-
Mini marathons: Tireless toddlers cover more than two and a half miles a day (but that includes 102 falls)
Daily Mail: They may be called baby steps but don’t be fooled: the average toddler walks more than two and a half miles a day. The distance - which would put many adults to shame - is made of 14,208 steps. Perhaps less surprisingly, it also includes 102 falls. To come up with the figures, the New York University researchers videoed more than 130 infants aged between 12 and 19 months as they explored a specially-designed playroom. Another 15 were taped at home. Some were ‘expert crawlers’ who had yet to start to walk. Some had just taken their first steps and a few had been toddling around for months. Read the whole story: Daily Mail
-
Your Secret Weapon for More Self-Control
Men's Health: Struggling to stay on task at work? Gargle some Gatorade. Swishing a sugary beverage in your mouth can help boost your self-control, says a recent study published in the journal Psychological Science. Researchers asked 51 students to complete two self-control tasks. In each test, half of the students rinsed their mouths with lemonade and sugar, while the other half rinsed with lemonade and Splenda. The results: Those who rinsed their mouths with the sugar-infused lemonade responded to the tests faster and showed more self-control than those who rinsed with the artificial sweetener. Read the whole story: Men's Health
-
Social science takes spotlight bow in election
USA Today: Polls, and pollsters, took a star turn on this year's election night, calling the presidential election days ahead of the outcome. Pundits and politicos look a little less bright, on the other hand, after a presidential race that many of them saw as too close to call turned out to be effectively over before midnight on Tuesday. Everyone from conservative nabob George Will to liberal gadfly Dana Milbank criticized prominent poll aggregator Nate Silver of The New York Times, for example, in the run-up to the election. Silver proved more prescient than they predicted, however.
-
Proof math can be a real pain
Chicago Tribune: Sian Beilock is the author of "Choke: What the Secrets Of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To." She recently co-authored a report that suggests that when a person is anxious about math, his or her brain responds in the same way it would if the person was experiencing pain. eilock, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, helps people learn how not to choke in important, stressful situations, such as taking a math test.She has her own story of choking: Years ago she was playing in the U.S. Youth Soccer Olympic Development Program, and a national coach was on the field, standing behind her.
-
New Insights Into Personality From Psychological Science
Read about new insights into personality from Psychological Science and Current Directions in Psychological Science. What Is Extraversion For? Integrating Trait and Motivational Perspectives and Identifying the Purpose of Extraversion Kira O. McCabe and William Fleeson Can the goals people pursue predict individual differences in extraverted behavior? Participants used a personal digital assistant to report their current level of extraversion, their momentary goals, and their current level of positive affect 5 times a day for 10 days. The researchers found that within- and between-person fluctuations in levels of extroversion were associated with changes in people's momentary goals.
-
“The signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t” by Nate Silver
The Washington Post: Nate Silver is best known as a statistician and election analyst (psephologist) who correctly predicted the winner in 49 of the 50 states during the 2008 presidential race and called all 50 states correctly this past week. He quietly persevered in his election analyses despite a torrent of criticism and invective from a variety of commentators who called the race a tossup or even insisted that Mitt Romney would win handily. Notwithstanding his track record, however, his book “The Signal and the Noise” is a much more general tome about predictions good, bad and ugly, whose basic outline is straightforward.
