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Read this full article: "seems" is the operative word, as linguists are NOT in agreement that language definitively shapes how we see the world. If you want to learn another language and become fluent, you may have to change the way you behave in small but sometimes significant ways, specifically how you sort things into categories and what you notice. Researchers are starting to study how those changes happen, says Aneta Pavlenko, a professor of linguistics at Temple University. If people speaking different languages need to group or observe things differently, then bilinguals ought to switch focus depending on the language they use. That's exactly the case, according to Pavlenko. For example, she says English distinguishes between cups and glasses, but in Russian, the difference between chashka (cup) and stakan (glass) is based on shape, not material. One's native language could also affect memory, says Pavlenko. She points to novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who was fully trilingual in English, French and Russian. When Nabokov started translating his first memoir, written in English, into Russian, he recalled a lot of things that he did not remember when writing it in English. Pavlenko states that "the version of Nabokov's autobiography we know now is actually a third attempt, where he had to recall more things in Russian and then re-translate them from Russian back into English." Lena Boroditsky, an associate professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, has studied the differences in what research subjects remember when using English, which doesn't always note the intent of an action, and Spanish, which does. This can lead to differences in what people remember seeing, which is potentially important in eyewitness testimony, she says. However, not all linguists agree that language affects what we notice. John McWhorter,, a linguist at Columbia University, acknowledges such differences but says they don't really matter. The experim

A Swedish union has set up a hotline for workers to report instances of "mansplaining" as part of a weeklong effort to raise awareness of a certain kind of condescending elocution that men use to explain to women things they already understand.

Like a human's brain, a dog's brain responds to the meaning of a word and how the word is said. And like with a human's brain, the dog's left hemisphere reacts to meaning and the right hemisphere reacts to intonation. In the study, words were said to dogs in positive and neutral tones, but only positive words spoken in a positive tone prompted strong activity in the brain's reward center. This study suggested that non-primates could process meaning and emotion long before humans could talk.

In relation to the current election that just passed, it was pretty obvious that there was a huge disconnect between two opposing sides. Words of frustration and anger flooded newsprints and social media. In the past, researchers found that there was a curious phenomenon in known as "positive feedback", which refers to people's tendency to use more positive words than negative words. In recent years, Google Books and the New York Times partnered to disprove this phenomenon. Both major print companies forged through tons of texts and found that 16.2 million of those texts contained negative language. They also found that negative words were used more frequently during times of unemployment, poverty, inflation rates, wartime casualties and political tension. More research has been conducted by psychological scientist including William Hamilton and Mark Liberman. Shockingly, they found that events like these were being triggered more often and positive language has decreased in the last 200 years.

This article is pretty self-explanatory based on the article - it talks about how monkeys' vocal cords and bodies are physiologically able to talk and make distinct sounds. However, monkeys lack the brain circuits used by humans to learn sounds, and the special nerve sets humans use to control the shape of our vocal tracts.

There are numerous positive effects of writing in a journal. The action of writing our thoughts, ideas and feelings benefits us in numerous aspects of our lives. One benefit of writing in a journal is that is boosts memory and comprehension. This is because there is a relationship between our hands and brains created by writing thoughts and ideas. Words are representation of ideas and the formation of letters causes the mind to compose or re-compose ideas while journaling. The second benefits is emotional, physical and psychological healing. This is because translating an experience into language makes the experience graspable and allows you to free yourself from emotional blockages and lowers anxiety, stress and induces better sleep. These are two out of ten benefits of writing in a journal that is proposed in this article.

"IT IS A SPECTATOR SPORT to look at someone else's books, if not an act of voyeurism or armchair psychology," wrote Henry Petroski in " The Book on the Bookshelf." Yet when the books don't belong to an individual, but rather to a hotel or a bar, it is not armchair psychology - it is an invitation to a chance encounter.

What makes a politician, or a person, authentic? This article lists off the various definitions of authenticity, according to ancient meanings, famed psychologists like Freud and Rousseau, and political pundits. In the past, the politicians deemed authentic by the public were those that were the most likable, a very interesting standpoint. However, it now seems that a politician that cares about what's in his heart, like Trump, is now thought of as being authentic.

As anti-Muslim rhetoric increases, American officials are cautioning that it could validate extremists' perceptions that Americans are waging a war on Islam. New research from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management lends credence to this fear. Research conducted by Ntour Kteily (Northwestern assistant professor of management and organizations), Gordon Hodson (Canada's Brock University), and Emile Bruneau (U. Penn. neuroscientist) shows that feeling dehumanized by another group can lead you to dehumanize that group in return, which can increase support for aggressive actions against them. Meaning, if Americans think that Muslims see them as savages, Americans will be more likely to return the "favor," perceiving Muslims to be savages. And both groups will be more likely to support aggressive acts-like drone strikes or torture-against the other.

A whistling language like that quoted in "Tree of Codes," she said, speaks to "how we humans adapt to and interact with our environment, not being separate, but really being in a merged relationship with everything around us." That positive attitude sets Ms. Lim apart from some of the other musical-linguistic ventures.

Students at Stephen F. Austin State University ask questions that pertain to creating your own language. Big TV shows and movies such as Game of Thrones and Avatar are making creating your own language a popular idea. This article also describes how to create your own language, which includes picturing what your character looks like and how they would speak.

Donald Trump, who often talks about "my beautiful family" and "lasting relationships," is a rather feminine-speaker. But Trump is also prone to speaking in overtly masculine ways (for example using phrases such as "absolutely destroy"). There are also times in which Trump uses language alienating to all people (regardless of gender); examples of such words include "moron," "imbecile," and "loser."

