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PULLMAN, Wash. - People tend to listen to big talkers, whether they are women or men. Still, more women prefer not to use assertive language, according to a new study led by Washington State University economist Shanthi Manian.
The study, published in
Management Science on Feb. 17, found that participants in an experiment more often followed advice when the people giving the advice used assertive cheap talk, statements that cannot be verified as true. Examples of such statements are often found in job seeking cover letters, such as I have extremely strong problem-solving skills.
The experiment participants followed the advice people gave at similar rates regardless of their gender even though they thought other people would be less likely to follow the advice of the female leaders.
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Experts say English slang and regional dialect should not be banned from classrooms but when you re getting to grips with a second language how helpful is it to learn non-standard lingo?
Very, says Sascha Stollhans, of the Department of Languages and Cultures at Lancaster University, who argues that standardised language norms are artificial and language learners should learn about all aspects of language, even the controversial ones.
In his policy paper, just published in the
Languages, Society & Policy Journal, he says: There are concerns among professionals that introducing learners to non-standard language could lead to ambiguity and confusion and that students might be penalised for using it in assessments.
When people pause before replying to a question, even for just a few seconds, their answers are perceived to be less sincere and credible than if they had replied immediately, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
Credit: UCR School of Medicine.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. Astrocytes star-shaped cells in the brain that are actively involved in brain function may play an important role in stuttering, a study led by a University of California, Riverside, expert on stuttering has found. Our study suggests that treatment with the medication risperidone leads to increased activity of the striatum in persons who stutter, said Dr. Gerald A. Maguire, professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the UCR School of Medicine, who led the study. The mechanism of risperidone s action in stuttering, in part, appears to involve increased metabolism or activity of astrocytes in the striatum.
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Faster speech rate, greater intensity in the middle of the word, and falling pitch at the end of the word: that is the prosody[1] to adopt if one wants to come across as reliable and honest to one s listeners. Scientists from the Science and Technology for Music and Sound laboratory (CNRS/Ircam/Sorbonne Université/Ministère de la Culture)[2] and the Perceptual Systems Laboratory (CNRS/ENS PSL) have conducted a series of experiments[3] to understand how we decide, based on the voice, whether a speaker is honest and confident, or on the contrary dishonest and uncertain. They have also shown that this signature was perceived similarly in a number of languages (French, English, Spanish), and that it is registered automatically by the brain: even when participants were not judging the speaker s certainty or honesty, this characteristic sound impacted how they memorized the words. Prosody consequently conveys information on the truth-value or certainty of a proposition. Scien