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Don’t Stand So Close to Me: Proximity Defines How We Think of Contagion
We judge probability and make risk judgments all the time, such as when we try new products or consider which stocks to trade. It would seem that our decisions would be rational and based on
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New Pitt Study on Alcohol Reveals Drinkers Not Only Zone Out—But Also Are Unaware That They Do
A new study out of the University of Pittsburgh suggests that a moderate dose of alcohol increases a person’s mind wandering, while at the same time reducing the likelihood of noticing that one’s mind has
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Children as Young as 19 Months Understand Different Dialects
We are surrounded by a multitude of different accents every day. Even when a speaker of another English dialect pronounces words differently than we do, we are typically able to recognize their words. Psychologist Catherine
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Five-Month-Old Infants Have Different Expectations for Solids and Liquids
When we knock over a container of pens, not much happens. However, when we knock over a container of cranberry juice, panic can ensue as we try to catch the container before too much juice
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Cheating the Lie Detector
In its war on terror, the U.S. government uses handheld lie detectors for fast screening of terrorism suspects. It has been shown that the pocket polygraphs have high error rates and are susceptible to successful
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Study Suggests Left-Side Bias in Visual Expertise
Facial recognition is not as automatic as it may seem. Researchers have identified specific areas in the brain devoted solely to picking out faces among other objects we encounter. Two specific effects have been established