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Baby Talk: The Roots of the Early Vocabulary in Infants’ Learning From Speech
Although babies typically start talking around 12 months of age, their brains actually begin processing certain aspects of language much earlier, so that by the time they start talking, babies actually already know hundreds of words. While studying language acquisition in infants can be a challenging endeavor, researchers have begun to make significant progress that changes previous views of what infants learn, according to a new report by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Daniel Swingley.
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It All Adds Up: Early Achievement in Math May Identify Future Scientists and Engineers
New research published in the October issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that there may be a way to identify budding scientists and engineers and thus be able to guide them, from a young age, to careers that will enable them to make the most of their abilities. Vanderbilt University psychologists Gregory Park, David Lubinski and Camilla P. Benbow wanted to see if early mathematical reasoning ability would be predictive of future accomplishments in scientific and technical fields. The researchers identified 1500 young adolescents who had scored in the top 1% on the math portion of the SAT.
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Phony Friends? Rejected People Better Able to Spot Fake Smiles
“There are hundreds of languages in the world, but a smile speaks them all.” It’s true too—next time you are lost in a foreign country, just flash a smile and the locals will be happy to help you find your way. An honest smile can convey a wide range of meanings, from being happy to having fun. Although, not all smiles are genuine. All of us have “faked a smile” at some point.
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Could Your Initials Influence Where You Choose to Work? A Systematic Test of the “Name-Letter Effect”
One of the most important decisions that we can make is what company we will work for. There are a number of factors to consider when making this decision, including salary, benefits and work location. However, there may also be less-obvious factors in play that sway our decision, and without us even knowing it. It is well known that unconscious thoughts can influence certain aspects of our behavior. An intriguing example of this is the “name-letter effect,” a phenomenon which shows that we have a preference for things that begin with the same letter as our first name.
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Hypnosis-induced Synaesthesia Makes You See Red – in the Number Seven
Hypnosis can induce synaesthetic experiences – where one sense triggers the involuntary use of another – according to a new study in Psychological Science. The findings suggests that people with synaesthesia do not necessarily have extra connections in their brain; rather, their brains may simply do more ‘cross-talking’ and this can be induced by changing inhibitory processes in the average brain. People living with synaesthesia (known as synaesthetes) experience abnormal interactions between the senses. Digit-colour synaesthetes, for instance, will experience certain numbers in specific colours (for example, they might experience the number seven as red).
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Just a Numbers Game? Making Sense of Health Statistics
Presidential candidates use them to persuade voters, drug companies use them to sell their products, and the media spin them in all kinds of ways, but nobody – candidates, reporters, let alone health consumers – understands them. Health statistics fill today’s information environment, but even most doctors, who must make daily decisions and recommendations based on numerical data – for instance, to calculate the risks of a certain drug or surgical intervention, or to inform a patient of the possible benefits versus harms of cancer screening – lack the basic statistical literacy they require to make such decisions effectively.
