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Researchers Tyler G. Okimoto, Michael Wenzel and Kyli Hedrick reported on what they've found happens in people's minds when they refuse to apologize. "We do find that apologies do make apologizers feel better, but the interesting thing is that refusals to apologize also make people feel better and, in fact, in some cases it makes them feel better than an apology would have," Okimoto said in an interview. He believes the research, in fact, may provide a clue on how best to get people to apologize. Our conventional approach, especially with kids, is to force people to apologize. But if people are reluctant to apologize because apologies make them feel threatened, coercion is unlikely to help - that is, if a sincere apology is hoped for.

For decades, psychologists cautioned against raising children bilingual. They warned parents and teachers that learning a second language as a child was bad for brain development. But recent studies have found exactly the opposite. Researchers now believe that when people learn another language, they develop cognitive advantages that improve their attention, self-control and ability to deal with conflicting information.

Raising bilingual children is actually good for them. They develop a better ability to concentrate and deal with conflicting information. This could indicate that nurturing a child's brain can increase their language capabilities.

Younger you are, the better the linguist you are. Multilingual brain is "nimbler, quicker, better able to deal with ambiguities, resolve conflicts and even resist Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia."

When children start studying music before the age of seven, they develop bigger vocabularies, a better sense of grammar and a higher verbal IQ. These advantages benefit both the development of their mother tongue and the learning of foreign languages. During these crucial years, the brain is at its sensitive development phase, with 95% of the brain's growth occurring now. Music training started during this period also boosts the brain's ability to process subtle differences between sounds and assist in the pronunciation of languages - and this gift lasts for life, as it has been found that adults who had musical training in childhood still retain this ability to learn foreign languages quicker and more efficiently than adults who did not have early childhood music training. Humans first started creating music 500,000 years ago, yet speech and language was only developed 200,000 years ago. Evolutionary evidence, as interpreted by leading researchers such as Robin Dunbar from Oxford University, indicates that speech as a form of communication has evolved from our original development and use of music. This explains why our music and language neural networks have significant overlap, and why children who learn music become better at learning the grammar, vocabulary and pronounciation of any language.

Is being trilingual better than being bilingual? Read to find out!

A new studysuggests that children who speak multiple languages are better at understanding other people. And not only those who are fluent, but those who are simply exposed to another language in their daily lives.

Here's the link to the original University of Chicago study referenced by the Atlantic article, published in The Economist: http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21652258-children-exposed-several-languages-are-better-seeing-through-others-eyes-do

This is a great site for getting an idea of what colleges are looking for in an essay. My idea of a good college essay changed after reading the top voted college essay.

The top essay was a very descriptive piece. It sounded like a short story, and I didn't know you could write about those kind of topics on a college essay. This site really helps me get a better idea of what an essay should look like when the time comes to submit one.

It really helps to be able to read examples of good college essays. It gives you an idea of not only what to write about but how to write it. I never would have guessed some of the top voted college essays would be written on such simple, everyday topics. I have a lot of work to do haha.

There are pros and cons to electronic readers and hard copies. E-readers have several pros, such as the ability to get almost any book the reader may want, it saves trees and it is also easy to carry around. However, more and more people are rejecting e-readers and returning to hear copies. The two leading arguments for hard-copy would be that they prevent you from getting distracted. It has also been shown that readers retain information better through hard-copy books.

A great article about why you should learn another language and the benefits of it.

Many languages have words that do not exist in English. Speaking many languages gives you a different way to use the different languages. Multi-linguals tend to score better on math, english, vocabulary, and even on standardized tests. Also, a multi-lingual's ability to focus on details of language that help to slow down cognitive decline.

Study shows that children taught words then tested on the next day score better than those tested the same day Nothing beats a good night's sleep for helping youngsters learn new words, new research has revealed. A study suggests that even the brightest children remember words best when they're given a chance to sleep on it.

Emoji use is on the rise, but so is GIF use. GIF's allow users to quickly express complex emotion more completely than a a handful of emojis could. One user says "I'm not that great with words, but if I find the perfect GIF, it nails it." GIF's may be the next frontier of electronic communication.

