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How Blind People Use Echolocation to Get Around
New York Magazine: Echolocation — sending out a sound wave, hearing how it bounces back at you, and using that information to navigate your environment — is a technique generally associated with animals like bats and dolphins, not people. And yet some visually impaired folks learn to use finger snaps or tongue clicks to help them get around. In a study published in Psychological Science, a team led by Gavin Buckingham of Heriot-Watt University in Scotland tried to learn about how this skill works.
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Using Science to Help Teach Teens Safe Driving Skills
Young drivers have a reputation for being among the most dangerous on the road for good reason; according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), teen drivers, per mile driven, are nearly three times more likely than drivers older than 20 to be in a fatal crash, particularly in the first few months after receiving their license. This week at the Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., psychological scientists presented innovative research on how we learn to transition from accident-prone novices to safer drivers as we gain experience behind the wheel. “The over representation of novice drivers in road accidents across the world is consistent.
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What Heroin Addiction Tells Us About Changing Bad Habits
NPR: It's a tradition as old as New Year's: making resolutions. We will not smoke, or sojourn with the bucket of mint chocolate chip. In fact, we will resist sweets generally, including the bowl of M&M's that our co-worker has helpfully positioned on the aisle corner of his desk. There will be exercise, and the learning of a new language. It is resolved. So what does science know about translating our resolve into actual changes in behavior? The answer to this question brings us — strangely enough — to a story about heroin use in Vietnam.
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The Paradox of the Free-Market Liberal
The New York Times: IN American politics, personality is, supposedly, destiny: Having a conservative personality makes us conservative on economic and social policy, and vice versa for liberals. Think of the stereotypes: the free-spending, libertine liberal; the rock-ribbed, free-market conservative. But there’s nothing natural about this pairing between personality and such broad ideologies. Instead, the structure of our ideological divide is shaped by political messaging rather than psychological differences.
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Shakespeare: One of the First and Greatest Psychologists
The Atlantic: Harvard linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker groups social reformers into two broad categories. The moralist condemns one behavior and promotes another; the scientist, on the other hand, tries to understand why human beings do the things they do, hoping self-knowledge will lead to positive change. In our conversation for this series, Pinker chose a favorite passage from Shakespeare’sMeasure for Measure that illustrates both points of view—in its critique of human nature, Isabella’s speech swivels from detached observation to plaintive complaint.
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The Discipline Gap: Race in the Classroom
I came of age in a Jersey shore community with high racial tension. A major road divided the town, and separated black homes from white homes. But we all met in the integrated schools, and that’s where I witnessed racial discrimination first-hand. I vividly remember this one incident from eighth grade. Word spread one morning through the corridors that there would be a fight in the boys’ lavatory in the afternoon, between a black boy and a white boy. This was not uncommon, and we all crowded around to witness the event, but in the end hardly a punch got thrown. Our eighth grade English teacher had gotten wind of the coming fight, and immediately broke it up.
