Although it helps, learning a new language doesn’t only assist with boosting your CV and making travelling that little bit easier, it benefits many cognitive processes too.
Studies have shown that being able to speak two or more languages aids a number of cognitive processes. The brains of those that can speak multiple languages work differently than single language speakers; these differences offer a number of mental benefits.
These benefits only apply to those people that speak multiple languages regularly. If you’re currently learning a language then don’t panic, because you can still reach fluency and you’ll reap the same benefits as those that have been speaking multiple languages since they learned to walk.
Smarter
Using a language other than your first challenges your brain to negotiate meaning, communicate and recognise alternative language systems. This skill can then be applied to other problem-solving tasks, for example, students who study languages tend to gain higher grades in standardised tests, particularly in the areas of maths and vocabulary.
Multitasking
Switching between two or more languages forces people to swap and change between multiple speech, writing and structure systems. This ability to mentally juggle a number of structures means that linguists become great multi-taskers.
More perceptive
Studies have shown that polyglots are much better than the single language speaker at observing their surroundings and retaining information, as well as omitting anything that’s irrelevant.
Improved memory
We’ve all seen the hundreds of brain training games out there, and that’s because the brain improves with exercise – just like a muscle. When you learn a new language you aren’t just learning a new vocabulary, you have to memorise rules and structures that are very different to what you’re used to. Doing this helps to strengthen your brain and improve overall memory which results in multi-language speakers being much better at retaining and recalling information like shopping lists, directions and phone numbers.
Last year we introduced the inspirational story of Steve Prescott, a well-remembered local rugby league hero who sadly passed away in 2013 after captured the hearts of many with his fight against cancer and fundraising efforts.
Inspired by this legacy we embarked on a year of fundraising events and have since managed to raise over £1000 for his charity The Steve Prescott Foundation.
Our staff shed blood sweat and tears, taking on everything from a 30 mile charity cycle, to a sport themed fun day.
But our success for Steve ended on a sweet note as we presented the cash to the charity at their glitzy afternoon with boxing icons Sugar Ray Leonard and Martin Murray at Sutton Leisure Centre, St Helens.
Local rugby league club St Helens RLFC (also known as the Saints) sparked our desire to give something back when they gifted us a rare, signed Mal Meninga plaque, which we decided to donate at the Sugar Ray event to further help raise money for the cause.
Talking about the fundraising success our Managing Director Tony Smith said: ‘It’s been a whirlwind of events. Everyone got involved and did a great job in raising the funds.
‘The kind gesture from Saints inspired us to give something back and we thought who better to support, than SPF. Hopefully all the money raised will make a big difference to a great local cause.’
Also recognising our fundraising efforts was Saint’s star Joe Greenwood who said: ‘Steve was one of my coaches on Saints Academy – he was a special guy and I would encourage everyone to follow NCC Home Learning’s example and support SPF.’
For more information on Steve ‘Prekky’ Prescott who is now dubbed by the rugby and local community as the ‘Man of Steel’ please see our previous blog.
If you have a great idea on what we can do next, we’d love to hear from you! Tweet us your suggestions or send us a message on our Facebook page.
Nowadays ethics and morality play a massive part in what can and cannot be done during psychological experiments. There are strict rules that experimenters must adhere to during the whole experimental procedure, from recruiting participants, to the experiment itself. However, standards haven’t always been so strict and some of the most famous and influential studies in psychology are the most unethical of them all.
Little Albert
The experiment conducted by John B. Watson, that’s now known as The Little Albert Experiment, is a study of classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is widely associated with Ivan Pavlov and his dogs and it involves creating a response in an animal or a human towards an object or sound that previously received a neutral response.
The Little Albert Experiment tested classical conditioning on a nine month old baby that Watson named Albert B. At the beginning of the experiment, the boy loved animals and had a particular bond with a white rat. Every time the rat was present, Watson started using a loud sound of a hammer hitting metal. The young boy soon developed a fear of the rat, along with most other animals and furry objects.
The boy died of an unrelated illness aged just 6 so it’s impossible to say whether or not the phobias that Watson produced would have continued into adulthood. However, he was never desensitised to the phobias, which is why the experiment is considered so unethical.
Asch’s experiments on conformity
In 1951 Solomon Asch did an experiment on conformity. He placed participants in groups and asked them to compare line lengths. Each group was shown a reference line along with three others. They were asked to identify which of the three lines was closest in length to the reference line. Each participant was unknowingly put into a group of actors that had been instructed to give the right answer on the first two occasions and the wrong answer thereafter. The aim of the experiment was to see whether the participant would conform and also give the wrong answer to avoid being the sole outlier.
Of the 50 participants, 37 of them went along with the incorrect group despite the correct answer being obvious.
Despite the study causing no harm to participants, it could not be replicated today because participants were deceived during the experiment and Asch failed to obtain any informed consent.
Milgram and obedience to authority
Stanley Milgram, psychologist at Yale, did an experiment on authority and obedience to try and understand how so many people came to participate in the disturbing acts of the holocaust. He began to conduct his experiments on obedience in 1961, with the theory that people are inclined to obey authority figures which would mean that the majority of people involved in the holocaust were obeying orders.
The participants were told that they were taking part in a study on memory and paired up with another ‘participant’, who was actually an actor that had been recruited for the experiment. The pair were then assigned roles of learner and teacher (the real participant was always the teacher) and they were moved to separate rooms.
The teacher was given instructions to press a button and ‘shock’ the learner every time they got a question wrong and the shocks increased in intensity each time. Eventually, as the shocks got stronger, the actor would start to complain of pain and this was followed by screaming.
Despite the screams, the majority of participants continued to deliver the shocks, despite the clear pain the learner was suffering, for as long as they were instructed.
This is another unethical study that would not be allowed today because the participants were left open to psychological harm. At the end of the experiment it was revealed to the participants that if the shocks had been real the majority would have killed the learner, a fact that could have left them psychologically traumatised.
Psychology is nowadays one of the most popular subjects to study in higher education, so why not give yourself a head start with one of our online courses?
It’s not just businesses and large corporations that have a carbon footprint. Every person in the world also has their own personal carbon footprint that is dependent on wealth, lifestyle and energy availability and usage.
The global carbon footprint is huge, but the fact that spending on housing, products, travel and services, pays for two thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions, shows that personal footprints could be reduced significantly.
Eat!
In wealthy countries around 100 kg of food is wasted per person, every year. This 100 kg accounts for around 20% of total food supply. By eating more of the food you buy, you’ll not only cut your carbon footprint but your bills and rubbish production too.
Eat nature
Foods like cheese and red meat have a carbon intensity more than ten times that of fruit and grains. Making an effort to eat more low carbon foods will not only help reduce your footprint but will also help improve your diet too.
Comfort
Cut your heating bills, make yourself more comfortable and lower your home’s emissions in the process, by improving insulation and air-tightness in your home. The relatively new Passive House concept uses just one tenth of the heating energy of a similar modern house.
Cool down
If you drop your heating by a mere 1⁰C you’ll reduce your usage by about 10% and by turning off the radiators in any rooms you’re not using, you’ll lessen your emissions and heating bills even further.
Be cycle-friendly
Bicycles are obviously the best form of low carbon transport and they’re a great way to get around. However, they’re not always practical, especially if you’re facing a particularly long commute. Electric public transport and even hopping onto a full bus, is another way to reduce your carbon emissions.
If the use of a car is something you rely upon heavily, then opt for an electric or hybrid as these models can reduce your driving emissions by more than 50%.
Love what’s around you
Flying is a major contributor to the size of your carbon footprint and any flight you manage to avoid will reduce it significantly. Although stopping flying altogether is pretty tough and probably not at all practical, limiting your flights is usually much easier.
Buy quality
Whether it’s second hand, made from low carbon materials or is just something that’ll last for years. Quality over quantity is the way forward if you’re looking to significantly reduce product emissions.
If protecting the environment is something you take a keen interest in then check out our online Environmental Awareness course and maybe start a new qualification with us today.
It doesn’t matter how good a picture might look, if you tell people it was taken on a smartphone, their opinion is likely to immediately change. A lot of people are of the opinion that you can’t take a good picture on a smartphone camera. However, with the majority of smartphones having a camera that’s 8-megapixels or more, it’s actually a lot easier than you think.
Don’t zoom
Almost all smartphone cameras have a zoom function and, although they can be useful, if you want to take an impressive shot then you should avoid using them if possible. When you use the zoom on your phone you’ll be able to see a noticeable reduction in the quality of the image being produced. Your smartphone zoom function is simply extrapolating the image that is already there and essentially guessing what it looks like close-up – hence the loss of detail.
Cropping the picture means that you maintain the resolution and therefore don’t jeopardise the clarity and the fact that there’s been no upscaling will help mask the fact that it was ever taken on a phone.
