the Book "How Children Learn Words" George A. Miller and Patricia M. Gildea, in Scientific American (Sept. 1987), 415 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017.
By the age of 12, the average child learns 5,000 new words each year, or about 13 every day-yet no more than 200 words are taught in a school year. How do children manage to learn so many words on their own? Miller, a psychologist at Princeton, and Gildea, professor of psychology at Rutgers University, believe students learn many new...
fifth and sixth graders in which new words were consistently rnisinter- preted, the authors concluded that tasks relying on the dictionary are "a waste of time."
Arbitrary vocabulary lists, the authors argue, isolate words from any context. Reading proves to be the most effective vehicle for vocabulary- building because it makes the reader want to understand new words. The authors found that only through "reading several million words per yearv-at least one and a half hours each...
the ACLI felt very confident about Social Security, and 55 percent are "not confident" that Medicare benefits will continue at current levels.
Edrnondson predicts that 50- to 64-year-olds will continue current spending and mobility habits for some time. But the clout of this age group will grow as the "baboom" generation ages: The U.S. Census Bureau ~redicts an 81 ~ercent rise in 50- to 64-vex-olds (to 59 million Ameri-
Poor bers "In Search of the Working Poor" by...
reducing the estimates of rural and small-town poverty dramatically. And most of the poor, he argues, will not see themselves as victims, but will instead "be seen as living lives that they choose to live.'
PRESS & TELEVISION
ss and Science "The Culture of Science Journalism" Dorothy
Nelkm, in Society (Sept.-Oct. 1987), Rutgers
Univ., New Brunswick, NJ. 08903.
Nineteenth-century American science journalists had a flair for false drama best described by a New York Sunday Wor...
Ellen Mickiewicz and Gregory Haley, in Slavic Review (Summer 1987), PO. Box 8180, Univ. of Texas, Austin, Tex. 78713.
In 1960 only five percent of the Soviet population had access to television; 1986 that figure had risen to 93 percent. Though a latecomer to the Soviet Union, television has had "an enormous effect" on the way Soviets acquire information, argue Mickiewicz, a political scientist, and Haley, a graduate student, both at Emory University.
Each evening, an estimated 150 million...
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PERIODICALS
PRESS & TELEVISION
News Tonight," the authors found that "Vremia" devoted a much larger percentage of its stories to international coverage than did its American counterpart. In particular, "Vremia" focused "on the adversary": 17.6 percent of "Vremia" stories involved the U.S. and its NATO allies, whereas only 5.1 percent of ABC "World News Tonight" stories covered the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries.
The "mission" of...
Richard Fox, in The Center Magazine, (Sept.-Oct. 1987), PO. Box 4068, Santa Bar-bara, Calif. 93140.
American liberahsm, argues Fox, a historian at Reed College, has tradition- ally found allies among such "celebrated religious spokesmen" as Martin Luther King, Jr. But in the 1980s, while leaders in other professions (ac- tors, psychologists, and even astronomers) support the liberal agenda, there is no theologian "to link liberal politics to spiritual meaning or tran- scendent purpose."
Why...
science.
Engen, a psychologist at Brown University, identifies two distinct types of olfactory memory: the ability to call up the sensation of a particular odor and the ability to identdy a smell when presented. New research has illuni-nated these Merences.
Until recently, researchers classified odors the "smell prism," de- veloped by German psychologist Hans Henning over 70 years ago. The prism separates all odors into six categories, such as "flowery," "spicy,"...
name.
Engen believes that people organize odors according to personal ex- periences. In one set of tests, Engen presented test subjects with 10 different odors, ranging from chemical "odorants" such as amyl acetate (banana oil) to "brand name " stimuh such as Vicks Vaporub. Responses such as "bawipes" for the smell of Johnson's baby powder show that people remember odors by association with similar smells and by "the context or kind of object in which odors may...
Lee Edson, in Mosaic (Surn-mer 1987), National Science Foundation, Wash- ington, D.C. 20550.
Silicon is the material that defines our times. Because it is the primary element of computer microchips, silicon is as important to our age as steel was to the 19th century and bronze was to the Greeks of 3,000 B.C.
Although silicon's importance will continue indefinitely, says Edson, a free-lance science writer, many of its functions may be taken over gallium arsenide, a synthetic semiconductor. While...