This sign is not normally linked to being smart.

The idea that ads engaging us emotionally perform better than those relying solely on logic may seem obvious to many Neuromarketing readers. Yet, I still encounter business executives who remain skeptical, believing they are not influenced by emotions when making purchasing decisions. Since they think they are immune, they often question whether emotional appeals work […]

The post Emotional Ads Work Best appeared first on Neuromarketing.

Too often, teachers are asked to use SEL practices without enough training and ongoing support, tanking the effectiveness.

Gov. Christie has pushed to flatten the state's funding formula so that the state's impoverished urban districts would get the same amount of money wealthy suburban districts get.

Wisconsin is one of a handful of states where how much schools will get this fall is still being debated in the state capitol.

In the Green Mountain State, education leaders discuss their focus on the whole child.

The principal of an elementary school in Washington, DC, describes how she and her staff broadened the focus of the school towards broader, more holistic goals for students.

The principal of a school in Washington, DC, describes a shift toward equity, diversity, and inclusion.

This brief chapter of art history is often overlooked. Now, an exhibition in New York City makes a strong argument for the integral role played by four artists in the city of Siena

COSMOSMotion offers efficiency, quality, and cost benefits that increase value for designers who develop moving assemblies

Cutting days and weeks from design cycle gives Syncroness more time to focus on designing lightweight, high performance products

At first glance, it could seem that teenagers just really, really hate high school. But Yale researchers found deeper student engagement issues.

Teachers, administrators, and school support staff must understand their own social-emotional abilities before they can impart those skills to students, according to new research.

A consistent bedtime may be more important to a child’s ability to control their emotions and behavior than the duration or quality of their sleep, according to a new publication by researchers in the Penn State College of Health and Human Development and Penn State College of Medicine. 

There are ways to attend to students’ social-emotional growth even when they are learning remotely or sitting in a classroom six feet apart. Ignoring those skills is a recipe for disaster.

Innovation Center, William Penn High School. – On Tuesday, Lt. Governor Hall-Long joined Patrick and Amy Kennedy and leaders in behavioral health from around Delaware for a round table discussion aimed at improving student mental health. Patrick Kennedy is one of the world’s leading voices on mental health and addiction. He is best known as the lead sponsor of the Mental Health Parity […]

Amjad Khan worked in over 132 films in a career spanning nearly two decades

The Trunk will premiere on November 29 on Netflix

Dover, DE – The Delaware Department of Correction (DOC) today announced several recent leadership promotions within the Bureau of Prisons. “The Bureau of Prisons is fortunate to have an exceptional team of highly trained and highly experienced staff who are well positioned to serve in senior roles with increasing authority and responsibility,” Bureau of Prisons Chief Shane Troxler […]

Dover, DE – Delaware Department of Correction (DOC) Acting Commissioner Terra Taylor today announced that James T. Vaughn Correctional Center Warden Robert May has been promoted to Chief of the Bureau of Prisons.  May, a 31-year veteran of the DOC and the Department’s most experienced Warden, began his career as a Correctional Officer at Howard […]

Title: Stuttering May Not Cause Emotional Woes in Preschoolers: Study
Category: Health News
Created: 8/26/2013 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/26/2013 12:00:00 AM

Title: Goats Can Read Human Emotions, Prefer Happy Faces
Category: Health News
Created: 8/31/2018 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/31/2018 12:00:00 AM

Title: Breakfast Might Be Good for a Child's Emotional Health, Too
Category: Health News
Created: 8/24/2022 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/24/2022 12:00:00 AM

Title: Motion Sickness
Category: Diseases and Conditions
Created: 5/30/1999 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/8/2022 12:00:00 AM

Thank you for the auspicious writeup It in fact was a amusement account it Look advanced to more added agreeable from you By the way how could we communicate

helloI really like your writing so a lot share we keep up a correspondence extra approximately your post on AOL I need an expert in this house to unravel my problem May be that is you Taking a look ahead to see you

The sound of silence, no more: Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, who as folk duo Simon & Garfunkel were one of the most popular American musical acts of the 20th century, recently reunited after years without speaking.

Many parents opt for more expensive baby milk, equating higher costs with better quality, the watchdog found.

