Why Multitasking Between Devices Is Associated With Poorer Attention And Memory

How many times have you sat down to watch TV or a movie, only to immediately shift your attention to your smartphone or tablet? Known as “media multitasking”, this phenomenon is so common that an estimated 178m US adults regularly use another device while watching TV.

The love of reading is one of the greatest gifts an adult can give to a child. Pragmatically, reading proficiently helps with school work. But it also widens children’s horizons. It can help readers to understand their own world better, and to explore other worlds.

It’s a question that’s reverberated through the ages – are humans, though imperfect, essentially kind, sensible, good-natured creatures?

Shortlisted for the Oxford English Dictionary’s 2018 word of the year, “gaslighting” has well and truly found its way into contemporary thought and vernacular.

A study of hundreds of brain scans sheds light on abnormalities common to people with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

We all have opinions, beliefs, preconceived notions, etc. And I've noticed, in myself and others, a tendency to discount anything that falls outside of what we've decided we "like". For example, when I discovered a...

If you’re anything like me, or at least who I used to be, my hunch is that when you are on the cusp of doing (and especially saying) something big, important, and paradigm shifting, you label what you are experiencing in your body as fear.

I have been “cleaning out my karma” for a few decades now. When I first started paying attention to the feelings of the moment, there was a collage of easy to detect feelings.

Between 60 and 80 percent of people surveyed have not been forthcoming with their doctors about information that could be relevant to their health, according to a new study.

Most people are probably familiar with the classic fight or flight response to a feared stimulus.

The violent and senseless death of 11-year-old Luke Batty in Victoria has not only drawn attention to the serious problem of family violence but has also raised questions about the role that undiagnosed or untreated mental illness may have played in his father’s behaviour.

When people come together in a crowd, physical and emotional connections define their movement, state of mind and will to act. Understanding crowds can help us manage the panic caused by a terrorist attack

Many of our psychological traits are innate in origin. There is overwhelming evidence from twin, family and general population studies that all manner of personality traits, as well as things such as intelligence, sexuality and risk of psychiatric disorders, are highly heritable

When ACT released its latest test scores this past October, the results showed that average scores took a dip for every racial group in the United States except one – Asian-Americans.

Food critic William Sitwell has resigned as editor of Waitrose’s in-house magazine following a row over his astonishingly hostile response to a freelance journalist who proposed a series of articles on veganism.

‘Tis the season when the conversation shifts to what you’re thankful for. Gathered with family and friends around a holiday feast, for instance, people may recount some of the biggies – like their health or their children – or smaller things that enhance everyday life – like happening upon a great movie while channel-surfing or enjoying a favorite seasonal food.

The World Health Organization calls stress "a global epidemic". Stress may be as American as apple pie, but it is also as worldwide as bread pudding. It doesn't matter who you are, where you live, how much money you make, or how dysfunctional your parents were...

When we are unhappy, we often quite naturally begin to fantasize about how our troubles would end "if only". If only I could quit my job... If only I could leave this marriage... Unfortunately, all too often we quit that stressful job or leave that unhappy marriage, only to find...

Every day, people try to make sense of challenges in their lives, but sometimes their explanations get in the way of solving them, psychologist Gregory Walton says in a new paper.

It is the events that happen in our lives that determine the state of our mental health, rather than some inherent personal inadequacy or genetic flaw.

Violence, psychological or emotional abuse, and deprivation or neglect during childhood can affect both cellular aging and biological development, according to a new study.

Usually the events for which we hold grudges are long-time past, yet, deep in our heart is this little hard cold spot where the memory of that event, accompanied with anger and resentment, lives on as if it happened yesterday. That dark negative energy comes up at the strangest moments...

Gratitude is noticing the good things that are happening all around you. Feeling gratitude when life is stormy can be difficult; it’s during times of hardship that our gratitude is most tested. Seeing the silver lining during those times is easier when we focus on the power of our gratitude.

As I felt the benefits of forgiving my ex-husband Werner, I began to look at other grievances and judgments I was holding. Mom was at the top of my list. Could I find my way to forgive her, too? That would require me to mourn the losses of my childhood and let them go. Holding onto my resentment to Mom kept them in place.

