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In the Age of A.I., Major in Being Human
Last summer, a piece of artwork generated with artificial intelligence took a first prize at the Colorado State Fair. To me, the image looks like a view from the back of the stage at an
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What Good Comes From Pretending?
Hang out with a 3-year-old and you will quickly be transported to a world of unicorns and superheroes, pretend tea parties and invisible spaceships. Young children spend hours pretending. But why would they spend so
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America Goes About Juvenile Crime Sentencing All Wrong
“I helped a so-called friend commit armed robbery and murder back in 1994,” explained Ming Ho, a Michigan prison inmate who first wrote me in 2015 upon spotting a math error in one of my
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People Blame and Judge Parents for Children’s Heavier Weights
The big idea Americans stigmatize parents of heavier children, specifically blaming them for their children’s weights, according to experiments conducted by our team of psychologists. The more a person views parents as responsible for a child’s excess weight, the more
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‘They Want Toys to Get Their Children Into Harvard’: Have We Been Getting Playthings All Wrong?
The week my eldest son finished nursery, I decided to clear out the playroom where he had spent much of his young life forming bonds with inanimate objects. Toys had kept him company whenever other duties or
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To Get Kids Into Science, Just Do It
Developmental psychologists have long noted that very small children think a lot like scientists. Anybody who has spent time with a 2-year-old has witnessed their insatiable curiosity and constant experiments. Yet by the time most