JERUSALEM: A fascinating study has suggested that children who speak more than one language may protect the brain against the effects of aging. The study published in the journal Psychology and Aging found that kids who speak a second or third language may have an unexpected advantage over monolingual later in life. Knowing and speaking many languages may protect the brain against the effects of aging, suggested the research at the Tel Aviv University.
The team of researchers led by Dr Gitit Kav, a clinical neuro-psychologist from the Herczeg Institute on Aging at Tel Aviv University, discovered that senior citizens who speak more languages test for better cognitive functioning. The research, which surveyed people between the ages of 75 and 95 and compared bilingual speakers to tri-and multilingual speakers, found that the more languages a person spoke, the better his or her cognitive state was, the ScienceDaily online reported.
A person who speaks more languages is likely to be more clear-minded at an older age, Kav says, in effect exercising his or her brain more than those who are monolingual. However, she advised caution, saying: There is no sure-fire recipe for avoiding the pitfalls of mental aging. But using a second or third language may help prolong the good years.
While the controversy continues as to whether or not parents should introduce their young children to a second language, Kav thinks that learning a new language is only a good thing, even if it isn’t intended to stave off mental decline in old age.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Your blog can be group therapy
By Anna Jane Grossman
(LifeWire) -- When a 24-year-old woman who called herself "90DayJane" launched a blog in February announcing she would write about her life and feelings for three months and then commit suicide, 150,000 readers flocked to the site. Some came to offer help, some to delight in the drama. Others speculated it was all a hoax.
Stacey Kim says blogging helps her cope with being a widow and a single mom to twins Riley, left, and Madeleine.
Few, however, questioned why she would share her deepest thoughts and feelings with strangers online. In the age of cyber-voyeurism, the better question might be: Why wouldn't she?
Overeating, alcoholism, depression -- name the problem and you'll find someone's personal blog on the subject. Roughly 12 million Americans have blogs, according to polls by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in 2006, and many seem to use them as a form of group therapy.
A 2005 survey by Digital Marketing Services for AOL.com a found nearly half of the 600 people polled derived therapeutic benefits from personal blogging.
'Instant support system'
For Stacey Kim, a 36-year-old book editor who lives in the Boston suburb of Arlington, Massachusetts, emotional blogging has become a reflex. On April 11, 2007, Kim curled up next to her husband and held him as he succumbed to a long battle with pancreatic cancer. The next morning, she went online to post about the experience.
"It cemented the reality that he was gone," Kim says. "I got hundreds of comments back that were all so loving and supportive. It gave me a really tangible sense of community."
She blogs about life as the widowed mother of 22-month-old twins at snickollet.blogspot.com.
"Right after he died, people kept asking if I was in therapy," says Kim, "and I'd say, 'No, but I have a blog.'"
Writing long has been considered a therapeutic outlet for people facing problems. A 2003 British Psychological Society study of 36 people suggested that writing about emotions could even speed the healing of physical wounds: Researchers found that small wounds healed more quickly in those who wrote about traumatic personal events than in those who wrote about mundane activities.
But it's the public nature of blogs that creates the sense of support.
Reading someone else's blog can be surprisingly beneficial, says MightyGirl.net blogger Margaret Mason, 32. She reads about other women's experiences with everything from in-laws to apartment-hunting at blogs like SuburbanBliss.net and SuperHeroDesigns.com.
"Blogging can create an instant support system, especially at a time when you might not have the energy or resources to seek out people who've shared your experiences," says Mason, author of "No One Cares What You Had For Lunch," a book on keeping a blog interesting.
A way to be heard
John Suler, a psychology professor at Rider University in New Jersey, has studied the overlap of psychology and cyberspace. Blog audiences are usually small, he says, but "going public with one's thoughts and experiences can be a self-affirming process."
He and other experts say blogging shouldn't replace face-to-face counseling -- although it can complement sessions when a patient shares their writing with the therapist.
"Some psychologists take special interest in any activities that their clients may undertake online," Suler says, "because such activities often reveal a lot about how they express their identity and relate to other people."
Kim did start psychotherapy, but kept blogging. "My therapist will give me little assignments and I'll blog about them," she says. "If I come home (after a session) and write about it, it solidifies it."
