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How to Improve Your Life with Story Editing
Scientific American: People can change — but how? This is the central concern of “Redirect,” a new book by Timothy D. Wilson, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. Wilson offers a tour of recent scientific work on psychological change, with a focus on techniques that help a person who is struggling — bad behavior, bad grades, bad attitudes — find a new, better path. Again and again, Wilson asks: What actually works? The answers can be surprising. He spoke recently with Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook. COOK: A central concept in your book is “story editing.” Can you please explain what you mean by this?
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Ciò che vediamo non sempre rispecchia la realtà
La Stampa: “Se non vedo non ci credo”… Oppure: “credo solo ai miei occhi”… e via discorrendo, i modi di dire sono tanti mentre la realtà dovrebbe essere una sola, per tutti. Invece, pare non sia così e le cose su cui puntiamo non solo il nostro sguardo, ma anche la mente, possono assumere connotati diversi, passando così da una realtà oggettiva a una soggettiva. Ecco quanto affermato da un nuovo studio dell’Università di Yale (Usa) i cui risultati saranno pubblicati su Psychological Science, una rivista dell’Association for Psychological Science.
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It’s all about how we perceive threat
Times of India: The way a threat is construed determines the effectiveness of the types of strategies that one embarks upon to resolve it, according to a new study. According to author Alexa Tullett, upon noticing that your house has been burgled "there's more than one way to interpret this event. You could see it as an indication that there's a bad apple in your neighbourhood, and in this case you would only feel comforted if that person was arrested.
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SpongeBob SquarePants zaps kids’ attention span? What study says
CBS News: Who lives in a pineapple under the sea - and is potentially ruining your kid's attention span? A new study says watching Nickelodeon's popular cartoon, "SpongeBob SquarePants", can negatively affect a 4-year-old's focus and memory - and it only takes less than 10 minutes of tube time.
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Scientists explain why the office party so often ends in embarrassment
The Telegraph: It is an annual event that usually leads to red faces the morning after. Now scientists have come up with an explanation for why the office party is so often the cause of embarrassing and inappropriate behaviour. Researchers have found that drinking in environments not normally associated with alcohol consumption can leave drinkers less able to control their behaviour. The brain learns to compensate for the inhibition lowering effects of alcohol when in a familiar setting, such as a pub or at home with friends, they discovered.
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Do Video Games Make You Smarter? Maybe Not.
Forbes: Video game players like to think that their hobby has benefits beyond entertainment –that even though they appear to be sitting and staring at a screen, they’re actually fine tuning reflexes, developing problem-solving abilities, and improving visual acuity. It’s a compelling idea, and it has some science behind it. Over the past ten years, a number of studies have shown that video game players often outperform non-gamers on measures of perception and cognition, and that video game practice can enhance those abilities. But a new study suggests the jury is still out on video games. In a paper recently published as Do Action Video Games Improve Perception and Cognition?
