How to navigate the knowledge explosion in mental health research

Solomiia gives an inside on “new” ways of organizing knowledge by building a database on the entire research domain, in her case, on the topic of daily life stress and mental health. She first presents a rationale as to why having a database of empirical articles would benefit the field of psychological science followed by a more detailed example of her work in which she explains how she plans to build a database on daily life stress and mental health research.

Read More

Capturing the dynamics of learning and forgetting through adaptive retrieval practice

Across virtually all levels and topics of education, students need to learn facts. The SlimStampen algorithm, developed at the UG, aims to optimize the process of fact learning. PhD student Thomas Wilschut explains how the algorithm works, what it tells us, and how future work (including his own) can improve it.

Read More

The Flow of Life: It Matters What You Do Before Arriving

Setting goals efficiently drives long-term goal pursuit, but it also facilitates the experience of flow states – such an intense focus on the present activity that goals, as future-oriented objects, lose importance and experience becomes deeply meaningful. Metaphorically, what makes a journey meaningful is not its destination, but the process itself.

Read More

Let’s write about sex and gender

Why and how do you measure sex or gender in your research participants? Are you still using a single binary question (male/female), or do you still add the option “other”? Are you aware of the differences between sex and gender? This blog post provides some hands-on best practices tips for including sex and/or gender in your research and for writing about them in an inclusive way.

Read More

Brain fog at work: A message to all the breakfast-skippers

In this post, Isabel explains why skipping breakfast could negatively affect performance, health, and well-being. Restricted food intake seems to worsen cognitive functions and decrease job performance. Further, it can affect mood and several aspects of overall well-being. Skipping breakfast regularly seems to be even worse and can result in nutrient deficiencies or elevated risk of diabetes type 2. Nevertheless, the evidence is not conclusive and according to the literature, intermittent fasting can be beneficial for some individuals.

Read More