One Chicago licensed social worker and therapist in her 50s encourages patients to release bottled emotions through blogging. Leah, who asked that her last name not be used because of the nature of her profession, started EveryoneNeedsTherapy.blogspot.com to share professional insights.
Soon, however, she was talking about her own feelings -- and her husband told her it seemed to lift her mood.
"It's a form of group therapy," says Leah. "Not only can you express your feelings, but you can get comments, and that creates a dialogue."
Blogging about personal matters seems to be more of a feminine pursuit. In the 2004 study "Effects of Age and Gender on Blogging," researchers examined more than 37,000 blogs on blogger.com. Their conclusion: Male bloggers tend to write about politics, technology and money; women are more likely to blog about their private lives and use an intimate style of writing.
This doesn't surprise Patricia Wallace, author of "The Psychology of the Internet."
"Women tend to self-disclose more online in general," says the senior director at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth. "Women far outnumber men in certain blogging worlds in which feelings are shared, such as cancer blogs."
Permanent marks
The only problem, some bloggers find, is that many posts become passé -- yet they're on the Web forever.
"The Internet takes momentary thoughts and freezes them in amber as if they're permanent," says Scheherazade Mason, a career counselor and sailing coach at Bowdoin College in Maine. She stopped posting her deepest thoughts, but calls the experience positive.
"Through my first blog, I learned to be braver," Mason says. "I learned that my weakness was also likable. In real life, you try to show only strength and to hide your weaknesses, but I exposed everything."
90DayJane also said she learned important things. After seven days, she announced the blog was an art project and she wasn't planning to kill herself.
"I wanted this blog to be about personal discovery and truth," she wrote in her final post. "But the correspondences I have received have taught me more about those qualities than I could ever express. 90DayJane ... has changed my perspective as a human being."
(LifeWire) -- When a 24-year-old woman who called herself "90DayJane" launched a blog in February announcing she would write about her life and feelings for three months and then commit suicide, 150,000 readers flocked to the site. Some came to offer help, some to delight in the drama. Others speculated it was all a hoax.
Stacey Kim says blogging helps her cope with being a widow and a single mom to twins Riley, left, and Madeleine.
Few, however, questioned why she would share her deepest thoughts and feelings with strangers online. In the age of cyber-voyeurism, the better question might be: Why wouldn't she?
Overeating, alcoholism, depression -- name the problem and you'll find someone's personal blog on the subject. Roughly 12 million Americans have blogs, according to polls by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in 2006, and many seem to use them as a form of group therapy.
A 2005 survey by Digital Marketing Services for AOL.com a found nearly half of the 600 people polled derived therapeutic benefits from personal blogging.
'Instant support system'
For Stacey Kim, a 36-year-old book editor who lives in the Boston suburb of Arlington, Massachusetts, emotional blogging has become a reflex. On April 11, 2007, Kim curled up next to her husband and held him as he succumbed to a long battle with pancreatic cancer. The next morning, she went online to post about the experience.
"It cemented the reality that he was gone," Kim says. "I got hundreds of comments back that were all so loving and supportive. It gave me a really tangible sense of community."
She blogs about life as the widowed mother of 22-month-old twins at snickollet.blogspot.com.
"Right after he died, people kept asking if I was in therapy," says Kim, "and I'd say, 'No, but I have a blog.'"
Writing long has been considered a therapeutic outlet for people facing problems. A 2003 British Psychological Society study of 36 people suggested that writing about emotions could even speed the healing of physical wounds: Researchers found that small wounds healed more quickly in those who wrote about traumatic personal events than in those who wrote about mundane activities.
But it's the public nature of blogs that creates the sense of support.
Reading someone else's blog can be surprisingly beneficial, says MightyGirl.net blogger Margaret Mason, 32. She reads about other women's experiences with everything from in-laws to apartment-hunting at blogs like SuburbanBliss.net and SuperHeroDesigns.com.
"Blogging can create an instant support system, especially at a time when you might not have the energy or resources to seek out people who've shared your experiences," says Mason, author of "No One Cares What You Had For Lunch," a book on keeping a blog interesting.
A way to be heard
John Suler, a psychology professor at Rider University in New Jersey, has studied the overlap of psychology and cyberspace. Blog audiences are usually small, he says, but "going public with one's thoughts and experiences can be a self-affirming process."
He and other experts say blogging shouldn't replace face-to-face counseling -- although it can complement sessions when a patient shares their writing with the therapist.
