News by Subject Social & Behavior

New research shows that the marketing communication technique of anchoring is not limited to decisions that involve numbers, the use and understanding of which require high-level cognitive thinking. Anchoring also biases judgments at relatively low levels of cognition when no numbers are involved.

A study recently published in the journal Language and Literacy found that bilingual books, which are not often used in French immersion classrooms, are seen by students as an effective tool for second language learning.

A new study by Northwestern University researchers finds that although human and non-human primate vocalizations facilitate core cognitive processes in very young human infants, birdsong does not.

Computer engineers at the world's largest companies and universities are using machines to scan through tomes of written material. The goal? Teach these machines the gift of language. Do that, some even claim, and computers will be able to mimic the human brain. But this impressive compute capability comes with real costs, including perpetuating racism and causing significant environmental damage, according to a new paper, "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? ?"

Researchers found that people who frequently engage in "persuasive bullshitting" are actually quite poor at distinguishing intentionally profound or scientifically accurate fact from impressive but meaningless fiction and are also much more likely to fall for fake news headlines.

Travellers looking to book a hotel should trust their gut instinct when it comes to online reviews rather than relying on computer algorithms to weed out the fake ones, a new study suggests.

An automated computer analysis method designed by Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists makes it possible to track social biases across decades of Bollywood and Hollywood movies.