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Kids own up to ownership
ScienceNews: Young children are possessed by possessions. Preschoolers argue about what belongs to whom with annoying regularity, a habit that might suggest limited appreciation of what it means to own something. But it’s actually just the opposite, psychologist Ori Friedman of the University of Waterloo in Canada reported on May 28 at the Association for Psychological Science annual meeting. At ages 4 and 5, youngsters value a person’s ownership rights — say, to a crayon — far more strongly than adults do, Friedman and psychology graduate student Karen Neary found.
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Researchers say math anxiety starts young
The Washington Post: Math problems make more than a few students — and even teachers — sweat, but new brain research is providing insights into the earliest causes of the anxiety so often associated with mathematics. Mathematics anxiety is more than just disliking math, experts say; someone with math anxiety feels negative emotions when engaging in an activity that requires numerical or math skills. In one forthcoming study, simply suggesting to college students that they would be asked to take a math test triggered a stress response in the hypothalamus of students with high math anxiety. Read more: The Washington Post
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Want to Solve a Problem? Don’t Just Use Your Brain, but Your Body Too
When we’ve got a problem to solve, we don't just use our brains but the rest of our bodies, too. The connection, as neurologists know, is not uni-directional. Now there’s evidence from cognitive psychology of the same fact. “Being able to use your body in problem solving alters the way you solve the problems,” says University of Wisconsin psychology professor Martha Alibali. “Body movements are one of the resources we bring to cognitive processes.” These conclusions, of a new study by Alibali and colleagues—Robert C.
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Cultural Pressure Encourages Poor Eating Habits In Immigrants
KQED: People who immigrate to the United States from traditionally healthy cultures usually develop Western disease patterns within one or two generations. Since genetic changes cannot occur this rapidly, environmental factors, particularly diet, are considered to be primary the reason for the shift. While it has been proposed that dietary changes are the result of having access to less healthy foods, new research suggests that poor food choices are often made not from preference but from pressure to fit in as an American.
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Capacity for Commitment May Start in Early Childhood
Yahoo News: The ability of men and women to have staying power and a strong level of commitment in their romantic relationships can be traced back to their early childhood and adolescence, a new study finds. Researchers asked 78 people aged 20 or 21 and their heterosexual partners about their level of commitment to their relationship. The researchers already had data on the participants from when they were aged 2 and 16, including how loving and attentive their mothers were when they were toddlers, and how they dealt with a conflict with a friend as teens.
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Overworked and Underplayed: The Incredible Shrinking Vacation
Huffington Post: As you trudge back to work after a brief glimpse of freedom beyond the office, your thoughts may turn to what it would feel like to have a few more days off from the grind. The end of May used to mark the unofficial start of vacation season, a time when people took road trips, went camping, roamed amusement parks, traveled and explored their world. Today, vacations are little more than a memory for many of us, a theoretical concept that exists only on paper. Some 25 percent of Americans and 31 percent of low-wage earners get no vacation at all anymore, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
