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Some Types of Fables May Be Better at Teaching Kids Not to Lie
Wired: To teach children not to lie, extolling the virtues of honesty may be more effective than focusing on the punishing consequences of deception. After listening to how a young George Washington admitted to chopping down a cherry tree—”I cannot tell a lie,” he famously said—children were significantly less likely to lie about their own dishonesty than if they heard “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” or “Pinocchio.” The difference? Unlike the fairy tales with their grisly punishments, George Washington is lauded for telling the truth.
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What Kids’ Drawings Say About Their Future Thinking Skills
NPR: At age 4, many young children are just beginning to explore their artistic style. The kid I used to babysit in high school preferred self-portraits, undoubtedly inspired by the later works of Joan Miro. My cousin, a prolific young artist, worked almost exclusively on still lifes of 18-wheelers. These early works may be good for more than decorating your refrigerator and cubicle, researchers say. There appears to be an association, though a modest one, between how a child draws at 4 and her thinking skills at 14, according to a study published in the journal Psychological Science. The findings don't mean parents should worry if their little ones aren't producing masterpieces early on.
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A Memorable Flight
Slate: On Aug. 24, 2001, Air Transat Flight 236 ran out of fuel en route from Toronto to Lisbon with 306 passengers aboard. The right engine was leaky, and the crew had performed a delicate fuel imbalance procedure—incorrectly—from memory. Below stretched the Atlantic Ocean for hundreds of miles. As the interior lights flickered and oxygen masks dangled from the ceiling, weeping flight attendants instructed everyone to prepare for a crash landing into the sea. Then the pilot located a small military base in the Azores, and after 25 minutes of hell, the plane touched down—violently, but without badly injuring anyone—to tears and applause.
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What Kids’ Drawings Say About Their Intelligence
TIME: A large and long-term new study shows the way a 4-year-old draws a person not only says something about their level of intelligence as a toddler but is also predictive of their intelligence 10 years down the line. A team of researchers at King’s College London had 7,752 pairs of identical and non-identical 4-year-old twins draw a picture of a child. Read the whole story: TIME
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Common Knowledge Makes Us More Cooperative
Pacific Standard: If you know that someone knows something that you also know, does that make you more likely to cooperate with them? A new study out of Harvard suggests the answer is yes. Social psychology has plenty of studies that examine altruism, but there hasn’t been much research that looks into its obscure cousin, “mutualistic cooperation”—that is, when people cooperate to benefit each other and themselves.
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Should Kids Get A Trophy For Showing Up?
NPR: Talk about a spirited debate ... Just Google the question, "Should kids get trophies for participation?", and the first page yields headlines like "Losing Is Good For You" and "Hell YES all the little league kids should get trophies!" I remember collecting a shelf full of participation trophies from years of playing YMCA soccer. Did they make me who I am ... or spoil me rotten? On the 'No' Side "No," says Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck. Kids should not be given trophies simply for participating, she says. Dweck explains her answer with an anecdote from a mother she'd recently spoken to. "Her daughter rarely showed up for her soccer team.
