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CBS News: The “spanking” debate — views depend on what you call it

CBS News covered the research of SMU Psychology Professor George W. Holden, an expert in spanking and its adverse impact on child development. Holden is co-author on a new study that found corporal punishment is viewed as more acceptable and effective when it’s referred to as spanking.

The new study found that parents and nonparents alike feel better about corporal punishment when it’s called spanking rather than hitting or beating.

Study participants judged identical acts of a child’s misbehavior and the corporal punishment that followed it, but rated the discipline as better or worse simply depending on the verb used to describe it.

SMU psychologist Alan S. Brown was lead author on the study.

Holden is a noted expert on parenting, discipline and family violence and a professor in the SMU Department of Psychology.

He strongly advocates against corporal punishment and cites overwhelming research, including his own, that has demonstrated that spanking is not only ineffective, but also harmful to children, and many times leads to child abuse.

Holden is a founding member of the U.S. Alliance to End the Hitting of Children, endhittingusa.org.

Brown is an expert in how people store and retrieve information about the real world, and the manner in which those processes fail us, such as tip of the tongue experience, where one is momentarily stymied in accessing well-stored knowledge.

He also explores the prevalence of other varieties of spontaneous familiarity, related to déjà vu, and whether there are changes across the age span and how people incorporate other’s life experiences into their own autobiography.

The CBS News article, “The ‘spanking’ debate: Views depend on what you call it,” published Jan. 5, 2017.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Mary Brophy Marcus
CBS News

Words matter when it comes to how people perceive parents’ actions when they discipline their kids, a new study shows.

When researchers at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, asked adults – 481 parents and 191 without kids – to judge a child’s misbehavior and the punishment that followed, the study participants were more accepting of the same violent punishment when it was called a “spank” versus terms like “slap,” “hit” or “beat.”

In other words, the same form of discipline was considered better or worse depending on the verb used to describe it, study author Dr. George Holden, professor and chair of the department of psychology at SMU, told CBS News.

“Other people have talked about this issue, so it’s not a novel idea, but no one to date has done an empirical study to show simply by changing the particular verb used to describe a parental act that it does indeed change peoples’ perceptions,” he said.

Read the full story.

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CW33: Spanking Sounds OK, Hitting Not So Much, SMU Study Says

Television station CW33 quoted SMU Psychology Professor Alan S. Brown for his latest research that found corporal punishment is viewed as more acceptable and effective when it’s referred to as spanking.

Brown’s new study found that parents and nonparents alike feel better about corporal punishment when it’s called spanking rather than hitting or beating.

Study participants judged identical acts of a child’s misbehavior and the corporal punishment that followed it, but rated the discipline as better or worse simply depending on the verb used to describe it.

The article, “Spanking Sounds OK, Hitting Not So Much, SMU Study Says,” published Jan. 4, 2017.

Brown was lead author on the research, conducted with SMU psychologist George W. Holden, a noted expert on parenting, discipline and family violence and a professor in the SMU Department of Psychology.

Brown’s research primarily involves how people store and retrieve information about the real world, and the manner in which those processes fail us, such as tip of the tongue experience, where one is momentarily stymied in accessing well-stored knowledge.

He also explores the prevalence of other varieties of spontaneous familiarity, related to déjà vu, and whether there are changes across the age span. Finally, there are several research projects on how people incorporate other’s life experiences into their own autobiography.

Holden is noted for his expertise on spanking. He strongly advocates against corporal punishment and cites overwhelming research, including his own, that has demonstrated that spanking is not only ineffective, but also harmful to children, and many times leads to child abuse.

Holden is a founding member of the U.S. Alliance to End the Hitting of Children, endhittingusa.org.

Read the story at CW33.

EXCERPT:

By Eric Gonzales
The CW33

So how does the word spanking hit you?

A new study by Southern Methodist University bets there are no hard feelings when it comes to getting spanked.

Psychology Professor Alan Brown says the word spank sounds more acceptable to people than saying a kid is getting a slap, a hit or a beating as punishment.

Even though hitting or slapping as punishment may be the same as a spanking, the professor says spanking sounds less harsh.

