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September 2, 2010
Seven-year-old children only need to interact with a person once to learn who to trust and seek information from. 
August 31, 2010
Girls are hitting puberty earlier and earlier. One recent study found that more than 10 percent of American girls have some breast development by age 7. This news has upset many people, but it may make evolutionary sense.
August 30, 2010
Mothers are said to hold a special lifelong place in their children's hearts, but it also appears they have a unique significance in their brains too.
August 20, 2010
Oxytocin plays an important role in birth and maternal behavior, but until now, research had never addressed the involvement of oxytocin in the transition to fatherhood.
August 3, 2010
A large part of human milk cannot be digested by babies and seems to have a purpose quite different from infant nutrition—that of influencing the composition of the bacteria in the infant's gut.
July 13, 2010
While the biological changes mom goes through are quite obvious, are hormones starting to kick in for dad as well?
June 16, 2010
Even before they learn to speak, babies are organizing information about numbers, space and time in more complex ways than previously realized.
June 7, 2010
Enrichment classes, after-school activities, tutoring, not to mention the gentle prodding of parents—all may count in giving a child that extra academic edge. But parents still puzzle over what the right mix.
June 1, 2010
Parents who despair over their teenagers' lack of concentration in class, inability to sit still long enough to finish homework or plan ahead, should take solace. Their children are not being lazy or careless—they are hapless victims of neurobiology.
May 18, 2010
Teenagers do crazy things, and the chemistry of their brains might explain why, say researchers.
May 13, 2010
Is breast milk so different from infant formula? The ability to track which genes are operating in an infant's intestine has allowed scientists to compare the early development of breast-fed and formula-fed babies. They say the difference is very real.
May 10, 2010
Researchers asked infants of various ages to choose between characters which they had seen behaving well or badly, and found they overwhelmingly favoured the "good" characters.
April 28, 2010
The phenomenon is known as "sexually antagonistic grandparental care" explains earlier studies showing a paternal grandmother benefits granddaughters' health more than grandsons.
April 16, 2010
Parents may want their girls to grow up to be astronauts and their boys to do their fair share of child care duties, but a new study suggests certain stereotypical gender preferences take root even before most kids can crawl.
April 8, 2010
Researchers have discovered that toddlers as young as 21 months appreciate good intentions, and will do their best to reward the efforts of people who try to help them.
March 31, 2010
A new study has found that fathers give toddlers more leeway and that allows them to actively explore their environments.
March 18, 2010
Active fathers may have been a key factor in why our early ancestors were able to have many children.
March 16, 2010
Researchers have discovered that infants respond to the rhythm and tempo of music and find it more engaging than speech.
March 1, 2010
It's not so much what teens are thinking—it's how,.
February 15, 2010
A study reveals that infants as young as six months old know when we're "playing" them—and they don't like it.
January 27, 2010
Children as young as five months old will follow the gaze of an adult towards an object and engage in joint attention.
December 17, 2009
A possible evolutionary explanation is that daughters are likely to mate and produce grandchildren regardless of condition, whereas weedy sons may fail in the struggle to have the chance to reproduce at all.
December 16, 2009
Why does a human baby need a full year before it can start walking, while a newborn foal gets up on its legs almost directly after birth?
November 25, 2009
Researchers have found that being too clean could impair the skin's ability to heal.
November 17, 2009
High emotionality is a characteristic of adolescents and researchers are trying to understand how 'emotional areas' of the brain differ between adults and adolescents.
November 13, 2009
Researchers found they were less likely to suffer high blood pressure during pregnancy and less likely to give birth to smaller babies.
November 11, 2009
Parents often try to teach their toddlers self-control and mental discipline. Increasingly, pre-school teachers do this, too. But should we really be trying to teach self-control?
November 5, 2009
From their very first days, newborns' cries already bear the mark of the language their parents speak.
October 28, 2009
Why women evolved to live beyond their reproductive years is a mystery. Now there is new evidence backing the "grandma hypothesis"—that they stick around to invest in their grandchildren, safeguarding the genes they share.
October 23, 2009
Infants as young as five months old are able to correctly identify humans as the source of speech and monkeys as the source of monkey calls, psychology researchers have found.
September 10, 2009
About 10% of all couples hoping for a baby have fertility problems. Environmentalists say pollution is to blame and psychiatrists point to our stressful lifestyles, but an evolutionary biologist offers a different take.
