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Parents: beware praise inflation
The Boston Globe: It’s natural for parents to want to heap praise on their children. But depending on the kid, it may not be as helpful as they might think. In a new study, researchers found that even though parents offered more inflated praise to children with lower self-esteem, children with low self-esteem were actually more motivated to challenge themselves after receiving non-inflated praise (“You made a beautiful drawing!”) than if they heard inflated praise (“You made an incredibly beautiful drawing!”) Read the whole story: The Boston Globe
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Know Thy Avatar: Good and Evil in the Gaming World
The Huffington Post: The 2013 Ben Stiller film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a remake of a 1947 Danny Kaye movie of the same name, which was itself based on a popular James Thurber story, first published in The New Yorker in 1939. The enduring appeal of this tale reflects the human urge to try on another identity, to be someone else for a time, to play act. Walter Mitty is an ordinary, boring fellow going about his very ordinary day, but in his rich heroic daydreams he is everything from assassin to fighter pilot to ER surgeon extraordinaire. It's all good fun. But is it possible that such complete immersion in novel and extraordinary identities might have unintended consequences?
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Why baby talk is good for your baby
The Washington Post: The more parents exaggerate vowels and raise the pitch of their voices when talking to babies, the more the babies babble, new research shows. Common advice to new parents is that the more words babies hear, the faster their vocabulary grows. The new findings show that what spurs early language development isn’t so much the quantity of words as the style of speech and social context in which speech occurs. Researchers examined thousands of 30-second snippets of verbal exchanges between parents and babies.
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In Life and Business, Learning to Be Ethical
The New York Times: LOTS of New Year’s resolutions are being made — and no doubt ignored — at this time of year. But there’s one that’s probably not even on many lists and should be: Act more ethically. Most people, if pressed, would acknowledge that they could use an ethical tuneup. Maybe last year they fudged some numbers at work. Dented a car and failed to leave a note. Remained silent when a friend made a racist joke. The problem, research shows, is that how we think we’re going to act when faced with a moral decision and how we really do act are often vastly different.
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Brain training can help older adults stay sharp for years
NBC: A brief course of brain exercises helped older adults hold on to improvements in reasoning skills and processing speed for 10 years after the course ended, according to results from the largest study ever done on cognitive training. Older adults who underwent a brief course of brain exercises saw improvements in reasoning skills and processing speed that could be detected as long as 10 years after the course ended, according to results from the largest study ever on cognitive training.
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Is Sugar Addiction Why So Many January Diets Fail?
NPR: We've survived the stretch between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, when rich, sweet treats come at us non-stop. Now is the season of reform, when gym memberships, cleanse books, and weight-loss plans sell like gangbusters. The cycle has become so predictable, and disheartening, as our collective motivation to change our ways dissolves by February like a sugar cube in a glass of champagne. I've certainly done my fair share of January food-restriction experiments that fizzled at the first sign of a Valentine's Day candy heart. For me, it's refined sugar, pure and simple, that, over time, I've identified as the food I would most love to be able to resist.
