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Why It’s So Challenging to Keep Things the Same
A particular challenge to maintaining the status quo may be inherent in how our brain functions.
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Are Audiobooks As Good For You As Reading? Here’s What Experts Say
Even for people who love books, finding the opportunity to read can be a challenge. Many, then, rely on audiobooks, a convenient alternative to old-fashioned reading. You can listen to the latest bestseller while commuting or cleaning up the house. But is listening to a book really the same as reading one? “I was a fan of audiobooks, but I always viewed them as cheating,” says Beth Rogowsky, an associate professor of education at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. For a 2016 study, Rogowsky put her assumptions to the test.
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The Unknowable Enigma of Babies’ Dreams
Infants spend most of their time sleeping, waking up for just a few hours total every day. A lot of growth happens during those spans of shut-eye, though. Research shows that sleep is just as formative for babies’ development as are the scattered bouts of consciousness when their eyes are open and their ears are perked up. As with adults, sleeping likely helps infants retain or protect memory and learn language; some evidence also suggests it promotes healthy physical growth.
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Scientists identify four personality types
Personality type tests are hugely popular, though if you ask working psychologists, they’ll tell you the results are little better than astrological signs. But a new study, based on huge sets of personality data representing 1.5 million people, has persuaded one of the staunchest critics of personality types to conclude that maybe distinct types exist, after all. In a report published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior, researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois identify four personality types: reserved, role models, average and self-centered
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Finding Gear for Teens to Try Out Hobbies
Get a group of parents of tweens and teens together and soon enough the conversation turns to how busy they all are shuttling multiple kids among multiple activities, clubs and sports. There are advantages to being part of a team, a theater group or a volunteer organization, and many young people thrive on the connections they develop there. But having a hobby can be deeply valuable, too, and research has shown that adolescence can be a fruitful period for passions to develop. Hobbies — creative passions pursued for their own sake — can be a way to counterbalance a culture that demands overwork and overachievement, or an antidote to technology and news-driven anxieties. Dr. Ronald E.
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A Spendthrift 5-Year-Old? Researchers Say Yes
For some people spending money is very stressful. For others, it’s fun—even therapeutic. Might children share these same tendencies? Scholars use a scale to measure adults’ propensity to spend and save. On one end of the scale are tightwads, or people who feel distress when they spend money, and on the other end are spendthrifts, or people who spend a bit too freely. In the middle are unconflicted people who don’t have strong emotional reactions to either spending and saving.