Being unappreciative in general and focusing on the half empty is a core attitude that Attitude Reconstruction associates with the emotion of anger. These qualities block our ability to experience the emotion of love. With the holidays approaching, it’s time to reverse your old tendency.

From the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Kashoggi by Saudi agents to President Trump’s clashes with the White House press corps, attacks on reporters are in the news. This problem extends far beyond the politics beat, and world leaders aren’t the only threats.

Mass shootings seem to have become a sad new normal in the American life. They happen too often, and in very unexpected places. Concerts, movie theaters, places of worship, schools, bars and restaurants are no longer secure from gun violence.

I think it is obvious that our planet Earth and its inhabitants are not all feeling the same amount of blessings of God and of the Universe. Some of us seem to be getting a bigger share of the blessings than others.

We want life to be secure as much as we want our plans and expectations to work out. We want to live happily-ever-after. We want life to conform to our wishes, to make us happy, and to protect us from human suffering. In the end, we want life to protect us from itself, and the idea of security offers us that false consolation.

Why is my awareness here, while yours is over there? Why is the universe split in two for each of us, into a subject and an infinity of objects? How is each of us our own center of experience, receiving information about the rest of the world out there? Why are some things conscious and others apparently not? Is a rat conscious? A gnat? A bacterium?

Historical accounts indicate that soldiers have roared in battle throughout history, from the Roman army to the Red army. We can also see it on the sports pitch, such as in wrestling or the New Zealand rugby players’ posture dance known as the “haka”.

When Lynn Grabhorn was asked, “What is one simple thing I can do now to help prepare for the Shift?” her reply was, “Learn to be grateful”. She suggested the practice of extending gratitude for all the little things we take for granted and of developing an “attitude of gratitude.”

More and more people are adopting plant-based diets in Australia and other western nations. But also seemingly on the rise is resentment towards vegans and vegetarians.

Report after report documents how—despite more technologies aimed at connecting people, ideas, and information—people of all ages continue to experience greater and greater social and personal disconnection. Why? Well, our body, mind, and spirit can only keep up with so much. When overloaded, we may disconnect because it all is too much or feels like it is too much.

Not knowing is an uncomfortable experience. As human beings, we are naturally curious. We seek to understand, predict and control – it helps us learn and it keeps us safe.

I teach people how to teach math, and I’ve been working in this field for 30 years. Across those decades, I’ve met many people who suffer from varying degrees of math trauma – a form of debilitating mental shutdown when it comes to doing mathematics.

Bulimia nervosa is a common and life-threatening eating disorder. About 275,000 Canadian girls and women will have bulimia at some point in their lives. They will eat large amounts of food, often secretly, and then prevent weight gain by vomiting, fasting or exercise.

The best way to understand Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence is to first understand the extent of the violence we practice, consciously or unconsciously, every day of our lives -- name-calling, teasing, insulting, disrespectful behavior. These are passive forms of violence.

From the playground to government, bullying exists everywhere. In fact, a recent report into bullying in the UK’s parliament revealed just how serious this problem is, urging behavioural change among MPs. But why is bullying so widespread and difficult to tackle? Part of the problem is that bullies sometimes don’t even realize that they are bullies.

When it comes to people, there are only about a dozen life stories in the whole world, and each archetype has its own obvious characteristics.

One morning, all of us in the group revisited our childhoods to more closely examine those things that still have power over us. We did this in small groups of four persons and, when it was my turn, I revisited some physical violence from my parents. Ever eager to delve deeper, I discovered something I had never seen before.

Lights and sounds coming from electronic gambling machines – also known as EGMs, pokies or slots – contribute to their addictive potential according to new research published today.

The heart of Eastern wisdom teaches you to be naturally in the world without rejecting it. Many spiritual paths condemn and judge the world, as if they were enabling one to move beyond desires. But many fail to realize that they are desiring not to desire (a point that the Buddha understood).

John Carpenter’s iconic horror film “Halloween” celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Few horror movies have achieved similar notoriety, and it’s credited with kicking off the steady stream of slasher flicks that followed.

