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Pew Researchers surveyed more than 1,500 technologists and scholars about the forces shaping the way people interact with one another online. They asked: "In the next decade, will public discourse online become more or less shaped by bad actors, harassment, trolls, and an overall tone of griping, distrust, and disgust?" The vast majority of techonolgists surveyed-81 percent of them-said they expect the tone of online discourse will either stay the same or get worse in the next decade. "Cyberattacks, doxing, and trolling will continue, while social platforms, security experts, ethicists, and others will wrangle over the best ways to balance security and privacy, freedom of speech, and user protections. A great deal of this will happen in public view," Susan Etlinger, a technology industry analyst, told Pew. "The more worrisome possibility is that privacy and safety advocates, in an effort to create a more safe and equal internet, will push bad actors into more-hidden channels such as Tor." Tor is software that enables people to browse and communicate online anonymously-so it's used by people who want to cover their tracks from government surveillance, those who want to access the dark web, trolls, whistleblowers, and others. The uncomfortable truth is that humans like trolling. It's easy for people to stay anonymous while they harass, pester, and bully other people online-and it's hard for platforms to design systems to stop them. Hard for two reasons: One, because of the "ever-expanding scale of internet discourse and its accelerating complexity," as Pew puts it. And, two, because technology companies seem to have little incentive to solve this problem for people. "Very often, hate, anxiety, and anger drive participation with the platform," said Frank Pasquale, a law professor at the University of Maryland, in the report. "Whatever behavior increases ad revenue will not only be permitted, but encouraged."

Sound symbolism is the systematic and non-arbitrary link between word and meaning. Although a number of behavioral studies demonstrate that both children and adults are universally sensitive to sound symbolism in mimetic words, the neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon have not yet been extensively investigated. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how Japanese mimetic words are processed in the brain. In Experiment 1, we compared processing for motion mimetic words with that for non-sound symbolic motion verbs and adverbs. Mimetic words uniquely activated the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS). In Experiment 2, we further examined the generalizability of the findings from Experiment 1 by testing another domain: shape mimetics. Our results show that the right posterior STS was active when subjects processed both motion and shape mimetic words, thus suggesting that this area may be the primary structure for processing sound symbolism. Increased activity in the right posterior STS may also reflect how sound symbolic words function as both linguistic and non-linguistic iconic symbols.

A feral child is a human child who has lived away from human contact from a very young age, and has little or no experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language.

This article outlines who and what trolls are, and what they do. It also shows some extreme examples of trolls, and how language can be abused and used as a weapon.

"One promising answer comes from the computer scientist Jon Postel, now known as "god of the Internet" for the influence he exercised over the emerging network. In 1981, he formulated what's known as Postel's Law: "Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others." Originally intended to foster "interoperability," the ability of multiple computer systems to understand one another, Postel's Law is now recognized as having wider applications. To build a robust global network with no central authority, engineers were encouraged to write code that could "speak" as clearly as possible yet "listen" to the widest possible range of other speakers, including those who do not conform perfectly to the rules of the road. The human equivalent of this robustness is a combination of eloquence and tolerance - the spirit of good conversation. Trolls embody the opposite principle. They are liberal in what they do and conservative in what they construe as acceptable behavior from others. You, the troll says, are not worthy of my understanding; I, therefore, will do everything I can to confound you."

Sex-based differences in the form of English compliments and in the frequencies of various compliment response types are discussed. Based on a corpus of I,062 compliment events, several differences in the form of compliments used by women and men are noted. Further, it is found that compliments from men are generally accepted, especially by female recipients, whereas compliments from women are met with a response type other than acceptance.

This New York Times interactive chatbox simulates a text conversation that you might have with a friend that's skeptical about getting COVID-vaccinated. One of the authors, Dr. Gagneur is a neonatologist and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Sherbrooke. His research has led to programs that increase childhood vaccinations through motivational interviewing. The second author, Dr. Tamerius is a former psychiatrist and the founder of Smart Politics, an organization that teaches people to communicate more persuasively. Dr. Gagneur highlights 4 principles that lead to more effective conversation: The skills introduced here are the same ones needed in any conversation in which you want to encourage behavior change, whether it's with your recalcitrant teenager, a frustrated co-worker or a vaccine-hesitant loved one. When you talk with people about getting vaccinated, there are four basic principles to keep in mind: ● Safety and rapport: It's very difficult for people to consider new ways of thinking or behaving when they feel they are in danger. Vaccine conversations must make others feel comfortable by withholding judgment and validating their concerns. Rather than directly contradict misinformation, highlight what they get right. Correct misinformation only late in the conversation, after they have fully expressed their concerns and have given you permission to share what you know. ● Respect for autonomy: The choice of whether to get vaccinated is others' to make, not yours. You can help guide their decision-making process, but any attempt to dictate the outcome - whether by commanding, advising, lecturing or shaming - will be met with resistance. ● Understanding and compassion: Before people will listen to what you have to say, they need to know you respect and appreciate their perspective. That means eliciting their concerns with curious, open-ended questions, showing you understand by verbally summarizing what you've heard and empat

Check out this article to learn more about the impacts of talk therapy in relation to psychotropic medications, in addition to the controversy that often comes with the supposed effectiveness of talk therapy.