September 4, 2009
A new study shows that dogs and young human babies both make the same classic error in a famous psychology experiment—while wolves raised by people do not.
August 31, 2009
With her breasts enlarged and hormones flowing, what happens if no newborn appears to suckle? How will her body—and brain—react?
July 23, 2009
You may be tempted to think men are becoming an optional extra in the mating game, but biochemical evidence in mice and people suggests that fathers may play a key role in the rearing of offspring.
July 21, 2009
Mothers' health in the days and weeks prior to becoming pregnant may determine the health of offspring much later in life.
July 15, 2009
Brain scans of teens sizing each other up reveal an emotion circuit activating more in girls as they grow older, but not in boys.
July 8, 2009
Wealthy mothers have more sons while their less privileged counterparts tend to produce more daughters, a study shows.
July 8, 2009
The study has shown for the first time that paternal investment is partly influenced by genetically based similarities.
June 10, 2009
Children who look and smell like their father receive more of their support, compared to kids who resemble dad less.
June 5, 2009
If you want to wait by the phone for your next college-aged daughter's call home, you should mark the days of her menstrual cycle on your calendar.
May 18, 2009
Any child confronting an outraged parent demanding to know "What were you thinking?" now has a new response: "Scientists have discovered that my brain is organized differently than yours."
May 13, 2009
What is cuteness for? No clear biological link has been found between cuteness and womanhood and mothering—until now.
May 7, 2009
A new study shows what many mothers already know: their babies are a lot smarter than others may realize.
May 6, 2009
Phonological constancy (recognizing words in different dialects) is already evident by 19 months of age, but is not yet present at 15 months.
April 30, 2009
Second-born children are more likely to be rebellious in later life than their more conservative older siblings, according to research.
April 16, 2009
A new theory about early human adaptation suggests that our ancestors capitalized on their capacities for play to enable the development of a highly cooperative way of life.
April 13, 2009
Many animals improve their chances of passing on their genes if they desert their young when food or parenting help is scarce and invest instead in future offspring that are more likely to survive and reproduce.
April 9, 2009
Judith Rich Harris argues that peers are much more important than parents, that psychologists underestimate the power of genetics and that we have a lot to learn from Asian classrooms.
April 6, 2009
Teenagers are selfish, reckless and irritable because their brains develop slower than their bodies.
March 31, 2009
Nurses in the maternity ward often say that a difficult labor is a sign of a baby boy. Now, a study provides scientific proof that a male baby comes with a bigger package of associated risks than his female counterparts.
March 24, 2009
The mysterious goings-on inside teen brains have befuddled countless parents over the years. Now some insights are being provided by recent neuroscience research.
February 10, 2009
A new study confirms that teens 16 and younger do think about the future less than adults, but explains that the reasons may have less to do with impulsivity and more to do with a desire to do something exciting.
January 28, 2009
Free, imaginative play is crucial for normal social, emotional and cognitive development. It makes us better adjusted, smarter and less stressed.
January 21, 2009
Women are better at spotting a cute baby than men, according to a study.
December 11, 2008
Menopause is a mystery. It leaves women with 20, 30, perhaps even 50 years of life—squandered time in evolutionary terms, because no further genes can be passed on.
October 31, 2008
Although babies typically start talking around 12 months of age, their brains actually begin processing certain aspects of language much earlier, so that by the time they start talking, babies actually already know hundreds of words.
October 13, 2008
A new study shows that 5-month-old babies can distinguish an upbeat tune, such as "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, from a lineup of gloomier compositions.
September 24, 2008
It’s probably not surprising that mothers excel at recognizing and interpreting the moods and emotions of their infants. However, the neural mechanisms that underlie these behaviors are poorly understood.
August 27, 2008
We are wired for epetitious syllables like "Mommy" and "Daddy."
August 22, 2008
Some children have evolutionary distaste for bitter remedies, foods, study finds.
August 14, 2008
Infants aged 5 months react very differently to a fearful face than those aged 7 months.
July 8, 2008
Science may have confirmed what most moms already know: When a woman sees her baby smile, certain areas of her brain activate, stimulating happy feelings.
May 28, 2008
Unconditional love in parent-child relationships may not be naturally wired in humans.
May 15, 2008
Having an older brother may reduce your chances of reproductive success.
May 14, 2008
Infants, unlike adults, store color categories in the brain's right hemisphere. This new finding reveals the surprising power of language over perception.