Halloween is now firmly part of the seasonal and consumer calendar – but, unlike other celebrations that promote gift-giving, family, love and friendship, Halloween involves disruption, transgression and an open engagement with darker emotions and fears.

One of the tools that I have used since its discovery in the first year after Pete’s death, is my image of my heart as a vast ocean, unable to be broken. Since its discovery, my heart is like water. If you come into my life, you’re enveloped completely, like a hand submerged in water. If you leave, the water goes back to complete, perhaps losing a drop. This idea...

A woman Zen master named Sono taught one very simple method of enlightenment. She advised everyone who came to her to adopt an affirmation to be said many times a day, under all conditions. The affirmation was, 'Thank you for everything. I have no complaint whatsoever.'

When it comes to offering your expertise, it’s better to keep it to yourself or wait until you’re asked, according to new research. Building upon previous findings that showed how helping colleagues slows one’s success, management professor Russell Johnson looked more closely at the different kinds of help in which people engage at work—and how that help was received.

A new article offers a potential explanation as to why we take pleasure from the misfortune of other people, a feeling known as schadenfreude.

I find myself thinking on occasion, "I hate it when...." We use the word hate easily... We hate a certain kind of ice cream, we hate tofu, we hate hurting ourselves, we hate being late, we hate... This is where I realized that anything that we profess to "hate" is simply a preference on our part.

There are numerous things that make our life "work" for us. Some of these are things we learned along the way. And of course, there are things that make our life "not work so well". One thing that has worked for me is persistence.

The decision to choose anger over happiness is based on one factor, and that one factor is judgment. Does this person meet my expectations or not? Does this situation please me or not? Does this event conform to my morally correct and spiritually advanced view of the world or not? We basically organize our lives into two giant categories: people and things we like and people and things we don't like.

Señora Labotta stared deep into Lucina’s eyes. “You are not the only soul who has suffered in love. There is a saying I like very much. Boethius said this; ‘Commit your boat to the winds and you must sail whichever way they blow, not just where you want’.

A small shift in the presentation of an assignment can reduce racial inequality within the group working on it and lead to better outcomes, according to a new study.

Take the following scenario. You are nearing the end of a busy day at work, when a comment from your boss diminishes what’s left of your dwindling patience. You turn, red-faced, towards the source of your indignation. It is then that you stop, reflect, and choose not to voice your displeasure. After all, the shift is nearly over.

As a clinical psychologist and educator, I am often asked to recommend a psychotherapist for people in need. These requests come with a sense of urgency to find the best possible therapist. Many people are at a loss over what to look for.

A yawn consists of an extended gaping of the mouth followed by a more rapid closure. In mammals and birds, a long intake of breath and shorter exhale follows the gaping of the mouth, but in other species such as fish, amphibians and snakes there is no intake of breath.

Since I started writing about and researching emotional intelligence in business, I found that data in support of it has only gotten stronger. I saw recently a study, this surprised me, engineers, software coders and so on were evaluated by their peers, people who work with them day-to-day on how successful they were at what they do.

Nature does not pick sides: it simply gives every plant a fair chance to life. The sun shines on everyone regardless of their size, race, language, or opinions. Can we not do the same? Forget our old quarrels, our old grievances, our old prejudices, and start looking at everyone on earth as another person just like us...

The film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind pitched an interesting premise: what if we could erase unwanted memories that lead to sadness, despair, depression, or anxiety? Might this someday be possible, and do we know enough about how distressing memories are formed, stored, and retrieved to make such a therapy possible?

Why didn’t these women speak up sooner? This was asked time and time again during the recent public furore around sexual harassment, violence and abuse. Underlying the question is a persistent uncertainty about the credibility of victims – a concern with identifying what is true and what is false.

Healing the emotional body in the fourth chakra is by far one of the most important things you can do for your health. With years of experience in Ayurvedic lifestyle counseling, I am convinced that heart health is directly linked to our emotional state.

After years of unsuccessful efforts to diminish, expel, erad­icate, and overcome the pain in my body, I wondered if the pain sensations might be a voice for not only the body but other levels of the self as well. I understood that, while pain felt strong and overbear­ing and it absolutely dominated my attention, it was not necessarily an adversarial power. It was a reaction.