A 2018 study by Vessisiere and Stendel of McGill University in Canada argue that smartphone technology may not be inherently addictive, per se. While many might think that compulsively checking one's phone is antisocial, these researchers claim the behavior is not so much antisocial as fundamentally social: mobile technology addiction is driven by the human urge to connect with people, and the related necessity to be seen, heard, thought about, guided, and monitored by others, that reaches deep in humans' social brains and far in our evolutionary past.

This article explains language variations and behavioral differences with the presence of a large group and without the presence of a group at all.

Stuttering, with its characteristic disruption in verbal fluency, has been known for centuries; earliest descriptions probably date back to the Biblical Moses' "slowness of speech and tongue" and his related avoidance behavior (Exodus 4, 10-13). Stuttering occurs in all cultures and ethnic groups ( Andrews et al. 1983; Zimmermann et al.

The urge to converse with animals is age-old, long predating the time when smartphones became our best friends. A new app, is the product of a growing interest in enlisting additional intelligences - machine-learning algorithms - to decode animal communication. The app detects and analyzes cat utterances in real-time, assigning each one a broadly defined "intent," such as happy, resting, hunting or "mating call." It then displays a conversational, plain English "translation" of whatever intent it detects. MeowTalk uses the sounds it collects to refine its algorithms and improve its performance, the founders said, and pet owners can provide in-the-moment feedback if the app gets it wrong. In 2021, MeowTalk researchers reported that the software could distinguish among nine intents with 90 percent accuracy overall. But the app was better at identifying some than others, not infrequently confusing "happy" and "pain," according to the results. Dogs could soon have their own day. Zoolingua, a start-up based in Arizona, is hoping to create an A.I.-powered dog translator that will analyze canine vocalizations and body language. Still, even sophisticated algorithms may miss critical real-world context and cues, said Alexandra Horowitz, an expert on dog cognition at Barnard College. For instance, much of canine behavior is driven by scent. "How is that going to be translated, when we don't know the extent of it ourselves?" Dr. Horowitz said in an email.

This article discusses the different theories on what influences language development: Nature or Nurture? Is language bound to develop from genetics, or is language dependent on environment?

Abstract: Self-affirmation theory posits that people are motivated to maintain a positive self-view and that threats to perceived self-competence are met with resistance. When threatened, self-affirmations can restore self-competence by allowing individuals to reflect on sources of self-worth, such as core values. Many questions exist, however, about the underlying mechanisms associated with self-affirmation. We examined the neural mechanisms of self-affirmation with a task developed for use in a functional magnetic resonance imaging environment. Results of a region of interest analysis demonstrated that participants who were affirmed (compared with unaffirmed participants) showed increased activity in key regions of the brain's self-processing (medial prefrontal cortex + posterior cingulate cortex) and valuation (ventral striatum + ventral medial prefrontal cortex) systems when reflecting on future-oriented core values (compared with everyday activities). Furthermore, this neural activity went on to predict changes in sedentary behavior consistent with successful affirmation in response to a separate physical activity intervention. These results highlight neural processes associated with successful self-affirmation, and further suggest that key pathways may be amplified in conjunction with prospection.

Do animal whisperers really understand what animals are saying? This article explains that it takes more than just watching an animals behavior to understand them. It explains what animal whisperers do and even teaches the reader how to communicate with their animal.

Kaitlyn Tiffany, the writer of this article from the Atlantic, examines the social media commentary surrounding Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "Milling," a sociological term, refers to the "agitated, aimless buzzing of the type of crowd that gathers in the aftermath of some bewildering catastrophe...We are all just chattering away in restless and confused excitement as we try to figure out how to think about what's happening. We want to understand which outcomes are most likely, and whether we might be obligated to help-by giving money or vowing not to share misinformation or learning the entire history of global conflict so as to avoid saying the wrong thing. We are milling." The word comes from the mid-20th-century American sociologist Herbert Blumer, who was interested in the process by which crowds converge, during moments of uncertainty and restlessness, on common attitudes and actions. As people mill about the public square, those nearby will be drawn into their behavior, Blumer wrote in 1939. "The primary effect of milling is to make the individuals more sensitive and responsive to one another, so that they become increasingly preoccupied with one another and decreasingly responsive to ordinary objects of stimulation." These days, we mill online. For a paper published in 2016, a team of researchers from the University of Washington looked at the spread of rumors and erratic chatter on Twitter about the Boston Marathon bombings in the hours after that event. They described this "milling" as "collective work to make sense of an uncertain space" by interpreting, speculating, theorizing, debating, or challenging presented information.

The following article explores language as a cultural, social, and psychological phenomenon. Why is it that a seemingly harmful sentence can create stereotypes or biases? How does language change the way we perceive ourselves, others, and the world? Can different language patterns indicate something about our behavior? These are some topics regarded in this text, as well as the overarching theme of how words shape us and our lives.