Science News

Science News

Here you will find highlights of findings from newly published research, notices about news or events, and other information of interest.

The Bilingual Advantage in Children

New Research: The Bilingual Advantage may extend to children with ASD
There’s a growing body of evidence that bilingualism brings numerous benefits to children, many of which extend into adulthood.

What Bilingualism is

Bilingualism comes when a child grows up learning two languages. Usually this means in the home – perhaps parents speak two languages, a caregiver or grandparent speaks a language different from the parents, or the child grows up in a community or goes to a school where people speak a language . . .

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What Makes You Happy?

What Do You Associate With Happiness?

Before you begin reading this, think of three words that come to your mind when you think of happiness.

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Some new, yet to be published, research by scientists at Yonsei University in Korea and U C Santa Barbara compared the words 500 university students associated with happiness with the results of a well-being questionnaire each completed. (The study is summarized in the U C Berkeley Greater Good Newsletter (2/27/17.) Half of the subjects were Korean and half American, which turns out to be rather interesting. Koreans selected . . .

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New Research on Personality and Well Being

Personality has long been related to happiness and well-being. Studies of the “Big Five” personality traits (Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Openness to Experience) consistently show that extraverts are happier than introverts, as are agreeable individuals compared with those who are less agreeable. In contrast, neuroticism is associated with less happiness and fewer feelings of well-being. Yet within these big groups there is a lot of variation: not all extroverts are jubilant and not all neurotics are miserable. Moreover, there is always the lingering . . .

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New Research: Mindfulness Training Reduces Levels of Impulsivity and Aggressiveness in Adolescents

A study just published in the journal, Frontiers in Psychology (September 22, 2016), reports that mindfulness training significantly decreases aggressive and impulsive behavior in high school students. The results come from a carefully conducted study of experimental and control groups using pre-training and post-training measures. Subjects were boys and girls 12 – 19 years old who were attending high school in Spain. Those randomly assigned to the experimental group participated in a mindfulness meditation technique for 10 week.

Background
Mindfulness training is known to improve emotional regulation, including anger anxiety and depression. Almost all research on this . . .

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