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Bringing The Body To Digital Learning
PBS: Today’s educational technology often presents itself as a radical departure from the tired practices of traditional instruction. But in one way, at least, it faithfully follows the conventions of the chalk-and-blackboard era: it addresses itself only to the student’s head, leaving the rest of the body out. Treating mind and body as separate is an old and powerful idea in Western culture, dating to Descartes and before. But this venerable trope is facing down a challenge from a generation of researchers—in cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience, even philosophy—who claim that we think with and through our bodies.
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Navigating Familiar Roads May Lead to Driving on “Autopilot”
For years, data on car accidents has consistently shown that drivers are most likely to crash at locations very near their homes. At first glance it might seem like this phenomenon occurs because people spend the most time driving close to home. However, a recent study suggests that it may actually due to the fact that drivers are less attentive and aware when they’re driving on familiar roads.
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Don’t Do the Things You Love
The New York Times: Do you like ice cream? Then don’t eat it — at least not every day. At least, that’s what Wendy Wood’s research suggests. In an interview with Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project, the psychology professor discusses how people form habits, and how they can change them — but Mihir Patkar at Lifehacker zeros in on her advice for what shouldn’t be habitual. Ms. Wood says, “the more often you eat ice cream, the less pleasure you get from eating it.” She explains: “With repetition, our action tendencies get stronger but our feelings habituate and weaken.
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Talking While Driving Safest With Someone Who Can See What You See
Talking on a cell phone is a known driving distraction, but new research suggests that talking to someone who can see what you see may actually contribute to driving safety. Results from a driving simulator study showed that conversation partners who could see the driver’s view via videophone were able to modulate their conversation according to what was happening on the road. The findings are forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “We’ve done years of study on driver distraction, and previous studies suggest that passengers often aren’t distracting.
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The Source of Bad Writing
The Wall Street Journal: Why is so much writing so bad? Why is it so hard to understand a government form, or an academic article or the instructions for setting up a wireless home network? The most popular explanation is that opaque prose is a deliberate choice. Bureaucrats insist on gibberish to cover their anatomy. Plaid-clad tech writers get their revenge on the jocks who kicked sand in their faces and the girls who turned them down for dates. Pseudo-intellectuals spout obscure verbiage to hide the fact that they have nothing to say, hoping to bamboozle their audiences with highfalutin gobbledygook.
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The Dark Side of Empathy
Pacific Standard: Public figures from President Obama to Neil deGrasse Tyson have suggested a lack of empathy is one of our species’ fundamental problems. “Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes,” writes author and prominent business-world thinker Daniel Pink. “Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.” A lovely thought. But new research suggests it isn’t always true. A paper just published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin provides evidence that feelings of empathy toward a distressed person can inspire aggressive behavior.