But parents say it may depend on where you’re spanked. “We got our butts spanked, our butts, not out backs, not our legs,” said Renee Hudspeth. “Even if we did get hit on the arm or the leg, it`s because we were trying to run from our parents.”

The professor says even swatting a kid sounds better than other words for corporal punishment, like beating.

Of course, some people say it’s never okay to hit a child. But a lot of parents believe spanking isn`t behind them.

Read the story at CW33.

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Corporal punishment viewed as more acceptable and effective when referred to as spanking, study finds

Parents and nonparents alike buffer their views of physical discipline and rate it more common, acceptable and effective when it’s labeled with a more neutral, less violent word

Parents and nonparents alike feel better about corporal punishment when it’s called ‘spanking’ rather than ‘hitting’ or ‘beating,’ according to a new study by researchers at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

Study participants judged identical acts of a child’s misbehavior and the corporal punishment that followed it, but rated the discipline as better or worse simply depending on the verb used to describe it.

Discipline acts referred to as spank and swat were ranked as more effective and acceptable than those referred to as slap, hit or beat.

The findings of the study indicate that people buffer negative views of corporal punishment by calling it by a more culturally acceptable label, said psychologist Alan Brown, psychology professor at SMU and lead author on the research.

“Our findings suggest that the way child-discipline is described may alter the action’s implied intensity or physical harm, and its consequences such as emotional upset,” Brown said. “Calling a response to misbehavior a ‘swat’ may imply higher prevalence of that response as well as make it seem more justifiable and valid — even if the actual punishment is the same as an act described more harshly.”

Participants in the study rated the acts after reading and responding to hypothetical scenarios in which a mom disciplined her misbehaving son. Spank rated highest for commonness, acceptability and effectiveness, while beat ranked the worst, he said.

“The labels that we give to our experiences can have a moderate to profound influence on how we interpret and remember these events,” Brown said. “We found that altering the verb used to describe an act of corporal punishment can change perception of its effectiveness and acceptance of it.”

One implication of the study is that public health interventions to eliminate corporal punishment should focus on changing the semantics of discipline to reduce or prevent violence, say the authors. They cite UNICEF’s 2014 recommendation that “There is a need to eliminate words which maintain ‘social norms that hide violence in plain sight.’”

The psychologists endorse replacing the verb spank with the verb assault, as suggested by other researchers in the field, which they say could change the perception of spanking and reduce its use.

Labels can buffer how actions are perceived
Research consistently has found that corporal punishment does emotional and developmental harm to children and fails to improve a child’s behavior over the long run.

“Our belief is that it is never OK to discipline a child by striking them, and that various terms commonly used to describe such actions can buffer how these actions are perceived,” Brown said. “Our research demonstrated that ratings of how common, acceptable and effective an act of corporal punishment appears to be is significantly influenced by the word used to describe it.”

Co-author on the study was psychologist George Holden, a noted expert on parenting, discipline and family violence and co-author on the research and a professor in the SMU Department of Psychology.

The findings were reported in the article “Spank, Slap, or Hit? How Labels Alter Perceptions of Child Discipline” published in the journal Psychology of Violence.

The other co-author on the research was Rose Ashraf, a graduate student in SMU’s Department of Psychology.

Holden is a founding steering committee member and current president of the U.S. Alliance to End the Hitting of Children.

Study examined how different terms influence perceptions and actions
Participants were 191 nonparents and 481 parents.

The discipline scenarios were between a mom and her 5-year-old son. The mom and son varied with each scenario, which described a boy in eight acts of misbehavior: aggression, stealing, ignoring requests, deception, teasing, property destruction, animal cruelty and lying.

Study participants read each vignette of misbehavior, and the subsequent description of the mom’s response using a term commonly reflecting corporal punishment: spank, slap, swat, hit and beat.

The authors selected the labels from the most commonly used terms in the research literature for corporal punishment in American culture.

The hypothetical scenarios were brief and left context and details such as the seriousness of the transgression or the intentions of the misbehaving child to the respondents’ imaginations.

