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Word-streaming tech may spell trouble for readers
ScienceNews: In the brave new digital world of reading, words flash by one at a time on the tiny screens of smart watches and phones. This portable, pageless story doesn’t end well for people keen on understanding what they’ve read, say psychologist Elizabeth Schotter of the University of California, San Diego and her colleagues. Rereading words salvages understanding of initially confusing passages, Schotter’s team reports April 18 in Psychological Science. Software that presents words one at a time makes it impossible to scan previously read words and phrases, undermining text comprehension, the scientists say. Read the whole story: ScienceNews
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Discrimination starts even before grad school, study finds
Nature: Most would acknowledge that women and minorities already face more hurdles in academia than their white, male peers. A lack of mentors, occasionally overt discrimination and the academy’s poor work-life balance, are well-documented issues. But now a study has suggested that these groups may be at a disadvantage even before the starting whistle sounds.
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See Jane Evolve: Picture Books Explain Darwin
The Wall Street Journal: Evolution by natural selection is one of the best ideas in all of science. It predicts and explains an incredibly wide range of biological facts. But only 60% of Americans believe evolution is true. This may partly be due to religious ideology, of course, but studies show that many secular people who say they believe in evolution still don't really understand it. Why is natural selection so hard to understand and accept? What can we do to make it easier? A new study in Psychological Science by Deborah Kelemen of Boston University and colleagues helps to explain why evolution is hard to grasp.
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Gratitude Is the New Willpower
Harvard Business Review: Patience is a virtue, especially when it comes to building capital. But as with most virtues, it’s not always easy to muster, since it usually requires resisting temptations for gratification on the sooner side. Should you put the extra $1,000 earned this month in your retirement savings or use it to buy a new suit? Should you approve money from the firm’s “rainy-day” fund to cover travel for senior executives (yourself included) to a lavish conference this summer or let it continue to accrue as a buffer for future challenges?
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Reading Pain in a Human Face
The New York Times: How well can computers interact with humans? Certainly computers play a mean game of chess, which requires strategy and logic, and “Jeopardy!,” in which they must process language to understand the clues read by Alex Trebek (and buzz in with the correct question). But in recent years, scientists have striven for an even more complex goal: programming computers to read human facial expressions. ...
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From Our Pets to Our Plates: The Psychology of Eating Animals
We love animals, caring for some as if they were members of our families, and yet we eat animals, too. In fact, we eat a lot of meat -- data show that the average person on this planet eats about 48 kg or 106 lbs of meat per year. This duality between loving and eating animals is what researcher Steve Loughnan of the University of Melbourne and colleagues call the “meat paradox”: “Most people care about animals and do not want to see them harmed but engage in a diet that requires them to be killed and, usually, to suffer,” the researchers explain.
