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In case you missed them – 10 of the best psychology links from the past week.

19 April 2013

1. The publishers Wiley have teamed up with TED to present a series of curated neuroscience talks packaged with free teaching and study materials.

2. Differences around the world in the way parents describe their children.

3. Scientific American Mind reviews Drunk Tank Pink – the new book about disfluency and other environmental psychological effects by Adam Alter. Disfluency is the idea that the ease with which we can process something affects our attitudes towards it and how deeply we think about it. Alter has a great essay explaining the concept at Edge.org and there’s a YouTube video of him chatting with Malcolm Gladwell about his new book. (more on disfluency from The Psychologist).

4. How do people arrange themselves in an elevator? Higher status folk stand at the back, apparently.

5. Is neuroscience really changing how we see and talk about ourselves? (see also).

6. “Mr Clifford’s expertise in the field of epidemiology is a matter of debate.” NHS Choices dissects media coverage of a recent study linking fame with reduced longevity

7. Eight reasons you’ll probably never upload your mind to a computer. (check out this novel based on the first ever brain upload)

8. BBC Radio 4’s Bringing Up Britain discussed the psychological effects of birth order.

9. Brain training tends to get a bad press – at least from more scientific quarters – so it made a change to hear a psychologist stand up for the field, as Scott Barry Kaufman did over at his Beautiful Minds blog this week: “In Defense of Working Memory Training” (although he does end up conceding that you’d be better off going to martial arts classes or a good school).

10. I tried reading books on Kindle for about a year, but I’ve reverted back to print books. This article by Ferris Jabr describes brilliantly the contrasting experiences of reading paper and electronic books, and he gives a comprehensive overview of research into whether there are any effects on our memory and comprehension for what we’ve read.