ScienceDaily: Living Well News

Research has revealed a correlation between being particularly proficient in tool use and having good syntactic ability. A new study has now shown that both skills rely on the same neurological resources, which are located in the same brain region. Furthermore, motor training using a tool improves our ability to understand the syntax of complex sentences and -- vice-versa -- syntactic training improves our proficiency in using tools.

When mothers and their children play together, they instinctively respond to each other's cues. And positive interactions promote the child's healthy socioemotional development. A new study examines how physiological and behavioral reactions coordinate during mother-child playtime. The findings highlight the importance of responsive communication, and can help provide insights for parents, practitioners, and researchers.

Even when emoji are used to substitute for words, we still understand the sentence. But how does that work? Do we interpret an emoji primarily as an image or as a word? To find out, a research team asked volunteers to read texts with emoji and measured the reading time precisely. It turns out that it takes a little longer to comprehend a sentence that includes emoji than one that doesn't. If the emoji does not directly represent the intended meaning, but another word with the same pronunciation, we need yet a little more time. Based on these results, the team concludes that emoji comprehension consists of two steps: first the image is interpreted, then the word is inferred.

The proportion of UK people reporting eating and drinking plant-based alternative foods such as plant-based milk, vegan sausages and vegetable burgers nearly doubled between 2008 -- 2011 and 2017 -- 2019, according to a new study.

In a large national survey, adults who struggled with picky eating habits as children overwhelmingly said they benefitted more from positive and encouraging strategies their parents used than forceful or coercive approaches.

Young people who consider themselves 'multilingual' tend to perform better across a wide range of subjects at school, regardless of whether they are actually fluent in another language, new research suggests. The study of more than 800 pupils in England found a measurable, positive relationship between their personal connection with other languages, and their GCSE exam results in both modern language and non-language subjects. This applied whether or not they actually spoke a second language fluently.