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Who’s in Charge Here? Aging Parents Resist Interfering ‘Helicopter’ Children
Joshua Coleman remembers watering down a glass of wine before giving it to his father, then in his 90s. “What the hell is this?” he recalls his father asking. “I feel a little guilty about that now,” says Dr. Coleman, whose father died in 2001. “The poor old guy had few remaining pleasures left. But I would have felt bad had he gone back to assisted living and slipped.” There’s a fine line between being an appropriately concerned adult child and an overly worried, helicopter one, says Dr. Coleman, a psychologist who specializes in family dynamics. If a parent is in an accident, it might be time to talk about driving, as he did after his father sideswiped three cars.
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You Asked: Is Listening to Music Good For Your Health?
If you’re looking for an easy way to transform your mood, cue the music. Studies have shown that music can buoy your mood and fend off depression. It can also improve blood flow in ways similar to statins, lower your levels of stress-related hormones like cortisol and ease pain. Listening to music before an operation can even improve post-surgery outcomes. How can music do so much good? Music seems to “selectively activate” neurochemical systems and brain structures associated with positive mood, emotion regulation, attention and memory in ways that promote beneficial changes, says Kim Innes, a professor of epidemiology at West Virginia University’s School of Public Health.
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‘Mental instability’ must be considered when looking for motive behind attack: psychologist
What makes Monday’s horrific van attack so deeply terrifying is almost the “banality” of the new violence, said an expert in crime and human behaviour. “Here you have a major thoroughfare in a major city and people are going about their lives and a van driving down the street just goes up the curb and starts cruising down the sidewalk,” said Frank Farley, a Canadian-born professor of psychological studies and education at Temple University in Philadelphia. “That’s what makes it so exceptionally scary. This is almost a new form of violence that takes place in our 9 to 5 lives.”
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Why It Seems as if Everyone Is Always Angry With You
Why do you look so angry? This article hasn’t even begun and already you disapprove. Why can’t I ever win with you? I see it in your face. If this sounds unfamiliar, good for you. You don’t need this. For the rest of us, it may be helpful to know that some people seem to have outsize difficulty with reading neutral faces as neutral, even if they are exceptionally accurate at interpreting other facial expressions. Over the past decade psychologists have been piecing together why this occurs. --- “Angry interactions could be a cue for them to retreat to their room,” said Alice Schermerhorn, a developmental psychologist at the University of Vermont and the author of the study.
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We’re underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video
Seeing is believing. And because of this fact, we’re screwed. Due to advances in artificial intelligence, it’s now possible to convincingly map anyone’s face onto the body of another person in a video. As Vox’s Aja Romano has explained, this technique is becoming more common in pornography: An actress’s head can be mapped onto a porn actress’s body. These “deepfakes” can be generated with free software, and they’re different from the photoshopping of the past. This is live action — and uncannily real. --- “The potential for abuse is so severe,” says Elizabeth Loftus at the University of California Irvine, who pioneered much of the research in false memory formation in the 1990s.
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How Exactly Does Autism Muddy Communication?
The quirks in Ramsey Brewer’s conversation are subtle. The 17-year-old repeats himself from time to time and makes small mistakes in the words he uses. For instance, he says he and his best friend look scaringly, not scarily, similar. He also pauses at odd spots, and for a beat or two longer than most people do. When he’s talking, he makes eye contact briefly but then slides his eyes sideways—or closes them. And his comments swerve in unexpected directions: Asked where he goes to school, he says Boston Latin Academy, but then suddenly adds, “I’m not actually from this state,” even though he and his family have lived in Massachusetts for years.
