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OPRE Grant Announcement
If you have questions regarding these grant announcements, please email [email protected] or [email protected], respectively, or call 1-877-350-5913. The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families, US Department of Health and Human Services, recently published two discretionary research funding announcements titled “Early Care and Education Research Scholars: Head Start Graduate Student Research Grants” and “Early Care and Education Research Scholars: Child Care Research Scholars,” which are summarized below.
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Moving Beyond “Just-So Stories”: Young Children Can Be Taught Basic Natural Selection
Spend more than a few hours with a child under the age of 10 and “why?” is a question you’re likely to hear a lot. Children are naturally curious explorers, and they actively try to understand the new and incomprehensible things around them. Psychology researchers have discovered that this natural curiosity can be harnessed to help even young children grasp some of the important scientific concepts involved in natural selection.
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Bilingualism Alters the Way the Mind Works
Over the past 20 years, researchers have increasingly accepted the fact that different types of experiences can alter the structure and function of the brain over time. In an article published in the Journal of Cognitive Psychology, APS Fellows Judith Kroll (Pennsylvania State University) and Ellen Bialystok (York University) highlight bilingualism as one experience that can have a profound impact on lifelong neural and cognitive development and functioning.
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Young Children Take Authoritarian Cues From Their Parents
Some people bridle at the very idea of having to bend to authority. Others, however, value following a leader and playing by the rules, a trait that researchers refer to as “authoritarianism.” Studies suggest that a person’s level of authoritarianism is correlated with various sociopolitical orientations, and they further indicate a strong link between young adults’ and their parents’ levels of authoritarianism. And yet, “research on the topic has rarely examined or even anticipated early-childhood manifestations of authoritarianism,” says psychological scientist Michal Reifen Tagar of the University of Minnesota.
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Idealistic Thinking Linked With Economic Slump
Envisioning a bright future should pave the way for success, right? Maybe not. Research suggests that thinking about an idealized future may actually be linked with economic downturn, not upswing. “[F]antasizing about having attained a desired future may lead people to mentally enjoy the idealized future in the here and now,” explain researchers A. Timur Sevincer of the University of Hamburg and colleagues.
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Head Start’s 12th National Research Conference on Early Childhood
Head Start's 12th National Research Conference on Early Childhood will be held July 7–9, 2014 at the Grand Hyatt Washington in Washington, DC. For more information visit www.hsrconference.net.
