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Can You Learn While You’re Asleep?
NPR: If you're a student, you may have harbored the fantasy of learning lessons while you sleep. Who wouldn't want to stick on a pair of headphones, grab some shut-eye with a lesson about, say, Chinese history playing in his ears — and wake up with newly acquired knowledge of the Ming Dynasty? Sadly, it doesn't work. The history lesson either keeps you from going to sleep, or it doesn't — in which case you don't learn it. But researchers may have taken the first baby step to making the fantasy come true: In an unusual experiment published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers Anat Arzi, Ilana Hairston and others showed that people are capable of learning simple lessons while fast asleep.
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Do SAT Scores Help or Hurt in Decisions About Who Will Do Well in College?
Every year, nervous high school juniors and seniors, clutching #2 pencils and armed with hours of test preparation, sit down and take the SAT. At their most basic, these tests focus on verbal, math, and writing ability, and performance on these tests has been linked to subsequent academic performance. As a result, college admissions teams use SAT scores along with other information, such as high school grades, in choosing their incoming freshman classes. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the SAT has been the subject of much scrutiny.
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Brain finds pleasure in processing abstract art
The Irish Times: A new discipline called neuroaesthetics was founded about 10 years ago by Semir Zeki of University College London. It aims to discover the neurological basis for the success of artistic techniques. Most people find the blurred imagery of Impressionist paintings appealing and the new studies show that these images stimulate the amygdala, the area in the brain geared to detect threats in our peripheral vision. The amygdala plays a big role in our emotions, which may explain why we find Impressionist paintings so moving. The images in abstract paintings do not directly picture anything in the real physical world.
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Wisdom is matter of culture
Zee News: Do we really get wiser with age or does culture shape wisdom? Having wisdom implies that one is also good at resolving conflict. But conflict is not handled the same way across cultures. Americans are known to emphasize individuality and solve conflict in a direct manner. Conversely, the Japanese place a greater emphasis on social cohesion, and tend to settle conflict indirectly, relying on mediation through another person. Psychological scientist Igor Grossmann of the University of Waterloo, Canada and his colleagues investigated how the resolution of conflict and, by extension, wisdom, differs between Japanese and American cultures, the journal "Psychological Science" reports.
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Self-Control May Not Be a Limited Resource After All
So many acts in our daily lives – refusing that second slice of cake, walking past the store with the latest gadgets, working on your tax forms when you’d rather watch TV – seem to boil down to one essential ingredient: self-control. Self-control is what enables us to maintain healthy habits, save for a rainy day, and get important things done. But what is self-control, really? And how does it work?
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Teaching Kids A Second Language Isn’t A Waste Of Money
Business Insider: Children growing up in low-income households often fall behind their peers in just about every category––from school testing, college exams and even their mortgage rates later in life. What if learning a second language could change that? It sounds far-fetched, but a team of University of Luxembourg researchers say they've found strengths in low-income bilingual children that may help them surpass the challenges of poverty––namely how they quickly and efficiently they learn to process information early in life. Read the whole story: Business Insider