For example: “John continues to hit his sibling after his mother has asked him to stop. John’s mother ______ him.” The participants then rated the mother’s response on how common it was, how acceptable it was and how effective it was.

The purpose was to examine how differences in the terms influence perceptions of parental discipline, the authors said.

“Our study highlights the role of language in legitimizing violent parental behavior,” according to the authors in their article. “Altering the verb used to describe the same act of corporal punishment can have a substantial impact on how that parental response is evaluated, with some terms having a relative tempering effect (spank, swat) compared with others (hit, slap, beat).”

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Parade: What The Simpsons Can Teach Us About Siblings

When a second sibling comes along, the oldest no longer has all of his parents’ attention—he loses the throne, so to speak.

Parade magazine covered the research of SMU psychologist and Simpsons‘ expert Chris R. Logan, senior lecturer, who with SMU colleague and professor Alan S. Brown, co-authored and edited the book The Psychology of the Simpsons: D’oh! (Smart Pop, 2006).

Journalist Hannah Dreyfus quotes Logan in her June 22 article on Logan’s and Brown’s siblings research, “What The Simpsons Can Teach Us About Siblings.

The Psychology of the Simpsons examines family relationships through the context of the popular Simpsons American adult animated TV situation comedy show. The Simpson’s are a middle class family consisting of the dad, Homer, the mom, Marge, the oldest child and brother, Bart, the oldest sister, Lisa, and the baby, Maggie.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:
By Hannah Dreyfus
Parade

What can America’s favorite yellow cartoon family—and this weekend’s cover subjects—teach us about family dynamics? To find out, we recently spoke with social psychologist, SMU social psychology professor and Simpsons’ expert Chris Logan, co-author and editor of The Psychology of the Simpsons: D’oh!.

PARADE: The oldest child is stereotypically responsible and overachieving—so what went wrong with Bart?
Logan:
Ha! Funny question. Research about the importance of birth order is actually quite controversial — many psychologists don’t subscribe to the idea that birth order plays a dominant role when it comes to determining personality. However, psychologists who do think birth order is a dominant characteristic talk about an eldest child’s experience of being “dethroned.” When a second sibling comes along, the oldest no longer has all of his parents’ attention—he loses the throne, so to speak. How the parents handle this shift can affect the oldest child’s relationship to his/her new sibling.

In the case of Bart, the series also makes it pretty clear that he was born evil. I mean, he grabs a lighter and tries to light Homer’s tie on fire minutes after his birth. In a case this extreme, I’m not sure birth order will make that big a difference one way or another.

Let’s talk about Lisa, the precocious, independent child. How is she affected by having Bart as a brother?
Bart is clearly the child who demands primary attention. Research shows that in cases such as these, the “good” child becomes as independent and self-reliant as possible. This is certainly the case with Lisa—Bart’s continual antics push her to be even more responsible.

It’s interesting to note how Bart responds when Lisa is given attention. In one episode, Lisa develops her own Barbie doll and receives a lot of attention for her invention. Bart goes crazy and starts screaming, crying, and bouncing off the walls. Although it’s an exaggerated case, a child who grows accustomed to receiving the majority of the family’s attention might not take it well when that dynamic shifts.

And what about baby Maggie? What’s her impact on the dynamics between the two big kids?
It’s hard to say. The funny thing about cartoons is that the characters don’t age. Maggie is a baby who’s attached to Marge’s hip—and she stays that way. Still, one effect Maggie does have is she makes it even harder for Lisa to receive attention from her parents. Youngest children somehow have a way of doing that.

In this weekend’s cover story, we note that having siblings is a way for boys and girls respectively to learn about the opposite sex. What does Bart teach Lisa about men?
Siblings definitely can have an affect on how children interact with members of the opposite sex, and, later on in life, how they go on to build relationships.

Lisa is a very interesting case study. She’s attracted to the typical bad-boy. Even though Milhouse (Bart’s friend) has a huge crush on her and follows her around like a puppy, she wants nothing to do with him. Instead, Lisa is infatuated with Nelson, the stereotypical bully.

Read the full story.

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Wall Street Journal: You, An Idea Thief? Say It Isn’t So.

