -- the pathways in the brain that transmit information -- showed increasing maturation with age from the back to the front of the brain. This is expected, as the frontal lobes are not fully formed until an individual is in his or her late twenties. The frontal lobes mediate executive function -- major planning of complex decisions and actions. But perhaps less expected is that so many of these changes begin to occur so early on. The findings in the study show that this maturation is largely beginning during years 9-12. This brain maturity correlates with a critical and formative period of time: children are undergoing rapid, neurological maturity at the same time that they are facing difficult social and academic decisions.

As a child grows, he or she becomes more able to control impulses and process complex concepts. In support of this observation the group discovered increasing scores on tasks that measured these skills. But how were these children able to have more impulse control and make more complex decisions? The group analyzed the data and were able to determine that anatomical and metabolic changes occurring during this window of development are responsible for this increase in abilities.

"We've learned that this is not a wait-and-see period of time," says Dr. Baron Nelson. "Dynamic changes are happening here and this gives us a real opportunity for intervention. We can help shape these kids as they grow."

Better way to teach physics to university students

Courses in introductory physics are required for nearly all university STEM degree programs not only because physics is considered foundational to those disciplines, but also because it provides students practical experience in applied mathematics. The latter is especially true for calculus-based physics courses, which typically provide students their first exposure to using calculus outside of their math classes.

Now, a team of physicists and educators at the University of Kansas has developed a curriculum for college-level students that shows promise in helping students in introductory physics classes further practice and develop their calculus skills, especially those who test lower in core math abilities. They term the approach "energy-first."

Their findings appear in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review Physics Education Research.

"It's almost always the case that in introductory physics courses students are first taught mechanics in the context of forces. Later in the course, they are shown that they can also apply the concept of energy to solve most of the problems they already learned to solve with forces," said co-author Christopher Fischer, engineering physics director and associate chair of physics & astronomy at KU. "We decided instead we want to teach energy first -- because, number one, we think it's a more generally applicable way of thinking about physics. Number two, it also allows us to achieve our secondary goal of providing the students with more opportunities to use and practice their calculus skills."

From fall 2015 to spring of this year, Fischer and his KU colleagues monitored students and performed testing in two introductory physics classes at KU taken mostly by students pursuing degrees in the physical sciences and engineering. For one, they devised an "energy-first" curriculum. For the other, they kept to a more traditional approach that taught students about forces before teaching them about energy.

The presence of two different physics courses using different curricula naturally provided an opportunity for the researchers to compare the outcomes of students in the two courses.

"We sought to compare, as best we could, apples to apples," Fischer said. "In other words, we compared students who had the same ACT math scores but who took different physics courses to determine what effect our new physics curriculum had on student outcomes."

The researchers worked with the KU Center for Teaching Excellence and the KU Office of Institutional Research & Planning to obtain the students' ACT math scores.

Fischer and his colleagues found engineering students taking the new "energy-first" physics curriculum tended to earn higher grades in subsequent engineering classes (for instance, in a mechanical engineering class for which either of the two introductory physics classes was a prerequisite).

"What we saw was the engineering students who were taking our new physics curriculum did better in their engineering classes," he said.

Furthermore, the biggest benefits to student performance in downstream engineering classes were seen in students who had lower math ACT scores but took the "energy-first" physics class.

"The benefits were even larger the lower your initial math abilities were," Fischer said. "So, engineering students who had lower ACT math scores had larger benefits from taking this new curriculum, which got us thinking maybe tasking students with solving more problems using calculus in this physics class is helping them with their applied math skills in general, as well as their physics skills."

Fischer's KU colleagues on the project from the KU physics & astronomy department were lead author Sarah LeGresley, assistant teaching professor of physics & astronomy; Jennifer Delgado, associate teaching professor; Christopher Bruner, a doctoral student; and Michael Murray, professor of physics & astronomy.

The KU researchers examined how well students had picked up on the physics content by performing more assessments, again finding those in the "energy-first" cohort had the edge over those in the old-style introductory physics class.

"Separately, we did a side-by-side comparison of student performance on a standardized physics conceptual test that many different universities use," Fischer said. "And we saw that all the students in the new physics curriculum are doing better than the students from the traditional physics curriculum."

While these results certainly argue for the adoption of an "energy-first" approach, Fischer stressed because of the small sample size and limited demographics of students at only a single, large Midwestern university, the "energy-first" curriculum would need to be tried out on a broader level before concluding it was a superior method for teaching introductory physics to college-age students.

"We didn't have tens of thousands of students in our study," Fischer said. "We looked at only a few thousand. Thus, it's important that other universities try this new curriculum to see if our results can be replicated. Indeed, we would happily welcome other institutions to collaborate with us to test if our results are robust -- that's essential."

