Group items tagged

I find this very relevant to us as teens because we do tend to have very selective hearing and memory, such that if we hear something that we don't like we just choose not to listen. I also found the information on optimism being very good for the body and I found it interesting that 80% of people are optimist even when they don't think so themselves.

Positive thinking can be used to manage and reduce stress.

Patterns of negative or positive self-talk often start in childhood. Usually, the self-talk habit is one that's colored our thinking for years, and can affect us in many ways, influencing the experience of stress to our lives. However, any time can be a good time to change it! The article offers several pointers for change.

Words have the ability to change our perspectives on people, opinions and other aspects. Words have taken over the world through crucial conversations, newspapers and news articles. This article basically explains how words frame our minds and how important it is to use your words positively rather than for a negative use.

This article talks about how music is able to affect our mood. It is said that even sad music is able to lift someone's mood. However, sometimes sad music can also make people feel negative feelings. Also people who listened to happy or upbeat music were able to lift their moods in just two weeks

Analyzing the verbs that followed male and female pronouns in 100K stories, the following patterns were observed: 1. Women are more likely to be in the role of victims- "she screams", "she cries", or "she pleads." Men tend to be the aggressor: "he kidnaps" or "he beats". Not all male-oriented terms are negative- many, like "he saves"/"he rescues" are distinctly positive- but almost all are active rather than receptive. 2. There's an old stereotype (that's appeared in works like Game of Thrones and Sherlock Holmes) that "poison is a woman's weapon", and this is supported in our analysis. Female characters are more likely to "poison", "stab", or "kick"; male characters are more likely to "beat", "strangle", or simply "murder" or "kill". Men are moderately more likely to "steal", but much more likely to "rob". 3. Based on this text analysis, a fictional murderer is about 2.5X as likely to be male than female, but in America (and likely elsewhere) murderers are about 9X more likely to be male than female. This means female murderers may be overrepresented in fiction relative to reality. David Robinson, the data scientist who ran the text analysis, offers these questions for future research: 1.Is the shift stronger in some formats or genre than another? We could split the works into films, novels, and TV series, and ask whether these gender roles are equally strong in each. 2. Is the shift different between male- and female- created works? 3. Has the difference changed over time? Some examination indicates the vast majority of these plots come from stories written in the last century, and most of them from the last few decades (not surprising since many are movies or television episodes, and since Wikipedia users are more likely to describe contemporary work). 4. I'd also note that we could expand the analysis to include not only pronouns but first names (e.g. not only "she tells", but "M

This article is about a study of around 260 students ages 11-18 years old at a secondary school in the Midlands to determine if the increased use of technology had hindered students' ability in school. It was found that about six out of ten students copied directly from sources with over a quarter of them not realizing that it was plagiarism. The study also found that the increase use of modern technology has made more students use "text-speak" in their work at school. Text-speak is made up of shortcuts usually used when texting another person. Teachers are having a harder time understand their students' work because of the usage of text-speak, thus proving the negative impacts of the increased use of modern technology on students.

This article focuses on the negatives of texting. It talks about how kids use abbreviations, such as "OMG", and how this is preventing them from being properly educated.

The brain interprets irony or sarcasm conveyed by an emoji in the same way that sarcasm is conveyed verbally, according to a new report from researchers at the linguistics department of the University of Illinois Researchers measured brain activity of native English-speaking college students reading sentences using various emoji at the end. They read sentences with positive, negative or ironic emoji at the end.

