Links to Brain Teasers For #Brain #Fitness

The Stroop Test measures the “interference effect,” or the way that conflicting information can interfere with the brain’s performance. Psychologists use this test in clinical settings to evaluate attention, mental flexibility and processing speed: Say aloud each color of each word that you see but not the word you read …(Los Angeles Times)

Brain teasers are games or puzzles that challenge the brain or teach people something about how their brains work. Though brain teasers are different from brain-training games in that they aren’t designed to progressively strengthen specific cognitive functions, Alvaro Fernandez, chief executive of SharpBrains, says they can still be good for your mind because they bring novelty, variety and challenge to your day.

Here are some links to a few games that might tease your brain:

The Stroop Test measures “the interference effect,” or the way that conflicting information can interfere with the brain’s performance. Psychologists use this test in clinical settings to evaluate attention, mental flexibility and processing speed:

http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2006/10/05/brain-exercise-the-stroop-test
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This classic experiment on “inattentional blindness” shows that we may not perceive something if our attention is focused elsewhere:

http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2006/09/28/attention-and-working-memory
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Sometimes experience can work against you. Take this pattern recognition test to find out how:

http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2006/09/10/brain-exercise-brain-teaser
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The Tower of Hanoi is an ancient mathematical puzzle that challenges the brain’s executive planning skills. Psychologists use this puzzle to assess a patient’s ability to solve problems:

http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2006/10/08/exercise-brain-planning-puzzle
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http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-brain-games-teaser-20130601,0,2736409.story

#PoliticalCorrectness Gone Crazy?

Is this a case of political correctness gone crazy, or were four kids truly traumatized?

(The following excerpt from Man Who Caught Boys Trashing Home He Was Renovating Now Faces Jail For Halting Destructive Rampage by Philip Caulfield was originally posted on nydailynews.com on June 17, 2013. To view it in its entirety please click on the link below.)

An upstate New York man is facing jail time after he caught a group of vandals destroying a home he was renovating and then locked them in a closet until police arrived.

Jesse Daniels, 53, of Clyde, caught the four boys trashing the house next to his home on Orchard Street after he heard banging noises at around 9 p.m. Saturday,the Times of Wayne County Newspaper reported. 

The house was empty and Daniels had spent years renovating it for his father-in-law, Richard Muoio, he told the newspaper.

Upon entering, he found four boys, ages 8 and 10, smashing walls, windows and fixtures with hammers.

Dirty words for women were also spray painted on the walls.

“One person was sitting on the floor and the other ones were swinging, just swinging crazy. So I grab the one hammer and the other three (boys) got hammers … I said you guys put that stuff down, what are you doing?” he said. “I was fortunate that they were in that room that had a closet, so I put them in the closet.”

Police arrived and the boys were arrested. They’ve been charged with burglary and criminal mischief, according to local reports.

But now the boys’ parents say Daniels threatened their sons, shoved them and even grabbed one of them by the throat.

Paul Bowler, father to two of the little goons, showed WHAM a photo of red marks on his son’s neck.

“They’re traumatized, they haven’t been to school they don’t sleep until the sun comes up,” Bowler told the station.

 
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-catches-boys-trashing-house-article-1.1374710

Why Children Need #Fathers … They Don’t Mother! … #Parenting #FathersDay

“The words that a father speaks to his children are not heard by the world, but they are clearly heard by posterity.”

–  Jean Paul Richter

(The following excerpt from The Distinct, Positive Impact Of  A Good Father by W. Bradford Wilcox originally appeared on theatlantic.com on June 14, 2013. To view it in its entirety please click on the link below.)

I understand where Jennifer Aniston is coming from. Like many of her peers in Hollywood, not to mention scholars and writers opining on fatherhood these days, she has come to the conclusion that dads are dispensable: “Women are realizing it more and more knowing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child,” she said at a press conference a few years ago.

Her perspective has a lot of intuitive appeal in an era where millions of women have children outside of marriage, serve as breadwinner moms to their families, or are raising children on their own. Dads certainly seem dispensable in today’s world.

What this view overlooks, however, is a growing body of research suggesting that men bring much more to the parenting enterprise than money, especially today, when many fathers are highly involved in the warp and woof of childrearing. As Yale psychiatrist Kyle Pruett put it in Salon: “fathers don’t mother.”

Pruett’s argument is that fathers often engage their children in ways that differ from the ways in which mothers engage their children. Yes, there are exceptions, and, yes, parents also engage their children in ways that are not specifically gendered. But there are at least four ways, spelled out in my new book, Gender and Parenthood: Biological and Social Scientific Perspectives (co-edited withKathleen Kovner Kline), that today’s dads tend to make distinctive contributions to their children’s lives in the following areas:

1. The Power Of Play

2. Encouraging Risks

3. Protecting His Own

4. Dad’s Discipline

5. The Difference Good Dads Make

6. Delinquency

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/the-distinct-positive-impact-of-a-good-dad/276874/

Affectionate #Cat For #Caturday

#CNN #GirlRising Letter Focuses On #EqualRights

Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan has made a name for herself globally as an advocate for education and women’s empowerment. Recently she wrote an inspiring letter for CNN’s “Girl Rising” project. Here are some excerpts.

Dear Girls of the World,

Some of you will be familiar with the childhood rhyme, “What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and all things nice, that’s what little girls are made of.”

