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Distractions Can Help You Make Better Decisions
Inc: Distractions help you make better decisions, researchers say. According to a study published in the journal Psychological Science, you may be better able to make a complex decision after a period of distraction than a period of conscious focus. In the study, led by Marlene Abadie of the University of Toulouse, researchers presented participants with a complex problem-solving question. Then the participants were given either a simple matching game to distract them, a complex distraction, or a quiet period in which to focus and reflect on the problem. Read the whole story: Inc
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Do you have brain power to make an idea go viral?
The Boston Globe: What distinguishes a hot new idea from one that’s destined to be a dud? University of California, Los Angeles, researchers explored what they called the “buzz effect” by recruiting nearly 100 undergraduate students to serve as either “interns” pitching what they deemed to be the next megahit TV show or “producers” to evaluate the interns’ ideas.
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How to Get Children to Eat Veggies
The Wall Street Journal: To parents, there is no force known to science as powerful as the repulsion between children and vegetables. Of course, just as supercooling fluids can suspend the law of electrical resistance, melting cheese can suspend the law of vegetable resistance. This is sometimes known as the Pizza Paradox. There is also the Edamame Exception, but this is generally considered to be due to the Snack Uncertainty Principle, by which a crunchy soybean is and is not a vegetable simultaneously.
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The Psychology of Success: Helping Students Achieve (Op-Ed) –
LiveScience: Timothy Wilson is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and author of "Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change" (Little, Brown and Co., 2011) and he contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Scientific practice is under intense scrutiny these days, including in research psychology. Due to some high-profile cases of scientific fraud, and concern by some about shoddy research practices, there is a lot of hand-wringing going on. This is ironic, because this should be a time for hand clapping, not hand-wringing.
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What is talent – and can science spot what we will be best at?
The Guardian: My interest in the science of talent has a personal backstory. By the age of three, I'd had 21 ear infections and after an operation to remove fluid from my ears, it took me an extra step to process speech. To help me catch up with my peers, I was diagnosed with an auditory processing disorder. I repeated third grade. I was sent to a special school for children with learning disabilities. I was fed a steady stream of low expectations. One day, when I was 14, everything changed. A new teacher took me aside and asked me why I was still in special education. With no prior expectations – seeing only the child in front of her – she took notice of my boredom and frustration.
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‘Active’ Student Engagement Goes Beyond Class Behavior, Study Finds
Education Week: Some warning signs are easy to spot: It's well-established that the kid goofing off in the back of the classroom, who plays hooky and turns in homework late, is disengaged, and at a higher risk of falling behind and eventually dropping out of school. But where are the red flags for the student who sits quietly, answers when spoken to, and politely zones out? A new study, published online in the journal Learning and Instruction, probes how more subtle facets of student engagement can be harder to flag, but just as critical for their long-term academic success.
