Messi, Ronaldo and Federer have exceptional bodies as well as discipline, will power and stamina. But, do they also have something else that could be copied to ‘produce’ other champions? Volunteers were asked to draw on a sheet of paper some symbols in four different scenarios. In the first they copied a symbol that they...
Even small children expect that in assigning rewards certain rules must be followed. A study was performed on 80 infants aged 17 months to understand if the presence of a dominant figure modifies how they view goods belonging to the community should be shared. The infants were showed a video where a puppet imposed himself...
It is difficult not to be moved by a toddler who is taking its first steps, who laughs when we play hide and seek and repeats the words it has just heard. Science is beginning to understand that a big head compared to the rest of the body, big deer like eyes, small ears, soft...
For various reasons it is easy to find oneself in a situation where people speak in a foreign language. Does this affect our way of thinking? If to save five people you had to push a person to certain death in front of a speeding train, would you do it? Studies show that if this...
Children’s books could be a way to spread moral values and scientific info. Four to six-year old children were read, and shown, illustrated books of people who were generous, kind and unselfish. Another similarly aged group of kids was shown and read the same stories, but the characters were all substituted with animals. In a...
Small children often speak about themselves in the third person. A child who wants a sweet may say: Paul wants a sweet”. Studies in adults might explain this behavior. Psychologists believe that speaking softly to oneself in the third person helps overcome stressful situations. If Luca is distraught because his girlfriend left him, his emotional...
It is not clear why ‘keeping quiet’ is not so easy. The smaller one is, the harder it is to stay silent and adults too have difficulty. In a conversation between two people the interval between when one stops and the other starts speaking is about one second. Longer time intervals are perceived differently depending...
Having a little chat is probably not a waste of time and might even be socially useful. It is a way to create a relationship with someone you don’t know. At this stage little does it matter what is actually said, what counts is that from that moment onwards it will be a lot less...
Some time ago a mother of a child who was down with another of his usual throat infections asked me if we could not once and for all eliminate germs from the world. Microbes are and have been the cause of many awful epidemics around the world. Smallpox, the Plague (about the year 1400, it...
A century ago half of all human deaths were due to infectious diseases. Today the proportion has come down to one quarter, mainly thanks to vaccines, antibiotics and improved living conditions. There is however a class of pathogens that has evaded human arms. These pathogens change their structure and so become insensitive both to drugs...
