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A really interesting study combining linguistics and behavioral economics. "To judge a risk more clearly, it may help to consider it in a foreign language: A series of experiments on more than 300 people from the U.S. and Korea found that thinking in a second language reduced deep-seated, misleading biases that unduly influence how risks and benefits are perceived."

"Even if we cannot consciously see a person's face, our brain is able to make a snap decision about how trustworthy they are. According to a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the brain immediately determines how trustworthy a face is before it's fully perceived, which supports the fact that we make very fast judgments about people."

It's sometimes said that the eyes are windows into the soul, revealing deep emotions that we might otherwise want to hide. Although modern science precludes the existence of the soul, it does suggest that there is a kernel of truth in this old saying: it turns out the eyes not only reflect what is happening in the brain but may also influence how we remember things and make decisions.

Learning a foreign language has many more benefits than you would think. This article highlights many of the cognitive benefits associated with learning a foreign language.

This article gives a rundown on 7 cognitive advantages of bilingualism: 1. You become smarter: speaking a foreign language improves the functionality of your brain by challenging it to recognise, negotiate meaning, and communicate in different language systems. 2. You build multitasking skills. 3. You stave off Alzheimer's and dementia. 4. Your memory improves. 5. You become more perceptive. 6. Your decision-making skills improve. 7. You improve your first language (L1)

The British Broadcasting System (BBC) World Service recently began producing digital news content in Naijá (Nigerian Pidgin). Though Naijá originated as a pidgin, trade communication between Portuguese and English speakers and natives of the Niger Delta, linguistically-speaking, its modern incarnation is actually a creole exhibiting systematic grammar and syntax. The service will bring language diversity to the news and current affairs that West and Central Africa audiences receive, where Pidgin is one of the most widely-spoken languages. The decision to make the service digital only was based on the fact that African people prefer to read content on their mobile phones. Itʻs also interesting to note the transformation of Pidgin, once solely an oral language, into standardized text-based language.

Children aged four and younger who speak two languages or are learning a second have more rapid improvements in inhibitory control, a study by the University of Oregon has said. Inhibitory control is the ability to stop a hasty reflexive response in behaviour or decision-making and use higher control to react in a more adaptive way. "Inhibitory control and executive function are important skills for academic success and positive health outcomes and well-being later in life," said Atika Khurana, the study's co-author and a professor in the Department of Counselling Psychology and Human Services and scientist at the UO's Prevention Science Institute. "The development of inhibitory control occurs rapidly during the preschool years," she said. "Children with strong inhibitory control are better able to pay attention, follow instructions and take turns. "This study shows one way in which environmental influences can impact the development of inhibitory control during younger years."

Priming is a linguistic and psychological concept where a "prime" idea (word, image, etc.) is presented before a "target". The prime might influence what a viewer thinks of the target. Psychological studies use priming in tests such as a completion or lexical decision task in order to test other phenomenon. Priming is also a strategy used in marketing. Advertisers use priming to get you see appeal in their product. Perhaps this is in the form of a commercial where statistics of the product vs other companies' products is shown to enhance their own product. This can also be as simple as playing moody music in a restaurant before you sit down!

This research article was published to the Journal of Experimental Psychology, but this experiment did include linguistics. The experiments purpose was to see if more engaged working memory could quickly determine whether a word was really a word, thus the effect of the working memory on semantic meaning. They found that a high working memory load impaired the prime and task efficiency.

A good working memory is perhaps the brain's most important system when it comes to learning a new language. But it appears that working memory is first and foremost determined by our genes. Mila Vulchanova, a professor at NTNU's Department of Modern Foreign Languages, led a study of approximately one hundred ten-year-old elementary school students from Norway. Her research suggests that a good working memory is a decisive factor in developing good language skills and competency. Vulchanova states, "Not only is working memory important in learning new words, it is also important in our general language competence, in areas such as grammar skills. Working memory is connected to our ability to gather information and work with it, and to store and manipulate linguistic inputs as well as other inputs in the brain." Vulchanova's results run contrary to some conventional assumptions in both linguistics and cognitive sciences. Quite often it is believed that children acquire languages regardless of their cognitive abilities, such as perception, spatial understanding, and working memory. In other words, children don't need to learn language per se. It just comes on its own. The results from Vulchanova's research contradict this idea. Not only did the researchers find out that there is a close relationship between language competence in the first language and working memory, but that language competence in the mother tongue correlated highly with skills in a foreign language. "We have found evidence that there is a link between language development and the capacity of our working memory, and that there are common cognitive mechanisms that support the ability to learn both your mother tongue and a second language," Vulchanova says. "This is important, because it has been the tradition in linguistics to maintain that learning your native language is qualitatively different from learning a foreign language," she says.

The priming effect occurs when one is exposed to words or images that subconsciously influence decision-making. For example, seeing pictures of a shower would likely influence you to fill in so__p as "soap." But, seeing pictures of bread, you would probably say "soup." A somewhat controversial study has shown that subjects who were unknowingly exposed to elderly words (like bald, gray, and wrinkle) walked more slowly toward the next experiment than the control group. Another study asked participants to lie via email and another group of participants to lie via voicemail. Those who lied on the email were more likely to purchase soap, whereas the group who lied via voicemail were more likely to buy mouthwash. This wasn't included in the article, but I suspect the reason it's easy to come up with puns is because our brains are primed to think of words within a certain theme. The article mentioned that you can use priming to help you come up with new ideas around a central idea by writing related words in a list, until you think of something appropriate.

Studies have traced a range of impressive benefits to writing down the things for which we're grateful-benefits including better sleep, fewer symptoms of illness, and more happiness among adults and kids alike. Robert Emmons, a UC Davis professor who studies the science of gratitude, offers the following research-based tips to enhance journaling effectiveness: 1. Don't just go through the motions. Research by psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky and others suggests that journaling is more effective if you first make the conscious decision to become happier and more grateful. "Motivation to become happier plays a role in the efficacy of journaling," says Emmons. 2. Go for depth over breadth. Elaborating in detail about a particular thing for which you're grateful carries more benefits than a superficial list of many things. 3. Get personal. Focusing on people to whom you are grateful has more of an impact than focusing on things for which you are grateful. 4. Try subtraction, not just addition. One effective way of stimulating gratitude is to reflect on what your life would be like without certain blessings, rather than just tallying up all those good things. 5. Savor surprises. Try to record events that were unexpected or surprising, as these tend to elicit stronger levels of gratitude. 6. Don't overdo it. Writing occasionally (once or twice per week) is more beneficial than daily journaling.

Writing down what you're grateful for greatly impacts your social, physical, and physiological health but to some the impacts are unclear. This article page has a link that has created their very own technological gratitude journal that deepens and practices efficient journaling. Included in this article are 6 tips: 1) Have passion behind jotting down your gratitude. It put more motivation and thought in your writings. 2) Be specific with what you're grateful for. 3) Lean towards focusing your gratitude on people rather than things. (You learn to become less materialistic.) 4) Consider mentioning what it would be like with out the blessings. 5) Record events that were surprising & out of the ordinary. 6) Occasional writing over daily writing because it's easy for us to get numb to the good side of life. Writing our thoughts down rather than thinking about them or saying them, deepens our emotional connection and makes us more self aware.

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

Lera Boroditsky, then an assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience, and symbolic systems at Stanford University at the time of this article, looks at how the languages we speak shape the way we think. Boroditsky's research data, collected from around the world, suggeststhat people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world. Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience of being human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step closer to understanding the very nature of humanity. Boroditsky argues that patterns in a language can indeed play a causal role in constructing how we think - that learning a new language isn't simply learning a new way of talking, but a new way of thinking. Languages shape the way we think about space, time, colors, and objects. Other studies have found effects of language on how people construe events, reason about causality, keep track of number, understand material substance, perceive and experience emotion, reason about other people's minds, choose to take risks, and even in the way they choose professions and spouses. Taken together, these results show that linguistic processes are pervasive in most fundamental domains of thought, unconsciously shaping us from the nuts and bolts of cognition and perception to our loftiest abstract notions and major life decisions. Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives.

Author Daniel Stillman offers up excellent pointers to create more productive conversations, especially when conversing with folx who hold diverse and maybe conflicting perspectives. The whole article's worth mining for details, but here are the key takeaways: 3 Ways to Deepen Conversations How do we go deeper into understanding other people's perspectives? Use these three levels of goals to peel back the layers in the conversation and understand why people want what they want, and find agreements that work for everyone involved. LEVEL 1: INTERESTS: Why does someone want what they want? Try saying, "That sounds important to you. Can you tell me why?" LEVEL 2: OPTIONS: "Hard" negotiators demand what they want. Reply: "That thing you're asking for is one option. Are there any other options or alternatives you can think of? Can we generate any others together?" Finding all the levers of value on both sides can help open up opportunities to create shared value. LEVEL 3: LEGITIMACY: When someone throws out a number or any firm position, it often feels like we need to counter. Instead, ask: "Where did you get that number? What can we base a fair number on?" Probing for ways to judge an outcome as objectively legitimate can lower the stakes.

This journal examines the role that emotions have played in past court cases, and how they might've influenced the decisions of the court. I personally believe that section 3.2 in which the author discusses how pain can be a motivator to put the jury into an agitated state might tip the scales of the court in favor of one argument.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is being further studied as more and more Americans are getting diagnosed with this chronic disease. In this specific study, the researchers do a systematic review on how this disease affects speech and memory, and why a cure needs to be found in order to help the patient continue to communicate with language. This page was able to identify the main resources that can support the development of decision support systems for AD and help people grasp a better understanding on the importance of helping those with AD

By activating internalized values and norms, accents play a role in the formation and categorization of one's cultural identity, resulting in culturally specific patterned cognition. This article looks at the way accents give rise to cultural shifts in perspective and decision-making within bicultural individuals who have accented English, suggesting that bilinguals adopt cultural values and attitudes associated with their target language and demonstrating that accent alone can affect people's cognition. It highlights the idea of cultural frame-switching in which a person's interpretive frames shift because of the situational cues linked with their bicultural identity.

Learning a second language is usually difficult and often when we speak it, we cannot disguise our origin or accent. However, there are important differences between individuals with regard to the degree to which a second language is mastered, even for people who have lived in a bilingual environment since childhood. Members of the Cognitive Neuroscience Research Group (GRNC) linked to the Barcelona Science Park, have studied these differences. By comparing people who are able to perceive a second language as if they were native speakers of that language with people who find it very difficult to do so, they have observed that the former group is also better at distinguishing the sounds of their own native language. The study results show that there is a positive correlation between specific speech discrimination abilities and the ability to learn a second language, which means that the individual ability to distinguish the specific phonemes of the language, both in the case of the mother tongue and in the case of other languages, is, without a doubt, a decisive factor in the learning process, and the ability to speak and master other languages."