“HMH Science Dimensions represents an entirely new approach to teaching science, one that is grounded in the real-world application of scientific concepts. This comprehensive program focuses on investigative activities and three-dimensional learning and leverages technology to provide new opportunities for engagement,” said Mary Cullinane, Chief Content Officer and Executive Vice President of Product Planning, Development and Marketing, HMH. “Our focus on experiential and interactive learning supports students and teachers as they pursue integrated and holistic scientific understanding within the NGSS framework.”
Not only will this new curriculum be more interactive and technology-based, it will feature exclusive content from Randall Munroe, author (of What If?, Thing Explainer, and the web comic, XKCD), former NASA roboticist, and just all-around awesome guy.
Not long ago, a post went viral that shouted to the masses "New Research Establishes That Intelligence Is Inherited From The Mother." Hopefully everyone called their mom and thanked her for this incredible gift, not because it's true (it's not), but because it's always good to call your mom and thank her for something.
Not the point of the post. The point is that, no, you don't inherit your intelligence from your mom. At least not completely. In a recent post for Forbes, science writer Emily Willingham ripped this post to shreds:
A garbled post from a website called Second Nexus has gone viral in my feeds (and possibly yours), likely because of its eye-catching headline claim that “New Research Establishes That Intelligence Is Inherited From The Mother.” The piece is bylined “Editorial Staff,” presumably because everyone was too embarrassed to put a real name on it.
Ouch. She goes on to offer some education on genetics, including that 1) women "tend to" have two X chromosomes (but not always), 2) one of those X's had to come from the father, 3) and having two X's doesn't double your odds for receiving some trait because cells might shut down most of one X, reducing its influence.
But more than that, she offers a far more complex view of intelligence, reminding her audience that only about half of what we call intelligence comes from genes:
While maybe half of our intelligence as we currently define and measure it is inherited, that proportion is in turn fractured into many many genetic variants scattered across our genomes. These variants operate together in various ways to form what we view as intelligence. And each of those fragments of heredity that contributes is itself subject to a host of environmental factors, both in its immediate molecular world and inputs to the whole organism, that will influence function. And that influence continues after birth as an ongoing mutual interplay of gene variants and environment. It’s layer upon layer upon layer of interacting pieces. So no. Not just your mother. Not just the X chromosome. Not even just genes.
Willingham then traces back the sources the original post used to make its claims, including Psychology Spot (a blog she calls "a dumpster fire of poor information about genetics and embryonic development"), and Cosmopolitan.
I saw many of my friends, including fellow scientists, share this hot mess of a post. Why? Willingham has one potential explanation:
Those headlines. It’s an irresistible invitation to humblebragging, whether you have a mother and think you’re a genius or you are a mother and think your children are geniuses or you’re feeling feminist and want to stake a claim that women bring the smarts to this world. That’s a pretty solid built-in audience ready to click…and share.
This is not to say mothers aren't important for their children's development and intelligence. About half of our intelligence comes from genes, and short of genetic engineering, there's not a lot we can do about that. But the other half seem to be environmentally influenced. Mothers (and fathers, and really anyone interacting with children) have a lot more control here. For instance, some research shows that offering growing infants lots of stimulation can result in more developed brains - the environment can actually influence the physical. Taking children out to see the world, and experience new things, does enrich them and boost their intelligence. (Note: this is real stimulation, not on a screen - though some would argue television has deleterious effects on children, the most we can say from research is that it has no effect. And don't get me started on the Baby Einstein videos...)
In my case, I know my mom is responsible for a lot of my intelligence, not just from genetics, but from offering an enriching world. She would teach me new words and ask me to try to use them in a sentence that day. I was probably the only first-grader who knew "tumultuous." She taught me the difference between independent and dependent variables when I entered a science fair in 7th grade. And she instilled me the curiosity that continues to influence my efforts today. She's also the reason I write.
Regardless of what genes were passed on (or not), there's a lot we can do for children.
Though I've professed a love of horror movies (many times), I also blog a lot about one of my other favorite forms of media: the novel. Just in time for Halloween, The Line Up posted a list of 9 underrated horror books to check out. I'm only familiar with one item on the list, but I have a great story to go with it that I've surprisingly never blogged about!
One of my favorite authors is Chuck Palahniuk, who is best known for writing Fight Club. He's written many great books that can be a little difficult to read at times, because of the graphic and unusual situations in which his characters find themselves. For instance, he was inspired to write one of his books after being asked to testify at the sentencing hearing of the man who killed Chuck's father. The death penalty was being sought, and Chuck found himself in a difficult place, wanting justice for his father but not wanting to feel that he had taken a life himself. He wrote Lullaby, in which the lead character discovers a story that will kill the listener. Not only does the protagonist struggle with (and misuse) his newfound power, the power falls into the hands of others who misuse with less struggle. In fact, they discover that just thinking through the story around someone can kill them. It gets weirder, of course.
But the book on the list linked above, Haunted, is probably one of his most graphic yet. The book is actually a series of short stories, that are connected because each character is sharing his/her story at a writers' retreat. I had the pleasure of meeting Chuck when I went to a reading of Haunted at Old Orchard Mall. Chuck has garnered a strong following thanks to Fight Club, and by the time my friend and I arrived, they had already passed out almost 150 numbers to people for the book signing after the reading. Yes, the number was our place in that line - the reading was at 7 or 8 pm, and we finally met Chuck around 1am. I had not expected him to stay until the end of the night, and I had immense respect for him as a fellow writer when they announced partway through the night that Chuck would not leave the building until everyone who wanted a book signed made it through the line. There were still others behind me, so I can't imagine how late he stayed.
