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How Bad Is Screen Time for Kids, Really?
Screen time has been a hot-button topic for parents for decades and particularly over the past few years. The rise of personal devices like tablets, phones and smart watches, along with the use of screens in schools, has made screen time common for kids. Data also shows that screen time skyrocketed during the pandemic as parents struggled to juggle working with managing their children being at home. Screen time guidelines have changed slightly over time. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) used to recommend no screen time at all for children until 18 to 24 months, and limiting kids ages 2 to 5 to an hour or less of screen time a day. ...
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Wendy Wood: It’s Time We Trained Students for Diverse Careers in Psychological Science
Podcast: Only about half of psychology PhDs are hired in academia, but psychology graduate training in the United States has largely retained the classic graduate training model of a direct path to an academic job. It’s time to change that, says Wendy Wood.
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Public May Overestimate Pushback Against Controversial Research Findings
Do researchers overestimate the risk that certain research findings will fuel public support for censorship, defunding, and other harmful actions?
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How to Learn Something New Every Day
Many people consider learning to be an active endeavor, one that takes place in a classroom with a teacher and homework and tests. This intentional form of education is just one way to acquire knowledge. In fact, we absorb new information every day, often unintentionally: the best way to store tomatoes, the quickest way to get to work, the dog’s preferred chew toy. “It’s really important to give ourselves credit for the massive amount of information we learn without realizing it,” says cognitive scientist Pooja Agarwal, an assistant professor at the Berklee College of Music. There is a distinction between committing facts to memory and learning.
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Humans Will Trade Pain for Useless Information
People often go great lengths to earn a reward—no pain, no gain, as the saying goes. A new study published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests that many will also go to great lengths for functionally worthless information, showing a willingness to endure physical pain for information about the value of a monetary reward, even when that information won’t affect its value. “This study gives us a vivid new window to understand how we motivate ourselves to seek information about our future,” says Ethan Bromberg-Martin, a neuroscientist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who wasn’t involved in the study.
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Want to Be More Successful? Neuroscience Shows Embracing a Growth Mindset Actually Changes How Your Brain Functions
