readings in psychology for february 22 2011

My daughter Karla drew this up so we could both celebrate ZELDA's 25 year anniversary! It has been quite a ride that I hope will never end and a new version is supposed to come out this year! CLICK on the above picture to visit the Zelda Universe

Here are some equally fun readings for today!

• A video of a baby Gorilla’s first steps!

The link above will also provide and addition reference for further reading — Laura

• did Neanderthals have fashion sense  ?

“Italy has ruled the fashion world for longer than we thought. That, at least, is the claim of archaeologists who say they have evidence that Neanderthals were using feathers as ornaments 44,000 years ago. The tenuous claim adds fuel to the debate over whether our distant cousins were simple brutes or as cultured as Homo sapiens.”

• when music strikes a chord then the fingers start tapping!

““The rapid and precise muscle movements of speech must be the most intricate, yet poorly understood, of all the sensory-motor skills,” says De Nil. De Nil’s interest in finger-tapping came out of his group’s previous work on adults who stutter. His team discovered that they have problems in acquiring new and unusual tapping sequences and not just speech. The research suggests an underlying neural basis for the motor deficit.”

• why would you confess, if you are innocent??

“A new Iowa State University study may shed light on one reason for those false confessions. In two experiments simulating choices suspects face in police interrogations, undergraduate subjects altered their behavior to confess to illegal activities in order to relieve short-term distress (the proximal consequence) while discounting potential long-term (distal) consequences.”