Marketing and stereotyping combine to have us believe that you’re also made of pink dresses, pigtails, dolls, ringlets, ribbons, bows and tiaras. That you like cupcakes. That all you will want to be are wives and mothers. That you’re more “inclined” to the arts and “better suited” to caring professions like teaching and nursing.

And, maybe, that’s true for some. But my daughter Salma teaches me every day that there’s so much more to you – and for you.

Salma is 13, and I can count, on one hand (in fact, on one finger!), the occasions she’s worn a dress — and they’ve never been pink! Dolls always stayed on the shelf. She’s happiest dribbling a soccer ball past her brothers and scoring goals or building model airplanes with her father. She dreams of being an engineer. That’s my Salma; that’s why I love her.

So, when I think about girls rising, I think of girls like her… I think of the millions of courageous girls all over the Arab world and beyond who, every day, summon inner strength, surmount barriers and make a difference in their communities.

It won’t be easy. We have a long way to go… There’s never been a better time for girls to rise up and share their talents with society. And, girls! Society has never needed you more.

If one girl with courage is revolution, imagine what we could do together.

Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah

http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/the-queen-of-jordan-wrote-an-amazing-letter-to-little-girls

Need a Wake Up Call? 13 Reasons You’re Not As Successful As You Could Be.

#1 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – Laziness

I don’t think there’s an easy way to put this. I have to assume that you’re lazy. Every single successful person works their butts off to get where they are. It’s ok to be lazy. Just admit it. But don’t whine about not being rich and successful, ok?

#2 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – Entitlement

Only a few people in the world are part of the lucky sperm club. You and me? We gotta work to get what we want. Quit thinking you are owed something. You’re not. Get to work.

#3 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – Fear

You are afraid, plain and simple. Afraid of looking silly. Afraid of what your friends and family will say. Afraid of everything. Look, you’re either going to stop being afraid, or you’re not. Nobody can convince you to stop. Imagine though… what awaits you when you stop with the fear excuses?

#4 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – Negativity

You may not realize it, but the people you associate with might be negative [orifices]. They could be soul-sucking beings who don’t want anyone to be successful. Get rid of them, now! Surround yourself with successful people. People you want to be like.

#5 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – Stop Thinking

How much do you want to bet you have paralysis by analysis? You think way too much about what you could or should do. Doers get what they want, and everyone else gets what they get. Stop analyzing and start doing.

#6 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – No Goals

You plan nothing. You believe that someway, somehow, everything you always wanted will just magically happen. So you “play it by ear” and wait. You need goals to shoot for. Otherwise, you’re just treading water.

#7 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – “They”

There’s no “they”. There’s no secret group of people that controls your success or failure. You’ve made that up to make you feel better about yourself. The truth is you, and you alone, control your success in life/business/everything. It’s easy to blame “them” though, isn’t it? Weak.

#8 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – No “X” Factor

You can’t do it because you’re not pretty enough. Or don’t have a strong personality? You don’t have the “X” factor? Wow, what an unbelievably lame excuse. The truth is even jerks, idiots and boring people can be just as successful as anyone else. Your problem is you don’t believe it yet.

#9 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – Time Waste

You’re a classic time-waster. You spend hours and hours every day working on not-working. You do things that aren’t productive. How are you ever going to get anything done, or reach any goal if you keep wasting time? You’re not. So you might as well give up now if you’re going to keep this path.

#10 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – Social B.S.

You spend way too much time in social media land.  You waste probably about 50% of your productive hours of the day doing this. The sad part is, you know it, but you can’t stop. So you can’t get anything done that matters.

#11 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – Think Small

You think way too small. You are constantly looking only a day or a week ahead instead of years ahead. Because of this, you never get anywhere, and you never lead; you always follow.

#12 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – Don’t Want It

You don’t really want to be successful. Sure, you like to dream about it like everyone else. But in your heart you are afraid of what might happen if you really get it. That’s B.S. fear your brain is feeding you. Success is change, and it feels really, really good. Tell your brain to shut the [foolishness] up.

#13 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – Don’t Believe

You never believed that it’s possible. Society taught you that only a few “exceptional” people get what they want. Everyone else should just settle. If you really want to believe that, go ahead. The rest of us will be at the front of the line because we believe.

http://goo.gl/dbw8S

Twitterpated? Is Your #SoulMate Waiting For You At Your Computer?

(The following excerpt taken from Is Your Soulmate Waiting For You At Your Computer by J. R. Bruns, M. D., originally appeared on psychology today.com on June 10, 2013. To view it in its entirety please click on the link below.)

A stunning study by researchers at the University of Chicago  which was reviewed by researchers at Harvard University has discovered that 35 percent of marriages between 2005 and 2012 were initiated by meeting on the internet. Half of those internet love connections were through dating websites such as eHarmony, Christian Mingle and Match.com. 20 percent of those who didn’t use dating websites met on social networking websites like Facebook, while 15 percent began courtship through e-mail and chat rooms.

The scientists at the University of Chicago determined that  65 percent of the new marriages from  2005 to 2012 still first met through non-digital means, with 21 percent of those meeting at work, 19 percent set up through mutual friends. Shockingly, only 10 percent of those who met by traditional methods began their romance at school, a huge change from a generation ago when men and women married at a much earlier age. University of Chicago researcher John Cacioppo concluded that ” these data suggest that the Internet may be altering the dynamics and outcomes of marriage itself.”

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/repairing-relationships/201306/is-your-soul-mate-waiting-you-your-computer