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Technology is ruining our memory. Here’s why that doesn’t matter.
The Washington Post: Two people walk into a seminar: one takes photos, video and an audio recording of the presentation, while the other takes hand-written notes. Which person do you think will better recall the information? The former can use their digital notes to create something new that builds on the topic, the latter – not so easy. Yet we still keep reading reports, such as one recently in New Scientist, which suggest that writing notes on paper gives a person a definite advantage in terms of remembering content. That report was based in part on an article in Psychological Science on the advantages written notes have over those typed on laptops.
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Being Able to Personalize Your Workspace May Have Psychological Benefits
Several studies have found that open office layouts can negatively impact employee performance. Environmental noise and interruptions can become distracting, impairing workers’ productivity. Employees in open offices have also been found to have higher levels of stress, lower levels of concentration and motivation, and they even seem to take more sick leave. In another strike against open offices, a recent study finds that employees who lack privacy may suffer from higher levels of emotional exhaustion compared to those who have an office with four opaque walls and a door. Psychological scientists Gregory A. Laurence, Yitzhak Fried, and Linda H.
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When Talking About Bias Backfires
The New York Times: A FATHER and his son are in a car accident. The father is killed and the son is seriously injured. The son is taken to the hospital where the surgeon says, “I cannot operate, because this boy is my son.” This popular brain teaser dates back many years, but it remains relevant today; 40 to 75 percent of people still can’t figure it out. Those who do solve it usually take a few minutes to fathom that the boy’s mother could be a surgeon. Even when we have the best of intentions, when we hear “surgeon” or “boss,” the image that pops into our minds is often male.
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Are Teenagers Getting Less Lonely?
The New York Times: At a time when many say loneliness is increasing in America, a new study offers what seems like hopeful news: Teenagers, at least, may be less lonely than they used to be. But some think the findings may reflect a change in how teenagers see their social worlds — one that may not be particularly positive. For research published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, D. Matthew T. Clark, Natalie J. Loxton and Stephanie J. Tobin looked at a survey given to high school students from 1991 to 2012.
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Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy
The New Yorker: My sister has a rare talent for mishearing lyrics. When we were younger, song meanings would often morph into something quite different from their original intent. In one Wallflowers hit, for instance, she somehow turned “me and Cinderella” into “the incinerator.” My favorite, though, remains that classic of the swing age, “Drunk driving, then you wake up”—a garbling of the Louis Prima hit that saw a brief resurgence in the nineties, “Jump, Jive, an’ Wail.” My sister’s creation of a night of drunk driving from jumping and jiving is actually a common phenomenon, with the curious name mondegreen.
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How the Powerful Change Their Speech
The Wall Street Journal: Accents often signal social status, but it turns out that your voice indicates status pretty well all by itself. Researchers from San Diego State and Columbia Universities have found that the voices of people put into more powerful roles changed in consistent—and somewhat surprising—ways by becoming higher and more monotonous, while varying more in loudness. To investigate the role of voice in hierarchy, the scientists designed two experiments. In the first, they recorded 161 college students reading a brief text routinely used to assess speaking skills.