Don’t filter, edit
Instagram is great, it makes sharing photos easy and has bought out the amateur photographer in pretty much everyone. However, simply covering your photos with the same filters and washes that are available to everyone, isn’t enough to make you stand out anymore.
Rather than sticking to Instagram, download a proper editing app like Photoshop Express or Photoshop Mix. You’ll be able to make adjustments to the sharpness of images, colour temperature and contrast and you’ll be making your photos unique in the process. There’s no reason you can’t share your images over social media afterwards but this will allow you to start to develop your own style, that you can maintain and share.
Avoid fake blur
One of the biggest challenges of smartphone cameras is achieving depth of field. The combination of wide angle lenses and small sensors mean that background blur is not easy to achieve, and adding it in afterwards almost always looks terrible.
When you use an editing app to add blur, it usually applies it across the entire image. This looks unnatural because it’s not the way that a lens works. It’s also difficult to select the object you want in focus when adding blur which means you end up with harsh transitions – a major giveaway that it’s not natural and you’ve been messing with the original image.
If you feel like taking your photography skills up to the next level then take a look at our selection of home learning courses and wow your friends with your new found talent.
As the head of Alabama’s Department of Public Safety, Floyd Mann was massively involved in saving riders from brutal attacks during the Freedom Rides of 1960.
Basics
Name: Floyd Mann
Born: August 20th 1920
Occupation: Law enforcement
Place of Birth: Alabama
Overview
Floyd Mann was born in Daviston, Alabama, on 20th August 1920 and died on 12th January 1996. He was a member of law enforcement and played an instrumental role in the protection of riders during the brutal attacks in Montgomery in 1960.
The attack was caused due to the Freedom Rides’ attempts to desegregate interstate travel and during the violence, Mann – a white police official from Alabama – endangered his own life to protect the riders in the fight for desegregation.
Background
As a child, Mann was schooled in both Davidson and Alexander City, Alabama. Later, he joined the US Army Air Corps and served throughout World War II, where he became a colonel and was honoured with numerous awards for his service including the Distinguished Flying Cross.
After serving in the military he served as a security officer for Republic Steel – one of the largest steel producers in the United States – and then went on to become a police officer in Alexander City where he climbed the ranks and became a lieutenant.
Between 1950 and 1958 he was chief of police of Opelika and, in 1959, he became the director of the Alabama Department of Public Safety.
Public Safety Director
After attending the National Academy of the FBI and working in Opelika as police chief for the majority of the 1950s, Mann was appointed as Alabama’s Public Safety Director, by John Patterson – the newly elected governor with strong segregationist beliefs.
Freedom Riders
In 1961, the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), started the Freedom Rides to challenge segregation on bus travel in the south. Although segregation was already technically illegal, the beliefs in the south were still extremely strong and, with white segregationists in control of the majority of law enforcement, it was an issue that continued.
The aim of the Freedom Rides was to challenge segregation but during the rides, participants – both black and white – faced a horrifying ordeal as they were met with brutal violence.
Attacks
Mann was involved in a police force of segregationists and despite opposing the idea of aiding the racist hate, he was overruled and police officers ‘took the day off’ and all white ambulances had ‘gone in for repair’ on the day of the attacks.
Refusing to shirk his duty, Mann worked to place an investigator on one of the rides, who helped to save riders from a fire attack by the Ku Klux Klan.
When he found out about Montgomery’s police officers taking a day’s holiday, abandoning their legal duty and offering riders no protection, and the fact that a lot of the violence had been organised by police officials, he drafted in 100 state troops and placed them on standby.
When the riders reached Montgomery on May 20th 1961 the riders were attacked by a swarm of mobsters with iron bars and baseball bats. The scene was horrific and activists were looking to kill. Mann ran into the crowd firing warning shots and demanded an end to the riots. Although there wasn’t an end straight away, he did manage to save a battered William Barbee, a young black man, who had been hit to the ground by mob members shouting “kill him! Kill him!”
Jim Zwerg was another man who was saved by Mann’s intervention that day, he had been badly beaten during the riots and after a taxi driver refused to escort him to hospital and the police wouldn’t allow Zwerg to travel to hospital until a white ambulance arrived (something that would never have happened because they had all ‘gone in for repair) Mann ordered one of his patrolmen to drive him to hospital, where he survived his injuries.
The police arrived ten minutes into the riot but took no action until they learned of Mann’s involvement. At that point the State Attorney General and Judge Jones took charge, but rather than demanding an end to the riots, they began to read the Judge’s injunction to the badly hurt Freedom Riders. At this point, Mann, defied authority and called for the troops he’d placed on standby. Their arrival restored order in the town.
