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Why Forgetting Is Good For Your Memory
Huffington Post: Forgetting could help you remember. Huh? That's the conclusion of new research from the University of Illinois at Chicago. We wouldn't be able to learn new information if we didn't forget some things, researchers said. "Memory is difficult. Thinking is difficult," study researcher Ben Storm said in a statement. Memories "could completely overrun our life and make it impossible to learn and retrieve new things if they were left alone, and could just overpower the rest of memory." In the study, Storm and his colleagues gave people a word list, where the words all had a relation to each other (example: a list of birds).
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Surprise! Guys want commitment, women want sex
Today Health: The difference in men's and women's attitudes toward sex are often taken for granted. Men want sex, women want commitment; men look for attractive mates and women go after social status. But not all psychologists are on board with these gender-essentialist statements. In a new review, University of Michigan psychologist Terri Conley and colleagues sift through psychology studies and find gender differences aren't always as black-and-white (or pink-and-blue) as they seem. Here are six gender differences that may not be innate after all. Read the whole story: Today Health
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Why teens are wired for risk
CNN: It was hot at 3 a.m. in a small town in North Carolina, and there wasn't a lot for a group of teenagers to do. So, Hillary Tillotson, her brother and three other guys sneaked under a fence to go swimming at a private pool down the street. Only Tillotson and her then-boyfriend kept their clothes on, she said. Two days later, a cop showed up at Tillotson's house. Some of the teens' accomplices had been bragging about their skinny-dipping adventure, and someone turned them in for trespassing. She and her brother had to go to court; their mother paid the fine. "Sometimes I wonder where their brains are at," Tillotson's mother, Lori Lee, said of her children.
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Vietnam official teed off about tee time
Globe and Mail: Reds no match for golf “Vietnam’s transport minister has banned officials from playing golf because, he said, too much time spent on the course had affected their performance at work,” BBC News reports. “The department said devotion to the game, even during holiday time, was partly responsible for sluggish productivity by some staff. Golf was once considered a bourgeois activity by the communist authorities in Vietnam. However, its popularity has surged among a rapidly growing middle class.” A good swim, spoiled “The Maldives is planning to build a floating golf course overlooking coral reefs and connected by underwater tunnels,” Orange News U.K. says.
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8 Percent of Parents Regret Their Baby’s Name, Survey Finds
ABC News: It took Kelcey Kintner nine months to conceive her baby girl's name, Presley, but nearly a year of gnawing regret before she changed it. Kintner, a 41-year-old who blogs about parenting on Mama Bird Diaries, said she and her husband chose the name Presley from a baby book, not as an homage to the king of rock, even though their older daughter's name is Dylan. "I actually like the name Presley -- I don't dislike the name," said Kintner, who lives in Westchester County, N.Y.
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Medical: Teen brains are a work in progress
The Seattle Times: How do teens alternate between shoplifting a case of beer, then "borrowing" a car and at other times scoring the winning goal or singing the National Anthem at perfect key? The answer, of course, is that their brains are a work in progress, still churning out new bundles of cells and knitting them together with connections that may not be fully fashioned until they're well into their 20s. Researchers are finding more and more evidence that those cells and connections play multiple roles in developing not only self- control and forethought, but personality, social skills and, on the downside, mental disorders.
