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What are you laughing at? New book explores what we find funny
CBS News: According to "The Humor Code" co-author and University of Colorado professor Peter McGraw, at the core of humor is one simple formula. "CBS This Morning" contributor Jamie Wax spoke with McGraw and his co-author Joel Warner about testing the formula around the world. Read the whole story: CBS News
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Fathers, Daughters and the Second Shift
The phrase “the second shift” entered the popular lexicon a quarter century ago, when sociologist Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung published a popular book by that name. Based on in-depth interviews and in-home observations of working couples, the book revealed that, despite entering the labor market and pursuing careers in record numbers, women were still taking care of most of the routine household and childcare responsibilities. The authors documented the toll that balancing career and unpaid domestic labor was taking on families, and women in particular—in stress, marital tension, exhaustion and guilt.
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Inside the Mind of a Child With Autism
The New York Times: Therapists who specialize in autism often use a child’s own interests, toys or obsessions as a way to connect, and sometimes to reward effort and progress on social skills. The more eye contact a child makes, for example, the more play time he or she gets with those precious maps or stuffed animals. But now a group of scientists and the author of a new book are suggesting that those favorite activities could be harnessed in a deeper, more organic way. If a child is fascinated with animated characters like Thomas the Tank Engine, why not use those characters to prompt and reinforce social development?
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Head Start’s 12th National Research Conference on Early Childhood
Head Start's 12th National Research Conference on Early Childhood will be held July 7–9, 2014 at the Grand Hyatt Washington in Washington, DC. For more information visit www.hsrconference.net.
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The Forgotten Childhood: Why Early Memories Fade
NPR: Francis Csedrik, who is 8 and lives in Washington, D.C., remembers a lot of events from when he was 4 or just a bit younger. There was the time he fell "headfirst on a marble floor" and got a concussion, the day someone stole the family car ("my dad had to chase it down the block"), or the morning he found a black bat (the furry kind) in the house. But Francis looks puzzled when his mom, Joanne Csedrik, asks him about a family trip to the Philippines when he was 3. "It was to celebrate someone's birthday," she tells him. "We took a long plane ride, two boat trips," she adds. Francis says he doesn't remember. That's a classic example of a phenomenon known as childhood amnesia.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Feature-Binding Errors After Eye Movements and Shifts of Attention Julie D. Golomb, Zara E. L'Heureux, and Nancy Kanwisher In this study, the authors examined distortions in feature binding that might occur after eye movements. Participants were shown four color blocks -- one in a precued spatiotopic (world-centered) location -- that appeared after an eye movement. When participants indicated the color of the block appearing at the cued location using a color wheel, their reports were systematically shifted toward the color of the distractor in the retinotopic (eye-centered) location of the cue.