psychology "Double Talk"-Bina BL

Double Talk

There's no doubt that speakers of more than one language have nimble brains. Meet four bilinguals whose languages paved the way to multifaceted lives.
By Carlin Flora, published on September 01, 2010 - last reviewed on September 05, 2010

Some are children of enterprising immigrants or embattled refugees. Others live along borders or are part of a minority that keeps its heritage while blending into the mainstream. Still others have spent years memorizing vocabulary lists and parsing sentences. All told, half of the world's population conducts life in multiple languages.

Bilingualism doesn't just apply to the small percentage of people who are perfectly fluent in two tongues. Bilinguals might speak beautifully in one language without being able to read or write it. And they may have acquired their second tongue as a child, a teen, or an adult.

People who are bilingual are often asked which language they think in, but when people are walking down the street, riding a bus, or jogging in the woods, their thoughts may not be in a particular language, points out Francois Grosjean, author of the research-based Bilingual Life and Reality. "Thought can be visual-spatial and nonlinguistic. It is only when planning to speak that individual languages actually intervene," Grosjean says.

While they do repress words in one tongue in order to speak another, bilinguals don't completely lose access to the first. For example, bilingual subjects reading sentences with cognates—examples would be "bleu" in French and "blue" in English—take less time to process them than other words, hinting at how they are always dipping into their total language knowledge. And they often intermingle their languages (Spanglish, Chinglish), not out of laziness or lack of ability, but in a natural quest for optimal self-expression and understanding.
Infants as young as 4 months who live in bilingual environments can distinguish between two languages, monitoring lip and facial movements. Babies also show a strong preference for the language their mother spoke during pregnancy. We're built to acquire language, of course, but we're also built to learn and accommodate more than one. Monolinguals are essentially underutilizing their abilities: Brain  scans show that while monolinguals use established language centers such as Broca's area, bilinguals employ far more of the neural landscape when expressing themselves.

Pro-Social Video Games Make Children Kinder

Pro-Social Video Games Make Children Kinder

Previous studies have suggested that there is a relationship between playing violent video games and aggressive behavior in children. But now, for the first time, the three new studies have concluded that some video games influence good behavior and can even make children kinder and more likely to help other people.

All the three separate studies that were carried out in the United States, Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia and used different age groups and a variety of scientific methods, suggest that people who play video games with pro-social content, become more attentive and helpful to others after the game is over. Douglas Gentile, a psychologist at Iowa State University and a principal investigator of the study, said: "Dozens of studies have documented a relationship between violent video games and aggressive behaviors. But this is one of the first that has documented the positive effects of playing pro-social games."

For the purposes of their first study, the researchers involved and studied 727 Singapore children with an average age of 13 years. The participants were asked to name their favorite games and also to recall how often the characters in those games "helped, hurt or killed other characters." In addition to these questions, the experts asked all kids how likely they were themselves to perform good deeds, including sharing, helping and cooperating, or in some cases, reacting in an aggressive way to situations. The results revealed that there was a strong link between playing pro-social video games and helping other people. But the experts also said that they found a strong correlation between playing violent games and negative behavior.

For the second experiment, the investigators involved about 2,000 Japanese children with the ages between 10 and 16 years and examined the long-term connection between video game habits and pro-social behaviour. Children were asked questions about their use of pro-social video games, and then to report how often they had helped other people in the previous month. Between 3 to 4 months later, all the kids were surveyed again, and researchers found that there was a significant connection between playing pro-social games and helpful behaviour few months later.

In the third study, U.S. college students with an average age of 19 years, played either a pro-social, violent, or neutral game. After that, the participants assigned puzzles to a randomly selected partner. In case the partner could solve the puzzle, he/she would earn $10. The main idea was that the participant choosing the puzzles could pick easy puzzles or hard puzzles, essentially deciding how easy or difficult it would be for the partner to earn the money. The research found that those students who played a pro-social game, were considerably more helpful, when compared to those who played violent or neutral games. They were found to select more easy puzzles to their partners. And those who had played violent games were significantly more likely to choose the hardest puzzles.

"Taken together, these findings make it clear that playing video games is not in itself good or bad for children," researchers said. "The type of content in the game has a bigger impact than the overall amount of time spent playing."

