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Doubts raised over dyslexia diagnoses
The Telegraph: Dyslexia is defined as reading achievement "substantially below that expected" for a person's age, intelligence and education level, according to a widely used guide, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Consequently 'dyslexics' - poor readers with an average or high IQ - have tended to be treated differently from those who are consistently bottom of the class. The basis for this approach has been the assumption that something particular impedes the brains of dyslexics, specifically their reading and writing ability.
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Rich less empathetic than poor, study says
Deseret News: Rich people are less empathetic, less altruistic and more selfish than those of the lower classes, according to new research from University of California at Berkeley and at San Francisco. In an article published by the Association for Psychological Science, co-authors Michael W. Kraus of UC-San Francisco and Dacher Keltner and Paul K. Piff of the UC-Berkely found people from lower classes were better at reading other people's emotions, which is one scientific measure of empathy. If you can't recognize what someone is going through, they argue, it's hard to respond to their needs.
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How Your Brain Reacts To Mistakes Depends On Your Mindset
“Whether you think you can or think you can’t—you’re right,” said Henry Ford. A new study, to be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people who think they can learn from their mistakes have a different brain reaction to mistakes than people who think intelligence is fixed. “One big difference between people who think intelligence is malleable and those who think intelligence is fixed is how they respond to mistakes,” says Jason S. Moser, of Michigan State University, who collaborated on the new study with Hans S. Schroder, Carrie Heeter, Tim P. Moran, and Yu-Hao Lee.
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Goldie Hawn Plunges into Brain Science
Scientific American: Aspen, Colorado. When I arrived at the Aspen Meadows Resort for the Second Annual Aspen Brain Forum last Thursday evening, Goldie Hawn was getting out of a vehicle near the entrance. I knew she was about to give the keynote address, but I was startled to practically run into the actress. A grandmother now, Hawn looked fabulous in over-the-knee black leather boots and a chunky silver belt strung around a black miniskirt. It wasn’t so much her looks, though, that made her instantly recognizable. Her trademark laugh and general effervescence mark her like a strobe light, quite visible even in the bright Colorado sun.
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Everybody Thinks They’re Typical: Seeing Yourself in Others
The Atlantic: Who's the more typical American, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama? According to a European study, the answer depends on who's answering the question. How people see themselves is a potent force that affects how they see others. The study posed the question of what the typical European man looked like to natives of Germany and Portugal. Not surprisingly, the Germans thought that the typical European looked more German, while the Portuguese thought that the typical European had a distinctly Portuguese cast. Other studies have shown that people who belong to a group think that a typical group member has characteristics similar to their own. But those studies were done using words.
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Les babouins apprennent l’analogie
La Marseillaise: Une équipe du laboratoire de psychologie cognitive (CNRS/Université de Provence), dirigée par Joël Fagot associée au chercheur américain Roger Tompson du Franklin & Marshall College est parvenue à prouver la capacité au « raisonnement » par analogie. « Cette publication dans la revue Psychological Science est une grande avancée, puisque jusque-là cette manifestation d’intelligence abstraite n’avait pu être démontrée de manière aussi claire que chez des chimpanzés ayant auparavant appris de l’homme une forme de langage. Nous avons obtenu ce résultat avec des babouins », explique Joël Fagot.
