Wednesday Morning Pre-Class Linkblogging Fun!

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Elders' stereotypes predict hearing decline:

To measure age stereotypes, participants were asked, "When you think of an old person, what are the first five words or phrases that come to mind?" The responses were judged on how negative or positive they were and how internal or external they were. Stereotypes rated negative included "senile" and "feeble," whereas stereotypes rated positive included "wise" and "active." External stereotypes included visual images such as grey hair, wrinkles and stooped posture. The study adjusted for initial levels of hearing, as well as several other variables that are known to affect hearing including age, education, gender, race, depression, chronic conditions and smoking history.

Older persons with more negative and external age stereotypes performed worse on hearing measures at the end of the three-year study. According to Levy, "Hearing loss is the third most common chronic condition among persons age 65 years and older and can lead to increased social isolation, self-denigration, loneliness and depression."

The evolution of right- and left-handedness

A study from the April issue of Current Anthropology explores the evolution of handedness, one of few firm behavioral boundaries separating humans from other animals. As researchers find new cultural behaviors among chimpanzees and other primates, language is the only other characteristic accepted to be unique to humans, and both language and handedness appear to relate to the separation of functions between the two halves of the human brain, also known as lateralization...

..."We studied two groups, one a modern group of Canadians, for whom we could document hand preference and physical activity histories, as well as the breadth of the part of the humerus that makes up the elbow joint," explain the authors. "We then applied the same measurement to a group of medieval English villagers known to us only through their skeletons. This allowed us to demonstrate the usefulness of this trait to determine changes in hand preference in populations separated in time by over a thousand years."

Delayed-release stimulant used to treat ADHD may be less subject to abuse