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Why Your 4-Year-Old Is As Smart as Nate Silver
Slate: Everyone who spends time with children knows how incredibly much they learn. But how can babies and young children possibly learn so much so quickly? In a recent article in Science, I describe a promising new theory about how babies and young children learn and the slew of research that supports it. The idea is that kids learn by thinking like Nate Silver, the polling analyst extraordinaire at the New York Times. I suspect that most people who, like me, obsessively click his FiveThirtyEight blog throughout the day think of Nate as a semi-divine oracle who can tell you whether your electoral prayers will be answered.
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The Psychology of Liberals and Conservatives
Wired: It’s election season in the U.S., and the campaigning between the Democrats and Republicans is fiercer than ever. Now, here at GeekDad, we prefer to steer clear of partisan politics, so this posting is not going to tap-dance into that minefield; instead, we’re going to take a look at the more interesting subject of the psychology of conservative and liberal viewpoints. And regardless of which way you lean politically, I’m pretty sure that once we’re finished, you’ll concede that both the left and the right have perfectly reasonable world views, and that the human mind is an intriguingly subtle organ.
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Should Scientists Promote Results Over Process?
NPR: Consider: two scientists are asked whether there's any doubt that humans are responsible for climate change. The first says, "It's a fact humans are causing climate change – there's no room for doubt." The second replies, "The evidence for anthropogenic climate change is overwhelming, but in science there's always room for doubt." The first scientist is probably a more effective spokesperson for the scientific consensus. But the second scientist is providing a more accurate representation of how science works. This example defines the tension at the boundary between the realms of science and public opinion.
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Causation Warps Our Perception of Time
You push a button to call the elevator to your floor and you wait for what seems like forever, thinking it must be broken. When your friend pushes the button, the elevator appears within 10 seconds. “She must have the magic touch,” you say to yourself. This episode reflects what philosophers and psychological scientists call “temporal binding”: Events that occur close to one another in time and space are sometimes “bound” together and we perceive them as meaningful episodes. New research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that binding may reveal important insights into how we experience time.
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New Insights on Child Development From Psychological Science
Read about new insights on child development from Current Directions in Psychological Science and Psychological Science. Activities and Programs That Improve Children's Executive Functions Adele Diamond Executive functions (EFs) are critical for success in many different areas, such as school and friendships. The good news for those who have problems with EFs is that these skills can be improved. According to Diamond, those with the poorest EF skills gain the most from training programs, but the transfer effect of the skill improvement is very narrow.
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How self-discipline works
Asian News International: Researchers believe that gaining a clearer understanding of how self-control works could provide critical insights into addressing some of the large-scale problems facing society today including obesity and addiction. Converging scientific evidence tells us that self-control is an important ability. It helps us keep our cool, get things done, and resist the things that tempt us. Numerous studies have found evidence for the idea of self-control as a limited resource, but emerging research suggests that this model may not tell the whole story.