The Wall Street Journal mentioned the 1989 classic research study of SMU Psychology Professor Alan Brown in a June 17 news article by Adam Grant about inadvertent plagiarism.

Brown has studied the phenomenon and published the results of his classic study in the scientific article Cryptomnesia: Delineating inadvertent plagiarism in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.

Brown’s research now primarily involves how people store and retrieve information about the real world, and the manner in which these processes fail us, including the tip of the tongue experience, where one is momentarily stymied in accessing well-stored knowledge.

Another such phenomenon is the false positive recognition experience of déjà vu, where a present experience seems subjectively familiar when one knows that it is objectively new. Brown is currently extending the TOT research to identify the factors underlying repeated TOTs, and whether these change in frequency with age.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:
By Adam Grant
The Wall Street Journal

All good things come to an end. By 1970, the beloved Beatles had decided to go their separate ways.

Within a year, George Harrison reached No. 1 with a solo song, “My Sweet Lord.” But his sweet time at the top was short-lived. Within a month, a lawsuit was filed. Harrison’s song had original lyrics, but shared a melody and harmony with the 1963 hit song by the Chiffons, “He’s So Fine.”

Was the Beatles’ lead guitarist guilty of plagiarism?

Judge Richard Owen, who happened to be a music aficionado, ruled that Harrison was guilty. But he said Harrison’s theft wasn’t intentional; it was accidental and subconscious.

Eventually, Harrison conceded that Owen was right. “I wasn’t consciously aware of the similarity between ‘He’s So Fine’ and ‘My Sweet Lord’,” Harrison wrote in his autobiography. “Why didn’t I realize?”

The psychologist Dan Gilbert calls this kleptomnesia: generating an idea that you believe is novel, but in fact was created by someone else. It’s accidental plagiarism, and it’s all too common in creative work.

In a classic demonstration, psychologists Alan Brown and Dana Murphy invited people to brainstorm in groups of four. They took turns generating lists of sports, musical instruments, clothes, or four-legged animals. Each participant generated four ideas from each category. Next, the participants were asked to write down the four ideas that they personally generated for each category.

Alarmingly, a full 75% of participants unintentionally plagiarized, claiming they generated an idea that was in fact offered by another member of their group. And later, the participants wrote down four new ideas for each category. The majority wrote down at least one idea that had already been generated by another group member—usually the group member who’d generated ideas immediately before them.

Were they not paying attention? If so, then surely they’d have been just as likely to plagiarize from their own ideas. But that didn’t happen. While 71% of participants took credit for an idea that a group member had generated, only 8% generated one of their own previous ideas.

Kleptomnesia happens due to a pragmatic, but peculiar, feature of how human memory is wired. When we encode information, we tend to pay more attention to the content than the source. Once we accept a piece of information as true, we no longer need to worry about where we acquired it.

Read the full story.

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SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Dallas Morning News: SMU professor studies mental lapses like Perry’s

Dallas Morning News columnist Steve Blow interviewed SMU Psychology Professor Alan Brown about what caused Texas Gov. Rick Perry during a recent GOP debate to forget which federal departments he wanted to abolish. Blow’s article, “SMU professor studies mental lapses like Perry’s,” was published Nov. 16.

Brown has studied the phenomenon and has written a book about “Tip of the Tongue” experiences.

Brown’s research primarily involves how people store and retrieve information about the real world, and the manner in which these processes fail us, including the tip of the tongue experience, where one is momentarily stymied in accessing well-stored knowledge.

Another such phenomenon is the false positive recognition experience of déjà vu, where a present experience seems subjectively familiar when one knows that it is objectively new. Brown is currently extending the TOT research to identify the factors underlying repeated TOTs, and whether these change in frequency with age.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Steve Blow
Dallas Morning News

Now that the politics of Rick Perry’s brain freeze have been thoroughly analyzed, let’s look at the psychology of it.

We happen to have an authority on the subject in our own backyard. In fact, Southern Methodist University psychology professor Alan Brown has just written an entire book on this all-too-familiar phenomenon.

The Tip of the Tongue State, his academic treatise is called.