Computer Game Tetris Improves Thinking

Computer Game Tetris Improves Thinking

Playing the computer game Tetris may boost gray matter in your brain, according to a new report which also suggests that regular idle act of fitting blocks together on a computer screen can improve thinking and increase "mental efficiency".

Tetris is a computer game, developed about 25 years ago by a Soviet computer programmer Alexey Pajitnov. The game requires players to score points by rotating different shaped blocks as they fall into position, so they form a straight completed line and then disappear from the screen. Till today Tetris remains one of the world's most popular computer games.

To come up with the conclusion, the scientists from the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, United States, along with researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute, had MRIs, magnetic resonance imaging, done on twenty-six adolescent girls with the ages between 12 and 15 years old. All the girls were asked to play the popular computer game for 30 minutes on a daily basis over the course of 3 months. As a result, using two brain imaging techniques, the scientists discovered that compared with a control group of girls who did not play the puzzle game, the subjects demonstrated improved efficiency in different parts of the brain that were involved in critical thinking, reasoning as well as language and processing.

In addition, MRI scans also showed increases in matter in the brain's cortex, an area of the brain scientists believe plays a role in the planning of complex, coordinated movements, and integrating sensory experiences, such as vision, sound and touch, with other information. "What we found was a change in the brain after playing Tetris," says Dr. Richard Haier, a neurologist with the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, and a principal investigator of the project. "The thickness of the cerebral cortex actually increased, by less than half a millimeter."

All 26 participants had limited experience in playing computer games. The team chose adolescent girls because brain changes might be easier to detect in a young person, and also because boys, when compared to girls, tend to spend much more time playing computer games and might not demonstrate noticeable changes in the brain after practice. Tetris is a useful tool when it comes to brain research, the experts said, because this game involves a number of cognitive processes, such as attention, hand and eye coordination, memory and visual spatial problem solving working in combination very quickly.

The experts intend to continue their investigation on the matter with larger and more diverse samples in order to find out whether the brain changes they spotted revert back when the participants stop playing Tetris. At the same time, they are interested if the skills obtained while playing the game, and the associated brain changes, transfer to other cognitive areas such as working memory, processing speed, or spatial reasoning.

Teen Marijuana Use Linked To Psychoses

Teen Marijuana Use Linked To Psychoses

Teenagers who are longtime marijuana smokers are at an increased risk of developing psychoses, such as schizophrenia, hallucinations and delusions, compared to short-term smokers or those who have never smoked pot, a new research suggests.

Scientists at the Brain Institute at the University of Queensland, Australia, tracked 3,801 young adults with the ages between 14 and 21 years. The participants and their mothers were asked about their mental health record and whether they had used any drugs, specifically marijuana, and then evaluated to determine if they had developed any psychotic conditions.

According to the data provided: 17.7 per cent of participants reported smoking marijuana for 3 or fewer years; 16.2 per cent smoked pot for 4 to 5 years; 14.3 per cent reported using marijuana for six or more years. The findings showed that overall, from all the test subjects, those who had started smoking marijuana before the age of 15 years, were more likely to develop symptoms of psychosis by the time they turned 21 years old.

Of the individuals who had smoked pot at an early age, 3.9 per cent had developed a psychotic disorder. This compared with approximately 3 per cent of those who had started smoking marijuana after age 15, and 2.1 per cent of young adults who had never used cannabis. The experts found that of all the participants, 223 had at least one "positive" report for hallucination on their interviews, and 65 received a diagnosis of schizophrenia. The authors said that long-term smokers of marijuana were 4 times more likely to have high scores on a list of psychotic illnesses. Two sample questions included "Do you ever feel as if you are possessed by someone or something else?" and "Do you ever feel as if other people can read your mind?"

In addition, the researchers analyzed the association between marijuana use and psychotic symptoms among a subgroup of 10 pairs of siblings. Within these pairs, not a big difference was noticed in cannabis use. However, among the 218 pairs of siblings where neither had developed a psychotic condition, siblings who had started smoking marijuana at a younger age were more likely to score higher on a questionnaire measuring "delusional-like experiences".

According to the study's lead author, Dr. John McGrath of the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research, there might be "confounding factors" in this new research. For example, the study did not account for the number of young adults who had psychoses to begin with, and how those conditions could influence their decision to use cannabis. Also, Dr. McGrath added that mental illness among parents "is a potential confounding factor because this could influence both the risk of cannabis use and psychotic-related outcomes in the offspring."

