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Breakthroughs in Diagnosing, One Day Preventing Autism
Education Week: New research says it's possible to help diagnose autism in babies as young as a year old, and an early diagnosis could allow for earlier intervention or potentially stop a child from developing autism. Autism typically isn't diagnosed until a child starts to show delays in talking and other milestones that occur after age 2. A study published in this month's Current Directions in Psychological Science says the medical community has new clues about what to look for in even younger children. For example, children who will later develop autism are less likely to show "joint attention behaviors"—paying attention to both a toy and another person.
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Bonus tötet Arbeitsfreude
Süddeutsche Zeitung: Staaten sind von der Pleite bedroht, Banken stehen nach nur drei Jahren vor der nächsten Rettungsaktion durch die resignierenden Steuerzahler - aber die Boni fließen weiterhin, vor allem die für Banker, die mit ihren Derivate- und sonstigen Wettgeschäften unbehelligt wie eh und je vor allem ihre eigenen Taschen gefüllt haben. Ehe wir indessen das Sozialneid-Lied der mangelnden Verteilungsgerechtigkeit anstimmen, wollen wir einfach mal dem vermaledeiten Bonus-Wesen wissenschaftlich auf den überhöhten Puls fühlen und nachschauen, ob solche Höchst-Belohnungen überhaupt durch Höchst-Leistungen gerechtfertigt sind.
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3 Ways To Treat Yourself Better
Huffington Post: Do you handle tough times by getting even tougher on yourself? Tearing yourself down with self-criticism or building yourself up with inflated self-esteem are two sure ways to prolong a hard time. Fortunately there’s a simpler way to relieve your suffering: self-compassion. What does self-compassion entail? “It’s not about judging yourself positively, it’s relating to yourself kindly -- whether you’re succeeding or failing,” says leading self-compassion researcher Kristin Neff, Ph.D. When a relationship “fails,” in the case of divorce, having self-compassion can decrease distress, according to recent research in Psychological Science.
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Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: The Importance of Perspective-Taking
Scientific American: I often find myself walking into the kitchen (or the living room or bedroom or wherever), unable to recall why I was going there in the first place. What I do in those cases is retrace my steps, until I am back to where I began my trip. And more often than not, the location triggers the precise association that prompted me to move in the first place, and I triumphantly return to the place of forgetfulness, ready to do whatever it is that needs doing. In this case, I’m exploiting the close contextual nature of memory: our minds respond to cues in our surroundings to retrieve whatever it was that needed retrieving.
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Concussion testing for student athletes is common, but some question its worth
The Washington Post: If you have a child playing ice hockey, lacrosse, soccer or football this fall, chances are good he or she has taken a computerized examination called ImPACT, for Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing. About 2 million U.S. athletes of all ages have taken the test, which measures mental abilities such as word and shape recall, reaction time, attention and working memory. Athletes are given a baseline test at the start of a season; those who suffer a concussion are tested again before being allowed to return to play. The increased prevalence of ImPACT reflects growing public unease about the state of our kids’ gray matter.
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Are handsome men never good in bed because they never had to be?
Examiner: A new study from the Association for Psychological Science says that people shouldn't take gender differences in sexuality at face value. To what gender stereotypes do TV shows expose most people? And which shows break the stereotypes? Does a new study from the Association for Psychological Science say in a press release that TV-repeated stereotypes say that good looking people are lousy in the bedroom because they're so attractive they don't have to be good in the bedroom? Or does a new study just look at entertainment's stereotypes of good-looking men in the bedroom? Read the whole story: Examiner