Researchers refer to the mental lapses as TOTs. But for now, a new name has taken hold — “a Perry moment.”

The governor’s predicament was painful to watch because we’ve all been there. In fact, I was there just last Friday night in front of a huge ballroom full of people. And Professor Brown helped me understand a little more of what happened to me and to the governor.

In my case, I was emceeing the Center for Nonprofit Management’s big annual dinner and awards program. I wanted to begin on that Veterans Day by honoring the veterans in attendance and also anyone on active duty or …

Or …

The word “recruit” had popped into my head. But I knew that wasn’t the word I wanted. Related, but not right. So I flailed around, stammering and stuttering. It was ugly.

Finally, someone at a table down front helped me out. “Reserve,” a voice said from the darkness.

Of course! Hallelujah! Reserve duty — that’s the plain-as-day word I was looking for. And Brown points out that “recruit” begins just like “reserve,” which is a common factor in tip-of-the-tongue mishaps.

We seem to blank out worst when a similar word blocks the way. “Some researchers have called them ‘ugly stepsister words,’” Brown said. “They keep the prince from finding Cinderella.”

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on Twitter.

For more information, www.smuresearch.com.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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WFAA News 8: Perry’s memory gaffe could be linked to studied health issue

“Stress temporarily causes part of the brain called the hippocampus to malfunction,” — Alan Brown

WFAA news reporter Janet St. James interviewed SMU Psychology Professor Alan Brown about what caused Texas Gov. Rick Perry during a recent GOP debate to forget which departments he wanted to abolish.

Brown has studied the phenomenon and has written a book about “Tip of the Tongue” experiences.

Brown’s research primarily involves how people store and retrieve information about the real world, and the manner in which these processes fail us, including the tip of the tongue experience, where one is momentarily stymied in accessing well-stored knowledge.

Another such phenomenon is the false positive recognition experience of déjà vu, where a present experience seems subjectively familiar when one knows that it is objectively new. Brown is currently extending the TOT research to identify the factors underlying repeated TOTs, and whether these change in frequency with age.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Janet St. James
WFAA
Team Perry is in damage control mode, trying to clean up an “Oops” moment at Wednesday night’s GOP debate when Texas Governor Rick Perry couldn’t remember a key point of his presidential campaign.

“The third agency of government I would do away with the education, the uh, the commerce and let’s see. I can’t the third one. I can’t. Oops,” said Perry.

Forgetfulness in geniuses is often considered a sign of brilliance. Einstein was famous for it.

Among the rest of us, senior moments are considered a sign of incompetence, aging, or disease.

Brain researchers said in Perry’s case, it was none of those things.

In fact, there is a name for what happened to Perry.

“The tip of the tongue experience, or state,” said Dr. Alan Brown, memory researcher at SMU. “It’s where you know you have the information, but you just can’t get it out right at the moment.”

Dr. Brown knows all about the phenomenon because he researches the memory and even wrote a book on “The Tip of the Tongue State.”

He said stress temporarily causes part of the brain called the hippocampus to malfunction.

Read the full story.

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Déjà Vu research pushes around memory, creates illusion of past encounter

Brown%2C%20Alan2%206-19-09%20photoshopped.jpg

Circle1.jpgA new study by research psychologists Alan S. Brown of SMU and Elizabeth Marsh of Duke University provides new clues about déjà vu, that eerie sense of experiencing a moment for the second time.

These clues, in turn, could help unlock the secrets of the human brain.

“Déjà vu is inappropriate behavior by the brain,” says Brown, professor in SMU’s Department of Psychology and a leading researcher on memory. “By shedding light on this odd phenomenon, we can better understand normal memory processes.”

Published in the May issue of “Psychological Science,” the study significantly extends research on the déjà vu theory of “double perception,” which suggests that a quick glance at a scene can make it appear strangely familiar when it is fully perceived moments later.

“This is easy to imagine in today’s distracted society,” Brown says. “Let’s say you enter a new museum, glancing at artwork while talking on your cell phone. Upon hanging up, you look around and sense you’ve been there long ago.”

