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Hand Gestures Could Make Kids Smarter
TIME: Using hand gestures may be important for more than just making a point; they could help children to learn. ... “Our study shows that young children’s gesturing can help them think,” says the study’s lead author Patricia Miller, professor of psychology at San Francisco State University. What’s more, she found that this effect had a stronger effect on successful performance than age — a powerful finding given that children’s skills improve rapidly with age during this stage of development.
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FDA backs low-nicotine cigarette research as it weighs new regulatory power
The Washington Post: Beverly Anusionwu, a smoker for three decades who favors Maverick menthols, was enticed to the small lab inside the University of Pittsburgh’s psychology department by an ad promising free cigarettes and a few bucks for her time. She spent a couple of hours on a recent morning answering questions about her medical history and undergoing a battery of cognitive tests. When she finished, researchers handed her five gray packs of cigarettes unlike any she had ever seen, along with instructions to report back daily on how much she was smoking and whether her cravings and moods changed. “Spectrum menthol,” Anusionwu said, reading the label aloud. “All right, then.
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People Judge Intentional Harms More Severely, Study Finds
The Huffington Post: Was it clearly an accident, or more of a malicious move? How we perceive an action affects how we judge it, according to a new study from Princeton University researchers. For the study, published in the journal Psychological Science, researchers had participants read about the CEO of a profit-sharing company who invested poorly, leading to his employees losing part of their paychecks. Some of the study participants were told that the bad investment was made intentionally, while others were told it was just an innocent mistake.
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The Appeal of Embarrassment
The Wall Street Journal: Watching the writhing of a celebrity caught doing something bad has become an American pastime. Regardless of the transgression, and whether it concerns a politician, athlete, actor or religious leader, there is great consistency to the spectacle of a public figure trying to seem contrite. ... But why should being aghast over your wedding faux pas increase blood flow to your cheeks and make you unconsciously tilt your head downward? In the 1950s, the psychologist Erving Goffman proposed that conspicuous embarrassment evolved as a social signal.
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A Bit Of Thought Makes Finding Out Medical Risks Less Scary
NPR: Would you want to know your risk of getting heart disease? Diabetes? Or an inherited form of breast cancer? Preventive medicine is all about knowing health risks and taking action to avoid them. But many people just don't want to know. As many as 55 percent of people who get tested for the HIV virus never return to get their test results. People like , who took a genetic test to determine her risk of breast cancer and had a preventive double mastectomy to reduce that risk, may be the exception.
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Singing ‘Happy Birthday’ makes the cake taste better
NBC: It’s your birthday! You hate attention. But you do love cake. So before you stuff your gullet with red velvet deliciousness, you’d better suffer through the annual off-key embarrassment of everyone singing “Happy Birthday” to you – and then blow out the candles and make a wish, too. That’s because a new study suggests that performing a ritual before eating -- even a silly thing like our American birthday traditions – actually makes the food taste better. “We found that people's attention is piqued when they perform a ritual and that helps them to be more involved in what they are eating or drinking,” said Kathleen D.
