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Our round-up of the latest and best psychology articles, podcasts, TV shows, radio programmes and blog posts from around the web.

13 January 2012

By Christian Jarrett

This weekend the Guardian and Observer reach the climax of their Memory Week with not one, but two pull-out supplements. Saturday’s Guardian comes with Make the Most of Your Memory, including contributions from Charles Fernyhough, Jon Simons, Hugo Spiers, Alice Bell and me. Sunday’s Observer promises a pull-out full of memory games. As part of Memory Week, Fernyhough took part in a live web chat on how to improve your memory. And there’s still time to take part in the largest ever online memory experiment.

Our sister blog, The Occupational Digest, has hit the year running, with two advice-filled posts:  Resolutions to take the harder edges off work and Make better selection decisions.

Want to get control of your dreams? Psychologist and Digest contributor Tom Stafford has penned a pay-as-much-as-you-want-for-it e-book that will show you how.

Did you catch the showcase of psychology and neuro-fun delivered by Bruce Hood for this year’s Royal Institute Christmas Lectures? If not, or if you want to see them again, they’re available online via the RI’s new Video Channel.

Channel 4 is currently broadcasting a series on neuroaesthetics called What Makes a Masterpiece? – the second episode airs tomorrow, 9.30pm on More4.

Are you already struggling with your new year’s resolutions? The secret to success is more about averting your eyes than gritting your teeth. Jonah Lehrer riffs on a study of temptation covered here on the Digest last week.

There’s still time to hear cricket star Freddie Flintoff speak to sportsmen and women about their experiences of depression. Freddie Flintoff: Hidden Side of Sport on iPlayer.

Nudging meets the smartphone age. A new app available in the US penalises you financially when you miss your gym sessions – and it rewards you when you do go.

There’s a buzz around the Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. It’s about a rising star in baseball who suddenly experiences a catastrophic loss of form. Mike Atherton, writing for the Times, said the book “will keep sports psychologists in conversation for years”. Here’s the Guardian review.

The latest issue of the American Psychological Association’s Monitor magazine is online and includes a feature on alternatives to one-on-one therapy.

Monitor also features a list of “psychology’s growing library of podcasts“.

On the subject of podcasts, something the Digest missed last year was Slate’s series of podcasts on how to negotiate in your personal and working lives.

Children have never had it so good – Paul Flatters for the BBC offers a counter-balance to the “toxic childhood” camp.

Psychologically, men and women are almost a different species“, says the author of a new research paper looking at gender differences in personality.

Professor of Gambling Studies, psychologist Mark Griffiths, has started his own blog.

Worth a look? New book: The Locked Ward: The Memoir of a Psychiatric Orderly by Dennis O’Donnell.

Another new book I think you’ll enjoy is The Optimism Bias by cognitive neuroscientist Tali Sharot. The Guardian published an extract.

If that wasn’t enough, there’s also Situations Matter: How Context Shapes Our Lives by psychologist Sam Sommers. Says Maria Popova on Brain Pickings, “Sommers fuses cognitive science with sociology and witty observation to pull into question what personhood means (cue in Christian Smith’s What Is a Person?) and illuminate the puppeteering power of situations over our lives.”

Want to know what it feels like to have a 70-year-old body? MIT have created a full-body suit that lets you experience it for yourself.

The importance of penis panics to cultural psychiatry – Vaughan Bell explains all over at Mind Hacks.

National Geographic published a super feature on twin research, together with a wonderful photo essay.

The New York Times had a feature on the difficulties experienced by people caring for a partner who suffered a brain injury.

They also had a feature on the romantic relationship between two young people with Asperger’s.

I have pictures on my walls of places I’ve lived in the past. This feature in the Atlantic helped me understand why: The Psychology of Home: Why Where You Live Means So Much.