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Babies are smarter than you think
CNN: In the past 30 years we've learned that babies and young children know more and learn more than we would ever have thought possible. Philosophers and psychologists, even the great Swiss child-development theorist Jean Piaget, once thought that babies and young children were irrational, solipsistic, illogical and amoral -- unable to take the perspective of others or understand cause and effect. But new scientific techniques have taught us that even the youngest infants already know a great deal about objects, people and language, and learn even more. In fact, they have implicit learning methods that are as powerful and intelligent as those of the smartest scientists.
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A High-Profile Executive Job as Defense Against Mental Ills
The New York Times: The feeling of danger was so close and overwhelming that there was no time to find its source, no choice but to get out of the apartment, fast. Keris Myrick headed for her car, checked the time — just past midnight, last March — and texted her therapist. “You’re going to the Langham? The hotel?” the doctor responded. “No — you need to be in the hospital. I need you consulting with a doctor.” “What do you think I’m doing right now?” “Oh. Right,” he said. “Well, O.K., then we need to check in regularly.” Read the full story: The New York Times
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Who You Are
The New York Times: Daniel Kahneman spent part of his childhood in Nazi-occupied Paris. Like the other Jews, he had to wear a Star of David on the outside of his clothing. One evening, when he was about 7 years old, he stayed late at a friend’s house, past the 6 p.m. curfew. He turned his sweater inside out to hide the star and tried to sneak home. A German SS trooper approached him on the street, picked him up and gave him a long, emotional hug. The soldier displayed a photo of his own son, spoke passionately about how much he missed him and gave Kahneman some money as a sentimental present.
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Deliberate Practice: Necessary But Not Sufficient
Psychological scientist Guillermo Campitelli is a good chess player, but not a great one. “I'm not as good as I wanted,” he says. He had an international rating but not any of the titles that chess players get, like Grandmaster and International Master. “A lot of people that practiced much less than me achieved much higher levels.” Some of the players he coached became some of the best players in Argentina. “I always wondered: What's going on? Why did this happen?” Now a researcher at Edith Cowan University in Joondalup, Australia, Campitelli studies practicing.
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Want to improve your memory? Oh, forget it
msnbc: The better you can forget, the better you’ll be able to remember, scientists now say. To remember facts that are important in your life today, you have to be able to let go of information that you no longer need, says Benjamin Storm, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago. “For example, if someone asks you who is the current Speaker of the House, you might remember Newt Gingrich or Nancy Pelosi,” explains Storm, co-author of a study on the subject published in Current Directions in Psychological Science. “That, of course, is incorrect.
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Men Are Funnier Than Women, But Not By Much, Study States
Huffington Post: Men are funnier than women, according to a study published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. Skeptical? Keep reading, there's a catch. Researchers at the University of California San Diego released a study that suggests males are more likely to make people laugh, but only by a small margin of 0.11 points. The researchers wanted to explore if the "women aren't funny" gender stereotype stood up to a series of experiments. A group of 16 male and 16 female undergraduates were instructed to write humorous captions for 20 New Yorker comics. A group of 34 males and 47 females were brought in to rate how funny they found a caption.