According to double perception theory, the initial glance created a mushy memory without time-space context, Brown says. “When you then consciously register the scene, the brain connects the two memories — and you get that spooky feeling.”

Brown and Marsh re-created this experience in the laboratory using unique symbols. In their trials, a symbol was flashed at a subliminal level on a computer screen, followed by a longer view of the same or a different symbol, or no symbol.

Lines5.jpgWhen a flash was followed by its identical symbol, participants were five times more likely to say they had seen that symbol sometime before the experiment.

“We pushed memory around,” Brown says. “We changed people’s views of their personal past by instilling a false sense of a previous encounter.”

In pushing its participants’ memories to a time and place outside the laboratory, the new study goes beyond the few previous studies of double perception that have been conducted in the past 100 years. Those studies used words or names, rather than symbols.

“Words and names are contaminated because study participants actually could have encountered them before the experiment,” Brown says, “but it’s extremely unlikely that they ever had encountered our symbols. Our study more closely parallels a quick glance at an unfamiliar object in the real world.”

In addition to double perception, researchers have other theories about the cause of déjà vu, which is French for “already seen.” These theories include a brief dysfunction in the brain, such as a seizure, and “episodic familiarity,” when a forgotten memory connects with part of the present experience.

Brown and Marsh tested episodic familiarity in a 2008 study published in “Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,” in which participants were quickly shown photos of college campuses they had never visited. Upon returning to the laboratory several weeks later, they viewed a series of new and old campus photos and judged whether they had been to the locations. The study showed that the initial brief exposure increased participants’ beliefs that they had visited these colleges — when, in fact, they hadn’t.

“Déjà vu is such a rare event, with potentially numerous causes,” Brown says. “If we can nudge people a little bit in that direction, we can learn the mechanisms behind it.” — Sarah Hanan

Related links:
“Psychological Science” research article: Creating Illusions of Past Encounter Through Brief Exposure
Alan S. Brown
Elizabeth Marsh
SMU Research News: Who and Why? Déjà Vu gets another look
SMU Department of Psychology
Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences

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Who and why? Déjà vu gets a second look

brown.jpgIt is a discussion that seems familiar. But new findings show that people who travel frequently are more likely to experience déjà vu. Political liberals report more déjà vu experiences than conservatives do. And déjà vu becomes less common as people grow older.

Most of us have experienced déjà vu, which means “already seen” in French, yet few scientists have studied it. Understanding its causes, however, promises to explain other mysteries of the brain, says Alan Brown, professor in the SMU Department of Psychology in Dedman College and a leading researcher on memory.

“The community of research psychologists is largely silent on the topic, but findings from such research could expand our understanding of routine memory functions,” Brown says.

Many explanations for the déjà vu experience have been connected to the supernatural, he says. In a new book, “The Déjà Vu Experience: Essays in Cognitive Psychology” (2004, Psychology Press), Brown surveys scientific research as well as popular notions of déjà vu from the early 19th century.

From the scientific studies, Brown has identified common facts about déjà vu. A majority of people experience déjà vu, some two-thirds of the population. The frequency of déjà vu decreases with age and is most common among people ages 15 to 25. People with higher incomes and more education have more déjà vu experiences. Déjà Vu appears to be associated with stress and fatigue. Those who travel have more déjà vu experiences. For some, déjà vu experiences appear to repeat prior dreams.

Although there are no definitive answers for what causes déjà vu, Brown offers four scientifically plausible possibilities: two cognitive processes become momentarily out of phase; a brief dysfunction in the brain, such as a seizure, or disruption in the speed of normal neuronal transmission; a memory that we forgot connects with part of the present experience; and an initial perception under distracted conditions is quickly followed by a second perception of the same thing under full attention.

Déjà vu research presents a unique challenge for Brown.

“There is a thrill of examining something that seems to be on the fringes, then pulling it into the scientific realm,” he says.

Brown, who joined the Psychology Department in 1974, is the author of four books, including “Maximizing Memory Power: Using Recall in Business” (1986, John Wiley & Sons).

Related links:
Alan Brown
SMU Department of Psychology
Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences