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Babies’ Hunger to Learn Has a ‘Goldilocks Effect’
The New York Times: Infants are constantly trying to make sense of the world around them, and they do this by seeking out situations that are neither too simple nor too complex. Writing in the journal PLoS One, a team of researchers from the University of Rochester call it the “Goldilocks effect.” Babies “are seeking out the type of learning material from the world that’s most efficient for them to learn from,” said the study’s lead author, Celeste Kidd, a cognitive scientist at the university. Her team measured the attention patterns of 72 infants, ages 7 and 8 months, as they watched video animations while an eye-tracking device below the screen followed their gaze.
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Does Speaking in a Second Language Make You Think More, or Feel Less?
Discover Magazine: Should homosexuals should be allowed to serve in the military? Let me rephrase that: Should gay men or lesbians be allowed to serve in the military? You may have detected within yourself a subtle emotional shift between these two questions. For many Americans, according to a 2010 poll by CBS and The New York Times, those subtly different gut reactions actually led to different responses depending on how the question was worded; people were more receptive to having “gay men and lesbians” than “homosexuals” in the military.
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The Healthy Poor: Demystifying John Henry
John Henry is one of the big men of American folklore, a former slave and “steel drivin’ man” who helped pioneer the American frontier in the 19th century. According to legend, John Henry was a man of extraordinary physical prowess who wielded a sledge hammer to clear the way for the nation’s expanding railroads. He was also a man of extraordinary determination. When the railroad owner threatened to replace men and their muscles with a new steam-driven hammer, John Henry challenged owner and machine to a contest of strength. He won, but lost, dying of exhaustion. That’s the John Henry story most Americans know.
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Inside a Child’s Mind — Research Findings from Psychological Science
Developmental psychology researchers have long known that children aren’t simply mini-adults – their minds and brains work in fundamentally different ways. Exploring those differences can help us understand how kids think and behave and can provide insights into how the mind and brain develop and change over time. Here is some of the latest research involving children from Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Who is Good At This Game? Linking an Activity to a Social Category Undermines Children’s Achievement Can linking an activity to a social group affect children’s performance on a task?
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Talking to Yourself: Not So Crazy After All
TIME: In the privacy of our minds, we all talk to ourselves — an inner monologue that might seem rather pointless. As one scientific paper on self-talk asks: “What can we tell ourselves that we don’t already know?” But as that study and others go on to show, the act of giving ourselves mental messages can help us learn and perform at our best. Researchers have identified the most effective forms of self-talk, collected here — so that the next time you talk to yourself, you know exactly what you should say. Self-talk isn’t just motivational messages like “You can do it!” or “Almost there,” although this internal cheering section can give us confidence.
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The Virtues of Daydreaming
The New Yorker: Humans are a daydreaming species. According to a recent study led by the Harvard psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Matthew A. Killingsworth, people let their minds wander forty-seven per cent of the time they are awake. (The scientists demonstrated this by developing an iPhone app that contacted twenty-two hundred and fifty volunteers at random intervals during the day.) In fact, the only activity during which we report that our minds are not constantly wandering is “love making.” We’re able to focus for that. At first glance, such data seems like a confirmation of our inherent laziness.