Post-Freedom Rides
The attacks in Montgomery were seen internationally and it highlighted to the world, the injustices still faced by civil rights workers. However, when asked about his actions, Mann said it was “just a matter of doing what had to be done.”
Now 83 years old, Clint Hill was the secret service agent that protected Jackie Kennedy in the moments following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Basics
Name: Clint Hill
Born: January 4th 1932
Occupation: Law Enforcement
Place of Birth: North Dakota
Overview
Clint Hill was born in North Dakota in 1932, and a few years after finishing his college education, in 1958 he joined the Secret Service. Following the appointment of John F. Kennedy in 1960, Hill was assigned as protector of the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy.
President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas on 22nd November 1963, Hill’s first move was to get into the presidential limousine to protect the family from further gunfire.
Background
Hill was born on 4th January 1932, in Larimore, North Dakota. He is the unexpected son of Alma Peterson – a hotel maid – who sent him to a children’s home just a few days after he was born. After some time in a children’s home, he was eventually adopted by a family from Washburn, North Dakota.
He later went on to say he,
“Had a great childhood, even though I never had my own room—I shared the porch with my grandfather and kept my belongings in one drawer of a dresser that was jammed next to the piano—I never went hungry and was always supported by my family.”
After high school, he went on to study history at Concordia College in Minnesota. Shortly after graduation he was called to serve in the US army, which resulted in a three-year stint of military service.
After serving in the army, in 1958 he joined the Secret Service and spent time in an investigative post in Colorado. In 1959 he was promoted and became part of the presidential protection unit intended to help guard the president – President Dwight D. Eisenhower, at the time.
After the election of President Kennedy in November 1960, Hill was disappointed to have been assigned to protect the first lady rather than the new president. However, he grew to admire Jackie Kennedy and was eventually promoted to protect her exclusively and was placed in charge of all other agents responsible for her protection.
The assassination of President Kennedy
On 22nd November 1963, President Kennedy was on an official visit to Dallas, Texas. Hill was assigned to walk alongside the vehicle procession as the presidential limo travelled through the city. After the first of Lee Harvey Oswald’s gunshots hit President Kennedy, Hill raced his way to the presidential limo to protect the rest of the family. As Hill got his footing on the back of the vehicle he pushed the first lady back down into her seat, after she’d begun climbing onto the boot of the car. President Kennedy lay, fatally wounded, across his wife’s lap, as Hill covered the pair to protect them from any further gun fire.
Hill himself, later described the scene as horrific. He was interviewed many times about the incident, for news crews all over the world. He told one interviewer:
“The [president’s] skull … it looked like somebody had taken an ice cream scoop and gone in there and just removed a whole portion of the brain and thrown it around the back of the car, the back of the car and she were covered in blood and brain.”
Post-assassination
Hill was praised for his actions and bravery during the tragic event and was even cited at a public ceremony, by the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Despite working for Jackie Kennedy for another year following the assassination – and going on to serve in the Secret Service until his retirement in 1975 – Hill suffered from stress and was plagued with guilt over the president’s death as he believed he hadn’t done enough to save him:
“I completely failed in my responsibilities. The president was killed on my duty.”
After the assassination, Hill didn’t take any time off but struggled with his demons in silence. It has since been revealed, by co-author of his memoir Lisa McCubbin, that:
“His PTSD was never treated and he received no time off after the assassination, but instead was faced with protecting the widow for a full year following the assassination. He did this honorably, with dignity, and with steely courage, suffering silently.”
Foetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) describes a range of conditions caused by exposure to alcohol by a developing foetus.
This week on ITV there is a programme investigating the impact of drinking during pregnancy particularly when a child develops FASD or Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.
Exposure: When Pregnant Women Drink
http://www.itv.com/news/2015-02-24/exposure-when-pregnant-women-drink-the-families-living-with-fasd/
03/03/2015 on ITV from 9:00pm to 10:00pm
In line with this programme we have a special offer on both our dedicated FASD courses.
Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD)
Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and the Criminal Justice System
These courses are ideal for anyone who may work with individuals with Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder or anyone wishing to know more about FASD.
Both these courses are authored and tutored by Gloria Armistead MBE.
Gloria is a founding member of the charity Foetal Alcohol Syndrome Aware UK (FASAwareUK) which aims to make people aware of the effects that drinking alcohol can have on an unborn child. Gloria received her MBE for services to FASD for both awareness and reduction of this syndrome.
See Gloria pick up her award below: