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Yesterday came suddenly
The Economist: IN “TIME’S Arrow”, a novel by Martin Amis, the protagonist experiences time backwards. Eating involves regurgitating food into his mouth, sculpting the mush with his tongue, packaging it up and selling it to a grocery store. The passage on defecation is best left undescribed. Such a comic device would once leave physicists cold. They used to think that time does not have a direction, at least at the subatomic level, though they now agree that it does. Ordinary people, of course, have always known this. Nearly all cultures have a version of the arrow of time, a process by which they move towards the future and away from the past.
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10 Things We Know About Autism That We Didn’t Know a Year Ago
The Huffington Post: Just two decades ago, autism was a mysterious and somewhat obscure disorder, commonly associated with the movie Rain Man and savantism. It affected an estimated 1 in 5,000 children. How times have changed. Today, thanks to awareness and advocacy efforts, people now have a much better understanding of autism. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) now estimates that a staggering 1 in 88 children, including 1 in 54 boys, in the United States has been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Another recent federal report presented data that autism prevalence among school-aged children, as reported by parents, is 1 in 50.
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The Price Is Right, but Confusing
Scientific American: You’re in the supermarket picking a breakfast cereal. Will it be cinnamon raisin or oats ‘n honey? Hard to decide? What if I told you they both cost the same, would that make it easier? Well, a new study suggests it would not. Because researchers have found that uniform pricing actually accentuates the differences between products, which makes it harder to choose. The results appear in the journal Psychological Science. [Jongmin Kim, Nathan Novemsky and Ravi Dhar, Adding Small Differences Can Increase Similarity and Choice] Read the whole story: Scientific American
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Why Not Apologizing Makes You Feel Better
NPR: To err is human. So is refusing to apologize for those errors. From toddlers and talk show hosts to preteens and presidents, we all know people who have done stupid, silly and evil things, then squared their jaws and told the world they've done nothing wrong. Parents, educators and even public relations flacks have talked at length about the value of coming clean, and there is abundant research on the psychological value of apologizing. But psychologists recently decided to take a new tack: If so many people don't like to do it, there must be psychological value in not apologizing, too. In a recent paper, researchers Tyler G.
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Le liti danneggiano i bimbi pure se dormono (Disputes harm children even if they sleep)
La Stampa: I litigi di mamma e papà danneggiano il benessere dei bambini. Questo si sapeva. Non tutti sanno che danneggiano anche i neonati, e la novità è che danneggiano i neonati anche quando dormono. Si è infatti scoperto che le discussioni in casa tra genitori hanno un effetto sulla funzionalità del cervello del bebé durante il sonno. Lo dimostra uno studio promosso da Alice Graham, Phil Fisher e Jennifer Pfeifer dell’Università dell’Oregon. La ricerca ha analizzato la funzionalità cerebrale di un gruppo di venti neonati dai sei ai dodici mesi durante il sonno in risposta a diverse stimolazioni vocali: voci molto arrabbiate, leggermente arrabbiate, felici e neutre.
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Meditation Is About More Than Inner Peace, Study Says
Boston Magazine: People who practice meditation often do so for individual health benefits like reduced stress and improved mental health. But new research from Northeastern University’s Social Emotions Group says meditation also has an effect on the way we treat the people around us. David DeSteno, a psychology professor at Northeastern, set out to study the social and interpersonal benefits of meditation, specifically its impact on compassion toward others. DeSteno and his team, whose research is set to be published in the journal Psychological Science, split three dozen people into two groups: one that completed an eight-week meditation training program, and one that did not.
