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Gesturing While Talking Helps Change Your Thoughts
Sometimes it’s almost impossible to talk without using your hands. These gestures seem to be important to how we think. They provide a visual clue to our thoughts and, a new theory suggests, may even
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Naming Tools Is a Hands-On Task
You don’t just need your eyes to think of the name of a tool; your hands get involved, too. A new study finds that people are slower to identify a picture of a tool if
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Feeling Blue? You’ll Shun the New
A sick or sad child might cling to mom’s leg. But that same child – fed, rested and generally content – will happily toddle off to explore every nook and cranny of the known world.
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The Body of Knowledge
The cold shoulder. A heavy topic. A heroic white knight. We regularly use concrete, sensory-rich metaphors like these to express abstract ideas and complicated emotions. But a growing body of research is suggesting that these
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Study Maps Social Proximity to Temperature
Adding to the emerging literature on “embodied cognition,” a new study looks at metaphors, like “the cold shoulder” and “warm feelings,” to test the link between thermometer readings and feelings of closeness or distance, affection
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The Link Between Weight and Importance
Weighty. Heavy. What do these words have to do with seriousness and importance? Why do we weigh our options, and why does your opinion carry more weight than mine? New research suggests that we can