On December 3, a federal appeals court ruled against one of the FDA’s untouchable restrictions on industry—thou shalt not promote the off-label use of pharmaceutical products. An industry that is little interested in constitutional law suddenly finds itself talking about the First Amendment and whether, and on what grounds, the case will be appealed. Meantime, the court’s decision left FDA Matters torn between cheering and booing. Patients are poorly served if their doctor is prescribing drugs without being able to tap into all sources of relevant knowledge. However, permitting off-label promotion undercuts the incentive for companies to thoroughly investigate the safety and efficacy of a drug for a second or third use.

[Fair Warning: I have generally tried to keep this blog separate from my corporate existence, but am making an exception for two quick posts about the upcoming DIA 2013 Annual Meeting.]

Improving Enrollment in Pediatric Clinical Trials

Logistically, ethically, and emotionally, involving children in medical research is greatly different from the same research in adults. Some of the toughest clinical trials I've worked on, across a number of therapeutic areas, have been pediatric ones. They challenge you to come up with different approaches to introducing and explaining clinical research – approaches that have to work for doctors, kids, and parents simultaneously.

On Thursday June 27, Don Sickler, one of my team members, will be chairing a session titled “Parents as Partners: Engaging Caregivers for Pediatric Trials”. It should be a good session.

Joining Don are 2 people I've had the pleasure of working with in the past. Both of them combine strong knowledge of clinical research with a massive amount of positive energy and enthusiasm (no doubt a big part of what makes them successful).

However, they also differ in one key aspect: what they work on. One of them – Tristen Moors from Hyperion Therapeutics - works on an ultra-rare condition, Urea Cycle Disorder, a disease affecting only a few hundred children every year. On the other hand, Dr. Ann Edmunds is an ENT working in a thriving private practice. I met her because she was consistently the top enroller in a number of trials relating to tympanostomy tube insertion. Surgery to place “t-tubes” is one of the most common and routine outpatients surgeries there is, with an estimated half million kids getting tubes each year.

Each presents a special challenge: for rare conditions, how do you even find enough patients? For routine procedures, how do you convince parents to complicate their (and their children’s) lives by signing up for a multi-visit, multi-procedure trial?

Ann and Tristen have spent a lot of time tackling these issues, and should have some great advice to give.

For more information on the session, here’s Don’s posting on our news blog.

Are we looking at our enrollment data in the right way?

Session Details:

June 25, 1:45PM - 3:15PM

• Session Number: 241
• Room Number: 205B

1. Enrollment Analytics: Moving Beyond the Funnel
Paul Ivsin
VP, Consulting Director
CAHG Clinical Trials

2. Use of Analytics for Operational Planning
Diana Chung, MSc
Associate Director, Clinical Operations
Gilead
3. Using Enrollment Data to Communicate Effectively with Sites
Gretchen Goller, MA
Senior Director, Patient Access and Retention Services
PRA

#5MoreNow

Gaining Independence While Living with Diabetes

The World of Autism

Today in my craft post, I'm going to talk about a straightforward skill… while referencing a book that's wonderfully un-straightforward.

H Is for Hawk is a memoir by Helen Macdonald that weaves together several threads, the three biggest of which are: her experience of training a northern goshawk; her analysis of T. H. White's memoir about training a northern goshawk; and her grief following the death of her father. In terms of balance and weaving, it's beautifully done. In terms of psychological insight, it feels searingly true. And in terms of the expression of emotion, it's stunning.

It's also an uncomfortable book at times, in ways that recommend it. And it's a fascinating memoir for a fiction writer to read while thinking about how to write character. H Is for Hawk left me with a lot of questions, for the book and for myself.

If you just want the straightforward writing lesson, which is on the topic of writing emotion, jump ahead to the *** below. If you're interested in a fiction writer's thoughts about memoir, read on.

I sat down to read H is for Hawk because a friend had described its structure and I was intrigued. I'm not a memoir writer; it's far too personal a style of writing for me. But I like to read books that differ greatly from my own writing, and I especially like to learn to write from them. After all, the more a book diverges from your own writing, the more it can stretch you into a broader perspective of what's possible. I was curious about what a memoir that weaves separate but related threads could teach me about writing a work of fiction that weaves separate but related threads; but I was also curious about what it could teach me that I didn't know about yet.

