Learning to Listen: Changes in Children's Brain Activity Following a Listening Comprehension Intervention.

"Are you LISTENING?" may be one of the most frequent questions preschoolers hear from their parents and teachers, but can children be taught to listen carefully-and thus better comprehend language-and if so, what changes occur in their brains? Twenty-seven four- and five-year-old children were taught a language simulation strategy to use while listening to stories: first, they practiced moving graphics on an iPad to correspond to the story actions, and then they practiced imagining the movements. Compared to a control condition, children in the intervention answered comprehension questions more accurately when imagining moving the graphics and on a measure of transfer using a new story without any instruction and with only immovable graphics. Importantly, for children in the intervention, the change in comprehension from the first to the sixth day was strongly correlated with changes in EEG mu and alpha desynchronization, suggesting changes in motor and visual processing following the intervention.

Ancestral Diversity: A Socioecological Account of Emotion Culture.

Cultural differences in emotion expression, experience, and regulation can cause misunderstandings with lasting effects on interpersonal, intergroup, and international relations. A full account of the factors responsible for the emergence of different cultures of emotion is therefore urgent. Here we propose that the ancestral diversity of regions of the world, determined by colonization and sometimes forced migration of humans over centuries, explains significant variation in cultures of emotion.