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Sounding out speech
The Harvard Gazette: Just about all parents would agree — infants undergo a nearly magical transformation from 3 to 6 months. Seemingly overnight, they can smile and laugh, and they squeal with delight when tickled. They babble, have “conversations” with those around them, and start to respond to their own names. A new Harvard study adds one more item to the list — solving the invariance problem. Among the thorniest challenges in the study of speech perception, the invariance problem was first identified in the 1950s, when scientists began using instruments to analyze spoken language.
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Cheerful tweets may mean a healthier heart
CBS News: Crowd-sourcing through social media has quickly become one of the most powerful tools for public health. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Yelp have been used to track influenza, HIV, food poisoning and other ailments. Now, a new report shows that Twitter can also help predict rates of heart disease on a hyper-local level. According to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Sciences, simply tracking the expression of negative emotions, including anger, stress and fatigue, may produce an accurate picture of which communities are most likely to have high incidences of heart disease.
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The Guilt-Prone Can Hold Back the Team
The New York Times: Do you constantly feel guilty? Here’s some good news: Research has found that guilt-prone people make excellent colleagues and leaders because they contribute more than their fair share, and they don’t free-ride on others’ contributions. But there’s a catch, of course: Guilt-ridden workers are so afraid of letting people down that they’re reluctant to take on challenging assignments with others, a new study finds. In the process, they may hinder not only their own advancement, but also that of colleagues and their organization. There. Don’t you feel guilty now? The research was conducted by two assistant business professors, Scott S.
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Mothers’ “Baby Talk” Is Less Clear Than Their Adult Speech
People tend to have a distinctive way of talking to babies and small children: We speak more slowly, using a sing-song voice, and tend to use cutesy words like “tummy”. While we might be inclined to think that this kind of “baby talk” is easier for children to understand, new research findings in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that mothers may actually speak less clearly to their infants than they do to adults.
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Yes, Walking Through A Doorway Really Does Make You Forget — Here’s Why
Forbes: More often than I care to admit, I’ll walk from one room to another with a clear vision in mind of whatever I need to do once I get there, but then I get there and can’t remember why I started. The only thing that happened between my first movement and my last is that I walked through a doorway. Surely that has nothing at all to do with forgetting something I knew just moments before, right? Wrong, says new research. As it turns out, walking through a doorway exerts an imperceptible influence on memory. In fact, merely imagining walking through a doorway can zap memory.
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Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others
The New York Times: ENDLESS meetings that do little but waste everyone’s time. Dysfunctional committees that take two steps back for every one forward. Project teams that engage in wishful groupthinking rather than honest analysis. Everyone who is part of an organization — a company, a nonprofit, a condo board — has experienced these and other pathologies that can occur when human beings try to work together in groups. But does teamwork have to be a lost cause? Psychologists have been working on the problem for a long time. And for good reason: Nowadays, though we may still idolize the charismatic leader or creative genius, almost every decision of consequence is made by a group.