April 23, 2008
New research provides the first evidence that a child’s sex is associated with the mother’s diet. The study shows a clear link between higher energy intake around the time of conception and the birth of sons.
April 8, 2008
It's thought of as a sexual stereotype: boys tend to play with toy cars and diggers, while girls like dolls. But male monkeys, suggests research, are no different.
April 1, 2008
Infants intuitively understand probability.
March 31, 2008
Many parents are convinced that the brains of their teenage offspring are different than those of children and adults. New data confirms that this is the case.
March 18, 2008
Grandmothers, you might want to look away now. An analysis of births and deaths in Costa Rica suggests that the longer grandmothers live, the fewer grandchildren their daughters raised.
March 4, 2008
Babies and adults use opposite sides of their brains to process colours. And the switch is due to the influence of language, a study suggests.
February 28, 2008
For most of human history, children played by roaming near or far in packs large and small. Younger children were supervised by older children and engaged in freewheeling imaginative play. But it's different today.
February 27, 2008
The urge to cuddle and coo when presented with a baby turns out to be an innate response prompted, at least in part, by the structure of an infant's face.
February 21, 2008
Study shows when kids' actions reflect their awareness that some outcomes are worth chasing more than others.
February 8, 2008
A wider choice of mates reduces people's reproductive output. That may explain why families in rich countries are smaller than those in poor ones.
January 23, 2008
Mothers are choosing to have fewer children in order to give their children the best start in life, but by doing so are going against millennia of human evolution.
December 3, 2007
Moms, want your baby to learn to like fruits and vegetables? If you’re breast feeding, you can provide baby with a good start by eating them yourself.
November 19, 2007
The sex of a child may depend on how stressed its mother is.
November 16, 2007
For many young girls, a stable family life is one key factor to avoiding a number of serious health problems and delaying the onset of puberty.
November 9, 2007
Teenagers and adults often don't see eye to eye, and new brain research is now shedding light on some of the reasons why.
October 2, 2007
Toddlers are learning language skills earlier than expected and by the age of 18 months understand enough of the lexicon of their own language to recognize how speakers use sounds to convey meaning.
September 19, 2007
The menopause may be an ordeal for women experiencing a 'hot flash', but new research suggests it had a good evolutionary cause—freeing women to be good grandmothers.
August 27, 2007
Adolescence brings more freedom and with it, more opportunities for risky behaviors. But mental health researchers say teen risk-taking is also a natural response to changes in their brains.
August 22, 2007
A large study of twins, which included both identical and fraternal twin pairs, found that nearly 80 percent of children's tendency to avoid unfamiliar foods was inherited.
August 20, 2007
Rich, married and well-educated women tend to have more sons while those who are unhealthy and poorer tend to have more daughters, according to a study.
August 19, 2007
Researchers have long known that at about 18 months children experience a vocabulary explosion, suddenly learning words at a much faster rate. They have theorized that complex mechanisms are behind the phenomenon. But new research suggests far simpler mechanisms may be at play.
August 19, 2007
Children can remember facts but are less good at recalling the context in which those facts are relevant. And they are easily swayed from long-term goals. But as people grow, their brains change.
August 19, 2007
Preschoolers are more introspective than we give them credit for.
July 23, 2007
Researchers found that the peer group a child belongs to has differential effects on deviant, aggressive, and prosocial behavior.
June 28, 2007
Children younger than 22 months may be entertained, but they do not learn words from a television program.
June 13, 2007
Women who enjoy good childhood relationships with their fathers select partners who resemble their dads.
June 5, 2007
A new study shows that by the age of seven months, human infants are on the lookout for abstract rules—and that they know the best place to look for such abstractions is in human speech.
June 1, 2007
Children are able to solve approximate addition or subtraction problems involving large numbers even before they have been taught arithmetic.
May 29, 2007
Babies might seem a bit dim in their first six months of life, but researchers are getting smarter about what babies know, and the results are surprising.
May 25, 2007
At four months, babies can tell whether a speaker has switched to a different language from visual cues alone.
May 21, 2007
Childhood is characterized by improvement on tasks of cognitive and motor function, this progress levels off at around age 11 or 12, just prior to adolescence.
May 17, 2007
Adolescents with high-risk sexual attitudes attract peers with similar attitudes.
