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This article is about how a second language may help in your critical thinking process. Because of the unfamiliarity of the language, it may take away taboos or emotions associated with words that may influence our decision.

"The graph is dramatic. It shows that the odds that prisoners will be successfully paroled start off fairly high at around 65% and quickly plummet to nothing over a few hours (although, see footnote). After the judges have returned from their breaks, the odds abruptly climb back up to 65%, before resuming their downward slide. A prisoner's fate could hinge upon the point in the day when their case is heard."

This article explains the "foreign language effect". It says that speaking a second language improves rational decision making and open-mindedness. It also discusses impacts of speaking a second language on our memory and elements of our personality.

"Web addicts have brain changes similar to those hooked on drugs or alcohol, preliminary research suggests. ... Dr Hao Lei and colleagues write in Plos One: 'Overall, our findings indicate that IAD has abnormal white matter integrity in brain regions involving emotional generation and processing, executive attention, decision making and cognitive control.' ... Prof Gunter Schumann, chair in biological psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London, said similar findings have been found in video game addicts. ... further studies with larger numbers of subjects were needed to confirm the findings." Link to the actual study: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0030253

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

New study co-authored by Lera Boroditsky: "The way we talk about complex and abstract ideas is suffused with metaphor. In five experiments...we find that metaphors can have a powerful influence over how people attempt to solve complex problems and how they gather more information to make "well-informed" decisions."

By Paul H. Thibodeau and Lera Boroditsky "In five experiments, we have explored how these metaphors influence the way that we reason about complex issues and forage for further information about them. We find that metaphors can have a powerful influence over how people attempt to solve complex problems and how they gather more information to make "well-informed" decisions.... [D]ifferent metaphorical frames created differences in opinion as big or bigger than those between Democrats and Republicans."

13 year old Trisha Prabhu of Naperville, IL, is a finalist in Google Science Fair 2014. Prabhu's project focuses on preventing cyber-bullying. Excerpted from her project summary statement: "Cyberbullying may result in depression, low self-esteem and in rare cases suicides in adolescent victims(12-18). Research shows that, over 50% of adolescents and teens have been bullied online and 10 to 20% experience it regularly. Research also shows that adolescents that post mean/hurtful messages may not understand the potential consequences of their actions because the pre-frontal cortex, the area of brain that controls reasoning and decision-making isn't developed until age 25. I hypothesized that if adolescents(ages 12-18) were provided an alert mechanism that suggested them to re-think their decision if they expressed willingness to post a mean/hurtful message on social media, the number of mean/hurtful messages adolescents will be willing to post would be lesser than adolescents that are not provided with such an alert mechanism. In order to check if my hypothesis was true, I created two Software systems: 1) Baseline 2) Rethink. "Rethink" system measured number of mean/hurtful messages adolescents were willing to post after being alerted to rethink, while the "Baseline" system measured the same without the alert. Results proved that adolescents were 93.43% less willing to post mean/hurtful messages using a "Rethink" system compared with "Baseline" system without alert."

Developmentally, teens are at particular risk for reckless online behavior, including secrecy regarding social networking. Many people - adults and kids alike - view likes, loves, comments and followers as a barometer for popularity, even within a smaller, closed group. Teens can quickly get caught up in the feedback loop, posting and sharing images and videos that they believe will gain the largest reaction. Over time, teens' own values may become convoluted within an online world of instantaneous feedback, and their behavior online can become based on their "all about the likes" values rather than their real-life values. There is a very real biological basis for this behavior. The combination of social media pressure and an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain that helps us rationalize decisions, control impulsivity and make judgments, can contribute to offensive online posts. In a recent study, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that the areas of teens' brains focused on reward processing and social cognition are similarly activated when they think about money and sex - and when they view a photo receiving lots of likes on social media. When teens viewed photos deemed risky, researchers found the brain regions focused on cognitive control were not activated as much, suggesting that it could be harder for them to make good decisions when viewing images or videos that are graphic in nature.

