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Foreign language programs are often one of the first items to be scrutinized and cut when elementary, middle, and high schools in the U.S. face poor performance evaluations or budget crunches. However, many studies have demonstrated the benefits of second language learning not only on student's linguistic abilities but on their cognitive and creative abilities as well.

Changes by the French language council, Académie Française, will simplify the spelling of about 2,400 words, coinciding with the start of the new school year in September. The hat-shaped circumflex accent will disappear above the "i" and "u" in many words. You'll also see fewer hyphens and some vanishing vowels.

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.

We each absorb select scenes in our environment through which we interpret a situation, creating our own reality by that to which we give attention. Our brain naturally tries to process what could otherwise be overwhelming amounts of information, by reducing it to a simplified story. However, because that story is based on a small sliver of reality, our perception may be incorrect. Thought holes, or cognitive distortions, are skewed perceptions of reality. They are negative interpretations of a situation based on poor assumptions. Studies show self-defeating thoughts (i.e., "I'm a loser") can trigger self-defeating emotions (i.e., pain, anxiety, malaise) that, in turn, cause self-defeating actions (i.e., acting out, skipping school). Left unchecked, this tendency can also lead to more severe conditions, such as depression and anxiety. Accurate thinking--identifying and recognizing one's false assumptions--can help reduce negative thinking. Here are 8 common thought holes: 1. Jumping to conclusions: judging a situation based on assumptions as opposed to definitive facts 2. Mental filtering: paying attention to the negative details in a situation while ignoring the positive 3. Magnifying: magnifying negative aspects in a situation 4. Minimizing: minimizing positive aspects in a situation 5. Personalizing: assuming the blame for problems even when you are not primarily responsible 6. Externalizing: pushing the blame for problems onto others even when you are primarily responsible 7. Overgeneralizing: concluding that one bad incident will lead to a repeated pattern of defeat 8. Emotional reasoning: assuming your negative emotions translate into reality, or confusing feelings with facts

"...for many Swedes, gender equality is not enough. Many are pushing for the Nordic nation to be not simply gender-equal but gender-neutral. ... Just days after International Women's Day a new pronoun, hen (pronounced like the bird in English), was added to the online version of the country's National Encyclopedia. ... critics believe it can be psychologically and socially damaging, especially for children ... toddlers cannot weigh arguments for and against linguistic interventions and they do not conceive of or analyze gender roles in the way that adults do ... One Swedish school got rid of its toy cars because boys 'gender-coded' them and ascribed the cars higher status than other toys."

Family Dinners Are Important 10 reasons why, and 10 shortcuts to help get the family to the table. After-school activities, late workdays, long commutes -- it's no wonder few families eat dinner together. Yet studies show that the family dinner hour is an important part of healthy living.

An in-depth look into the science of MultiTasking, along with the real-world consequences it can have in business, school, and our daily lives.

Ending a battle that could only have taken place in the brave new world of social media, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback on Monday apologized for an incident involving a teen who had maligned him on Twitter. ... she tweeted: "Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot." ... the principal told her to send Brownback a letter of apology ... the Shawnee Mission School District had begun to back away from the issue ... the district also gave the kerfuffle an educational twist."

I really liked how this site took a more technical approach to writing a good college essay. I found this link to be very useful.

This article was really interesting. It really helped me to think about my college essay and think about the things that I need to change or go back and edit. I really liked the part about your "Hook" and the "Don't Express Yourself" tip. I also really liked how this article gave tips that I have never heard before.

Debunked myths about the college essay and broke down how to make your essay "winning." I thought the most important part about this article how the author explained the college essay is meant for the school to examine your character, so make sure to include a revelation or process of learning.

"Sustained changes in the region of the brain associated with cognitive function and emotional control were found in young adult men after one week of playing violent video games ... The results showed that after one week of violent game play, the video game group members showed less activation in the left inferior frontal lobe during the emotional Stroop task and less activation in the anterior cingulate cortex during the counting Stroop task."

Actually, there are some studies just about emotional Stroop tests that sound similar to the one in the violent video games study. This looks like a good presentation about how emotional Stroop tests work: http://frank.mtsu.edu/~sschmidt/Cognitive/Emotion1.pdf This one talks about why those Stroop tests work: "In this task, participants name the colors in which words are printed, and the words vary in their relevance to each theme of psychopathology.The authors review research showing that patients are often slower to name the color of a word associated with concerns relevant to their clinical condition." - http://brainimaging.waisman.wisc.edu/~perlman/papers/stickiness/WilliamsEmoStroop1996.pdf This is a meta-analysis of emotional Stroop test studies that describes (actually, it's critical of) how such studies are done: http://www.psych.wustl.edu/coglab/publications/LarsenMercerBalota2006.pdf

Thanks, Ryan! I will take a look at these.

"School-age children whose mothers nurtured them early in life have brains with a larger hippocampus ... For the current study, the researchers conducted brain scans on 92 of the children who had had symptoms of depression or were mentally healthy when they were studied as preschoolers. The imaging revealed that children without depression who had been nurtured had a hippocampus almost 10 percent larger than children whose mothers were not as nurturing. ... Although 95 percent of the parents whose nurturing skills were evaluated during the earlier study were biological mothers, the researchers say that the effects of nurturing on the brain are likely to be the same for any primary caregiver - whether they are fathers, grandparents or adoptive parents."