May 10, 2007
If you have teenage boys and are unsure about what topics to cover when discussing 'the birds and bees' with them, it may be worth reading the latest piece of research about sexual communication and teenage boys.
April 12, 2007
While the government spends billions of dollars on educational and prevention programs to persuade teens not to do things like smoke, drink or do drugs, studies suggest risky or dangerous behavior is biologically driven.
March 26, 2007
Infants use indirect emotional information—emotional reactions that are directed at other people—to guide their own behavior.
March 22, 2007
Humans as young as 4-months-old have the ability to detect at least some three-dimensional features that give rise to the perception of object coherence.
March 13, 2007
Teenage aspirations aside, modern humans are in no rush to grow up.
March 13, 2007
A mechanism that calms nerve cells in adults and children, has the opposite effect on teenagers; finding could lead to new treatments for teen angst and depression.
March 12, 2007
If you've ever felt silly cooing "baby talk" to your infant, relax. New research suggests you're giving your child just what he or she needs to begin developing language skills and to bond with you.
March 8, 2007
New research suggests that this might be because children think the toy or blanket has a unique property or 'essence'.
January 19, 2007
Very young children are much better than adults at learning music.
December 11, 2006
They think more than adults about risks and benefits, but then opt for the benefits.
December 7, 2006
Would you choose a guaranteed $100 or a 20 percent chance of $1000? What if the odds went up to 40 percent? Whatever your answer, your mother would likely agree.
November 29, 2006
It is a mystery that has for centuries befuddled midwives and scientists alike: why do mothers insist that their scrunched-up, ruddy-faced, newborn babies look just like daddy?
November 28, 2006
Willingness to take risks and trust others are inherited—this also has implications for economic success
March 22, 2006
Like teenagers, babies don't much care what their parents say.
February 18, 2006
Depriving children of a loving family environment causes lasting damage to their intelligence, emotional wellbeing and even their physical stature, according to the most extensive study of social deprivation yet.
January 13, 2006
Brothers and sisters are more powerful role models than friends or parents when it comes to teenage drinking and smoking, research has shown.
October 23, 2006
Blue-eyed men show preference for women with same eye color.
October 24, 2006
Sexy males sire dowdy daughters and attractive females bear insipid sons.
September 19, 2006
Perceived facial similarity of children is effectively an estimate of the probability that two children are close genetic relatives.
September 12, 2006
Chemical cues from fathers may be delaying the onset of sexual maturity in daughters, as part of an evolutionary strategy to prevent inbreeding.
September 7, 2006
If you ever sense teenagers are not taking your feelings into account, it's probably because they're just incapable of doing so.
July 25, 2006
Male primates, including men, experience dramatic hormone changes when they become fathers.
June 8, 2006
It takes a lot more than testosterone to make a father out of a man. Research shows that hormonal changes in both sexes help shape men into devoted dads.
July 13, 2006
The absence of a father, the presence of half- and step-brothers, and living in an urban environment are all associated with the earlier onset of a girl's first period
July 13, 2006
U.S. psychologists say children's ideas about fairness might involve a consideration of racial factors.
June 19, 2006
Parenthood can have its gross-out moments, but then so can science. In a test to examine the possible evolutionary roots of the disgust response, mothers were asked to sniff soiled diapers.
June 18, 2006
Before society criticises teenage girls for having sex behind the bike sheds and becoming pregnant, or women in their 60s for seeking IVF treatment, it is important to consider fertility not just in terms of the 21st century but in the context of the past 150,000 years.
May 12, 2006
Be grateful to your mom. Not only did she carry you around for nine months, but now new research suggests that her mothering style may have triggered genes that help determine your parenting style.
April 17, 2006
Even those who doubt status are wrong 70% of time, study shows.
April 6, 2006
What do women want from a man? While not much has changed for men, as women's financial independence has increased, it seems that their preferences have changed.
December 2, 2005
Paleolithic girls arrived at menarche—the first occurrence of menstruation—between seven and 13 years. This is a similar age to modern girls, which suggests that this is the evolutionarily determined age of puberty in girls.
November 10, 2005
Fatherhood significantly reduces men's testosterone levels, a study has shown.
November 3, 2005
Research into an unusually high prevalence of a particular set of genes in China has suggested that 1.5 million Chinese men are direct descendants of Giocangga, the grandfather of the founder of the Qing dynasty.
