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Are We the Only Animals That Understand Ignorance?
The Atlantic: You’re holding a surprise party for a friend. The door opens, the lights flick on, everyone leaps out... and your friend stands there silent and unmoved. Now,you’re the one who’s surprised. You assumed she had no idea, and based on that, you made a (wrong) prediction about how she would react. You were counting on her ignorance. This ability to understand that someone else might be missing certain information about the world comes so naturally to us that describing it feels mundane and trite. And yet, according to two psychologists, it’s a skill that only humans have. “We think monkeys can’t do that,” says Alia Martin from Victoria University of Wellington. ...
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What Your Brain Looks Like When It Solves a Math Problem
The New York Times: Solving a hairy math problem might send a shudder of exultation along your spinal cord. But scientists have historically struggled to deconstruct the exact mental alchemy that occurs when the brain successfully leaps the gap from “Say what?” to “Aha!” Now, using an innovative combination of brain-imaging analyses, researchers have captured four fleeting stages of creative thinking in math. In a paper published in Psychological Science, a team led by John R.
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Don’t think too positive
aeon: Do you believe that positive thinking can help you achieve your goals? Many people today do. Pop psychology and the $12 billion self-help industry reinforce a widespread belief that positive thinking can improve our moods and lead to beneficial life changes. In her book The Secret Daily Teachings (2008), the self-help author Rhonda Byrne suggested that: ‘Whatever big thing you are asking for, consider having the celebration now as though you have received it.’ Yet research in psychology reveals a more complicated picture. Indulging in undirected positive flights of fancy isn’t always in our interest.
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The Right Way to Bribe Your Kids to Read
The New York Times: My children need to read this summer. They’re in the middle of a long vacation from school, and I want them to enjoy it — but I also want them to be able to pick up their education where they left off when school starts again in the fall. Kids who read over the summer lose fewer skills than kids who don’t. This is especially important for children from low-income families and those with language problems, like my younger daughter. When reading is difficult, so is almost everything else. As new readers move from decoding text to fluency, every subject from math to history becomes more accessible, but practice is the only way to get there.
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Beyond “Mama” and “Dada”: Why Babies Learn Certain Words
Scientific American Mind: Twila Tardif, a linguist at the University of Michigan, remembers the day she and her Mandarin-speaking babysitter watched as Tardif's 11-month-old daughter crawled over to a pen that had just fallen on the floor and pointed to it. “Pen!” Tardif told her daughter in Mandarin just as her sitter said, “Grab!” also in Mandarin. Then they looked at each other in puzzlement. Tardif realized that caregivers in different cultures might be influencing which words babies learn first.
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White people think racism is getting worse. Against white people.
The Washington Post: How do Americans think about the role of race in our country’s daily life? News reports, social media and uncomfortable dinner conversations often point to one conclusion: They disagree. Many white Americans believe that the United States has entered a post-racial phase; many black Americans believe that race is as salient an issue as ever. Recent polling identifies one area, though, where black and white Americans show remarkable convergence: They believe that race relations have gotten worse.