Can babies learn to read? While parents use DVDs and other media in an attempt to teach their infants to read, these tools don't instill reading skills in babies, a study by researchers at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development has found. In their study, which appears in the Journal of Educational Psychology, the researchers examined 117 infants, aged nine to 18 months, who were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. Children in the treatment condition received a baby media product, which included DVDs, word and picture flashcards, and flip books to be used daily over a seven-month period; children in the control condition did not receive these materials from the researchers. Over the course of seven months, the researchers conducted a home visit, four laboratory visits, and monthly assessments of language development. To test children's emerging skills in the laboratory, the researchers examined the capacity to recognize letter names, letter sounds, vocabulary, words identified on sight, and comprehension. A combination of eye-tracking tasks and standardized measures were used to study outcomes at each stage of development. Using a state-of-the art eye-tracking technology, which follows even the slightest eye movements, the researchers were able to closely monitor how the infants distributed their attention and how they shifted their gaze from one location to another when shown specific words and phrases. No discernible differences were observed between the results of the experimental group vs. the control; yet parents of the infants in the experimental group perceived that their children were, in fact, acquiring words. :-)

This article notes the mutual dependence that both speech/language skills and literacy have on one another. This goes back to the fact that babies who hear more words from their parents often achieve more academically than those who don't converse with their parents as much. Learning anything requires some form of communication and interaction, and without an adequate level of communication, an individual can't learn as effectively.

The more parents talk to their children, the faster those children's vocabularies grow and the better their intelligence develops. The problem seems to be cumulative. By the time children are two, there is a six-month disparity in the language-processing skills and vocabulary of toddlers from low-income families. Toddlers learn new words from their context, so the faster a child understands the words he already knows, the easier it is for him to attend to those he does not. Dr Anne Fernald, of Stanford, found that words spoken directly to a child, rather than those simply heard in the home, are what builds vocabulary. Plonking children in front of the television does not have the same effect. Neither does letting them sit at the feet of academic parents while the grown-ups converse about Plato. The effects can be seen directly in the brain. Kimberly Noble of Columbia University studies how linguistic disparities are reflected in the structure of the parts of the brain involved in processing language. Although she cannot yet prove that hearing speech causes the brain to grow, it would fit with existing theories of how experience shapes the brain. Babies are born with about 100 billion neurons, and connections between these form at an exponentially rising rate in the first years of life. It is the pattern of these connections which determines how well the brain works, and what it learns. By the time a child is three, there will be about 1,000 trillion connections in his brain, and that child's experiences continuously determine which are strengthened and which pruned. This process, gradual and more-or-less irreversible, shapes the trajectory of the child's life.And it is this gap, more than a year's pre-schooling at the age of four, which seems to determine a child's chances for the rest of his life.

I was surprised by this article and by the fact that sometimes, our seemingly boring moments in life has the potential to transform into a great college essay. This article made me change my views of college essays and reexamine what topics I want to write about.

I liked the ideas this essay shared because I realized that if I were to have written my college essay prior to reading this article, my essay would've been similar to the majority of students who submit college essays. This site stresses the importance of being different and that having humility, humor, and personal stories in college essays are attractive. But the article did imply that there are limits and that some things such as torturing animals and showing inconsideration to other people, are inappropriate.

It seems more common now for counselors and advisors to recommend writing about everyday things, but with our own personal "flair." So it was helpful to read in this article about how there are some negative everyday experiences that are important to leave out.

Developing language skills appears to be more important for boys than girls in helping them to develop self-control and, ultimately, succeed in school, according to a study led by a Michigan State University researcher. Language skills -- specifically the building of vocabulary -- help children regulate their emotions and behavior and that boys lag behind girls in both language skills and self-regulation. The researchers noted that while girls overall seemed to have a more natural ability to control themselves and focus, boys with a strong vocabulary showed a dramatic increase in this ability to self-regulate -- even doing as well in this regard as girls with a strong vocabulary.

The amount of texting a teenager does can lead to school bullying, obesity and lack of sleep, according to a story in The Salt Lake Tribune. These factors can affect a teenager's relationships with both friends and family.

Much of our recent reporting, especially from New Orleans, has focused on young people who are neither in school, nor working. There are an estimated five and a half million of them, ages 16 to 24, in the United States. But what do we call them? The nomenclature has fluctuated widely over the decades. And each generation's preferred term is packed with assumptions- economic, social, cultural, and educational - about the best way to frame the issue. Essentially, each name contains an argument about who's at fault, and where to find solutions.

McDonald's swears up and down that the little yellow "Minions" Happy Meal toy is speaking only nonsense words and not something a little more adult. Experts say the company may be right, and the curse words many hear may be tied to how our brains are primed to find words even when they're not really there. "The brain tries to find a pattern match, even when just receiving noise, and it is good at pattern recognition," says Dr. Steven Novella, a neurologist at the Yale School of Medicine. "Once the brain feels it has found a best match, then that is what you hear. The clarity of the speech actually increases with multiple exposures, or if you are primed by being told what to listen for" - as most people who heard the toy online already had been. The technical name for the phenomenon is "pareidolia," hearing sounds or seeing images that seem meaningful but are actually random. It leads people to see shapes in clouds, a man in the moon or the face of Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich.