Group items tagged

Not about linguistics, but of general interest to students. Talks about genetic basis for test anxiety--and under which conditions it is advantageous. This article is long but gets more interesting the further you read.

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

"Change has occurred so rapidly for our species that now we are equipped with brains that are super sensitive to threat but also super capable of planning, thinking, forecasting and looking ahead," said Ahmad Hariri, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. "So we essentially drive ourselves nuts worrying about things because we have too much time and don't have many real threats on our survival, so fear gets expressed in these really strange, maladaptive ways." Dr. Hariri studies the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure that has been called the seat of fear (there's one in each hemisphere of the brain). But it's really the seat of anticipation. The amygdala primes you to react - your pulse quickens, your muscles tense and your pupils dilate - even before other parts of your brain can figure out if you need to be scared or not. Nowadays, our amydalas can be overactive, thanks to 24/7 awareness of disasters around the world and/or stress/instability in one's personal and professional life. Remaining in this state of wary hypervigilance can contribute to issues like social anxiety, hypochondria, post-traumatic stress disorder, insomnia and all manner of phobias. It also plays a role in racial and religious intolerance because fearful people are more inclined to cling to the familiar and denigrate the unfamiliar. If you can sense and appreciate your fear - be it of flying, illness or social rejection - as merely your amygdala's request for more information rather than a signal of impending doom, then you are on your way to calming down and engaging more conscious, logic-dominated parts of your brain. At that point, you can assess the rationality of your fear and take steps to deal with it.

This article was about how a gratitude journal can affect someone's life. A college student began writing monthly gratitude lists when she was "at a point when [she] was just not in a very good place in [her] life." There is an increasing amount of research being done on the benefits of a gratitude journal. Multiple studies show that expressing gratitude can help people sleep better, lower stress, and improve relationships. Then there is a lack of research on how the expression of gratitude can affect those with clinical depression, anxiety, or suicidal tendencies. Gratitude journals aren't for everyone, it's all dependent on how you feel.

While most are pushing towards being more grateful, researchers are explaining the benefits of journaling gratitude. The research on gratitude is beneficial to us emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually. It's a simple practice that can benefit people, and it's free! While being grateful is something good to practice and turn to habit, it doesn't effect everyone the same. There is still undergoing research on the impact that gratitude has on those that have depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts.

Tense people may miss the subtle warning signs of danger Image: Roc Canals Photography/Getty Images Worrywarts, beware: all that fretting may be for naught. Anxiety has long been interpreted as a symptom of hyperawareness and sensitivity to danger, but a study published last December in Biological Psychology turns that logic on its head.

Studies suggest a link between negative cognition (a.k.a. negative thinking) and increased propensity for guilt, chronic anxiety clinical depression. (Apparently, women are more prone to negative cognition than men.) Psychology professor Emeritus Tom Stevens of California State University describes some common negative thinking pitfalls and offers advice as to what you can do instead. Research has supported the efficacy of cognitive therapy (called cognitive restructuring) that replaces these styles with more positive thinking. 1. Negative bias. Negative bias is a tendency to look at the more negative side of some event, person, object, or situation. It gives a negative interpretation or a negative point of view for looking at a situation. Instead think: I will assume the best instead of assume the worst. Positive self-fulfilling prophesies tend to create positive outcomes; negative self-fulfilling prophesies tend to create negative outcomes. Negative explanations of my own or other peoples' underlying motives cause me to intensify my anger or other negative feelings. Assuming the world is a hostile place creates fear, anxiety, and anger. 2. Negative selective abstraction. Selective abstraction means taking negative features of a situation out of context and exaggerating their significance. Usually it also means negating positive features. Example: A student who gets four "A"s and one "C," then focuses on the "C's." Instead think: I will list at least one positive feature for each negative feature. I will limit my focus on negative features to constructive thoughts about how I can either accept or change the negative features. 3. Overgeneralization. When we overgeneralize, we assume far-reaching conclusions from limited data. A student made a "D" on one test. She overgeneralizes, she doesn't just think "Well, I messed up on that one test. Instead, "I may not pass the course, not ever finish college." "I must be stupid and a failure." "My whole life is ruin

This article discusses the correlation between listening to music and cognition. They mainly used pop music and distinguished their test subjects between extraverts and introverts.

Some studies show that listening to music improves cognitive performance and focus. Certain rhythms and beats can cause shifts in emotion, which can ultimately affect the way that we comprehend things we read. In one of their studies, a controlled group of students studied with music that caused them to feel anxiety while another listened to music that evoked concentration. They also allowed a certain controlled group to listen to their favorite song and actually performed worse on their tests.

Listening to music for relaxation is common among students to counter the effects of stress or anxiety while completing difficult academic tasks. Some studies supporting this technique have shown that background music promotes cognitive performance while other studies have shown that listening to music while engaged in complex cognitive tasks can impair performance.

