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Editor’s Selections: Twins, Musical Workouts, Universal Grammar, and Bilingual Blood Flow

Here are my Research Blogging Editor’s Selections for this week: American family values: where even the dull can dream! “One of the issues when talking about the effect of environment and genes on behavioral and social outcomes is that the entanglements are so complicated.

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Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week:

  • American family values: where even the dull can dream! "One of the issues when talking about the effect of environment and genes on behavioral and social outcomes is that the entanglements are so complicated. That is why cross-cultural studies are essential," writes Razib Khan.

  • If you ask Rift of the Psycasm blog, We should be music testing athletes! "Wherein our hero examines the positive effects of Music on Workouts, even though he thinks music is cheating."

  • Negative Evidence: Still Missing After All These Years. A killer post on the Games with Words blog addressing the question of universal grammar. "Pinker's account is not perfect and may end up being wrong in some places, but it remains the fact that negative evidence (implicit or not) can't alone explain where children (and adults) do or do not generalize."

  • Can Language Affect Blood Flow? "Yes," says Chris of The Lousy Linguist blog. "In a recent fMRI study, researchers showed that Cantonese verbs and nouns are processed in (slightly) different parts of the brain than English nouns and verbs in bilinguals."

Finally, a brand new psychology blog has caught my eye this week. The Association for Psychological Science is now blogging at Daily Observations. Go check it out!

Jason G. Goldman is a science journalist based in Los Angeles. He has written about animal behavior, wildlife biology, conservation, and ecology for Scientific American, Los Angeles magazine, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the BBC, Conservation magazine, and elsewhere. He contributes to Scientific American's "60-Second Science" podcast, and is co-editor of Science Blogging: The Essential Guide (Yale University Press). He enjoys sharing his wildlife knowledge on television and on the radio, and often speaks to the public about wildlife and science communication.

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