This guide gives a run-down of tips for greater happiness. Some Words R Us related items: 1. Conquer negative thinking by acknowledging and challenging your thoughts. 2. Rewrite your story: we all have a personal narrative that shapes our view of the world, but sometimes our inner voice doesn't get it right. By (literally) writing and then editing our own stories, we can change our perceptions of ourselves and identify obstacles that stand in the way of our personal well-being. 3. Practice optimism: thinking positive thoughts and surrounding yourself with positive people really does help. 4. Kindness and compassion towards others and yourself

Why does psychotherapy favorably compare to medication in treating depression? One reason may be rooted in the evolutionary origins of depression. Scholars suggest humans may become depressed to help us focus attention on a problem that might cause someone to fall out of step with family, friends, clan or the larger society-an outcast status that, especially in Paleolithic times, would have meant an all-but-certain tragic fate. Depression, by this account, came about as a mood state to make us think long and hard about behaviors that may have caused us to become despondent because some issue in our lives is socially problematic. Steven D. Hollon, a professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, explores the implications of helping a patient come to grips with the underlying causes of a depression-which is the goal of CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), and is also in line with an evolutionary explanation. The anodyne effects of an antidepressant, by contrast, may divert a patient from engaging in the reflective process for which depression evolved-a reason perhaps that psychotherapy appears to produce a more enduring effect than antidepressants. Hollon notes that depression has a purpose--it spurs rumination about complex social problems, and that CBT can expedite rumination and make it more effective. He states, "For most people, depression motivates them to think more deliberately about the causes of their problems and the solutions they can apply. In most instances in our ancestral past this worked well enough; most depressions remit spontaneously even in the absence of treatment. Cognitive therapy, at the least, hurries the process along and, at the most, helps unstick that subset of individuals who get stuck making negative ascriptions about themselves, typically about personal competence or lovability."

This articles explains that although there are typically negative connections between swearing and the message the speaker is trying to get across, swearing can also be used in constructive ways.

Sarcasm is more often than not found to be harmful and conflict inducing. This article touches upon some of the negative outcomes of sarcasm and examines how sarcasm can be beneficial to our creativity. In a study, researchers had their participants engage in simulated conversations containing sarcastic, sincere, and neutral dialogues. Then, they were asked to complete tasks that would test their creativity. Through this study, researchers found that those who participated in sarcastic conversations did better. To create or understand sarcasm takes creative thinking because one must distinguish between the literal and actual meaning.

According to communication experts and marriage counselors, we should stay away from sarcasm because it can hurt others and harm relationships. But in this article it explains how sarcasm can help creative sparks fly.

This article includes new information about how the coronavirus lockdowns have negatively impacted children's speech and language skills. It has small anecdotes of real families with young children where their language progress was practically stalled during the lockdowns but able to bounce back through rigorous language assistance schools. It even touches on how by adulthood, "four times more likely to struggle with reading, three time more likely to have mental health issues, twice as likely to be unemployed and have social-mobility issues, " if someone has issues with language in childhood.

This study looks at the advancement in technology in China and how it has impacted children and their language skills. Chinese children have learned to use pinyin input on electronic devices, which is typing in what a character sounds like, without having to actually write it out. Use of pinyin input and other e-tools are negatively impacting character recognition skills and Chinese reading acquisition, while handwriting works oppositely.

Interesting video on how using social media in different ways can affect mood positively / negatively. Specifically passive versus active use of social media.

This article talks about a face all humans make, the "not face." It combines the 3 emotions of anger, disgust, and contempt. It not only shows that we are able to express complex emotions, but also how the "not face" is closely tied to language. In ASL speakers, the sign for "not" is also replaced with the negative expression. This article also highlights how facial expression affects language and that there could be more facial expressions like grammatical markers.

Article discusses the negative impacts of parent screen time and digital device distraction on parent-child communication, conversational interaction, and language development, especially in young children.

Profanity is a staple of modern life, but how did it come to be? Researchers put the starting date of swearing somewhere in the early 19th century, but they say that its popularity surged in 70's. The researchers go on to explain that profanity would not exist without people who are against it, because then profanity wouldn't have the negative connotation that it currently has.

This article covers the word 'like' and talks about how the negative beliefs that are associated with using this word such as "it is a sign of stupidity" are inaccurate. I was originally attracted to this article because I tend to say 'like' a lot when I talk, and I've always been told that this is something I want to avoid. However, after reading this article, I no longer think that saying 'like' often is a bad thing.