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Memory Lane Has a Three-Way Fork
The Atlantic: In his magnum opus, In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust wrote that “remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” That elegant line speaks to a simple truth: There are things you remember, and there are things you remember well. Even if you can recall a past event, your memories will vary considerably in how much detail they contain, and how correct those details are. In an elegant experiment, a team of neuroscientists led by Jon Simons at the University of Cambridge have shown that these aspects of our memories—our success at recalling them, their precision, and their vividness—depend on three different parts of the brain.
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Teaching Your Child Emotional Agility
The New York Times: It’s hard to see a child unhappy. Whether a child is crying over the death of a pet or the popping of a balloon, our instinct is to make it better, fast. That’s where too many parents get it wrong, says the psychologist Susan David, author of the book “Emotional Agility.” Helping a child feel happy again may offer immediate relief for parent and child, but it doesn’t help a child in the long term. “How children navigate their emotional world is critical to lifelong success,” she said. Read the whole story: The New York Times
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Do You See the Forest or the Tree? Neural Gain and Breadth Versus Focus in Perceptual Processing Eran Eldar, Yael Niv, and Jonathan D. Cohen How is the balance between focus and breadth determined during perceptual processing? The authors hypothesized that this balance is determined by neural gain such that high gain leads to perceptual processing being dominated by the most salient signal (focus), whereas low gain results in weak and strong inputs producing more equal neural activity (breadth).
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How Virtual Reality Can Boost Retirement Savings
The Wall Street Journal: What if you could travel into your own future to see what your life will look like in 20, 30 or even 40 years? Well, it turns out that virtual time travel may just be the best tool to motivate us to save more effectively for retirement—starting at a younger age. ... So how do you motivate people, especially millennials, to think about saving for their future retirement?
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Why Pride is Good
99u: It’s true that “hubristic pride” – when you feel pleased in your own abilities – can be harmful and indicative of an inflated ego. But “authentic pride,” which is the satisfaction and pleasure we take from the positive outcomes of our hard work and dedication, is an important, rewarding emotion that encourages persistence. And for creatives going through a tough patch, feeling a lack of pride can be a useful indicator that you’re taking the wrong approach. In extreme cases, it might mean it’s time for you to change strategies, or even to take a new direction entirely. ...
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Why We’re Living in the Age of Fear
Rolling Stone: Jen Senko believes that her father was brainwashed. As Senko, a New York filmmaker, tells it, her father was a "nonpolitical Democrat." But then he transferred to a new job that required a long commute and began listening to conservative radio host Bob Grant during the drive. Eventually, he was holing himself up for three hours every day in the family kitchen, mainlining Rush Limbaugh and, during commercials, Fox News. "It reminded me of the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers," Senko says.