Additionally, the KU researchers hope to develop and implement an assessment to use in physics classes to understand math transference better.

"Is this new way of teaching physics helping students improve their applied calculus skills?" Fischer said. "To our knowledge, no one has built an assessment targeting that specific question. So, we're trying to figure out how to design such an instrument."

Finally, Fischer said the team would like to build off the lessons learned from the implementation of the "energy-first" physics approach to modify the curriculum of other classes in the department.

"Is there a way we could design something similar, or at least take advantage of this sort of design methodology for our department's algebra-based physics classes?" he said. "This naturally also motivates us to reach out to high schools to find collaborators to help us develop new and improved ways of teaching physics in a way that would be more useful for high school students."

Hurricane resilience in the bahamas: Ecosystem

As new hurricanes gain strength in the Atlantic, residents of the Bahamas have barely begun recovering from destroyed villages and flooded streets brought by Hurricane Dorian's battering this month. The losses were grim validation of a new Stanford-led study on coastal risk throughout the country.

The study predicts a tripling of storm-related damages if protective ecosystems such as coral reefs and mangrove forests are degraded or lost. The findings, published in Frontiers in Marine Science, are being used by the Bahamian government, development banks and local communities to pinpoint key areas where investment in natural ecosystems could support a more storm-resilient future.

"Climate change is forcing coastal nations to reckon with a new reality of disaster management and rethink the business-as-usual development model in order to survive," said Jessica Silver, ecosystem services analyst at Stanford's Natural Capital Project and lead author on the study. "In the Bahamas, the islands hardest hit by Hurricane Dorian -- Grand Bahama and Abaco -- are those our research identified as the most at risk to coastal hazards in the whole country. Understanding and mapping at-risk areas and their natural assets is a first step in changing development norms."

The integrated approach scientists used in this study could also help other coastal communities plan where to invest in natural habitats to reduce storm damage. A combination of open-source modeling software and cutting-edge environmental analyses with local information can be used to identify where and how people in coastal communities are at greatest risk to climate disasters.

Natural solutions

Silver and other researchers at the Natural Capital Project have been working in the Bahamas for five years alongside government partners, Bahamian scientists, The Nature Conservancy and the Inter-American Development Bank. Together, they have modeled coastal hazards and the role nature plays in reducing risk in the country.

"We need solutions that leverage powerful allies to protect coastal communities now and in the future," Silver said. "In the Bahamas, these allies include the hundreds of kilometers of coastal forests, mangroves, barrier and fringing reef, and seagrasses that envelop the archipelago."

The work is part of a growing body of research showing that natural defenses can, in many places, represent more climate-resilient alternatives to traditional built shoreline protection -- like seawalls and jetties -- which is expensive to build and maintain.

For example, coral reefs weaken storm surges by taking the energy out of waves. The waves that do make it past the reefs are buffered by mangrove forests and seagrass beds, which also secure sand and sediment to prevent shoreline erosion. By the time a storm reaches homes and streets, the island's environmental barricades have gradually lessened its strength. These natural defenses are also a local source of sustenance and economic security. Healthy coastal habitats support abundant fisheries -- a resource especially important in the aftermath of a storm, when food supplies are low. Thriving marine areas help communities regain their financial footing through key industries like tourism and commercial fishing.

Actionable advice

Local decision-makers often lack basic information about where and how to invest in critical risk-reducing ecosystems. So, the research team combined information on storm waves and sea-level rise with maps of coastal habitats and census data to close this information gap. The researchers assessed the risk reduction provided by coral reefs, mangroves and seagrass along the entire coast of the Bahamas using open-source software developed by the Natural Capital Project. They looked at current and projected sea-level rise scenarios to identify the most vulnerable groups of people and where they live.

"Our results show that the population most exposed to coastal hazards would more than double with future sea-level rise and more than triple if ecosystems were lost or degraded," said Katie Arkema, co-author and lead scientist at the Natural Capital Project. "We see that on populated islands like Grand Bahama and Abaco, natural habitats provide protection to disproportionately large numbers of people compared to the rest of the country. Without them, the destruction from Dorian could have been even worse."

The study equips the Bahamian government and supporting development banks with clear, actionable information to guide future investments in natural ecosystems. It shows where nature is providing the greatest benefit to people and can help decision-makers understand where and how targeted conservation and restoration projects could support coastal resilience. In the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian's destruction, the Stanford team has been in close communication with their Bahamian co-authors, who are already using these results to call for strategic investments in nature.

"We hope, in some small way, that the results of this study will help our friends and colleagues build a more resilient future for the Bahamas," Silver said. "And, we hope that other countries will look to the Bahamas as a beacon of progress and fortitude in the face of climate adversity."