"Some psychologists take special interest in any activities that their clients may undertake online," Suler says, "because such activities often reveal a lot about how they express their identity and relate to other people."
Kim did start psychotherapy, but kept blogging. "My therapist will give me little assignments and I'll blog about them," she says. "If I come home (after a session) and write about it, it solidifies it."
One Chicago licensed social worker and therapist in her 50s encourages patients to release bottled emotions through blogging. Leah, who asked that her last name not be used because of the nature of her profession, started EveryoneNeedsTherapy.blogspot.com to share professional insights.
Soon, however, she was talking about her own feelings -- and her husband told her it seemed to lift her mood.
"It's a form of group therapy," says Leah. "Not only can you express your feelings, but you can get comments, and that creates a dialogue."
Blogging about personal matters seems to be more of a feminine pursuit. In the 2004 study "Effects of Age and Gender on Blogging," researchers examined more than 37,000 blogs on blogger.com. Their conclusion: Male bloggers tend to write about politics, technology and money; women are more likely to blog about their private lives and use an intimate style of writing.
This doesn't surprise Patricia Wallace, author of "The Psychology of the Internet."
"Women tend to self-disclose more online in general," says the senior director at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth. "Women far outnumber men in certain blogging worlds in which feelings are shared, such as cancer blogs."
Permanent marks
The only problem, some bloggers find, is that many posts become passé -- yet they're on the Web forever.
"The Internet takes momentary thoughts and freezes them in amber as if they're permanent," says Scheherazade Mason, a career counselor and sailing coach at Bowdoin College in Maine. She stopped posting her deepest thoughts, but calls the experience positive.
"Through my first blog, I learned to be braver," Mason says. "I learned that my weakness was also likable. In real life, you try to show only strength and to hide your weaknesses, but I exposed everything."
90DayJane also said she learned important things. After seven days, she announced the blog was an art project and she wasn't planning to kill herself.
"I wanted this blog to be about personal discovery and truth," she wrote in her final post. "But the correspondences I have received have taught me more about those qualities than I could ever express. 90DayJane ... has changed my perspective as a human being."
Multilingual children may slow aging process: study
Jerusalem (PTI): A fascinating study has suggested that children who speak more than one language may protect the brain against the effects of aging. The study published in the journal 'Psychology and Aging' found that kids who speak a second or third language may have an unexpected advantage over monolingual later in life. Knowing and speaking many languages may protect the brain against the effects of aging, suggested the research at the Tel Aviv University.
The team of researchers led by Dr Gitit Kav, a clinical neuro-psychologist from the Herczeg Institute on Aging at Tel Aviv University, discovered that senior citizens who speak more languages test for better cognitive functioning.
The research, which surveyed people between the ages of 75 and 95 and compared bilingual speakers to tri-and multilingual speakers, found that the more languages a person spoke, the better his or her cognitive state was, the ScienceDaily online reported the study as suggesting.
A person who speaks more languages is likely to be more clear-minded at an older age, Kav says, in effect exercising his or her brain more than those who are monolingual. However, she advised caution, saying: There is no sure-fire recipe for avoiding the pitfalls of mental aging. But using a second or third language may help prolong the good years.
The team of researchers led by Dr Gitit Kav, a clinical neuro-psychologist from the Herczeg Institute on Aging at Tel Aviv University, discovered that senior citizens who speak more languages test for better cognitive functioning.
The research, which surveyed people between the ages of 75 and 95 and compared bilingual speakers to tri-and multilingual speakers, found that the more languages a person spoke, the better his or her cognitive state was, the ScienceDaily online reported the study as suggesting.
A person who speaks more languages is likely to be more clear-minded at an older age, Kav says, in effect exercising his or her brain more than those who are monolingual. However, she advised caution, saying: There is no sure-fire recipe for avoiding the pitfalls of mental aging. But using a second or third language may help prolong the good years.
Psychology of suicide violence
CONVENTIONAL military theory continues to take the backseat to suicide-attack-driven urban insurgencies as the negative fallout of the war against terrorism expands, growing violence now establishing its presence as routine in increasing parts of the world.
Muscle obviously does not suffice to subdue a charged enemy whose thesis revolves around taking his own life in order to inflict damage upon the opponent, sometimes more psychological than physical. The other option of diplomatic engagement, though not yet tried in the right spirit, is also unlikely to yield desired results, since the extremists’ demand-list comprises total power and unquestioned implementation of their extreme reading of religion, ‘or else’!
