You may know your mother, but how well do you really know Mothers’ Day? Cards, flowers, sales, TV specials, and a day off for someone who really deserves it — those are what probably come to mind for many people when they think of Mothers’ Day. But there’s more to the story.

The earliest Mothers’ Day celebrations were held during spring in ancient Greece. The celebrations honored Rhea, the mother of the gods. During the 1600s, England celebrated a day called Mothering Sunday. On this day even servants(仆人) were given the day off to spend with their families. A mothering cake was even served with the family meal.

In the US, Mothers’ Day began in 1872 when Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the words to the famous song The Battle Hymn of the Republic, suggested it as a day devoted to peace. But it didn’t really become popular until 1907 when Anna Jarvis started a campaign to honor mothers. She believed that mothers could help people get over the pain they experienced during the Civil War. The US isn’t alone in devoting a day to mothers. Many other countries including Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia, Japan, and Belgium also honor their mothers in May. Other countries honor their mothers at different times of the year.

Learning more about Mothers’ Day and celebrating Mothers’ Day are important, but probably not as important as understanding what your own mother, or grandmother, or aunt has really done for you. And that will certainly be appreciated more than one day in year.

If you were like most children, you probably got upset when your mother called you by a sibling’s (兄弟姐妹的) name. How could she not know you? Did it mean she loved you less?

Probably not. According to the first research to tackle this topic head-on, misnaming the most familiar people in our life is a common cognitive (认知的) error that has to do with how our memories classify and store familiar names.

The study, published online in April in the journal Memory and Cognition, found that the “wrong” name is not random but is always fished out from the same relationship pond: children, siblings, friends. The study did not examine the possibility of deep psychological significance to the mistake, says psychologist David Rubin, “but it does tell us who’s in and who’s out of the group”.

The study also found that within that group, misnaming occurred where the names shared initial or internal sounds, like Jimmy and Joanie or John and Bob. Physical resemblance between people was not a factor. Nor was gender.

The researchers conducted five separate surveys of more than 1,700 people. Some of the surveys included only college students, others were done with a mixed-age population. Some asked subjects about incidents where someone close to them—family or friend—had called them by another person’s name. The other surveys asked about times when subjects had themselves called someone close to them by the wrong name. All the surveys found that people mixed up names within relationship groups such as grandchildren, friends and siblings but hardly ever crossed these boundaries.

In general, the study found that undergraduates were almost as likely as old people to make this mistake and men as likely as women. Older people and women made the mistake slightly more often, but that may be because grandparents have more grandchildren to mix up than parents have children. Also, mothers may call on their children more often than fathers, given traditional gender norms (常态). There was no evidence that errors occurred more when the misnamer was frustrated, tired or angry.

We have long imagined a world where we interact with computers and robots as if they were normal human beings. Science movies show computers and robots that think and feel just like humans. While these scenes exist only in the movies for now, we may be getting close to making technology emotionally intelligent.

The first step toward this is understanding what emotions are, Scientists are often unable to describe emotions in exact terms, even though we generally understand what people mean when they say they’re sad or happy.

Back in the 1950s, few scientists studied emotion. But American scientist Paul Ekman saw a lot of potential in this field. He began analyzing facial expressions, and gathered a list of over 5,000 muscle movements. These muscle movements combine to form our different expressions. His discovery of micro-expression—facial expressions that last only less than a second—allows us to read the emotions that people try to hide.

There are many possible uses of emotion-sensing technology. Dr. Chieko Asakawa, a researcher at IBM, has been blind since the age of 14. She has been developing a smartphone app that might be able to help people with disabilities. It recognizes people’s faces and facial expressions as they approach.

Another use of emotion-sensing technology can be shown through human-shaped robots like Pepper. It can comfort someone when it senses the person is sad, or tell a joke when the person is feeling playful. In Japan, Pepper is already serving customers in stores.

But as we walk on the streets, intelligent devices(设备)could record our facial expressions without our knowledge. This could allow many people to monitor(监视)or view our feelings without our permission. It may leave us with no control over who we share our feelings with. However, if we can deal with these challenges successfully, there could be many benefits for all of us if our devices become a little more human.