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Research Hints at Promise and Difficulty of Helping People With A.D.H.D. Learn
The New York Times: Over the past few decades, cognitive scientists have found that small alterations in how people study can accelerate and deepen learning, improving retention and comprehension in a range of subjects, including math, science and foreign languages. The findings come almost entirely from controlled laboratory experiments of individual students, but they are reliable enough that software developers, government-backed researchers and various other innovators are racing to bring them to classrooms, boardrooms, academies — every real-world constituency, it seems, except one that could benefit most: people with learning disabilities. ... “If anything, for the A.D.H.D.
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Why we never really get over that first love
The Washington Post: Twenty years ago . . . She was my first relationship . . . My first boyfriend . . . I was 17 . . . She was 19 . . . We were crazy about each other . . . We broke up because . . . So much time has passed . . . I find myself thinking of her . . . He keeps appearing in my dreams . . . I’m happily married . . . I’m happily married, BUT . . . I can’t help but wonder . . . We recently reconnected . . . I know I need to move on . . . Please, help . . . What should I do? If you spend enough time reading advice columns, you notice a pattern. In the stream of sorrows and quandaries and relationship angst, one word bubbles up again and again. First. My first love. My first time.
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Six ways your body changes your perception
Science: Can you jump that gap? Will you even try? Your visual system helps you make such decisions by warping and stretching the things you look at according to your physical traits or abilities, says Jessica Witt, a cognitive psychologist at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. Rather than showing us the world as it is, our vision toys with things like slope and distance. The harder a task, the more it seems to magnify before our eyes. These visual biases may have evolved to help us make quick decisions, letting us know at a glance which tasks to tackle.
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People Are Pretty Bad at Reading Faces
The Atlantic: The truth was written all over her face. The eyes are the window to the soul. From our clichés, you would think that we could read faces like they were … well, open books. In fact, the skill has more in common with dancing, or writing confessional poetry: People tend to overestimate their ability to do it. Most of us can’t distinguish between certain expressions without contextual clues. In one study, participants were unable to tell whether faces in photos were showing pain or sexual pleasure about a quarter of the time [1]. In another, when people watched silent videos of the same person experiencing pain and faking pain, they couldn’t tell which was which.
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The crippling thing about growing up poor that stays with you forever
The Washington Post: Poverty has a way of rearing its ugly head, slipping into the cracks in people's lives when they're young and then re-emerging later in life. Sometimes it happens in ways that are easily observable—what poor babies are fed, for instance, has been shown to alter what they crave as adults, creating life-long affinities for foods that might be better left uneaten. But sometimes the influences are hidden, and all the more insidious as a result.
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Why People Are Confused About What Experts Really Think
The New York Times: GIVEN the complexities of the modern world, we all have to rely on expert opinion. Are G.M.O. foods safe? Is global warming real? Should children be vaccinated for measles? We don’t have the time or the training to adjudicate these questions ourselves. We defer to the professionals. And to find out what the experts think, we typically rely on the news media. This creates a challenge for journalists: There are many issues on which a large majority of experts agree but a small number hold a dissenting view. Is it possible to give voice to experts on both sides — standard journalistic practice — without distorting the public’s perception of the level of disagreement?
