It can be hard to understand a non-native speaker of your own language. But conversation is a two-way street and linguists are figuring out how native listeners can improve their half of the interaction.
One way to see the value of meaning is to share information and cooperate with others.
Mario Purisic/Unsplash
The self-help books are full of advice on how to get meaning in life, but it helps to understand what meaning actually is. Science may be able to provide some answers.
It’s a psychological quirk that when something becomes rarer, people may spot it in more places than ever. What is the ‘concept creep’ that lets context change how we categorize the world around us?
When you quit in frustration, little eyes are watching and learning.
Victor Maschek/Shutterstock.com
Julia Leonard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Persistence and self-control are valuable traits that can help kids succeed in school and beyond. A new study suggests infants can learn stick-to-itiveness by watching adults persist in a difficult task.
Everyone sees them all, but we don’t all give them the same distinct names.
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Ted Gibson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Bevil R. Conway, National Institutes of Health
People across the globe all see millions of distinct colors. But the terms we use to describe them vary across cultures. New cognitive science research suggests it’s about what we want to communicate.
Quirks of human psychology can pose problems for science communicators trying to cover controversial topics. Recognizing what cognitive science knows about how we deal with new information could help.
The modern world is a complex place, even if we don’t think it is.
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Google’s image recognition project has not only generated some disturbing images but also tells us something about how we humans identify objects we see.
This sign might actually be appealing to treasure hunters in the distant future.
Alan English CPA/Flickr
My mum and dad are troopers. Every morning, in an effort to stave off old age and dry rot, they down a tablespoon of oily, stinky fish oil. This is done without any obvious signs of distress – clearly…
Future technology won’t just be a gadget we use, it will re-structure our societies.
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Throughout history, whenever new technologies have emerged that change our means of production and ability to communicate they have tended to transform society. The rapid technological development of the…
How does feeling you inhabit a body different than your own affect your racial biases?
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Maister et al.
In 1959, John Howard Griffin, a white American writer, underwent medical treatments to change his skin appearance and present himself as a black man. He then traveled through the segregated US south to…