Posts Tagged ‘cognition’
Society & Culture - Aug 31, 2009 13:12 - 1 Comment
Pay attention, multitaskers!
“When [multitaskers are] in situations where there are multiple sources of information coming from the external world or emerging out of memory, they’re not able to filter out what’s not relevant to their current goal,” says psychologist Anthony Wagner. “That failure to filter means they’re slowed down by that irrelevant information.”
Health & Medicine - Aug 19, 2009 12:22 - 0 Comments
Brain ‘sees’ even when eyes can’t
Blue shows regions of the brain that were more activated when both sighted and blind participants thought about nonliving things rather than animals. (Courtesy: University of Rochester)
Science & Technology - Jul 16, 2009 12:29 - 0 Comments
Keep it down! I can’t hear myself read.
“Auditory training and reducing background noise in classrooms, our research suggests, may provide significant benefit to poor readers,” says the study’s senior author Nina Kraus.
Health & Medicine - Jul 2, 2009 12:51 - 0 Comments
Older Yanks top Brits in battle of the brains
“Given the growing number of older adults worldwide,” says Kenneth Langa, University of Michigan professor of medicine, “future cross-national studies aimed at identifying the medical and social factors that might prevent or delay cognitive decline in older adults would make important and valuable contributions to public health.”
Health & Medicine - Jun 26, 2009 17:11 - 0 Comments
Bigger waistlines thanks to brain’s shortcut
“The eating environment has morphed into an atypical scenario where our usually helpful mental mechanisms betray us,” says Andrew Geier, lead author and a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania.
Society & Culture - Jun 26, 2009 10:01 - 0 Comments
Distracting cell phones have familiar ring
“Many of us consider a cell phone ringing in a public place to be an annoying disruption, but this study confirms that these nuisance noises also have real-life impacts,” says Jill Shelton, a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis
Society & Culture - Jun 26, 2009 9:51 - 0 Comments
Can you ‘really’ imagine yourself in my shoes?
This example illustrates a perspective-taking task. Panel A: Back-facing condition—no perspective transformation is required. Panel B: Front-facing condition—requires imagined self-other transformation. People who are able to imagine themselves in the positions of another person also appear to feel more empathy.
Society & Culture - May 20, 2009 14:33 - 0 Comments
Bilingual kids have tuned-in brains
CORNELL (US)—Teaching young children how to speak a second language is good for their minds and may even help them stay focused, report two Cornell University linguistic researchers. (more…)
Society & Culture - Mar 10, 2009 15:15 - 0 Comments
Brain taps emotion, reward to form first impressions
NYU (US)—First impressions matter. Now neuroscientists have peeked into the brain to find out why. New study results show that two brain regions kick into high gear when we meet someone for the first time. The findings by researchers at New York University and Harvard University reveal how we encode social information and then evaluate it in making these initial judgments. (more…)