In America’s children, we often see hope for a better future, especially when it comes to reducing racism. Each new generation of white people, the thinking goes, will naturally and inevitably be more open-minded and tolerant than previous ones.

All day every day we experience things: physical sensations, emotions, and thought patterns. Most of our experience we fail to observe. While having an experience we don’t notice it. While this is well and good when it comes to sensation in our feet or many other aspects of living, failure to observe certain parts of our physical, emotional, and cognitive experience...

Every day, everyone we meet can be assisted by simply our changing our attitude and our focus. We can all change the world today. On passing people in the street, on the bus, in places of work and play, bless them...

Less parental warmth and more harshness at home can affect how aggressive children become and whether they lack empathy and a moral compass, according to a new study.

Research suggests that around 70% of people will experience an illogical sense of being a phony at work at some point in their careers. It’s called the impostor phenomenon (also known, erroneously, as a syndrome).

Hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires have tested our resolve as individuals, communities and societies. Along with social crises such as political- and war-induced migration, these events provide stark illustrations of our ability to adapt, help and trust one another through informal social networks and formal social institutions.

Have you ever found yourself wanting to 'fix' people? You know... when you can clearly see everything that's wrong with them and want to reorganize them and their life? It seems so easy for us to look at someone else and see everything that they need to do to improve themselves. It seems so easy to 'fix' someone else...

Friends, children, romantic partners, family members – many of us exchange hugs with others on a regular basis. New research from the United States, published today in PLOS, now shows hugs can help us to cope with conflict in our daily life.

One of the great things about computer games is that anything is possible in the almost endless array of situations on offer, whether they are realistic or fantasy worlds. But it has been reported that gamers are boycotting Total War: Rome II on the grounds of historical accuracy after developers introduced women generals, apparently to please “feminists”.

Alcoholics Anonymous was established as a form of benign anarchy. Members have to want to help themselves—and one another. While a great number of people see value in the mutual aid of Alcoholics Anonymous, many of them would be surprised to discover that the concept of mutual aid was popularized in the 20th century by the Russian anarchist Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) with his 1902 book Mutual Aid.

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”--Rabindranath Tagore. Babaji encouraged people to serve others on a daily, even hourly basis. He also taught that no act of service is beneath a person. Just because a person has an advanced degree or a very important job, they can still do the smallest act of service like digging ditches, washing dishes, scrubbing floors.

When composer George Gershwin was developing his career, he contacted his esteemed role model Maurice Ravel and asked if Ravel would take him on as a student. Ravel, familiar with Gershwin’s work, rejected him, replying, “Why become a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?”

The recent allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have further divided the nation. Among the questions the case raises are some important ethical ones.

Gravely misinformed ideas about health, beauty and body image still dominate, as derogatory reactions to plus size model Tess Holliday’s October Cosmopolitan UK magazine cover prove. TV presenter Piers Morgan, for example, posted a photo of the cover on Instagram with a caption that called out this “step forward for body positivity” as “a load of old baloney”.

Why do many problems in life seem to stubbornly stick around, no matter how hard people work to fix them? It turns out that a quirk in the way human brains process information means that when something becomes rare, we sometimes see it in more places than ever.

Of course things don’t always happen they way we wish they would. There are moments in which we feel we are seeking something that is not meant for us, knocking on doors that don’t open, waiting for miracles that don’t manifest themselves. Fortunately that is the way things are – if everything went the way we wanted...

Winter is coming: the nights are drawing in and in the Northern Hemisphere the hours of darkness already outnumber the hours of daylight. Research has shown that darkness produces a big fall in the number of people out walking – and a major reason for this is that people feel less safe walking in the dark.

In the United States, the teen years are frequently assumed to be a time of experimentation, risk-taking and rebellion. But this notion of adolescence as a phase of irresponsible behavior is a relatively new invention.

One of the most important aspects of meaningful conversation is listening. If you’re asking important questions and not listening, you’re not having a conversation at all; you are giving a soliloquy.

