[原创]借块宝地练听力(每天一更新)

cvvt1986

Beware the Holiday Sugar High

http://podcast.sciam.com/psych/sa_p_podcast_081222.mp3

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Candy canes. Christmas cookies. And, predictably, your little cousins are bouncing off the walls. An article published last week in BMJ says that our skewed perception of hyper behavior post-sugar might be mostly in our heads.

Most reviews, including this one, have concluded that if you slip kids some sugar without them knowing it, it doesn’t have a hyperactivity effect in most children, even ones with ADHD.

One study shows that parents can fall prey to the placebo effect, seeing their kids as more hyperactive when under the false impression that the kids have eaten sugar.

Researchers gave 30 boys a drink of sugar-free Kool-Aid, but they told some mothers that they had been given a very sugary beverage, instead.

Those moms who thought their kids had ingested sugar rated their sons as more hyperactive than those who were told the truth.

So if your cousin is being a pain in the rear, maybe you should be the one to chill out.

—Susannah F. Locke

况天佑

练习听力确实贵在坚持，楼主加油！我自己也要加油！~~

cvvt1986

Men's Chess Superiority Explained
    

http://podcast.sciam.com/daily/sa_d_podcast_081229.mp3

cvvt1986

Women are so much better than men at so many things. But according to a report published by the Royal Society, chess is not one of them. The topic of sex differences when it comes to matters of the mind is, needless to say, a divisive one. Those who wish to argue that women are just not as smart as men often point to chess as their proof. Although girls can obviously play, no woman’s ever been world champion. But before looking for cultural or biological explanations for the disparity, scientists say you need to do the math.

Serious chess players are assigned ratings based on their performance against other players. So the scientists compared the ratings of the top hundred male and top hundred female players from Germany. And they found that the men indeed outperformed the women. However that difference can be almost entirely explained by statistics. Because the larger the population, the wider the range of measured scores—the bell curve has a longer tail. And because many more men play than women, the best male players are extreme outliers on that bell curve. As more women play, a few should also reach those extremes, right out there with the men. To which one might be tempted to say: Checkmate.

—Karen Hopkin 

cvvt1986

Brain Smarter Than We Are

http://podcast.sciam.com/daily/sa_d_podcast_081230.mp3

cvvt1986

We humans don’t always make the best choices. But now a study in the journal Neuron demonstrates that maybe our brains do make the best possible decisions—but only if it’s done unconsciously. Alex Pouget at the University of Rochester takes a look at unconscious information gathering. He says a lot of our good decisions—like stopping at a red light—are unconscious ones.

Subjects stared at dots moving around in random patterns on a screen. A controlled number were heading towards either the right or left of the screen. The subjects were asked if the dots were moving left or right. The longer subjects stared at the screen, the more sure they became of the answer.

Pouget analyzed the subjects’ neuronal patterns. If a few dots in the group moved to the right, a part of the brain that recognizes right-direction movement lit up. As time went on, it’d light up more and more frequently until the subjects gave a definitive answer. According to Pouget, the subjects were subconsciously gathering information until they finally felt sure of the answer. So the brain usually gets it right. Too bad we still seem to run so many red lights.

—Cynthia Graber 

cvvt1986

Great Expectations for 2009

http://podcast.sciam.com/psych/sa_p_podcast_081230.mp3

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Making decisions for 2009? 

Well maybe consider Duke professor Dan Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational in which he describes how our expectations can hugely affect our decisions.

At M.I.T., he and two colleagues had several hundred students try two different pints of beer. One was Budweiser and the other was Budweiser, but with balsamic vinegar added. 

Students who weren’t told about the “secret ingredient,” vastly preferred the balsamic beer. But those who were informed before tasting the beer, hated it.

If people think up front that something might be distasteful, Ariely argues, the odds are high that they’ll experience it negatively, no matter how intrinsically good it is.

But can expectations change the physiology of our experience?

In a second experiment participants were told about the vinegar after they tasted the beer. If knowledge of the vinegar is merely information, then our perception should be the same regardless of when we get that information.

But this group loved the beer just as much as those who never heard about the vinegar.

So our expectations can reshape our sensory perceptions. Then, should you have zero expectations for the future? Not necessarily. Maybe just expect great things in 2009.  After 2008, it can’t hurt, right?

—Christie Nicholson

cvvt1986

Infecting Mosquitoes Before They Infect Us(听之前要好好看文章,这篇有点怪)

http://podcast.sciam.com/daily/sa_d_podcast_090102.mp3