Psychology "Relative Happiness" BBL

 Relative Happiness

Your family may not be storybook, but you can cheer up the house by breaking bread, finding fun, and following a few proven plotlines.

By Amy Rosenberg, published on July 01, 2010 - last reviewed on September 03, 2010

When I was a child, I loved the All-of-a-Kind Family books. Five sisters sharing a bedroom in a small New York apartment at the turn of the last century—what could be more fun? To me, growing up in the suburbs with an older brother with whom I was never very close, and with parents who were active in numerous clubs and organizations that often kept them out of the house, the idea of a large family doing things together was extremely appealing. I envied even a housecleaning scene in which the girls' mother hid buttons for them to find as they dusted the living room. Everything was tackled with team spirit, and so everything—even the chores—seemed like play. The family possessed an infectious energy that you couldn't help but absorb through the books' pages. Simply put, they were happy.

Of course, the current era demands a different kind of family life. You and your partner may both be working long hours while staying electronically tethered to the office afterward. Your kids, too, are probably deep into their devices. On the weekends, homework—your kids' or your own—takes over, and errands swallow up whatever time is left. Then, when you finally manage to corral the whole clan for some quality time together, someone is too exhausted to enjoy it, someone else resents the forced fun, and no one really knows how to talk to anyone else.

It's hard to feel in control when you're busy managing the daily scramble. But you should at least be cognizant of the power you have to set the tone of your home, even if it's most often set by default, by all those electronic interferences. For starters, you can impose limits on interruptions and distractions. And then, on top of that, you can consciously decide to do what came naturally to the All-of-a-Kind Family, one that constantly shared adventures, despite being poor. Because they were steeped in Jewish culture, they adhered to family rituals that further increased warmth and closeness. Happiness wasn't their goal; it was a by-product of their lifestyle.

Tolstoy wrote that all happy families are alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion. This may or may not be true, but happy families share certain behaviors and that unhappy ones can change. Examining what works for others might help you figure out ways to start increasing the levels of joy among your own clan.

A truly happy family supports and encourages the growth of each of its members. Reaching that ideal state requires the group to respect one another's space while simultaneously fostering togetherness. Such a family paradoxically provides predictable comfort and dramatic highs and lows, both of which come from caring deeply for the people under your own roof.

Communicate Well and Often

Catie and Kevin O'Keefe, a couple in their late 50s who live in Washington, D.C., where they raised their three children, swear that effective communication is the key. When their kids, now 26, 23, and 19, were younger, Catie and Kevin (who, incidentally, own a communications company together) emphasized the importance of interacting with one another. "We ate dinner together every night," says Kevin. "That was a given. We asked each other, 'What did you do today?' We had discussions about everyday kinds of things. It brought us closer together."

Barbara Fiese, a psychologist who studies family routines and health at Syracuse University, finds that "eating together helps open up the lines of communication. Concerns leak out, and it becomes an opportunity to solve problems as a team."

The Landsgaards, a large clan living in a small town in Mississippi, also insist on eating together—no easy feat with 6 children ranging in age from 3 to 10 years old. "Everyone feels free to express themselves around the table," says Kristen Landsgaard, mother of the family, "even the babies. I homeschool the older kids, so I have breakfast and lunch with all of them, and my husband always joins us for dinner. We all connect that way."

For Naomi Pabst and Don Daly, who live in lower Manhattan with their 3 children-Anatola, 11, Ian, 4, and Ariana, 1- one-on-one time with each child is as crucial as group sessions. "Maintaining five different schedules in a chaotic city means we really have to take the opportunity to have one-on-one time when it arises," Naomi says. "We have to make the in-between moments count." She often has her most heartfelt conversations with her elder daughter while walking with her from one activity to another.

The O'Keefes also encouraged their kids to verbally resolve conflicts. "We let our kids talk things out among themselves," Kevin explains. And when talking was hard, they found other ways. "Our middle child always found it easier to write letters than to speak. When she was a teenager and we set a curfew for her, she disagreed with our rules. She wrote us a letter that made a great argument for a later curfew, and we changed our minds."