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Will Mozart make my child smarter?
The Guardian: Playing Mozart and Beethoven to young children improves their listening skills, concentration and self-discipline, according to a study this week by the Institute of Education. The study was an evaluation of a programme for primary schools in the London boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets. Some teachers credited the music with improving English skills. If these are the effects of listening to music, what happens if you encourage your child to play an instrument? According to Glenn Schellenberg, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, who studied the link between music lessons and higher achievement at school, it won't make much difference.
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We Didn’t Eat the Marshmallow. The Marshmallow Ate Us.
The New York Times: In a series of famous experiments in the 1960s and ’70s conducted by the Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel, preschoolers were invited to sit alone in a room furnished only with a small desk. On the desk sat two marshmallows (or equivalently tempting treats) and a bell. The researcher told each child that he had to leave, but that when he returned, she could eat both marshmallows. If she wanted one marshmallow before then, however, she could ring the bell and eat one, but not both. Then the researcher shut the door, leaving the child alone with the forbidden marshmallows.
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Detecting Sickness By Smell
Humans are able to smell sickness in someone whose immune system is highly active, a study shows.
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Multiplier les erreurs aide à mieux apprendre (Making mistakes helps you to learn better)
Le Figaro: Vingt-cinq siècles plus tard, le Pr Tom Stafford, du département de psychologie de l'université de Sheffield (Royaume-Uni), et son collègue de New York Michael Dewar viennent de confirmer l'enseignement du sage chinois dans une expérience originale. Pour s'approcher au plus près de la vie réelle, les deux chercheurs ont observé à leur insu le comportement de 854.064 joueurs sur un jeu gratuit en ligne, Axon, spécialement créé pour l'occasion. «Si l'on parvient à déterminer comment apprendre plus efficacement, on pourra apprendre plus de choses, ou autant en moins de temps», explique au FigaroTom Stafford, à l'initiative de cette étude publiée dans la revue Psychological Science.
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Facebook Snooping on Job Candidates May Backfire for Employers
Scientific American: It’s 2014, which means that Facebook will be 10 years old this February. Since the site launched it has become standard procedure for companies to screen job candidates based on their social media profiles. A recent study, however, suggests that the practice may actually drive away qualified applicants who feel that their privacy has been compromised. Researchers at North Carolina State University have found that when job applicants realize an organization has viewed their social media profile, they are less likely to perceive the hiring process as fair, regardless of whether they were offered the position.
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Is Your Impatience Costing You?
US News & World Report: Impatience, it turns out, can be costly. Research suggests that people who opt for smaller rewards today over bigger rewards later tend to have lower credit scores. In the study by Columbia Business School associate professor Stephan Meier, the most impatient people had credit scores below 620, which means they pay more for loans. In the 2011 study published in the journal Psychological Science, Meier and his co-authors offered 437 low- to moderate-income participants bigger cash rewards if they were willing to receive the money later. They correlated the participants' willingness to delay their cash rewards with their FICO score, a commonly used credit score.