Here are some of the unexpected questions that arose for me while reading this book:

In terms of writing character (if one can use that word with a memoir, and I believe one can; more on that later), what are the differences between memoir and fiction?

For example, what advantages does the memoir writer have? Does a reader come to a memoir with a greater willingness to believe in a character than they bring to the reading of fiction? A fiction writer often has to go through a lot of contortions to keep a character believable while also fulfilling the necessities of the plot. Push the character's behavior too far outside the characterization you've so carefully established, and the behavior becomes unbelievable. The reader is left thinking, "I don't believe they would actually do that."

In contrast, in a memoir, a character is an actual person. They did what they did. The memoir writer reports what they did and we believe it, because it's a memoir. Any "unbelievable" behavior consequently brings power with it: amusement, surprise, shock value. (This is not to minimize the work it requires to make any character in any kind of book engaging. I don't mean to suggest that a memoir writer has an easy job creating character, only that they may have a believability advantage.)

Okay then, what advantages does the fiction writer have when writing character? Well, the fiction writer can make shit up; that's a pretty huge advantage. The fiction writer also generally doesn't have to worry about getting sued for defamation of character :o).

Another huge advantage: Though it's true that as a fiction writer I sometimes encounter readers who mistakenly assume I'm like my characters, for the most part, fiction readers remember that fiction is made up. This means that the fiction writer is unlikely to be accused of having done the things their characters did, or judged for that behavior. In contrast, a memoir writer writing about her own actions is opening herself to all kinds of very personal judgment. All writing requires courage and involves exposure… But this takes things to a whole other level! Fiction writers have some built-in emotional protections that I tend to take for granted, until I read a memoir and remember.

This leads me to another question that arose while reading this book: What is the place of the memoir reader when it comes to judging the people inside the memoir? For example, Helen Macdonald writes a compassionate but blistering exposé of T. H. White in this book. It's an exposé that T. H. White wrote first; anyone can learn from White's own memoir that he was heartbreakingly, sometimes sadistically abusive to the goshawk he trained. But Macdonald presents it anew, and she presents it with an analysis of White's psychology that shows us more about White than he ever meant us to know. She shows us the abuse, familial and societal, that brought White to this place. She shows us his heartbreak, failures, and shame. White feels like an integrated, complete person in this book.

But also, she shows us what she wants to show us — she shows us the parts of White that fit into her own book, about her own experiences. She's the writer, and this is her memoir. To be clear, I don't mean this as a condemnation — I'm not accusing her of leaving things out or misrepresenting White! This is a part of all book-writing. You include what matters to the rest of your book. Everything else ends up on the cutting room floor. As far as I know, Macdonald did a respectful and responsible job of incorporating T. H. White into her book, and I expect she worked very hard to do so. I believe in the T. H. White she showed us. But I think it's important to remember this part of the process when reading any memoir. Even when a writer is writing about themselves, their book has plot and themes, it has content requirements. There'll always be something specific the writer is trying to convey, about themselves or anyone else, and there'll always be stuff they leave out. No book can contain a whole person.

Personally, when I read memoir (and biography and autobiography), I consciously consider the people inside it to function as characters. It's hard to read H Is for Hawk and not come away with some pretty strong opinions about T. H. White. But I keep a permanent asterisk next to my opinions, because White was a real, living person, but I only know him as a character in this book. No matter how many books I read about him (or by him), I'll always be conscious of not knowing the whole person.

As a fiction writer, I find all of this fascinating. I think it's because I see connections between how hard it is to present a compelling character study of a real person and how hard it is to create a believable character in fiction. What are the differences between a memoir writer who's figuring out which part of the truth matters, and a fiction writer who's creating a fiction that's supposed to invoke truth? Also, I'm fascinated by how much all of this lines up with how hard it is to understand anyone in real life. How well can we ever know anyone? How much can we ever separate our own baggage from our judgments of other people? There's a third person getting in the way of my perfect understanding of T. H. White: me.

Next question: How does a writer (of memoir or fiction) make a character ring true to the reader? How does the writer make the character compelling and real?