Most of what you experience leaves no trace in your memory. Learning new information often requires a lot of effort and repetition – picture studying for a tough exam or mastering the tasks of a new job. It’s easy to forget what you’ve learned, and recalling details of the past can sometimes be challenging.

The popularity of SUVs, 4WDs and commercial utilities is showing no signs of abating in Australia. In the first six months of 2018, passenger vehicles made up just one-third of new vehicle sales (down from 50% five years ago) and SUVs 43% (up from 29% in 2013).

The first step in conducting online propaganda efforts and misinformation campaigns is almost always a fake social media profile. Phony profiles for nonexistent people worm their way into the social networks of real people, where they can spread their falsehoods. But neither social media companies nor technological innovations offer reliable ways to identify and remove social media profiles that don’t represent actual authentic people.

By choosing to let go of the past, we can sweep out all the ashes that weigh us down and subtly affect every aspect of our health, our relationships, and our peace of mind. And the more we practice the art of letting go of all negativity, the better able we...

Technology has undoubtedly become essential for productivity and communication in our professional and personal lives. However, the most prominent reason users of all ages reach for their device is not to work, but to “zombie check”.

There are numerous things that make our life "work" for us. Some of these are things we learned along the way, and others are somehow "innate" within us. And of course, there are things that make our life "not work so well". I would like to share with you one thing that has worked for me. 

A California psychologist has alleged that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when both were in high school in Maryland.  As the nation debates the accusation, the terms “sexual abuse,” “sexual assault,” “sexual harassment” – and even “rape” – are cropping up daily in the news. This isn’t new – the #MeToo movement over the last year has put those terms in more common circulation.

Many of us spend hours every day tethered to our devices, pawing at the screen to see if it will deliver a few more likes or emails, monitoring the world and honing our online presence. Social networking platforms such as Whatsapp, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are supposed to make us feel more connected.

Evolution built shame into human nature because it served an important function for our foraging ancestors, a new paper argues.

I was launched as one; and ended up being trillions of them. The cells composing my body are amazing micro-machines; one hundred of them can fit into the period at the end of this phrase.

Pride may not be such a bad thing, according to new research. In fact, it may be how humans stay connected. Human nature evolved to have pride, researchers argue, because it served an important function for our foraging ancestors who lived in small, highly interdependent bands and faced frequent life-threatening reversals.

Each and every person comes into this life as a unique expression of Source consciousness. This means each person comes in with a unique essence, like an energetic signature. We come in with a unique purpose, along with unique thoughts, feelings, desires and needs. All this and our role within the greater universe is embedded in our essence.

Can love be learned? In principle, yes, but there are important requirements. Love necessitates a positive, embracing view of ourselves and of life. Fromm claimed that only a person who has reached developmental maturity is truly capable of loving. Such maturity implies self-acceptance and overcoming narcissism.

We can deal with blatant discrimination through legal channels and receive some corrective action, but these kinds of compensation cannot heal hearts. Our goal is deeper healing. We want nothing less than total release from the pain and fear that racist conditioning breeds.

When we listen to a foreign language, we may hear sounds which do not exist in our mother tongue, and may sound different from anything we have ever heard before. The first time we hear something new, a foreign sound or word – even an unknown word in our own languages – something in it may provoke delight or revulsion.

We’ve read the stories and seen the figures. We know that women are still underrepresented at the decision making table. We know women across professional fields get paid less than their male peers for doing the same job. We know about the #MeToo movement. Yet, those who call for structural reforms are still often dismissed as whiners or unreasonably demanding.

Contemporary self-help teachings assure us that we are the makers of our own destiny, that we have within us the power to change our lives for the better, even to make ourselves anew. Self-help leaders, from Tony Robbins to spiritual gurus like Robin Sharma and Deepak Chopra, ask us to take responsibility for our lives.

Parents often say that they don’t mind what their children do in life just as long as they are happy. Happiness and pleasure are almost universally seen as among the most precious human goods; only the most curmudgeonly would question whether benign enjoyment is anything other than a good thing. Disagreement soon creeps in, however, if you ask whether some forms of pleasure are better than others. Does it matter whether our pleasures are spiritual or carnal, intellectual or stupid? Or are all pleasures pretty much the same?