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Scientists Look to Genetics of Behavior for Answers to Country’s Partisan Divide
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Scientific analysis has been able to solve the mysteries of polio and smallpox, heavier-than-air flight, the structure of atoms, and millions of other longstanding puzzles of nature. Could it now be used to diagnose and perhaps even solve our nation's political dysfunction? There are grounds for some optimism. A new generation of university researchers, many with backgrounds in psychology, are tackling the question, armed with new findings involving behavioral genetics. The leaders include John T.
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What’s Different About The Brains Of People With Autism?
NPR: Like a lot of people with autism, Jeff Hudale has a brain that's really good at some things. "I have an unusual aptitude for numbers, namely math computations," he says. Hudale can do triple-digit multiplication in his head. That sort of ability helped him get a degree in engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. But he says his brain struggles with other subjects like literature and philosophy. "I like working with things that are rather concrete and structured," he says. "Yeah, I like things with some logic and some rules to it." So Hudale, who is 40, does fine at his job at a bank. But he doesn't do so well with social interactions, where logic and rules aren't so obvious.
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Research Finds Students Short on Study Savvy
Education Week: Students are least likely to choose to test themselves while studying, although it has been shown to be the most effective study strategy, according to researchers here at the Association for Psychological Science conference. "It's a remarkable feature of our educational system that we give students so much stuff to learn and rarely tell them how to go about learning that stuff," said Purdue University psychologist Jeffrey D. Karpicke. "Learners tend to think of 'how do I get all this stuff into my head?' and they don't spend much time considering how they will get all of that stuff back out of their heads when the time comes to retrieve it.
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Babies’ Hunger to Learn Has a ‘Goldilocks Effect’
The New York Times: Infants are constantly trying to make sense of the world around them, and they do this by seeking out situations that are neither too simple nor too complex. Writing in the journal PLoS One, a team of researchers from the University of Rochester call it the “Goldilocks effect.” Babies “are seeking out the type of learning material from the world that’s most efficient for them to learn from,” said the study’s lead author, Celeste Kidd, a cognitive scientist at the university. Her team measured the attention patterns of 72 infants, ages 7 and 8 months, as they watched video animations while an eye-tracking device below the screen followed their gaze.
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Does Speaking in a Second Language Make You Think More, or Feel Less?
Discover Magazine: Should homosexuals should be allowed to serve in the military? Let me rephrase that: Should gay men or lesbians be allowed to serve in the military? You may have detected within yourself a subtle emotional shift between these two questions. For many Americans, according to a 2010 poll by CBS and The New York Times, those subtly different gut reactions actually led to different responses depending on how the question was worded; people were more receptive to having “gay men and lesbians” than “homosexuals” in the military.
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The Healthy Poor: Demystifying John Henry
John Henry is one of the big men of American folklore, a former slave and “steel drivin’ man” who helped pioneer the American frontier in the 19th century. According to legend, John Henry was a man of extraordinary physical prowess who wielded a sledge hammer to clear the way for the nation’s expanding railroads. He was also a man of extraordinary determination. When the railroad owner threatened to replace men and their muscles with a new steam-driven hammer, John Henry challenged owner and machine to a contest of strength. He won, but lost, dying of exhaustion. That’s the John Henry story most Americans know.
