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Beating Dyslexia Through Music
Musical skills may translate into reading skills — particularly for children with dyslexia. Research published by Martina Huss, Usha Goswami, and colleagues in Cortex indicates that musical games may be useful in treating dyslexia in young children because an inability to distinguish between strong and weak “beats” is closely related to dyslexia. Huss and Goswami asked 10-year-old children to listen to pairs of simple songs in which certain notes were accented. To make the songs different, the scientists changed the length of the accented notes.
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A Vaccination Against Social Prejudice
Evolutionary psychologists suspect that prejudice is rooted in survival: Our distant ancestors had to avoid outsiders who might have carried disease. Research still shows that when people feel vulnerable to illness, they exhibit more bias toward stigmatized groups. But a new study in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science suggests there might be a modern way to break that link. “We thought if we could alleviate concerns about disease, we could also alleviate the prejudice that arises from them,” says Julie Y. Huang of the University of Toronto, about a study she conducted with Alexandra Sedlovskaya of Harvard University; Joshua M.
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Why Do We Give? Not Why Or How You Think
NPR: New findings in the science of charity reveals some counter-intuitive results. For instance, people will give more money to a single suffering person than to a population of suffering people, and also give more when some type of physical discomfort — for example, running a marathon — is involved. GUY RAZ, HOST: This time of year, pleas for donations are as plentiful as eggnog and door-buster sales. Americans give around $300 billion a year to charity. And as NPR's Alix Spiegel reports, psychologists have started to look more closely at when and why we're motivated to give.
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‘Redirect’ by Timothy D. Wilson and ‘Who’s in charge?’ by Michael S. Gazzaniga
The Boston Globe: Common sense has a lot to say about human behavior and the human brain. Recent empirical research, though, strongly suggests that a good deal of what it has to say is wrong. This is both unfortunate and serious, since many of the practices and policies we choose as a society are based on our beliefs about human behavior and how to change it. Two new books from eminent brain researchers aim to apply these recent findings to questions of behavior, free will, and responsibility. In “Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change,’’ Timothy D.
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Surviving Holiday Parties When You Have Social Anxiety
Yahoo!: Socializing is a major part of the holiday season, but many people find it difficult. If you suffer anxiety or feel tongue-tied at festive gatherings, here are some helpful tips from Martin Antony, a psychology professor at Ryerson University in Toronto. First, some advice about making conversation. Smile and make eye contact. Be approachable and open to conversation. Join an ongoing conversation, ideally with a group discussing a topic that interests you. Ask questions and be an active listener. Try not to simply avoid going to parties altogether. Avoiding fearful situations will only cause your anxiety to increase over time, Antony said.
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How to handle an angry boss
CBS News: New research from a team of Stanford researchers shows that the state of mind in which a person listens to an angry outburst has a big effect on whether or not they actually get upset. It gives some clues to help anyone lessen the impact of being yelled at, either by an angry boss or an angry spouse. A common technique often recommended by cognitive-behavioral therapists tries to give people a different framework through which to view an angry person. So if someone is yelling at you, you might tell yourself that they've just received some bad news about their job or about a family member, and are now taking it out on you.