A writer as skilled as Macdonald knows how to bring her characters, human or hawk, alive for the reader. One way she does this is by keeping her characterizations always in motion. White is many, many things — kind and cruel, sensitive and sadistic, abused and despotic. Macdonald's hawk, Mabel, is also constantly growing and changing. Mabel is a point of personal connection for Macdonald, but she's also always just out of reach. And of course, Macdonald herself is a character in the book. Macdonald lays bare her own successes, failures, oddities, cruelties, kindnesses, insights, ambivalences, and delights, and lets us decide. Personally, as I read, I felt that I was meeting a human of sensitivity and compassion; an anxious person whose need for both solitude and connection was starkly familiar to me; someone consciously composed of contradictions; a person of deep feeling who cares about what matters; a grieving daughter; a person I can relate to. Or should I say, a character I can relate to? Having read this book, I don't presume I know Helen Macdonald.

Here's something I do know about Helen Macdonald though: She's a damn good writer. In particular, as I read, I kept noticing one specific thing she does so well that it needs to be called out and shown to other writers.





All page references are to the 2014 paperback published by Grove Press.

Okay, writers. When it comes to writing a character's emotion, there's a certain skill at which Helen Macdonald excels. Namely, she conveys emotion via action.

Put differently: rather than describing an emotion in words, Macdonald shows us a behavior, one so meaningful that we readers feel the associated emotion immediately.

Here's an example. For context, Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly one March, throwing her into a deep and unexpected grief. Listen to this description of one of the things that happened next:

"In June I fell in love, predictably and devastatingly, with a man who ran a mile when he worked out how broken I was. His disappearance rendered me practically insensible. Though I can't even bring his face to mind now, and though I know not only why he ran, but know that in principle he could have been anyone, I still have a red dress that I will never wear again. That's how it goes." (17)

While there is some effective emotional description here — like when she's rendered practically insensible — the real punch in this passage is the red dress. Macdonald tells us that there's a red dress she'll never wear again, and immediately I get it. I get that the identity of the man is irrelevant; what's relevant is the passion she had for another person and how it connected to her grief, and I feel that passion and grief because there's a red dress she'll never wear again. I can see the dress, hidden away in the back of her closet. I don't have a dress like that, but I could. I get it.

Here's another moment. This one takes place at a much later point, when Macdonald has been grieving for a long time and is finally noticing that she's capable of happiness again:

"But watching television from the sofa later that evening I noticed tears running from my eyes and dropping into my mug of tea. Odd, I think. I put it down to tiredness. Perhaps I am getting a cold. Perhaps I am allergic to something. I wipe the tears away and go to make more tea in the kitchen" (125).

It's hard to write about tears in a way that doesn't feel like a cliché shorthand for sadness, grief, catharsis, whatever you're trying to get across in that moment. Macdonald succeeds here. This dispassionate report of tears conveys what Macdonald needs to convey: that grief is layered; that a person can have many feelings at once; that sometimes your body knows what's going on before the rest of you does; that when you're grieving, sometimes happiness brings with it a tidal wave of sadness. But imagine if Macdonald had listed all those things I just listed, instead of telling us about her tears dropping into her tea. Her way is so much better, and it conveys the same information!

Let me be clear, it's not bad to describe emotion. In fact, it's necessary in places. You need to give your reader an emotional baseline so that they'll know how to contextualize how plot points feel for the character. But if you can find a balance between emotional description and the thing Macdonald is doing here — using action to convey emotion — it will gives the emotion in your writing a freshness, an impact, a punch that you can't get from description alone. It will also give the reader more opportunities to engage their own feelings — to feel things all by themselves, rather than merely understanding what's being felt by the character.

It's hard to write emotion. It's especially hard to figure out non-cliché ways to explain how a character feels. Sometimes it's fine to use a known shorthand or a cliché. Sometimes it's fine to use emotional description. You want a mix of things. But Macdonald's book reminds me that whenever I can, I want to look for ways to use plot to convey feeling. Show what my character does in response to a stimulus. Let the reader glean the emotions from behavior. Your character is happy? Show us what they do with their body. How do they stand, how do they walk? Does it make them generous? Does it make them self-centered and oblivious? Remember that an "action" doesn't have to be something physically, boisterously active. If you're writing a non-demonstrative character, it's not going to ring true if they start flinging their arms around or singing while they walk down the street. But maybe instead of "feeling ecstatic," they sit still for a moment, reveling in what just happened. Maybe instead of "feeling jubilant," they listen to a song playing inside their own head. Internally or externally, show us what they do.