A new form of therapy makes use of virtual therapists, who have the capacity to read facial expressions, vocal patterns, body posture, and speech tones. Cleo Stiller, host of Asking For A Friend, said in a video, "[The virtual therapist]'s also interpreting my speech in real time. Am I using positive or negative language? [the therapist] adjusts her questions based off of my responses." The benefit of virtual therapy is that it removes some of the stigmas associated with "seeing a shrink," and allows people to feel more open with their feelings and problems... at least, that's the idea.

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.

"Experienced meditators seem to be able switch off areas of the brain associated with daydreaming as well as psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia ... Less day dreaming has been associated with increased happiness levels ... experienced meditators had decreased activity in areas of the brain called the default mode network, which has been implicated in lapses of attention and disorders such as anxiety, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, and even the buildup of beta amyloid plaques in Alzheimer's disease."

Emotions are complicated and never more so than in the realm of the scientific, where commonly accepted definitions are lacking. In a new article, a researcher examines the basic emotions of grief, fear/anxiety, anger, shame and pride as they appear in scientific literature in an attempt to take a first step in defining them. "Emotion terms, especially in English, are wildly ambiguous," he writes in the paper's introduction

Contrary to popular belief, liars don't actually give many visual giveaways to their lies. The better cues are in their speech. The common misconceptions about liars and their body language are actually signs of anxiety. More often than not, truth-tellers are assumed to be liars because they are anxious to recount the correct details

China has sharply scaled back, and restricted, the teaching of languages spoken by ethnic minorities in its vast western regions in recent years, promoting instruction in Chinese instead as part of a broad push to encourage the assimilation of Tibetans, Uighurs and other ethnic minorities into the dominant ethnic Han culture. The Education Ministry says a goal is to "make sure that minority students master and use the basic common language." And some parents have welcomed the new emphasis on teaching Chinese because they believe it will better prepare their children to compete for jobs in the Chinese economy and for places at Chinese universities. But the new measures have also stirred anxiety and fueled resentment, with residents arguing that they threaten the survival of ethnic identities and traditions already under pressure by migration, economic change and the repressive policies of a government fearful of ethnic separatism.

Teenagers use text messaging more than any other mode of communication, so it may be hard to tell. But youngsters who check their phones continually, snap if you interrupt them and are so preoccupied with texting that they skip sleep and don't get their work done may be compulsive texters, a new study says. Overall, girls text compulsively at a far higher rate than boys do. And unlike girls, boys in the study who were compulsive texters were not at risk of doing poorly in school. Dr. Lister-Landman hypothesized that girls' texts may focus more on relationships and be more emotionally laden, causing them anxiety. Studies have shown that communicating by cellphone about problems or negative feelings is more common among young women than among men.

A link to the full study is embedded in the NYT article, but you can also find a .pdf of the full study on our course Canvas Page, Qtr. 1, Cycle 6, Resources for Cycle 6.

Ana Homayoun, a life coach and consultant, offers the following tips for success in quelling anxiety over face: face conversations: 1. Visualize the end first. 2. Brainstorm many solutions, not just one. 3. Practice out loud. 4. Intentionally reset your attitude. 5. Reframe the experience as an opportunity.

Lukianoff, a First Amendment lawyer, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (fire), and author of _The Coddling of the American Mind_, speaks about free speech controversies at American universities and the dangers of protecting students from ideas and words that they dislike. Such moves, although well-intentioned, arguably diminish tolerance for diversity and dialogue, and ironically, may exacerbate both depression and anxiety.

Both metaphor and grammar influence how people think about political candidates and elections. voters' attitudes can be influenced by a number of factors, including which information the media chooses to emphasize and how it is slanted. Framing, how a message is worded to encourage particular interpretations and inferences, can influence the perception of political candidates. Negative framing is often used to make opposing candidates seem weak, immoral and incompetent. It is persuasive because it captures attention and creates anxiety about future consequences. Grammar, though seemingly innocuous, also encodes meaning and is linked to mental experience and physical interactions with the world. Information framed with past progressive caused people to reflect more on the action details in a given time period than did information framed with simple past. Using grammatical aspect to frame campaign information, positive or negative, appears to be an effective tool for influencing how people perceive candidates' past actions. It may also be tweaked to invite inferences about what candidates will do in the future because it influences inferences about how events transpire.

Negative thinking= detrimental both mentally and physically; it inhibits one's ability to bounce back from life's inevitable stresses. Negative feelings activate a region of the brain called the amygdala, which is involved in processing fear and anxiety and other emotions. Dr. Richard J. Davidson, a neuroscientist and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, has shown that people in whom the amygdala recovers slowly from a threat are at greater risk for a variety of health problems than those in whom it recovers quickly. Both he and Dr. Fredrickson and their colleagues have demonstrated that the brain is "plastic," or capable of generating new cells and pathways, and it is possible to train the circuitry in the brain to promote more positive responses. That is, a person can learn to be more positive by practicing certain skills that foster positivity. 8 suggested activities to help bolster those skills: 1.Do good things for other people. 2.Appreciate the world around you. 3.Develop and bolster relationships. 4.Establish goals that can be accomplished. 5.Learn something new. 6.Choose to accept yourself, flaws and all. 7.Practice resilience. 8.Practice mindfulness.

Intentional positive self-talk can be used to boost emotional condition and reduce anxiety