Embodied cognition: what to do
23rd February 2011
This blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file. "Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!" attrib. Goethe/William Murray "To reach the other shore with each step of the crossing is the …
Embodied cognition: muscle & willpower
22nd February 2011
This blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file. Introduction: Lying very comfortably in my warm bed early this morning, I knew I wanted to get up but it was hard to do. I waited a little, then tightened my right hand into a …
Embodied cognition: posture & feelings
21st February 2011
This blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file. Sadly (!) more recent research throws doubt on this 'power posture' literature ... see for example Simmons & Simonsohn's paper "Power posing: P-curving the evidence". Intriguingly there is an argument that possible benefits of an …
Mental contrasting: a way to boost our commitment to goals we care about
20th February 2011
This blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file. What is ‘mental contrasting'? Mental contrasting (MC) is a way of boosting our energy and commitment for goals that are important to us. It helps us turn our hopes and dreams into realities. Interestingly, and …
Recent research: two studies on relationships, two on body to mind effects, and two on mindfulness
17th February 2011
Here are details of half a dozen recent research papers - two on relationships, two on body to mind effects, and two on mindfulness. Fuller details, links and abstracts of all the studies mentioned are given further down this post. First a couple of relationship studies. Gibb & colleagues reported …
Valentine's day: "language style matching predicts relationship initiation and stability"
14th February 2011
Valentine's Day! Well here's a topical research study. Professor Jamie Pennebaker is probably best known for his research on expressive writing - see, for example, the series of four blog posts I wrote about his lecture at last year's British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies' conference. However, as he …
New NICE guidance on the treatment of generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) and panic disorder (with or without agoraphobia)
10th February 2011
In January, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) published their new evidence-based clinical guideline on the care and treatment of adults with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) or panic disorder (with or without agoraphobia). This guideline updates and replaces their 2004 one (which was itself amended in 2007). …
New NICE guidance on managing bed-wetting in children and on prevention of osteoporosis in adults
9th February 2011
This is a very brief blog entry to signpost a couple of recent National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines on the management of bed-wetting in children & young people (up to age 19), and on the prevention of osteoporosis in adults. These are both subjects that I'm …
International Journal of Wellbeing: a new, free full-text publication
6th February 2011
January saw the publication of the first edition of the new, free full-text International Journal of Wellbeing. It's good news. The opening editorial - "Promoting research on wellbeing" - starts "Welcome to the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Wellbeing (IJW). The IJW is an open access peer-reviewed journal …
Recent research: articles from January journals
3rd February 2011
I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - EndNote - which currently contains over 15,500 abstracts. Every few weeks I scan through all the articles I've found interesting in the previous month (in the general areas …