Here's Macdonald describing her childhood obsession with birds:

"When I was six I tried to sleep every night with my arms folded behind my back like wings. This didn't last long, because it is very hard to sleep with your arms folded behind your back like wings." (27)

I can feel the devotion to birds. She doesn't just love birds; she wants to be a bird.

Macdonald goes on to report that as a child, she learned everything she possibly could about falconry, then shared every word of it, no matter how boring, with anyone who would listen. Macdonald's mother was a writer for the local paper. Here's a description of her mother during the delivery of one of Macdonald's lectures:

"Lining up another yellow piece of copy paper, fiddling with the carbons so they didn't slip, she'd nod and agree, drag on her cigarette, and tell me how interesting it all was in tones that avoided dismissiveness with extraordinary facility." (29)

What an endearing depiction of a mother's love for her tedious child :o).

And here's a scene that takes place at a country fair, where Macdonald has agreed to display her goshawk, Mabel, to the public. Macdonald is sitting on a chair under a marquee roof. Mabel is positioned on a perch ten feet behind her. There are so many people at the fair, too many people for the likes of both Macdonald and Mabel:

"After twenty minutes Mabel raises one foot. It looks ridiculous. She is not relaxed enough to fluff out her feathers; she still resembles a wet and particoloured seal. But she makes this small concession to calmness, and she stands there like a man driving with one hand resting on the gear stick." (206)

Oh, Mabel. I get the sense that when it comes to the writer's need to convey emotion, Mabel is a challenging character. Macdonald does such a wonderful job creating a sense of the gulf between a human's reality and a hawk's reality, the differences in perception and priority. But she also gives us moments of connection with Mabel. Since Mabel is a bird, these moments of connection are almost always described through Mabel's behavior.

I wonder if Macdonald's intense connection with the non-human world, and with hawks in particular, is partly what makes her so good at noticing behaviors and gleaning their emotional significance? And then sharing it with us, the lucky readers.

That's it. That's my lesson: When you're trying to convey feelings, find places where an action or behavior will do the job.

And read H Is for Hawk if you want an admirable example of writing emotion! Also, Helen Macdonald has a new book, just released: Vesper Flights. I'm in.

Reading like a writer.

I'm gonna be at Gencon at booth 1237 this weekend! I'll have some books and stuff and will be doing sketches and complimenting your pet photos. SEE YOU THERE???

African Americans experience racial discrimination at different stages of their lives and they have to learn to cope with the psychological strain (!--ref1--).

Primary care providers are ideally suited to tackle medlinkemotional eating/medlink due to their ongoing relationships with patients, as highlighted by Jana DeSimone Wozniak, Ph.

By combining traditional approaches with new technologies, researchers aim to refine the accuracy and reliability of measuring emotions. This exploration

Emotion recognition is not solely based on facial expressions but involves a complex process where physical traits, cultural context, and background information

Research suggests that neonatal kidney transplantation could be a game-changing solution to the organ shortage crisis, highlighting the emotional challenges faced by families.

Practicing Transcendental meditation may boost your emotional intelligence and relieve stress levels when you are at work finds a new study. Finding

During the television show 'The View', Kim Kardashian, who has 255 million followers on Instagram, touted the benefit of migraine drug Nurtec ODT. She

Even though the festivities are coming to an end, Raashi Khanna is making sure she keeps the festive cheer alive with her choice of outfits

Numerous Bollywood celebrities have paid tribute to the iconic Rohit Bal after his death by wearing outfits that he had designed, however, netizens definitely did not like Kiara's tribute to the designer

Men outnumber women nearly 2 to 1 on the first move up the management ladder. WSJ’s Vanessa Fuhrmans explains how this can hurt women right out of the gate.

Streaming services offer a plethora of content. Many platforms provide free trials and promotions to attract users. Tech enthusiasts can leverage these offers to enjoy premium content without breaking the bank. Understanding how to maximise these opportunities is crucial. This guide

On Saturday, the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in a press note warned of "unauthorized and ill-intentioned" activities of the MSME Export Promotion Council and also clarified that the government is not associated with the council. "Ministry