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An Infant’s Refined Tongue
ScienceNOW: Your baby's language skills may surprise you. Before they speak—before they even crawl—infants can distinguish between two languages they've never heard before just by looking at the face of a speaker. And if they're raised in a bilingual household, they retain this ability for a long time, according to research presented here today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW). Read the whole story: ScienceNOW
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People who speak two languages are ‘better at multi-tasking and less likely to develop Alzheimer’s’
The Daily Mail: Learning a second language boosts your brain power and can protect against Alzheimer's disease, scientists say. New research has shown that bilingual people do better in mental challenges and are more skilled at multi-tasking than those who have just one tongue. They also develop symptoms of dementia an average of four or five years later. Read the whole story: The Daily Mail
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‘Talk Therapy’ Can Alter Brain Activity, Research Shows
Bloomberg (HealthDay): Psychotherapy triggers changes in the brains of people with social anxiety disorder, finds a new study. Medication and psychotherapy are used to treat people with social anxiety, a common disorder in which people experience overwhelming fear of interacting with others and of being harshly judged. But there's been far less research on the neurological effects of psychotherapy (talk therapy) than on medication-induced brain changes. Read the whole story: Bloomberg (HealthDay)
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Psychology and the Law: A Special Issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science
Legal systems are necessary in any functioning society. Centuries ago, people realized that the only way to maintain a peaceful community was to develop a firm set of rules—laws—to punish transgressors. As laws have continued to evolve in societies around the world, psychological scientists have begun to investigate the psychological basis of many aspects of legal systems. A new special issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, presents the current state of research on psychology and law.
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New Research From Psychological Science
On the Strength of Connections Between Localist Mental Modules as a Source of Frequency-of-Occurrence Effects Shannon O’Malley, Derek Besner, and Sarah Moroz How do people become familiar with items and events that appear frequently in their lives? To test potential mechanisms, the reaction times to numerical stimuli presented in either Arabic numerals (the more frequent form in which numbers are presented) or words (less frequent) were compared in different tasks. There was a difference in the reaction times between the two formats for a parity judgment task (in which participants indicated whether a number was odd or even) but not for a test in which participants read each stimulus aloud.
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Herschel W. Leibowitz Dies at 85; Studied Night Vision’s Tricks
The New York Times: Herschel W. Leibowitz, a Penn State University psychologist who was among the first scientists to explore how the mind can misinterpret what the eye sees at night, a phenomenon that contributes to traffic accidents, died on Sunday in State College, Pa. He was 85. His death was confirmed by his granddaughter Amy Milgrub Marshall. Dr. Leibowitz lived in State College. Read the whole story: The New York Times
