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Inside the Mind of a Child With Autism
The New York Times: Therapists who specialize in autism often use a child’s own interests, toys or obsessions as a way to connect, and sometimes to reward effort and progress on social skills. The more eye contact a child makes, for example, the more play time he or she gets with those precious maps or stuffed animals. But now a group of scientists and the author of a new book are suggesting that those favorite activities could be harnessed in a deeper, more organic way. If a child is fascinated with animated characters like Thomas the Tank Engine, why not use those characters to prompt and reinforce social development?
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The Forgotten Childhood: Why Early Memories Fade
NPR: Francis Csedrik, who is 8 and lives in Washington, D.C., remembers a lot of events from when he was 4 or just a bit younger. There was the time he fell "headfirst on a marble floor" and got a concussion, the day someone stole the family car ("my dad had to chase it down the block"), or the morning he found a black bat (the furry kind) in the house. But Francis looks puzzled when his mom, Joanne Csedrik, asks him about a family trip to the Philippines when he was 3. "It was to celebrate someone's birthday," she tells him. "We took a long plane ride, two boat trips," she adds. Francis says he doesn't remember. That's a classic example of a phenomenon known as childhood amnesia.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Feature-Binding Errors After Eye Movements and Shifts of Attention Julie D. Golomb, Zara E. L'Heureux, and Nancy Kanwisher In this study, the authors examined distortions in feature binding that might occur after eye movements. Participants were shown four color blocks -- one in a precued spatiotopic (world-centered) location -- that appeared after an eye movement. When participants indicated the color of the block appearing at the cued location using a color wheel, their reports were systematically shifted toward the color of the distractor in the retinotopic (eye-centered) location of the cue.
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Enjoy Life More: Use Facebook Less
Pacific Standard: Feeling down? New research from Austria points to a drug-free, no-cost treatment that may very well help: Stop spending so much time on Facebook. In a recently published study, psychologists Christina Sagioglou and Tobias Greitemeyer of the University of Innsbruck report people “expect to feel better after using Facebook, whereas in fact, they feel worse.” Their evidence suggests it’s not Internet browsing in general, but specifically social media use that brings people down. It also points to a likely reason: The nagging feeling that you’ve been wasting time. Read the whole story: Pacific Standard
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Eight (No, Nine!) Problems With Big Data
The New York Times: BIG data is suddenly everywhere. Everyone seems to be collecting it, analyzing it, making money from it and celebrating (or fearing) its powers. Whether we’re talking about analyzing zillions of Google search queries to predict flu outbreaks, or zillions of phone records to detect signs of terrorist activity, or zillions of airline stats to find the best time to buy plane tickets, big data is on the case. By combining the power of modern computing with the plentiful data of the digital era, it promises to solve virtually any problem — crime, public health, the evolution of grammar, the perils of dating — just by crunching the numbers. Or so its champions allege.
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Play It Again And Again, Sam
NPR: A couple of years ago, music psychologist decided to make some alterations to the music of . Berio was one of the most famous classical composers of the 20th century, a man internationally recognized for the dramatic power of his compositions. But Margulis didn't worry much about disrupting Berio's finely crafted music. After loading his most famous piece into a computer editing program, she just randomly started cutting. ... And the power of repeated exposure isn't just limited to music. Research has shown that the mere exposure effect makes stockbrokers feel more warmly toward stocks they've seen before; it also works when looking at art or fashion or random geometric shapes.