Yet that is not reason enough to abandon the search for alternatives to head-on collision, especially since the elusive extremists seem much better at it. Clearly they won’t stop ramming explosive-loaded cars into sensitive buildings and pulling suicide belt triggers in busy markets till all manner of opposition to their designs is either finished or submits, implying that this is definitely a fight to the end in which only one side will be left standing. That is all the more reason for a serious look into the psychology of this new, seemingly irresistible wave of suicide warfare.
It has been some time since a suicide bomber drew any sort of muted sympathy from pockets of lesser extremist circles, highlighting frustration and depravation in the fight for an apparently just but unachievable cause. Though the phenomenon is not new, its post 9/11 implementation has seen increasing numbers of civilians included as targets, innocent men, women, children and the elderly. It does not matter to the attackers whatever the collateral damage amounts to as long as their antics keep blood flowing, send financial markets tumbling and the fear factor always high. That, along with brutal suppression of almost all forms of social and political rights in areas under their control, is an apt indicator of the barbaric and brutish nature of their mindset that is forever locked in an ancient, no longer applicable era.
A closer look leaves one aghast at how carefully implemented indoctrination has produced hordes of such fanatics ready to blow up themselves and everything in sight when directed. Equally concerning, though, are geo-political factors they leverage for their twisted cause — unspeakable but real violation of human rights on part of those whose hunt is now getting the innocent common man trampled upon in the process.
The brainwashing factor shows that the solution must also begin with an ideological and intellectual push. Along with that, the international system needs to evolve into a more egalitarian environment, where excesses of superpower interests and client states stop squeezing the life out of the lesser unfortunate just as inhumanly as the bombers, if not more cunningly.
Just as military manuals need rewriting, so does the social order, or we will be dogged by fanatics dancing to the orgy of death and destruction that is underway with force till all manner of civility is lost, and only killers of children and women remain to enact their absurd laws.
Muscle obviously does not suffice to subdue a charged enemy whose thesis revolves around taking his own life in order to inflict damage upon the opponent, sometimes more psychological than physical. The other option of diplomatic engagement, though not yet tried in the right spirit, is also unlikely to yield desired results, since the extremists’ demand-list comprises total power and unquestioned implementation of their extreme reading of religion, ‘or else’!
Yet that is not reason enough to abandon the search for alternatives to head-on collision, especially since the elusive extremists seem much better at it. Clearly they won’t stop ramming explosive-loaded cars into sensitive buildings and pulling suicide belt triggers in busy markets till all manner of opposition to their designs is either finished or submits, implying that this is definitely a fight to the end in which only one side will be left standing. That is all the more reason for a serious look into the psychology of this new, seemingly irresistible wave of suicide warfare.
It has been some time since a suicide bomber drew any sort of muted sympathy from pockets of lesser extremist circles, highlighting frustration and depravation in the fight for an apparently just but unachievable cause. Though the phenomenon is not new, its post 9/11 implementation has seen increasing numbers of civilians included as targets, innocent men, women, children and the elderly. It does not matter to the attackers whatever the collateral damage amounts to as long as their antics keep blood flowing, send financial markets tumbling and the fear factor always high. That, along with brutal suppression of almost all forms of social and political rights in areas under their control, is an apt indicator of the barbaric and brutish nature of their mindset that is forever locked in an ancient, no longer applicable era.
A closer look leaves one aghast at how carefully implemented indoctrination has produced hordes of such fanatics ready to blow up themselves and everything in sight when directed. Equally concerning, though, are geo-political factors they leverage for their twisted cause — unspeakable but real violation of human rights on part of those whose hunt is now getting the innocent common man trampled upon in the process.
The brainwashing factor shows that the solution must also begin with an ideological and intellectual push. Along with that, the international system needs to evolve into a more egalitarian environment, where excesses of superpower interests and client states stop squeezing the life out of the lesser unfortunate just as inhumanly as the bombers, if not more cunningly.
Just as military manuals need rewriting, so does the social order, or we will be dogged by fanatics dancing to the orgy of death and destruction that is underway with force till all manner of civility is lost, and only killers of children and women remain to enact their absurd laws.
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