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‘Adults can learn new things’
BBC Radio: Are you ever too old to learn a musical instrument? Gary Marcus, professor of psychology at New York University and author of Guitar Zero - The Science of Learning to be Musical, told the Today programme how he learned the guitar at 38 years old. Speaking to Justin Webb, he explained how he started out with the video game Guitar Hero and worked his way to the real thing. Listen here: BBC Radio
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Training and Development in Organizations: What Matters, What Works
Each year in the United States about $135 billion is spent in training employees -- but those billions do not always improve the workplace because the skills often do not transfer to the actual job. “Learning is a way of life in organizations,” says Eduardo Salas, a psychological scientist from the University of Central Florida. “Everyone gets training. But what matters? What works?
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The Makings of Our Earliest Memories
The New York Times: Like many other pediatricians, I do not wear a white coat. Many of us believe that babies and small children suffer from a special form of “white coat syndrome,” that mix of trepidation and anxiety that some adults experience — to the point of high blood pressure — in a medical setting. The pediatric version is easy to diagnose: Doctor in white coat walks into room, kid starts to cry. I worry that a child like this has recalled shots or an unpleasant ear check and has connected that memory to a particular garment, rather than to my face, or my exam room, or my stethoscope. But how realistic is that? Do babies remember past events? Starting when?
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Study of the Day: When Teamwork Isn’t Democratic, Everyone Benefits
The Atlantic: PROBLEM: Though many believe that equality within a team is important, does this flat power structure really improve a group's performance? METHODOLOGY: Researchers led by Richard Ronay randomly assigned 138 undergraduate students to one of three experimental conditions -- primed to feel high in power, low in power, and baseline or control. They organized subjects into same-sex teams of three high-power participants and three low-power participants or groups with one high-power, one low-power, and one baseline participant.
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Re: The English Wars
The New Yorker: Acocella misunderstood my essay on usage in the American Heritage Dictionary. It never declares that “there are no rules” but, rather, begins from the opposite premise: “What kind of fact are you looking up when you look up a word in the dictionary? A fact it certainly is. It is not just a matter of opinion that there is no such word as misunderestimated, that the citizens of modern Greece are Greeks and not Grecians, and that divisive policies Balkanize rather than vulcanize society.” My goal was to use the answer to this question to distinguish bogus rules of usage from defensible ones.
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Stress Turns Men Into Social Butterflies
LiveScience: When stress strikes, women are said to turn to their social ties for support, while men are supposed to become aggressive. But new research finds that these gender stereotypes don't always hold true.... In fact, men under stress are more likely to trust others, behave in a trustworthy manner and to share resources, a new study finds. Earlier research has suggested that when under stress, men take a "fight-or-flight" approach, becoming more aggressive, while women are more likely to "tend-and-befriend," reaching out to others. Read the whole story: LiveScience
