Pleasing doctors: when it gets in the way

When the goal gets in the way: The interaction of goal specificity and task difficulty

When life gets physical

The subatomic world is nothing like the world that biologists study. Physicists have struggled for almost a century to understand the wave– particle duality of matter and energy, but many questions remain unanswered. That biological systems ultimately obey the rules of quantum mechanics might be self-evident, but the idea that those rules are the very basis of certain biological functions has n...

When the mathematics gets lost in didactics

This study shows how six elementary teachers, construed locally as effective, interpreted and were observed to enact the same curricular and didactical language very differently. One group of three provided high-level cognitively challenging tasks to engage children in mathematics. A second group of three, ensuring their children enjoy mathematics, subordinated mathematical learning to an empha...

When HDL gets fat...

Because low levels of plasma high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) are a major independent risk factor for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease,1 the mechanisms leading to low HDL-C are of substantial biological and clinical importance. Low HDL-C is most commonly seen in persons who have other components of the “metabolic syndrome,” particularly increased waist circumference, elevated ...

Semantic Size of Abstract Concepts: It Gets Emotional When You Can’t See It

Size is an important visuo-spatial characteristic of the physical world. In language processing, previous research has demonstrated a processing advantage for words denoting semantically "big" (e.g., jungle) versus "small" (e.g., needle) concrete objects. We investigated whether semantic size plays a role in the recognition of words expressing abstract concepts (e.g., truth). Semantically "big"...