Euphemistic language is the timeless enemy of anyone concerned with clarity. While everywhere, they tend to cluster within taboo subjects such as death, sex, and drugs - and giving people the axe, as no corporation would say. Few topics have accumulated as many euphemisms as the action called downsizing, making redundant, laying off, demising, and even absurd, clunky phrases like

We each absorb select scenes in our environment through which we interpret a situation, creating our own reality by that to which we give attention. Our brain naturally tries to process what could otherwise be overwhelming amounts of information, by reducing it to a simplified story. However, because that story is based on a small sliver of reality, our perception may be incorrect. Thought holes, or cognitive distortions, are skewed perceptions of reality. They are negative interpretations of a situation based on poor assumptions. Studies show self-defeating thoughts (i.e., "I'm a loser") can trigger self-defeating emotions (i.e., pain, anxiety, malaise) that, in turn, cause self-defeating actions (i.e., acting out, skipping school). Left unchecked, this tendency can also lead to more severe conditions, such as depression and anxiety. Accurate thinking--identifying and recognizing one's false assumptions--can help reduce negative thinking. Here are 8 common thought holes: 1. Jumping to conclusions: judging a situation based on assumptions as opposed to definitive facts 2. Mental filtering: paying attention to the negative details in a situation while ignoring the positive 3. Magnifying: magnifying negative aspects in a situation 4. Minimizing: minimizing positive aspects in a situation 5. Personalizing: assuming the blame for problems even when you are not primarily responsible 6. Externalizing: pushing the blame for problems onto others even when you are primarily responsible 7. Overgeneralizing: concluding that one bad incident will lead to a repeated pattern of defeat 8. Emotional reasoning: assuming your negative emotions translate into reality, or confusing feelings with facts

When people talk about positive and negative emotions they often use spatial metaphors. A happy person is on top of the world, but a sad person is down in the dumps. Some researchers believe these metaphors are a clue to the way people understand emotions: not only do we use spatial words to talk about emotional states, we also use spatial concepts to think about them. Researchers Daniel Casasanto (MPI and Donders Institute, Nijmegen) and Katinka Dijkstra (Erasmus University, Rotterdam) ran 2 experiments. In the first experiment, students had to move glass marbles upward or downward into one of two cardboard boxes, with both hands simultaneously, timed by a metronome. Meanwhile, they had to recount autobiographical memories with either positive or negative emotional valence, like "Tell me about a time when you felt proud of yourself', or 'a time when you felt ashamed of yourself.' Moving marbles upward caused participants to remember more positive life experiences, and moving them downward to remember more negative experiences. Memory retrieval was most efficient when participants' motions matched the spatial directions that metaphors in language associate with positive and negative emotions. The second experiment tested whether seemingly meaningless motor actions, e.g. moving marbles up or down, could influence the content of people's memories. Participants were given neutral-valence prompts, like "Tell me about something that happened during high school," so they could choose to retell something happy or sad. Their choices were determined, in part, by the direction in which they were assigned to move marbles. Moving marbles upward encouraged students to recount positive high school experiences like "winning an award," but moving them downward to recall negative experiences like "failing a test." "These data suggest that spatial metaphors for emotion aren't just in language," Casasanto says, "linguistic metaphors correspond to mental metaphors, and activati

Three separate experiments were conducted which all showed that individuals in the open body position took more action than those who were constricted. "Going into the research, we figured role would make a big difference. But shockingly, the effect of posture dominated the effect of role in each and every study," Li Huang, a doctoral student at Kellogg and co-author of the study, said.

"Teenagers are more susceptible to developing disorders like addiction and depression ... "The brain region traditionally associated with reward and motivation, called the nucleus accumbens, was activated similarly in adults and adolescents," said Moghaddam. "But the unique sensitivity of adolescent DS to reward anticipation indicates that, in this age group, reward can tap directly into a brain region that is critical for learning and habit formation." ... not only is reward expectancy processed differently in an adolescent brain, but also it can affect brain regions directly responsible for decision-making and action selection. ... "Adolescence is a time when the symptoms of most mental illnesses-such as schizophrenia and bipolar and eating disorders-are first manifested, so we believe that this is a critical period for preventing these illnesses," Moghaddam said."

Researchers at Georgia State University's Language Research Center examined how two language-trained chimpanzees communicated with a human experimenter to find food. Their results are the most compelling evidence to date that primates can use gestures to coordinate actions in pursuit of a specific goal. Dr. Charles Menzel, a senior research scientist, notes, "The chimpanzees used gestures to recruit the assistance of an otherwise uninformed person and to direct the person to hidden objects 10 or more meters away...the findings illustrate the high level of intentionality chimpanzees are capable of, including their use of directional gestures. This study adds to our understanding of how well chimpanzees can remember and communicate about their environment."

A new Northwestern University study shows the power of language in infants' ability to understand the intentions of others. The results, based on two experiments, show that introducing a novel word for the impending novel event had a powerful effect on the infants' tendency to imitate the behavior. Infants were more likely to imitate behavior, however unconventional, if it had been named, than if it remained unnamed, the study shows. Sandra Waxman, co-author of the study, states, "This is the first demonstration of how infants' keen observational skills, when augmented by human language, heighten their acuity for 'reading' the underlying intentions of their 'tutors' (adults) and foster infants' imitation of adults' actions."

The benefits of bilingualism