Why do writers abandon their native language? IN 2012, Jhumpa Lahiri moved to Rome and began a period of self-imposed linguistic exile from English. She stopped speaking, reading, and writing the language entirely, the better to learn Italian. I just read this book, and it was extremely interesting since I read the book in conjunction with our discussions about bilingualism in class. I highly recommend this book called In Other Words.

Why do writers abandon their native language? IN 2012, Jhumpa Lahiri moved to Rome and began a period of self-imposed linguistic exile from English. She stopped speaking, reading, and writing the language entirely, the better to learn Italian.

It has become a tradition for writers to completely abandon their native language and continue their writings in a new language. In this article Jhumpa Lahiri goes over the improvements to her writing brought about by this transition.

Recently, people have been returning to writing basics: handwriting, notebooks, pens, paper, and stationary. While technology can certainly provide an edge for certain tasks, digital overload, addiction, and distraction are growing concerns. many studies indicate that multitasking is bad for us and makes our brains more scattered. In contrast, several studies suggest that pen and paper have an edge over the keyboard. In three studies, researchers found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand. Those who took written notes had better comprehension and retention of material because they had to mentally process information rather than type it verbatim. And, another study, published in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology, showed that people who doodle can better recall dull information. Writing it down also sparks innovation. Being innovative and creative is about "getting your hands dirty" a feeling that is lacking when you use technology or gadgets, says Arvind Malhotra, a professor at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School."Research has also shown that tactile sensory perceptions tend to stimulate parts of the brain that are associated with creativity. So, touch, feel and the sensation you get when you build something physical has also got a lot to do with creativity," he says.

A new study finds that software designed to automatically read and grade essays can do as good a job as humans - maybe even better. The robo-readers are efficient, as well, and can grade 16,000 essays in 20 seconds. The caveats, however: computers don't do as well on comprehension, ascertaining facts vs. fiction, and assessing certain genres, like poetry.

More than a couple of tips...

A new speed-reading app, Spritz, premiered in March 2014. Its makers claim that Spritz allows users to read at staggeringly high rates of speed: 600 or even 1,000 words per minute. (The average college graduate reads at a rate of about 300 words per minute.) Spritz can do this, they say, by circumventing the limitations imposed by our visual system. The author of this article argues that your brain has an even more superior "app": expertise, which creates a happy balance between speed and comprehension. In their forthcoming book, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, researchers Henry Roediger III and Mark McDaniel (along with writer Peter Brown) liken expertise to a "brain app" that makes reading and other kinds of intellectual activity proceed more efficiently and effectively. In the minds of experts, the authors explain, "a complex set of interrelated ideas" has "fused into a meaningful whole." The mental "chunking" that an expert - someone deeply familiar with the subject she's reading about - can do gives her a decided speed and comprehension advantage over someone who is new to the material, for whom every fact and idea encountered in the text is a separate piece of information yet to be absorbed and connected. People reading within their domain of expertise have lots of related vocabulary and background knowledge, both of which allow them to steam along at full speed while novices stop, start, and re-read, struggling with unfamiliar words and concepts. Deep knowledge of what we're reading about propels the reading process in other ways as well. As we read, we're constantly building and updating a mental model of what's going on in the text, elaborating what we've read already and anticipating what will come next. A reader who is an expert in the subject he's reading about will make more detailed and accurate predictions of what upcoming sentences and paragraphs will contain, allowing him to read quickly while filling in his alrea

The gene that affects how babies pick up language has been identified. If we know more about this gene, can we nurture children and help them learn to better suit their needs and increase their language capabilities?

Bilinguals averaged higher scores in cognitive performance on tests and "better attention focus, distraction resistance, decision-making, judgement and responsiveness to feedback."

Information set to music, suggests research, is better retained, as it taps into time- honored strategies that help information stick. Tales that last for many generations tend to describe concrete actions rather than abstract concepts. They use powerful visual images. They are sung or chanted. And they employ patterns of sound: alliteration, assonance, repetition and, most of all, rhyme. A study by Rubin showed that when two words in a ballad are linked by rhyme, contemporary college students remember them better than non-rhyming words. Such universal characteristics of oral narratives are, in effect, mnemonics-memory aids that people developed over time "to make use of the strengths and avoid the weaknesses of human memory," as Rubin puts it. Songs and rhymes can be used to remember all kinds of information. A study just published in the journal Memory and Cognition finds that adults learned a new language more effectively when they sang it.