L&S News  Tag: Psychology

Mark Seidenberg is not the first researcher to reach the stunning conclusion that only a third of the nation's schoolchildren read at grade level. The reasons are numerous, but one that Seidenberg cites over and over again is this: The way kids are taught to read in school is disconnected from the latest research, namely how language and speech actually develop in a child's brain.

Smiling, and showing emotions in general, is more common in countries that are historically diverse than in homogenous places, say researchers from Niedenthal Emotions Lab, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Individuals in diverse societies have to rely on emotional expression to navigate the panoply of foreign cultures, social norms, and languages they came across during the course of everyday life.

Adults who lived high-stress childhoods have trouble reading the signs that a loss or punishment is looming, leaving themselves in situations that risk avoidable health and financial problems and legal trouble. According to researchers at UW-Madison, this difficulty may be biological, stemming from an unhelpful lack of activity in the brain when a situation should be prompting heightened awareness.

Shawn Green, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, believes that games like Call of Duty develop retained skills specifically because they are fun. Games created with the sole intent to improve cognition are what he referred to at a panel at the University of California, San Francisco, as “chocolate-covered broccoli.”

University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist and professor Richard Davidson has been elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the premier authority dedicated to the health and medical sciences. The academy awards this honor to the world's top experts who demonstrate outstanding professional achievements and commitment to service in the field.

Due to their surprisingly complicated nature, scientists have long struggled to classify smiles, but a study published last week by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and collaborators has now categorized them into three groups.

The smile may be the most common and flexible expression, used to reveal some emotions, cover others and manage social interactions that have kept communities secure and organized for millennia. But how do we tell one kind of smile from another?

The College of Letters & Science is proud to announce that three L&S students have earned Dean’s Prizes, an honor awarded annually to outstanding scholars in the senior class.

On May 16th, when many faculty and students are putting the semester behind them and looking toward summer, a community of dedicated faculty, staff, and administrators joined together to honor 18 Assistant Professors graduating from the Madison Teaching and Learning Excellence (MTLE) program.