Tag: Child Development

Anxious people take fewer risks — this is not surprising. However, a team of psychologists from the German Friedrich Schiller University Jena, together with partners from Würzburg in Germany and the Canadian University of Victoria have succeeded in making this decision process visible in the brain, allowing them to predict the behaviour of individuals. They

Several studies have suggested that intensive musical training enhances children’s linguistic skills. Such training, however, is not available to all children. Researchers at Cognitive Brain Research Unit in the University of Helsinki studied in a community setting whether a low-cost, weekly music playschool provided to 5-6-year-old children in kindergartens affects their linguistic abilities. The children

Spending more years in full time education is associated with a greater risk of developing short-sightedness (myopia), finds a study published by The BMJ today. The researchers say their study provides “strong evidence” that more time spent in education is a risk factor for myopia, and that the findings “have important implications for educational practices.”

Just as we abide by an external time schedule to eat, sleep, and go to work, our body is similarly dictated by internal clocks. Known as circadian rhythms, these daily cycles keep us on a regular 24-hour day and are involved in numerous aspects of our well-being. When these biological clocks fail to work as

Skyrocketing drug prices and the looming insolvency of Social Security and Medicare are just two of many pressing issues caused by America’s surging baby-boom population, often referred to as the “Silver Tsunami.” What can be done about it? In a recent article published in The Elder Law Journal, Sharona Hoffman, the Edgar A. Hahn Professor

Children who participate in gun safety programs often ignore what they learned when encountering a real firearm, according to a Rutgers School of Nursing study. The report, published recently in Health Promotion Practice, reviewed 10 studies on the effectiveness of strategies for teaching gun safety to children ages 4 to 9. The researchers found such

A new study has discovered that horses were first domesticated by descendants of hunter-gatherer groups in Kazakhstan who left little direct trace in the ancestry of modern populations. The research sheds new light on the long-standing “steppe theory” on the origin and movement of Indo-European languages made possible by the domestication of the horse. The

Sorry, new moms and dads — even though your infants really do appreciate your squeaky coos, they would prefer to hear sounds from their peers — other babies. Even at the pre-babbling stage — before they can form sounds resembling syllables like “ba ba ba” — infants recognize vowel-like sounds, but they tend to dwell

Have you ever considered that working night shifts may, in the long run, have an impact on your health? A team of researchers from the McGill University affiliated Douglas Mental Health University Institute (DMHUI) has discovered that genes regulating important biological processes are incapable of adapting to new sleeping and eating patterns and that most

A recent study by sensory researchers at Kansas State University’s Olathe campus finds that emojis are a viable alternative to words when it comes to accurately measuring how kids feel about food, products and other experiences. The results appear in the study, “The emoji scale: A facial scale for the 21st century,” which was published

Parenting concerns contributed significantly to the psychological distress of mothers with late-stage cancer, according to a study by University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers. Cancer is the leading cause of disease-specific death for parenting-age women in the United States, and women with incurable cancer who have children can have increased rates of

Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Beer-Sheva, Israel have demonstrated for the first time the feasibility of a robotic system that plays Tic Tac Toe with rehabilitation patients to improve real-life task performance. The interdisciplinary research team designed a game with a robotic arm to simulate “3D Functional Activities of Daily Living”

A recent study finds that young people who get financial support from their parents have greater professional success, highlighting one way social inequality is transmitted from one generation to the next. “The question underlying this work was whether parental support gives adult children an advantage or hinders their development,” says Anna Manzoni, an associate professor

Autism is challenging to diagnose, especially early in life. A new study in the journal Scientific Reports shows that inexpensive EEGs, which measure brain electrical activity, accurately predict or rule out autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in infants, even in some as young as 3 months. “EEGs are low-cost, non-invasive and relatively easy to incorporate into

The cerebral neocortex is responsible for higher brain functions, such as conscious thought and language, in humans. In the neocortex, neurons are precisely arranged in an ordered 6-layered structure. This neocortical structure is formed by the sequential generation of billions of neurons and their migration toward the brain surface in the fetal period. “Subplate neurons”

People rely on financial managers, doctors and lawyers to be as objective as possible when making decisions about investments, health and legal issues, but findings from a new study suggest that an unexpected factor could be influencing these choices. In a series of experiments, researchers found that people at higher elevations in an office building

In a new analysis of interviews conducted with children who have asthma, their caregivers and their clinicians, Johns Hopkins researchers found that there was significant lack of agreement about why the kids miss their needed daily anti-inflammatory medication. A report on the findings, published in the Journal of Asthma on Feb. 8, 2018, highlights the

While global rates of mental disorders in children have remained stable over time, the decline of infectious diseases will place mental disorders among the main causes of disease in children aged 4-15 years, according to a study published in the open access journal Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health. Marie-Laure Baranne and Bruno Falissard

Four months after Hurricane Harvey soaked the Houston area and displaced more than a third of the population, an alarming 52 percent of Harris County residents said they were still struggling to recover, according to a new report from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health. “What we

A comprehensive review of scientific literature surrounding the psychology of vaccinations has shown that shaping behavior rather than trying to change minds is far more effective at persuading people to get immunized. “There is very little evidence to suggest that we can change people’s beliefs or knowledge in a way that will lead to increased