Just seeing a list of negative words for a few seconds will make a highly anxious or depressed person feel worse, and the more you ruminate on them, the more you can actually damage key structures that regulate your memory, feelings, and emotions.But negative words, spoken with anger, do even more damage. They send alarm messages through the brain, interfering with the decision making centers in the frontal lobe, and this increases a person's propensity to act irrationally. Fear-provoking words-like poverty, illness, and death-also stimulate the brain in negative ways. And even if these fearful thoughts are not real, other parts of your brain (like the thalamus and amygdala) react to negative fantasies as though they were actual threats occurring in the outside world. Curiously, we seem to be hardwired to worry-perhaps an artifact of old memories carried over from ancestral times when there were countless threats to our survival.

With voters' decision to repeal English-only instruction in California, public schools across the state now have more power to operate bilingual and dual-language programs. White, middle-class, English-speaking parents who want their children to learn Spanish are driving the demand for new dual-language programs.The passage of Proposition 58 last week means that public schools are now free of any restrictions on using various forms of bilingual education, most notably for teaching the state's 1.5 million English-language learners, although students are still mandated to become proficient in English.

Israeli scientists have discovered for the first time an instance of viruses leaving messages for other viruses. What makes the discovery remarkable is that scientists expect such communication systems to exist among other kinds of viruses. Rotem Sorek of Weizmann Institute of Science and his research team have found the protein that viruses used to communicate: arbitrium, which is Latin for "decision." Even though viruses are the most primitive form of life, they infect and harm millions of people every year. The possibility of tapping into viral communication has many scientists excited, because it offers new ways to build drugs that could defeat viruses.

"...a desire in Hollywood to infuse fantasy and science-fiction movies, television series and video games with a sense of believability is driving demand for constructed languages, complete with grammatical rules, a written alphabet (hieroglyphics are acceptable) and enough vocabulary for basic conversations. ... "The days of aliens spouting gibberish with no grammatical structure are over," said Paul R. Frommer ... who created Na'vi, the language spoken by the giant blue inhabitants of Pandora in "Avatar." ... fans rewatched Dothraki scenes to study the language in a workshop-like setting. ... There have been many attempts to create languages, often for specific political effect. In the 1870s, a Polish doctor invented Esperanto ... The motivation to learn an auxiliary language is not so different from why people pick up French or Italian, she said. "Learning a language, even a natural language, is more of an emotional decision than a practical one. It's about belonging to a group," she said. ... The watershed moment for invented languages was the creation of a Klingon language ... But as with any language, there is a certain snob appeal built in. Among Dothraki, Na'vi and Klingon speakers, a divide has grown between fans who master the language as a linguistic challenge, and those who pick up a few phrases because they love the mythology." Reaction on Language Log: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3628 - "there's an attitude among some linguists - and also plenty of non-linguists, as is evident from many of the comments on the NYT piece - that engaging in conlang activity is a waste of time, perhaps even detrimental to the real subject matter of linguistics."

"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."

_Slate _ blogger Amanda Marcotte examines the decision of Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO, to disavow the term "feminist". Mayer suggested that she lacked "the militant drive" and "chip on the shoulder" often accompanying the term. Marcotte counters that "militant drive" and "chip on the shoulder" are code words for traits exhibited by those brave enough to challenge the sexist status quo, even at the risk of personal vilification.

This was a really interesting interview with an admission committee, more specifically an extremely picky admission committee at Amherst College. It was really eye-opening to see some of the students that were getting turned down, or set aside. There were these students that seemed to have done everything "right", like getting good grades and taking hard class and doing community service, but still didn't get accepted. It's decisions like this that make applying for college and submitting these college essays such a daunting task, as you really don't quite know exactly what will read well for the admission committee. Therefore, applicants are stuck with the options, to be extremely honest and personal but risk saying something that reveals a bad quality, or to be rather general and play it safe, but risk the lack of individuality.

New Jersey now requires it's students to learn a foreign language. They are starting instruction at a younger age, in the hopes of having it be more effective. The state is basing it's decision on studies that show acquiring more than one language boosts brain function in children, and leads to success in standardized tests. They are also hoping to end a shortage of bilinguals needed in the workforce.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014 By Byron Spice / 412-268-9068 PITTSBURGH-Some people say that reading "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" taught them the importance of friends, or that easy decisions are seldom right. Carnegie Mellon University scientists used a chapter of that book to learn a different lesson: identifying what different regions of the brain are doing when people read.