The best part of the story, of course, is the reading itself, where Chuck read the short story referenced in the article, "Guts," a story so graphic there are urban legends about people fainting during the reading. I won't say much, except to say the character who told this story poured his guts out, figuratively and literally.
The reading had been advertised for many weeks, and one hopes that the people who scheduled the reading were familiar with the material, or at the very least, Chuck's writing. So, you can understand why Chuck was surprised when, as he was about to start the reading, he heard the sounds of children. He stopped, looked around, and said clearly into the microphone, "Hey, any parents in the store, you should probably know that this material is not appropriate for children. You may want to finish up your purchases and head out." He waited a moment, and read. A few minutes later, more sounds of children, and again, a pause and a strong warning from Chuck. He did that at least once more.
A few weeks later, I met the assistant manager of the store through a mutual friend, and he informed me that Chuck had been banned from Barnes & Noble, because, "You can't read that type of stuff there!"
I never did hear if he was banned from all Barnes & Nobles, or just that one.
In one of my favorite childhood stories, The (Wonderful) Wizard of Oz, the tin man was unable to feel emotions because he did not have a heart. He, Dorothy (with her dog, Toto) the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion make their way to see the Wizard of Oz in the Emerald City so that each can get their heart's desire (pun fully intended). Though in the book, the Wizard fools each character into thinking he has actually given them what they want, in the MGM movie version as well as one of the best adaptations of the source material (The Wiz), the realization is that each character had what s/he wanted all along. They just didn't see it, and their thinking had blinded them to the strengths they already possessed.
Though these are just stories, research suggests that how we think about ourselves and our abilities impacts our reality. It can actually change us, for better or for worse. Today in "This Week in Psychological Science," I learned about a new study that finds how we think about emotions actually impacts how they are represented (and experienced) in our brains. Specifically, the researchers set out to examine thinking about emotions as categories, or thinking about them on a continuum:
An important aspect of emotion perception that has been overlooked concerns the difference between the continuous nature of the sensory inputs that people receive and the categorical nature of their thinking about emotion. In facial expressions, the contractions of various facial muscles can vary continuously to create gradations of movements (Jack & Schyns, 2015). But people typically talk about these expressions in categorical terms, calling them expressions of “fear” or “calm,” for instance (Barrett, 2006).
Whether we think about emotions continuously or categorically does have some important ramifications. A nuanced view of emotion can make us better at detecting how others are feeling, while thinking about them in categories means that a facial expression or behavior has to reach some threshold before we decide the other person is feeling a certain emotion. This would in turn impact our behavior and interactions with others. It might also impact how we manage our emotions. Viewing emotions continuously also allows us to understand more complex emotions, made up of combinations of the basic emotions. According to Ekman, there are 7 basic emotions:
They conducted two studies, in which participants examined pictures portraying emotions while undergoing MRI. In the first study, participants saw faces displaying fear or calm to varying degrees, and either categorized them or marked where they fell on a continuum for "fear" and "calm." In the second study, participants judged their own responses to graphic images, either as categorically "bad" or "neutral" or along a continuum. They found different levels of activation in parts of the brain responsible for emotion, specifically the amygdala and the insular cortex (the part of the cerebral cortex closest to the amygdala and other structures in what is known as the midbrain):
Activation was greater when the perceived intensity of the negative emotion was greater. When people were only given categories to work with, they had to force pictures into those holes, even when the displayed emotion wasn't very extreme. So a picture showing very mild fear that a participant categorized as fearful produced greater activation in those parts of the brain. Activation was lower when the perceived intensity of the positive or neutral emotion was greater. Allowing a "gray area," through use of a continuum, would allow for more accurate perception, while being forced to use categories may change perception, leading people to perceive the target as being more similar to the category selected. Obviously, this goes beyond emotions, and could have some important implications for other work involving categories, such as stereotypes.
October 10th is World Mental Health Day, a day to raise awareness of psychological and social health. According to the World Health Organization, the theme for this year is psychological first aid, the delivery of mental health treatment after a crisis:
The investment in psychological first aid is part of a longer-term effort to ensure that anyone in acute distress due to a crisis is able to receive basic support, and that those who need more than psychological first aid will receive additional advanced support from health, mental health and social services.
IFLScience also weighed in on World Mental Health Day, and shared this comic, portraying people treating physical illnesses like they treat mental illness:
As a social psychologist, I believe the situation has a strong influence on behavior, over and above a person's traits. Of course, I do recognize the existence of personality - I'm a big fan of the Big Five theory, which states that our personality can be summed up by where we fall on five continua: openness to change, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. When I've measured personality in past studies, I used a measure developed to assess the Big Five (take one such test here).
A recent study also used the Big Five traits, to try to understand why people choke under pressure. According to their work, one of the Big Five explains who choked under pressure: people high in neuroticism:
Previous research, conducted by Sian Beilock and Thomas Carr, has shown that although individuals may be highly competent in low-pressure contexts, their performance may significantly decrease once the pressure is on. One explanation for why this happens is that anxiety acts as a distractor, sapping cognitive resources such as working memory away from the task at hand and ultimately harming performance.
On the basis of this previous work, Kaileigh Byrne, Crina Silasi-Mansat, and Darrell Worthy hypothesized that individuals with higher levels of neuroticism would experience greater performance anxiety, leading to worse decision-making strategies under pressure.
“This theory offers a potential mechanism by which neurotic individuals may fail when they most need to succeed,” Byrne and colleagues explain.
They conducted two studies, one that created pressure by telling individuals their decisions would impact a (fictional) team member, and another creating pressure with deadlines. In both studies, they found people high in neuroticism performed less well than people low in neuroticism when the pressure was on. In the low pressure conditions, there was no difference.
