Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

Nick Perham, a psychology researcher who conducted a major study on music and reading comprehension, gives a summary of music's effect on productivity. Whether it is beneficial or not is dependent on task and the timing of the music.While recent research has found that music can have beneficial effects on creativity, with other areas of performance, the impact of background music is more complicated. Performance is poorer when a task is undertaken in the presence of background sound (irrelevant sound that you are ignoring), in comparison to quiet: this is known as the irrelevant sound effect. The irrelevant sound effect phenomenon arises from attempting to process two sources of ordered information at the same time - one from the task and one from the sound. Unfortunately, only the former is required to successfully perform the serial recall task, and the effort expended in ensuring that irrelevant order information from the sound is not processed actually impedes this ability. A similar conflict is also seen when reading while in the presence of lyrical music. In this situation, the two sources of words - from the task and the sound - are in conflict. The subsequent cost is poorer performance of the task in the presence of music with lyrics. It doesn't matter whether one likes the music or not--performance was equally poor. Whether having music playing in the background helps or hinders performance depends on the task and on the type of music, and only understanding this relationship will help people maximise their productivity levels. If the task requires creativity or some element of mental rotation, then listening to music one likes can increase performance. In contrast, if the task requires one to rehearse information, then quiet is best, or, in the case of reading comprehension, quiet or instrumental music. One promising area of the impact of music on cognitive abilities stems from actually learning to play a musical instrument. Studies show that child

This article serves as an update in the new year of 2024 on which states require their public schools to teach kids how to read and write in cursive. New to the 27 state list are California and New Hampshire, as they now all require some form of cursive education for the youth in school.

This seminal paper by Dr. Jean Berko Gleason introduces the Wug Test, a unique way to study childhood language acquisition by asking young children to pluralize nonsense words, put them past tense, and more.

This article details the impact of effective technology and the accessibility that comes with communication methods. The article also describes the way that iPads and tablets have become a part of the way that special education teachers communicate with their students and the newfound independence of non-verbal students.

This article talked about how adults talk to babies and why we do it. When we talk to babies, we tend to raise our pitch a little and supposedly, it calms the baby down. They also talked about a research project where they recorded adults from different parts of the world, and noticed that those who come from western places raised their pitch the most, and in remote places didn't raise their pitch that much but everyone raised their pitch at least a little. The way we talk to babies is universal and we've evolved as humans to be able to communicate with infants.

The features of baby talk - softer tone, higher pitch, almost unintelligible vocabulary - are global. Researchers at Harvard's Music Lab documented over 1,500 recordings in 21 urban, rural and Indigenous communities - making their work possibly a first of its kind experiment. The article includes samples from different languages around the world. There are many reasons why baby talk might have evolved in humans and why it might serve beneficial purposes. Some theories suggest that the way we speak accentuates the vowels of the speech and helps babies learn speech. Other theories suggest that this kind of baby talk helps regulate the baby's emotions and helps structure the social interactions we have with babies, so it helps socialize them and control their behavior and mood. In prehistoric times, having ways to interact with babies and to care for them while still being able to keep your eyes up to look out for predators and use your voice to interact with babies, might have been an important reason why we may have evolved these kinds of behaviors.

This article focussed on how the covid lockdown had affected the language acquisition of children, ranging from about 1 to 3 years old. It talked about how screen use was shown to lower the amount of words learned during the same periods of time as compared to face to face interaction with another person.

This article focused on the main types of code-switching and their purposes. This occurs in two main ways: 1) switching/combining two separate languages, and 2) using different accents and dialects around different people. Code-switching can be used both for comprehension and as a group belonging mechanism.

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.

Technology is a huge part of our lives. Nowadays, where we work, where we learn, how we communicate, and how we stay connected to each other are all surrounded by technology. We may not think about this when we're around these tech devices but it affects our mental health, and not always in a positive way. This article discusses how technology impacts us and our mental health, and what we can do to balance it out!

From the Zippys.com website: Did you know that Hawaiʻi is the only US state to have two official state languages - English and Hawaiian ('Ōlelo Hawaiʻi)? The month of February is designated as "Mahina 'Ōlelo Hawaiʻi" (Hawaiian language month) by the Hawaiʻi State legislature, various county councils around Hawaiʻi, and by other organizations. The purpose for the month is to celebrate and normalize the use of 'Ōlelo Hawaiʻi in everyday life, as well as to perpetuate the Hawaiian culture. Zippy's is proud to celebrate all of the cultures in Hawai'i that make our home a special place in the world. For the month of February, Zippy's is supporting Mahina 'Ōlelo Hawaiʻi Month by giving you an opportunity to learn a little bit of the language and to see what the Zippy's menu looks like in 'Ōlelo Hawaiʻi! Check out the Papa Kuhikuhi Mea`ai o ka Hale `Aina `o Zippy's in PDF form here. (Makemake `o Kumu Cowell i ka Pā Zip!)

This article is on how emotional language can affect the responses of generative AI and how the AI can learn from the language