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Busy bodies, healthy minds
Chicago Tribune: Carol Adamitis had a stroke when she was 5 years old. Now, at 65, she is participating in research that annually tests her physical and mental health, examining her dexterity as she places pegs in a board and her memory as she repeats a series of numbers backward and forward. The study, led by professors at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, has found that people who are active are sharper and experience lower rates of Alzheimer's disease. Although Adamitis' arthritis makes exercise more difficult, and the stroke hurt her math skills and memory, her exam results show consistency from year to year. "I'm always glad to know how I did on these tests.
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Insights From the Youngest Minds
The New York Times: CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Seated in a cheerfully cramped monitoring room at the Harvard University Laboratory for Developmental Studies, Elizabeth S. Spelke, a professor of psychology and a pre-eminent researcher of the basic ingredient list from which all human knowledge is constructed, looked on expectantly as her students prepared a boisterous 8-month-old girl with dark curly hair for the onerous task of watching cartoons. The video clips featured simple Keith Haring-type characters jumping, sliding and dancing from one group to another.
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The Future of Focus Groups: My Brain Knows What You Like
Forbes: Sometimes what you don’t know you know is where the action is. With lessons about both personal humility and the future of focus groups, first of its kind research used brain data from a small group to predict behavior in the general public. In a research report just published online in Psychological Science, public health officials used activity in a very specific region of the brain to predict which would be the most effective of three different anti-smoking ad campaigns. Rather than focus group self-reports, or even the predictions of experts, the useful information was found to be in brain activity not represented in consciousness.
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The Spirit of Sisterhood Is in the Air and on the Air
The New York Times: When first we meet Hannah, the wondrously mopey mid-20s heroine of HBO’s new hit series “Girls,” she seems to have more strikes against her than a bowling alley at Fenway Park. Her parents have cut off her monthly stipend. Her literary-magazine boss refuses to turn her unpaid internship into a real job. Her atonal lover explores his sex fantasies on her awkwardly untitillated body. She lives in New York City. She majored in English. Yet offsetting all those slings and risk factors is a powerful defense system: girlfriends.
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Moody toddlers at risk for gambling issues, study bets
CTV: Parents who dismiss a toddler's foot-stomping and tantrum-throwing as ordinary growing pains may want to revisit that idea. Defiant, impulsive behaviour in preschool could hint that a child is at risk of developing a gambling problem later on in life. At least that's the takeaway from a recent study published in Psychological Science linking "under-controlled" temperament in childhood to compulsive gambling. If accurate, the report's authors say the findings could have far-reaching implications on the way we approach problems related to self-control and emotional regulation.
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Why do you have to sell your privacy to win?
Chicago Tribune: When you heard about that southern Illinois couple winning a $218 million lottery prize — and keeping it a secret for weeks — did you think about what you would have done? Would you have tried to keep it a secret? I thought, yes, sure, Betty and I wouldn't tell a soul, not if I wanted to keep writing the column and keep our lives just about the same. With that cash, we wouldn't have to worry about bills or retirement or sending our boys off to college, but we'd have to worry about our lives changing forever. Perhaps you would have hoped to keep it a secret too, and perhaps it doesn't matter when you win such a sum. But Americans have a right to privacy.
