As a society we might want to rethink the time and money spent on education, so that these resources can benefit a greater percentage of the population. Ideally, both high schools and colleges can prepare individuals for the ever-changing roles that are likely to be expected of them.

High school degrees offer less in the way of preparation for work than they might, or than many other nations currently offer, creating a growing skills gap in our economy. We encourage students to go on to college whether they are prepared or not, or have a clear sense of purpose or interest, and now have the highest college dropout rate in the world.

We might look to other countries for models of how high schools can offer better training, as well as the development of a work ethic (勤奋工作的美德) and the intellectual skills needed for continued learning and development. I recommend Harvard’s 2011 “Pathways to Prosperity” report for more attention to the “forgotten half” (those who do not go on to college) and ideas about how to address this issue.

Simultaneously, the liberal arts become more important than ever. In a knowledge economy where professional roles change rapidly and many college students are preparing for positions that may not even exist yet, the skill set needed is one that prepares them for change and continued learning.

Learning to express ideas well in both writing and speech, knowing how to find information, and knowing how to do research are all-solid background skills for a wide variety of roles, and such training is more important than any particular major in a liberal arts college. We need to continue to value broad preparation in thinking skills that will serve for a lifetime.

Students also need to learn to work independently and to make responsible decisions. The lengthening path to adulthood appears exacerbated (恶化) by parental involvement in the college years. Given the rising investment in college education, parental concern is not surprising, but learning where and when to intervene will help students take more ownership of the outcomes of these increasingly costly educations.

Are you addicted to computer games?Do you stay up all night playing them?Do you feel happy after you play computer games?

There’s no doubt that the excitement of games these days makes them hard to put down.We are attracted by the choice when it comes to gaming:You can role play —creating your own fantastic characters and stories,giving you a chance to step out of everyday life into an imaginary world.And there are shooting games where you can let out your anger and depression in violent situations where you kill people with guns.You can get excited from the games.

However,can these kinds of games really be fun and can being absorbed in virtual reality be good for us?Should we worry about their effects on our health?Popular games like Grand Theft Auto have been blamed for everything from falling results at school to causing acts of extreme violence.Internet safety adviser,Alan MacKenzie,thinks “any people understandably will just think that a game is just a game,not realizing the exact content that’s in there”.He gives an example of the violence,which he says is “wholly inappropriate for anybody,not to mention children”.

Others will argue that gaming is a harmless form of entertainment.There is evidence that playing video games could actually be good for us.Some games like Game of Thrones and World of Warcraft are educational and using games certainly can help children learn good qualities.Studies have also shown that the skills used in playing games can cause growth in certain areas of the brain,the ability to think in 3D and even improve our eyesight.

Video game players are also no longer just simple creatures.For some,gaming is having a positive effect on their social lives with games like Halo and World of Warcraft often being played in groups.When your group works together to win the game,your sense of achievement is higher than when winning by yourself.

So every coin has two sides.It seems that today gaming isn’t just for game fans and if used in a proper way,we can all take part.If video games have two sides,what side do you stand by?

Research spanning several decades demonstrates that you are more likely to think the information that is repeated to be true than the information you hear only once. You usually assume that if people put in effort to repeat a statement, this reflects the truth of the statement. This tendency-also called the truth effect-is a bias (偏见) that can lead you to draw incorrect conclusions.

To what degree are people aware of the truth effect? This question was addressed in a paper in the journal Cognition early this year.

In the critical study in this paper, participants did two sessions. In one session, they read about a hypothetical (虚构的) study in which they were exposed to some statements and then were asked whether both statements they had heard before as well as these new statements were true. They were asked to predict the proportion (比例) of each statement that would be judged as true. They did this both as a prediction of other people’s performance as well as a prediction of how they would do in this study.

At another session a few days later, participants actually performed this study, reading a set of 20 statements in the hypothetical study again and then judging the truth of altogether 40 statements, half of which were from the hypothetical study and the other half of which were new.

This study did replicate the well known truth effect. People were more likely to judge statements they had seen before as true than statements that were new. Two interesting findings emerged from the prediction. First, participants tended to underestimate the size of the truth effect for everyone. T hat is, while they did expect some difference in judgments between the statements seen before and those that were new, they thought this difference would be smaller than it actually was. Second, participants more significantly underpredicted the truth effect for themselves compared to that for other people.   

This study is particularly important in light of the amount of misinformation present in social media. Many people have the power to influence public opinion about important matters. Flooding social media feeds with misinformation will lead people to believe this information is true just because it is stated. Recognizing that we are all susceptible to this influence of repeated information should lead us to mistrust our intuition (直觉) about what is true and to look up important information prior to using it to make important judgments and decisions.