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Here’s One More Reason To Play Video Games: Beating Dyslexia
NPR: Most parents prefer that their children pick up a book rather than a game controller. But for kids with dyslexia, action video games may be just what the doctor ordered. Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disabilities, affecting an estimated 5 to 10 percent of the world's population. Many approaches to help struggling readers focus on words and phonetics, but researchers at Oxford University say dyslexia is more of an attention issue. So programs should emphasize training the brain's attention system, they say, something that video games do.
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Loneliness twice as unhealthy as obesity for older people, study finds
The Guardian: Loneliness can be twice as unhealthy as obesity, according to researchers who found that feelings of isolation can have a devastating impact on older people. The scientists tracked more than 2,000 people aged 50 and over and found that the loneliest were nearly twice as likely to die during the six-year study than the least lonely. Compared with the average person in the study, those who reported being lonely had a 14% greater risk of dying. The figure means that loneliness has around twice the impact on an early death as obesity. Poverty increased the risk of an early death by 19%.
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Teens feeling stressed, and many not managing it well
USA Today: Teens across the USA are feeling high levels of stress that they say negatively affect every aspect of their lives, a new national survey suggests. More than a quarter (27%) say they experience "extreme stress" during the school year, vs. 13% in the summer. And 34% expect stress to increase in the coming year. ... In addition, a study about depression published in 2012 in the journal Clinical Psychological Science, found that rates of suicide attempts were significantly higher in adolescents ages 13-17 than in emerging adults (ages 18-23) or adults (24-30).
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Do you play as Voldemort or Superman? Study shows virtual roleplay affects behaviour
The Independent: The alter-egos that players adopt in online games can affect how individuals act in real life, according to new research published in the latest issue of the journal Psychological Science. "Our results indicate that just five minutes of role-play in virtual environments as either a hero or villain can easily cause people to reward or punish anonymous strangers," says lead researcher Gunwoo Yoon of the University of Illinois. According Yoon and his co-author Patrick Vargas, virtual environments provide them with “a vehicle for observation, imitation, and modelling” as well as offering individuals the chance to act and feel in a way they cannot in real life.
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Meditation Makes People Feel Better. Can It Help You Work Smarter, Too?
Businessweek: Meditating can ease stress, insomnia, and depression and may even help ward off disease. Now there’s evidence it can produce better business decisions. A new study suggests meditating can help business people change course when initial plans don’t work out. People often stick with decisions because they don’t want to feel wasteful or admit that their initial investment was a loss, says Andrew Hafenbrack, a doctoral student at INSEAD in Singapore and the study’s lead author. Behavioral scientists call this “sunk-cost bias”—also known as throwing good money after bad. Participants in the study were asked to make decisions in business-related scenarios.
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Dishonesty and Creativity: Two Sides of the Same Coin?
New research shows that lying about performance on one task may increase creativity on a subsequent task by making people feel less bound by conventional rules. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “The common saying that ‘rules are meant to be broken’ is at the root of both creative performance and dishonest behavior,” says lead researcher Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School.
