Is sleep important to children？A new study says yes.

A new study published this week shows that children who do not get _____ sleep have less control over emotions and are less focused at school.

The National Sleep Foundation _____ 10 to 11 hours of shut-eye per night for children aged between 5 and 12. About 41 million American workers get less than six hours of sleep per night. Now health experts _____ that adults are passing their poor sleeping _____ down to their children.

Reut Gruber is a lead author of the new study. In the study，Gruber and other experts either added or reduced one hour of sleep for _____ children aged 7 to 11. They _____ the children over five nights. The _____ was to see if small changes in the amount of sleep could _____a child's behavior.

“The findings show that for children small changes can make a big _____，and that is why this is meaningful.”

Before the survey began, students were _______to sleep the same amount of hours as they ______ would. Their teachers were asked to ______ the children on thoughtfulness, touchiness and emotional reactions. After five nights of the kids' sleep change, the teachers were asked to take the survey again. ______ their original scores, those who slept one hour less had ______ behavior scores than those who were allowed to sleep an hour more.  Students with less sleep were more annoyed, frustrated and had more problems which need paying ______ to.  The children with more sleep showed ______ in these areas.

“______ less sleep leads to a drop in attention in class, children may ______ on learning and chances to be ______. If they are easily annoyed and frustrated because their bodies and brains are ______, they may not learn as much either,”says Gruber.

   A newly-published study has shown that loneliness can spread from one person to another，like a disease. Researchers used information from the Framingham Heart Study，which began in 1948. The Framingham Heart Study gathers information about physical and mental health，personal behavior and diet. At first，the study involved（使参加）about 5,000 people in the American state of Massachusetts. Now more than 12,000 individuals（个人）are taking part.

Information from the Framingham Heart Study showed earlier that happiness can spread from person to person. So can behavior like littering and the ability to stop smoking.

Psychologist John Cacioppo，at the University of Chicago，led the recent study. He and other researchers tried to show how often people felt lonely. They found that the feeling of loneliness spread through social groups.

Having a social connection with a lonely person increased the chances that another individual would feel lonely. In fact，a friend of a lonely person was 52% more likely to develop feelings of loneliness. A friend of that person was 25%more likely. The researchers said this shows that a person could indirectly be affected by someone’s loneliness.

The effect was the strongest among friends. Neighbors were the second most affected group. The effect was weaker on husbands and wives，and brothers and sisters. The researchers also found that loneliness spread more easily among women than men.

The New York Times newspaper reported that，on average，people experience feelings of loneliness about 48 days a year. It also found that every additional（额外的）friend can decrease loneliness by about five percent，or two and a half fewer lonely days.

Loneliness has been linked to health problems like depression（抑郁症）and sleeping difficulties. The researchers believe that knowing the causes of loneliness could help reduce it.

The study suggested that people can take steps to stop the spread of loneliness. They can do this by helping individuals they know who may be experiencing loneliness. The result can be helpful to the whole social group.

   Before I studied psychology，I used to think that people would laugh when funny things occurred. While I was right about that，I discovered there are lots of other psychological reasons that make people laugh other than the funny part of a joke. When someone laughs at a joke，there will usually be more than one reason that makes him laugh-and the more reasons there are，the more powerful the joke will be.

I was attending a stand-up comedy show in Egypt，and when the man started to make fun of pedestrians crossing streets，everyone laughed their head off. The main reason why those people strongly laughed was that almost all of them felt angry with pedestrians who crossed streets carelessly. The joke wasn't only funny，it also made the audience feel that they were right about being angry at those pedestrians. That is，people were laughing because of both the funny joke and the happiness experienced as a result of the psychological support they got.

The better a joke makes a person feel，the more it includes other psychological factors，and the more the person will like it. For example，if you envy one of your friends，and someone tells a joke that is funny and，at the same time，makes your friend seem stupid，then you will probably laugh at it louder than if you weren't jealous（嫉妒的）of him.

In short, we not only laugh when we hear something funny, but also laugh when we experience some kind of happiness that results from the other psychological factors involved in the joke. I strongly discourage making fun of anyone or belittling someone to make someone else laugh. All I want to explain is that if your joke supports a person's emotions, he will certainly like it a lot.