Skip to main content

Home/ Words R Us/ Group items tagged effect

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Lisa Stewart

Without Miracles: The Development and Functioning of Thought - 0 views

  • it might come as somewhat of a surprise to learn that some scholars reject natural selection as an explanation for the appearance, structure, and use of language.
  • to use Darwin's term, the roll film of the still camera was preadapted, although quite accidentally and unintentionally, for use in the motion picture camera. To use Gould's more neutral and more accurate terminology, this feature of the still camera was exapted for use in motion picture cameras. So, in effect, Chomsky and Gould assert that the human brain is analogous to roll film in that it evolved for reasons originally unrelated to language concerns; but once it reached a certain level of size and complexity, language was possible.
  • All mammals produce oral sounds by passing air from the lungs through the vocal cords, which are housed in the larynx (or "Adam's apple"). The risk of choking to which we are exposed results from our larynx being located quite low in the throat. This low position permits us to use the large cavity above the larynx formed by the throat and mouth (supralaryngal tract) as a sound filter. By varying the position of the tongue and lips, we can vary the frequencies that are filtered and thus produce different vowel sounds such as the [i] of seat, the [u] of stupid, and the [a] of mama.[9] We thus see an interesting trade-off in the evolution of the throat and mouth, with safety and efficiency in eating and breathing sacrificed to a significant extent for the sake of speaking. This suggests that the evolution of language must have provided advantages for survival and reproduction that more than offset these other disadvantages.
Lisa Stewart

How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand - 11 views

  • An estimated 300 million Chinese — roughly equivalent to the total US population — read and write English but don't get enough quality spoken practice. The likely consequence of all this? In the future, more and more spoken English will sound increasingly like Chinese.
  • in various parts of the region they tend not to turn vowels in unstressed syllables into neutral vowels. Instead of "har-muh-nee," it's "har-moh-nee." And the sounds that begin words like this and thing are often enunciated as the letters f, v, t, or d. In Singaporean English (known as Singlish), think is pronounced "tink," and theories is "tee-oh-rees."
  • English will become more like Chinese in other ways, too. Some grammatical appendages unique to English (such as adding do or did to questions) will drop away, and our practice of not turning certain nouns into plurals will be ignored. Expect to be asked: "How many informations can your flash drive hold?" In Mandarin, Cantonese, and other tongues, sentences don't require subjects, which leads to phrases like this: "Our goalie not here yet, so give chance, can or not?"
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • According to linguists, such words may introduce tone into other Asian-English hybrids.
  • Chinglish will be more efficient than our version, doing away with word endings and the articles a, an, and the.
    • Lisa Stewart
       
      This reminds me of the Vikings' effect on Anglo-Saxon.
Ryan Catalani

The QWERTY Effect: How stereo-typing shapes the mental lexicon - 2 views

  •  
    "Most people implicitly associate positive ideas with "right" and negative ideas with "left"....The meanings of words in English, Dutch, and Spanish are related to the way people type them on the QWERTY keyboard. Words with more right-hand letters are rated as more positive in emotional valence than words with more left-hand letters, consistent with right-handers' tendency to implicitly associate "good" with "right.""
Jade Hinsdale

Effective Communications - 0 views

  •  
    Voice inflections in different language - how people interpret them. Videos with only sound.
Michaela Tsuha

Love Hurts - 0 views

  •  
    This commercial is promoting "Pepsi Max, with zero calories." It has the unstated premise that anything without calories must be good for you or that anything without calories is the healthy way to go. But the truth of the matter is that not everything without calories is "good." Diet sodas don't actually have any nutritional value and many contain a chemical in them called aspartame which proves to have some negative effects when not taken in moderation.
Ryan Catalani

The Secret Language Code: Scientific American - 1 views

  •  
    "Remarkably, how people used pronouns was correlated with almost everything I studied. For example, use of first-person singular pronouns (I, me, my) was consistently related to gender, age, social class, honesty, status, personality, and much more. Although the findings were often robust, people in daily life were unable to pick them up when reading or listening to others... Higher GPAs were associated with admission essays that used high rates of nouns and low rates of verbs and pronouns. The effects were surprisingly strong and lasted across all years of college, no matter what the students' major."
Nick Pang

10 Tips for Writing the College Application Essay - Professors' Guide (usnews.com) - 29 views

  •  
    "Be concise, Be honest, Be an individual, Be coherent, Be accurate, Be vivid, Be likable, Be cautious in your use of humor, Be controversial, and Be smart" HOW?!?!?!?!?!?!? Quite a bit to take in and remember while working away on a concise paper which may or may not decide our future. Just a few small nuggets of gold (interpret as you please): "If you go over 700 words, you are straining their patience, which no one should want to do." "Not everyone has to be the star at everything." "The whole application is a series of snapshots of what you do. It is inevitably incomplete. The colleges expect this. Go along with them." "If you write about Nietzsche, spell his name right." "Subtlety is good." "Be funny only if you think you have to. Then think again." "It is fine to write about politics, religion, something serious, as long as you are balanced and thoughtful. Don't pretend you have the final truth." "Colleges are intellectual places, a fact they almost always keep a secret..." From this, I take: Be human. But be an awesome human.
  • ...3 more comments...
  •  
    This article gives guidelines that I trust in and will take into consideration when writing my essay. However, I don't think that people should limit themselves too much or all follow the same guidelines. Like some of the other articles exemplified, it is difficult to choose an appropriate topic, and restricting yourself with too many rules could have a negative effect.
  •  
    I honestly don't agree with the "be controversial" bit. Many of us are applying to classic, old-school colleges and universities. If someone wants to attend a deeply catholic school, there's no chance their pro-choice paper will be thought of as a good one. I totally agree with all the other tips, though.
  •  
    I agree with Kellen, the guidelines given are great advice and are also given by a reliable source so as a result I will take what has been written in the article into consideration. But at the same time, as mentioned by Kellen, they do restrict the senior who is putting together their essay a little too much which is something that I do not like nor agree with.
  •  
    4. Be coherent.  I thought that this website was really helpful because I am known to like to write a lot and sometimes want to write so much that I ramble a lot.  I don't want to sound busy but not scattered or superficial either.
  •  
    I feel like by setting up some of these guidelines, it is kind of changing our experiences or ideas we want to write. We have to find something coherent to the question and on top of that be likeable. what if what you think is likeable isn't the same as what the college people want?
Jade Hinsdale

Talk-Therapy is as effective as Medication in some cases of depression - 1 views

  •  
    I saw this topic at one of ms. stewarts posts and the topic really interests me as someone that is really interested in biology and believes in the science of medicine. possible research topic.
Ryan Catalani

The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations - 1 views

  •  
    "Explanations of psychological phenomena seem to generate more public interest when they contain neuroscientific information. ... The neuroscience information had a particularly striking effect on nonexperts' judgments of bad explanations, masking otherwise salient problems in these explanations."
Lara Cowell

How extreme isolation warps the mind - 0 views

  •  
    This article is relevant to the Genie case, outlining the many ways isolation is physically bad for us. Chronically lonely people have higher blood pressure, are more vulnerable to infection, and are also more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Loneliness also interferes with a whole range of everyday functioning, such as sleep patterns, attention and logical and verbal reasoning. The mechanisms behind these effects are still unclear, though what is known is that social isolation unleashes an extreme immune response - a cascade of stress hormones and inflammation. This response might've been biologically advantageous for our early ancestors, when being isolated from the group carried big physical risks, but for modern humans, the outcome is mostly harmful. A 1957 McGill University study, recreated in 2008 by Professor Ian Robbins, head of trauma psychology at St George's Hospital, Tooting, found that after only a matter of hours, people deprived of perceptual stimulation and meaningful human contact, started to crave stimulation, talking, singing or reciting poetry to themselves to break the monotony. Later, many of them became anxious or highly emotional. Their mental performance suffered too, struggling with arithmetic and word association tests. In addition, subjects started hallucinating. The brain is used to processing large quantities of data, but in the absence of sensory input, Robbins states that "the various nerve systems feeding in to the brain's central processor are still firing off, but in a way that doesn't make sense. So after a while the brain starts to make sense of them, to make them into a pattern." It tries to construct a reality from the scant signals available to it, yet it ends up building a fantasy world.
Brian Piper

Do weight loss and weight gain affect the voice? Laryngology Los Angeles - 0 views

  •  
    About the Author Dr. Reena Gupta is the Director of the Voice and Swallowing Center at OHNI. Dr. Gupta has devoted her practice to the care of patients with voice and swallowing problems. She is board certified in otolaryngology and laryngology and fellowship trained in laryngology, specializing in the care of the professional voice.
Mandy Matsumoto

Think Sarcasm is Funny? Think Again - 1 views

  •  
    This article goes over the subtleties of sarcasm and why at times it has negative effects
Ellis Akana15

Swearing and pain tolerance - 1 views

  •  
    Swearing like a sailor helps to lessen pain. Study shows that swearing and the effect of the brain helps to lessen pain. This is a book so you might have to download a PDF.
akirschenbaum16

Are You Big Enough to Apologize? - 1 views

  •  
    Discusses the purposes of apologizing and the effects of apologizing and not apologizing.
Steven Yoshimoto

Should You Listen to Music While Studying? - 3 views

  •  
    Since a large number of students listen to music while doing homework, this article explains on whether or not music is effective or detrimental to studying.
keamyers-rosa15

Too Hot to Function: The Truth Behind Temperature and Cognition - 0 views

  •  
    Have you ever experienced mind-numbing cold? Or have you ever felt like it was so hot you could barely think? Believe it or not, these expressions are more than just idioms. Research shows that shifts in core body temperature caused by extreme heat or cold can have significant effects not only on mood but also on cognition.
Mandy Matsumoto

The Science of Happiness - 0 views

  •  
    This video is an experiment of gratitude. It experimented the effects expressing gratitude with words, has on happiness.
thigashihara15

Electronic Distractions - 0 views

  •  
    This article captures the many distractions that humans face in the 21st century. Technology has a variety of pros as well as cons. It has allowed us to communicate more effectively and efficiently. However, technology has also brought with it a decreased in work efficiency, it has altered brain patterns, and may potentially exacerbate aging.
« First ‹ Previous 141 - 160 of 269 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page