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Mehrsprachigkeit verschafft geistigen Vorsprung
Die Welt: Johan Vandewalle sammelt Sprachen. Er weiß nicht genau, wie viele er nun schon gelernt hat. Im Jahr 1987 gewann er einen Wettbewerb, der ihn zum polyglottesten Menschen Flanders kürte. Schon damals sprach er 31 Sprachen, darunter so exotische wie Aserbaidschanisch, Tadschikisch und Swahili. Außerdem noch neun tote Sprachen. Seine Begeisterung für Vokabeln und Grammatik begann bereits im Kindesalter, als Vandewalle in die Schule kam. Dort lernte der im Jahr 1960 in Brügge geborene Belgier neben seiner Muttersprache Flämisch bald Französisch. Im Gymnasium kamen Deutsch und Englisch, später Griechisch und Latein hinzu. Read the whole story: Die Welt
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Distrutti dopo il divorzio? La separazione non c’entra
la Repubblica: Diceva Marlene Dietrich che "quando l'amore è finito, gli alimenti colmano il vuoto". Di separazioni la femme fatale ne sapeva qualcosa, ma un conto è lasciare Ernest Hemingway per Jean Gabin e un altro è separarsi da comuni mortali, magari con figli piccoli e un mutuo da pagare. Il divorzio è sempre un momento difficile da affrontare sia sul piano pratico che psicologico, ma non tutti lo vivono allo stesso modo. C'è chi supera il trauma dopo qualche mese, chi si lascia tutto alle spalle all'istante, chi impazzisce di rabbia e chi va in depressione e non riesce più a rifarsi una vita. Lo psicologo David A. Sbarra dell'università dell'Arizona, con i colleghi Hillary L.
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Listen to your elders! Study shows old people really DO have more wisdom than youth
Daily Mail: Wisdom really does come from experience. A new study has found adults aged 60 and over are better at strategising their decisions than those in their late teens and early 20s, who tend to focus on instant gratification.
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Eyewitness Testimony Can Be Tragically Mistaken
LiveScience: Last night's execution of convicted murderer Troy Davis reportedly sent those convinced of Davis' innocence into hysterics. One of their concerns — that eyewitness testimony in the case had been recanted — also concerns cognitive scientists. "This is not the first time a person is pretty much convicted based on eyewitness testimony and circumstantial evidence," said Jason Chan, assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University, adding that the number of eyewitnesses who later recanted their testimony was "relatively unusual." Seven of nine witnesses who implicated Davis in the shooting of a police officer recanted their testimonies.
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Single-Sex Education Is Assailed in Report
The New York Times: Single-sex education is ineffective, misguided and may actually increase gender stereotyping, a paper to be published Friday asserts. The report, “The Pseudoscience of Single Sex Schooling,” to be published in Science magazine by eight social scientists who are founders of the nonprofit American Council for CoEducational Schooling, is likely to ignite a new round of debate and legal wrangling about the effects of single-sex education. It asserts that “sex-segregated education is deeply misguided and often justified by weak, cherry-picked or misconstrued scientific claims rather than by valid scientific evidence.” Read the whole story: The New York Times
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Dyslexia independent of IQ
MIT News: About 5 to 10 percent of American children are diagnosed as dyslexic. Historically, the label has been assigned to kids who are bright, even verbally articulate, but who struggle with reading — in short, whose high IQs mismatch their low reading scores. On the other hand, reading troubles in children with low IQs have traditionally been considered a byproduct of their general cognitive limitations, not a reading disorder in particular. Now, a new brain-imaging study challenges this understanding of dyslexia. “We found that children who are poor readers have the same brain difficulty in processing the sounds of language whether they have a high or low IQ,” says John D. E.
