-
Language-Gap Study Bolsters a Push for Pre-K
The New York Times: Nearly two decades ago, a landmark study found that by age 3, the children of wealthier professionals have heard words millions more times than those of less educated parents, giving them a distinct advantage in school and suggesting the need for increased investment in prekindergarten programs. Now a follow-up study has found a language gap as early as 18 months, heightening the policy debate.
-
How Eye Contact Can Backfire
TIME: We’re often told to maintain eye contact when speaking with others. But a new study published in the journal Psychological Science is poking holes in the theory that looking deep into someone’s eyes shows interest and boosts persuasion. In fact, the University of British Columbia researchers report that in the midst of an argument, looking the other person in the eye won’t get them to agree with you. It actually may do the opposite. The researchers tested the power of eye contact by asking 20 study participants to share their opinions of controversial issues such as affirmative action and assisted suicide, and then watch a video of a speaker chatting about various topics.
-
Drinking With Your Eyes: How Wine Labels Trick Us Into Buying
NPR: We're all guilty of it. Even if we don't want to admit it, we've all been suckered into grabbing a bottle of wine off the grocery store shelf just because of what's on the label. Seriously, who can resist the "see no evil" monkeys on a bottle of Pinot Evil? But the tricks that get us to buy a $9 bottle of chardonnay — or splurge on a $40 pinot noir — are way more sophisticated than putting a clever monkey on the front. A carefully crafted label can make us think the bottle is way more expensive than it is, and it can boost our enjoyment of the wine itself, says David Schuemann of CF Napa Brand Design, who has been designing wine packaging for more than a decade. ...
-
How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses
Wired: José Urbina López Primary School sits next to a dump just across the US border in Mexico. The school serves residents of Matamoros, a dusty, sunbaked city of 489,000 that is a flash point in the war on drugs. There are regular shoot-outs, and it’s not uncommon for locals to find bodies scattered in the street in the morning. To get to the school, students walk along a white dirt road that parallels a fetid canal. On a recent morning there was a 1940s-era tractor, a decaying boat in a ditch, and a herd of goats nibbling gray strands of grass.
-
Ethical Parenting
New York Magazine: Imagine this scenario: It’s a Tuesday evening and you’re just home from work, still panting from the subway ride, when you determine without doubt that your fourth-grader has lice. The teeny pale eggs, they could be dandruff, but they’re not; ugh, dozens of them, everywhere, clinging to the silky hairs, and all you can think is, Not tonight. Having been through this before, you know that the only way to help arrest a schoolwide epidemic is to spend hours, three at least, dealing with the vermin right now—combing, vacuuming, washing, drying—not including the inter-spousal fighting and the hysterical kid meltdown that invariably accompanies such an outbreak.
-
Future Seems Closer than the Past
Inside Science: Sometimes the day seems to drag on and time can’t move fast enough. Other days, time seems to fly by and time gets away from us. In general, people experience time as moving toward the future and away from the past. In a new study, social psychologists found that people see the distance of past or future events very differently and that difference, speculates one of the authors, could affect their overall happiness. “So, a week from now people reported that they felt psychologically closer than a week ago even though it was the same objective amount of time in either direction,” said Eugene Caruso, social psychologist at the University of Chicago.
