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Dyslexia independent of IQ
MIT News: About 5 to 10 percent of American children are diagnosed as dyslexic. Historically, the label has been assigned to kids who are bright, even verbally articulate, but who struggle with reading — in short, whose high IQs mismatch their low reading scores. On the other hand, reading troubles in children with low IQs have traditionally been considered a byproduct of their general cognitive limitations, not a reading disorder in particular. Now, a new brain-imaging study challenges this understanding of dyslexia. “We found that children who are poor readers have the same brain difficulty in processing the sounds of language whether they have a high or low IQ,” says John D. E.
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Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change
London Evening Standard: Redirect provides an intelligent person's introduction to psychology, a field that gives rise to more quackery and charlatanism than almost any other. That alone makes it worth reading. The fact that it is accessible, engaging and consistently WTF-worthy makes it an instant classic of popular science - and its lessons could scarcely be more timely. Timothy D Wilson, an American who literally wrote the textbook on social psychology, has a scientist's pernicketiness about evidence-based research but a writer's gift for distilling its latest findings into everyday language.
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Rambert Dance Company: Dance cosies up to science
The Telegraph: The gap between science and the humanities, as identified in C P Snow’s celebrated lecture The Two Cultures, has in recent years been conscientiously bridged: Ian McEwan writes a novel about global warming, while Brian Cox popularises physics for the layman. Somewhat surprisingly, however, it is in the field of contemporary dance that science has become seriously voguish. Last year, Wayne McGregor’s FAR fashioned movement out of ideas from the Age of Enlightenment, while in 2009 David Bintley’s E=mc² took on the theory of relativity. Not exactly Romeo and Juliet.
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Study: Single-sex education may do more harm than good
The Washington Post: The push for more single-sex instruction in public schools is based on weak, “misconstrued” scientific claims rather than solid research and may do more harm than good, according to a study published in the journal Science on Thursday.
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Non voters
CBC The Homestretch: In the recent PC leadership vote, Gary Mar emerged as the clear favourite, but many registered PC voters stayed home that day. Mar's team is hoping that if those party members come out for the next ballot, most will vote for him. Based on the numbers, that seems reasonable to assume, but a new study in the journal Psychological Science says you can't assume anything about people who haven't voted yet. Namkje Koudenburg is one of its authors. She's a graduate student at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Find out more: CBC The Homestretch
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Il sesto senso per gli «untori»
Corriere della Sera: Secondo uno studio delle Università del Kentucky e della Florida pubblicato su Psychological Science, quando siamo convalescenti sviluppiamo una sorta di sesto senso nei confronti di chi potrebbe essere portatore di un agente infettivo per noi dannoso in quel particolare momento in cui ancora non ci siamo del tutto ripresi e lo evitiamo prudentemente riuscendo a riconoscerlo semplicemente dalla faccia. Non si tratta quindi di percepire eventuali agenti patogeni trasmissibili perché i soggetti esaminati sono stati in grado di individuare subito chi avrebbe potuto infettarli guardandolo dallo schermo di un computer in cui venivano presentate varie facce.
