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‘Sesame Street’ Widens Its Focus
The New York Times: On “Sesame Street,” a distressed cow has a big problem. She made it up the stairs to the beauty parlor but now, her bouffant piled high, she’s stuck. Cows can go up stairs, she moans, but not down. Enter Super Grover 2.0. Out from his bottomless “utility sock” comes an enormous ramp, which, as the cow cheerily notes before clomping on down, is “a sloping surface that goes from high to low.” ... “This is working,” said Rosemarie Truglio, senior vice president, curriculum and content. Still, they acknowledge there are challenges in measuring a young child’s scientific understanding, and experts are only just beginning to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
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Wie Kinder teilen lernen (How children learn to share)
Suddeutsche Zeitung: Sie helfen Erwachsenen, Papier in den Mülleimer zu werfen. Sie zeigen Mitgefühl, wenn jemand anderes verletzt oder traurig ist. Und wenn es besonders gut läuft, teilen Kinder auf dem Spielplatz sogar Schaufel und Plastiktraktor mit Altersgenossen. Dieses sogenannte prosoziale Verhalten von Babys und Kleinkindern macht Eltern stolz - und Forscher etwas ratlos. Was motiviert die Kleinen zum Teilen und Helfen, wie lässt sich ihre Bereitschaft dazu weiter fördern? Hinweise auf eine Antwort bietet eine Studie amerikanischer Entwicklungspsychologinnen.
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How Financial Woes Change Your Brain (And Not for the Better)
TIME: Worrying about making ends meet, it seems, can occupy enough of the brain‘s finite thinking power that it makes it difficult to think clearly. According to the latest research published in Science, just thinking about shaky finances can drop IQ by the equivalent of 13 points. That may help to explain why poverty can become a vicious cycle, with lower income people tending to make seemingly irrational and risky decisions, particularly when it comes to money. ...
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“Seeing” Faces Through Touch
Our sense of touch can contribute to our ability to perceive faces, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “In daily life, we usually recognize faces through sight and almost never explore them through touch,” says lead researcher Kazumichi Matsumiya of Tohoku University in Japan.
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Get Off the Work Treadmill
Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, likens today’s work environment to running on a treadmill. People race to keep up with meetings, emails, and deadlines, while making no real progress – especially on creative tasks. Instead, it often would be better to do less, says Amabile, an APS Fellow. The single most important thing managers can do to enhance workplace creativity is “protecting at least 30 to 60 minutes each day for yourself and your people that’s devoted to quiet reflection,” she tells the Harvard Gazette. Amabile has spent the last 35 years researching life inside organizations and how it influences employees and their performance.
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Diagnosing Self-Destruction
NPR: And also, Matthew Nock is professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard in Cambridge. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Nock. ... NOCK: We know there's no simple answer, and as you were highlighting, we have identified risk factors for suicide, so we know that in the U.S. people who are white, people who are male, people with a mental disorder, people with a family history of suicide or mental disorders, are at higher risk. What we haven't done yet is developed an understanding of why it is that people with these characteristics are at high risk.
