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Children’s Language Advantage
Why are children more successful at learning a new language compared to adults? Elissa Newport has devoted her career to studying human language acquisition, including the learning differences between children and adults. In her “less-is-more” hypothesis, she posits that children are better able than adults to learn languages because, paradoxically, they have fewer cognitive resources available to them.
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APS Announces Second Replication Project: Proposals Due April 10, 2014
APS is pleased to announce a new Registered Replication Report project is under way. The replication editors at Perspectives on Psychological Science will be reviewing applications to participate in this project through April 10th. Applicants should note that this study requires that subjects be native English speakers. Links to the study protocol and application to participate, as well as to the full project site on Open Science Framework, can be found here. Significant financial support is available. Researchers can seek funding for expenses related to conducting the replication, such as subject testing fees, materials, and other costs.
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Reporter turns in article about procrastination on time
PBS: While writing this article, I have engaged in the following activities: checked Facebook more than 35 times, watched 10 totally unrelated YouTube clips and browsed BuzzFeed. And I can’t even count the number of times I opened my email. In other words, I procrastinated on a story about procrastination. What was behind these overwhelming urges to do anything but write this story? And how much control did I have over my procrastination? Was I hardwired to put things off until the last minute? We all procrastinate. We delay things we know we shouldn’t — then scramble to get them done.
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Open-Sourcing a Treatment for Cancer
The New Yorker: Elana Simon was given a diagnosis of a rare form of liver cancer at the age of twelve. Six years later, a few months shy of her high-school graduation, she is not only a survivor but a certified cancer researcher: today, she published an article about her disease, fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma, in Science, one of the world’s most important scientific journals. One of the unique issues that Simon and others with extremely rare illnesses face is that there’s often not enough data to know exactly how to treat them.
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Are More Eccentric Artists Perceived As Better Artists?
NPR: Think for a moment about an artist who is really out there in some way. Maybe a musician comes to mind, somebody like Lady Gaga or a painter like Salvador Dali. New research now asks whether you like such artists because of their art or because they conform to a mental stereotype of how artists are supposed to behave. ... But this is the first time I've seen empirical evidence that shows that being eccentric has a measurable effect on our judgments of art and artists. I spoke with Eric Igou. He's at the University of Limerick in Ireland and along with his co-author Wijnand Van Tilburg, he examined the effect that being eccentric has on our perceptions of art.
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17 Signs You’re An Overachiever
The Huffington Post: "I just don't know how he/she manages to do it all!" If people are always saying this about you, you may be an overachiever. But while the title of "overachiever" often has a positive connotation -- think back to your elementary school days, when being an overachiever basically meant being the teacher's pet -- it's not always all it's cracked up to be. Overachievers are more likely, for instance, to feel anxious. And their motivations for, well, over-achieving, often stem from the need to avoid negative judgment, explains Robert Arkin, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at The Ohio State University. Read the whole story: The Huffington Post