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Difference between ‘violet’ and ‘purple’
https://jakubmarian.com/difference-between-violet-and-purple/, posted 2019 by peter in cognition color physics
The reason why purple and violet look similar to us is because they stimulate our cones in a similar way, but most other animals don’t share the same types of cones and “post-processing”. This means that to other animals, purple and violet may look completely different!
Now imagine a violet flower petal with a purple pattern on it. Depending on the particular shades, this pattern might be completely invisible to us, while many other animals could see it as clearly as we can see an orange pattern on green background.
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Opinion | Let Children Get Bored Again - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/opinion/sunday/children-bored.html, posted 2019 by peter in cognition education opinion parenting
It’s especially important that kids get bored — and be allowed to stay bored — when they’re young. That it not be considered “a problem” to be avoided or eradicated by the higher-ups, but instead something kids grapple with on their own.
We’ve stopped training children to do this. Rather than teach them to absorb material that is slower, duller and decidedly two-dimensional, like a lot of worthwhile information is, schools cave in to what they say children expect: fun. Teachers spend more time concocting ways to “engage” students through visuals and “interactive learning” (read: screens, games) tailored to their Candy Crushed attention spans. Kids won’t listen to long lectures, goes the argument, so it’s on us to serve up learning in easier-to-swallow portions.
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We Should Teach Media Literacy in Elementary School - Scientific American Blog Network
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-should-teach-media-literacy-in-elementary-school/, posted 2018 by peter in cognition education media opinion toread
We need to have a lot of difficult conversations in order to resolve the issues we are facing as a society, and the only way these conversations will be productive and enduring is if we all can agree on the facts. Right now, with Americans believing more than 40 percent of the news they see is fake, we aren’t quite there as a society, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be. The internet is an amazing tool, but to use it most effectively we have to embrace its benefits while also understanding the ways in which it makes us vulnerable. If students are still learning dated practices such as cursive writing in school, shouldn’t they be learning how to navigate and consume the internet responsibly as well?
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Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age: Confronting the Challenges of Motivated Reasoning and Misinformation | Civic Engageme
www.civicsurvey.org/publications/263, posted 2018 by peter in cognition education media science toread
Much misinformation and many falsehoods related to politics circulate online. This paper investigates how youth judge the accuracy of truth claims tied to controversial public issues. In an experiment embedded within a nationally representative survey of youth ages 15-27 (N=2,101), we examined factors that influenced youth judgements regarding the accuracy of the content. Consistent with research on motivated reasoning, youth assessments depended on a) the alignment of the claim with their prior policy position and, to a lesser extent, on b) whether the post included an inaccurate statement. However, and most importantly, among those participants who reported the most media literacy learning experiences, there was a large, statistically significant difference in ratings of accuracy between those exposed to a post that employed misinformation and those who saw an evidence-based post. Implications for educators and policymakers are discussed.
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Not Just White Noise: The Many Colors of Sound - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/white-noise-sound-colors/462972/?single_page=true, posted 2018 by peter in audio cognition reference
Most people are familiar with white noise, that static sound of an air conditioner that lulls us to sleep by drowning out any background noise.
Except technically, the whirl of a fan or hum of the AC isn’t white noise at all. Many of the sounds we associate with white noise are actually pink noise, or brown, or green, or blue. In audio engineering, there’s a whole rainbow of noise colors, each with its own unique properties, that are used to produce music, help relaxation, and describe natural rhythms like the human heartbeat. If you know what to look for, you can start to notice the colors of the noise that make up the soundscape around us.
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Max Planck Neuroscience on Nautilus: Learning to Read in Your 30s Profoundly Transforms the Brain
maxplanck.nautil.us/article/338/learning-to-read-in-your-30s-profoundly-transforms-the-brain, posted 2018 by peter in cognition science toread
In contrast to previous assumptions, the learning process leads to a reorganization that extends to deep brain structures in the thalamus and the brainstem. The relatively young phenomenon of human writing, therefore, changes brain regions that are very old in evolutionary terms and already core parts of mice and other mammalian brains.
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Standing desks 'increase pain' and slow down mental ability, study suggests
www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/02/23/standing-desks-increase-pain-slow-mental-ability-new-study/, posted 2018 by peter in cognition health msm science
Researchers at Curtin University in Australia observed 20 participants working at standing desks for two hours.
They found discomfort “significantly” increased for the lower back and lower limb regions, which correlates with previous research suggesting standing desk is responsible for swelling of the veins, which can endanger the heart.
Mental reactiveness also slowed down after roughly an hour and a quarter, however “creative” decision making was shown to marginally improve.
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Donald Trump’s strange speaking style, as explained by linguists - Vox
https://www.vox.com/2016/8/18/12423688/donald-trump-speech-style-explained-by-linguists, posted 2018 by peter in cognition language politics usa
"Leadership is hard; it needs discipline, concentration, and an ability to ignore what's irrelevant or needless or personal or silly," Pullum says. "There is no sign of it from Trump. This man talks honestly enough that you can see what he's like: He's an undisciplined narcissist who craves power but doesn't have the intellectual capacity to exercise it wisely."
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Sorry, Science Says Speed Reading Doesn't Work | Inc.com
www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/sorry-science-says-speed-reading-doesn-t-work.html, posted 2016 by peter in cognition msm performance science toread
That's the verdict of a comprehensive review of the science on the subject recently published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest. The team behind the research looked at decades of studies focused on all manner of techniques and apps that promise to help you devour words at an incredible clip. Sadly, what they found is that what looks too good to be true almost certainly is.
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BPS Research Digest: Why do so many people believe in psychic powers?
digest.bps.org.uk/2016/02/why-do-so-many-people-believe-in.html?m=1, posted 2016 by peter in cognition science toread
A large proportion of the public – over a quarter according to a Gallup survey in the US – believe that humans have psychic abilities such as telepathy and clairvoyance, even though mainstream science says there is no evidence that these powers exist. It might be tempting for sceptics to put this down to a lack of intelligence or education on the part of the believers, but in fact past research has failed to support this interpretation.
Now a paper in Memory and Cognition has looked for differences between believers and sceptics in specific mental abilities, rather than in overall intelligence or education. Across three studies – this was one of the most comprehensive investigations of its kind – the researchers at the University of Chicago found that believers in psychic powers had memory abilities equal to the sceptics, but they underperformed on tests of their analytical thinking skills.
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