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Give Your Halloween Candy a Flavor Boost with Psychological Science
Late on Halloween night, with candy strewn across the dining room table, millions of children across the United States will enjoy the hard-earned fruits of their trick-or-treating labors. After picking through the spoils and immediately
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Stress Eaters May Compensate by Eating Less When Times Are Good
When faced with stress, some people seem to lose their appetite while others reach for the nearest sweet, salty, or fatty snack. Conventional wisdom tells us that stress eaters are the ones who need to
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Learning Vocabulary and Grammar
Janellen Huttenlocher has published on a range of research topics, including language, spatial coding in adults and children, quantitative development, and memory. Huttenlocher has been particularly interested in the role of the child’s environment in the development of cognitive skills. One of her most famous findings is that the verbal behavior of parents and teachers not only determined children’s vocabulary growth, but also their grammatical learning. Huttenlocher has also conducted research on conceptual representation and memory, including the role of concepts in people’s memories of events.
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A Simple ‘Thanks’ Can Tame the Barking Boss
Supervisors often resort to bullying to compensate for their own feelings of incompetence. But studies show that bosses lower their aggression when they feel appreciated.
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The future of facial recognition: 7 fascinating facts
TED Blog: Alessandro Acquisti thinks we are about to have an Adam and Eve moment, where all of a sudden we realize that we aren’t wearing any clothes. Up until now, we have — for the most part — willingly offered up our personal information online without thinking too much about it. But as Acquisti puts it in today’s talk, “any personal information can become sensitive information.” To illustrate what he means, he focuses our attention on facial recognition software and a study he conducted in 2010, when about 2.5 billion photos were uploaded to Facebook in a single month, many of them tagged. ...
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Sirens in the Grocery Aisles
The Huffington Post: On his long sea journey back home following the fall of Troy, the Greek war hero Odysseus sailed perilously close to the Sirens. The Sirens were beautiful and seductive creatures who used their enchanting songs to lure sailors into shipwrecks on the rocky coast. Odysseus yearned to hear the Sirens' song, but he also knew that his weak will was no match for their potent temptation, so he ordered his crew to plug their ears and lash him to the ship's mast -- and never to untie him no matter what he pleaded. He did plead to be released, and his crew did ignore his pleas as ordered -- and only in that way did Odysseus control his desires and avoid destruction. ...