October 25, 2005
The stress of dirty air skews sex ratios in Sao Paulo.
October 12, 2005
Families who regularly share meals together have children who know more about their family history and tend to have higher self-esteem, interact better with their peers and show higher resilience in the face of adversity.
October 10, 2005
"Ladies choice" isn't just a dance routine, it is also a driver of species evolution.
September 22, 2005
While the study found that year-old babies tune into the rhythms of their own musical heritage, the infants still have a better ear than adults for the complex rhythms unique to foreign music.
September 14, 2005
Even the subtlest hints of anger or hostility in their environment sets physically abused children on prolonged "alert," even if a conflict has nothing to do with them.
August 12, 2005
Increasing use of genetic testing for medical and legal reasons means more couples are discovering the biological proof of who fathered the child.
August 4, 2005
Breastfeeding toddlers: it's considered a social no-no, which means very few mothers end up breastfeeding their babies past 12 months of age despite recommendations by the World Health Organisation.
August 1, 2005
It is sealed with a kiss. Researchers have found that a protein called kisspeptin triggers the cascade of biochemical changes that leads to puberty and turns children into hormonally challenged adolescents.
July 19, 2005
As a generally cynical society, we tend to assume that the only innocent minds worth cherishing are those of children. However, that idyllic thought could be dashed to pieces.
June 8, 2005
Poor nutrition in the womb may remodel the brain circuitry of newborn babies and predispose them to become obese in later life, research in mice suggests.
May 20, 2005
Your ability to follow the rules of the road when driving on unfamiliar streets exists thanks to the way your pre-teen life experiences influenced the development of your brain.
May 18, 2005
Although being popular is a primary goal for many teenagers—and their parents—a new study finds that popularity itself has a downside.
May 17, 2005
Finally researchers have come up with a reason other than pure laziness for why teenagers can't shower and brush their teeth or unload the dishwasher and wipe down the counter.
May 9, 2005
Growing research shows that babies as young as four months show a preference for certain colours.
May 3, 2005
Children in a single-parent family tend to do worse academically than children living with married parents. Having a grandparent in the home appears to buffer some of these negative effects.
May 2, 2005
Not all the victims of 9/11 died in the towers or the crashed planes. A higher than average number of male fetuses died in the US in the following months, a study of birth rates suggests.
April 12, 2005
A recent observational study on children and shopping cart safety shows that good-looking children are more likely to be better attended to by their parents than "unattractive" kids are.
April 8, 2005
Research has suggested children begin to understand false beliefs at about 4 years of age, but a recent study finds children realize some beliefs are false at a much earlier age than previously thought.
March 31, 2005
Adults may feel silly when they talk to babies, but those babies will learn to speak sooner if adults talk to them like infants instead of like other adults.
March 25, 2005
A study found no differences in children's social and intellectual development between those whose mothers spent a lot of time with them in infancy and those whose mothers spent less time because they worked outside the home.
March 10, 2005
Exactly why evolution has produced all this fussing and squawking from babies is a question many biologists are trying to answer.
March 9, 2005
A collection of articles from New Scientist.
March 9, 2005
Kids who imitate their mothers may develop a better sense of conscience.
March 7, 2005
A whiny kid attracts a lot of attention, as any exhausted parent will tell you. But there may be an evolutionary reason for annoying tones.
March 4, 2005
Our immediate ancestors, Homo erectus, may not have had large brains, high culture or even language, but could they have boasted the original teenage rebels?
March 4, 2005
Scientists are discovering the real reasons for the hell of adolescence.
January 31, 2005
A taste for meat prompted early humans to wean their children at a young age. The idea explains why we now wean our infants years earlier than other great apes.
January 31, 2005
How brain development, in concert with racing hormones, accounts for the differences in how teens act and think.
January 24, 2005
For the first time, sociologists have mapped the romantic and sexual relationships of an entire high school over 18 months, providing evidence that these adolescent networks may be structured differently than researchers previously thought.
January 5, 2005
Despite similarities in the complex form of human faces and bodies, recent research suggests that the developmental processes are unique for that special face of ours.
January 1, 2005
We all know that teenagers hate to get up in the morning. But are they really just lazy, or is there a biological cause?
December 20, 2004
Researchers have discovered the early learning experiences forever alter brain circuitry.
December 17, 2004
New research provides the strongest evidence to date that infants and young children—unlike adults—are more drawn to sounds than they are to visuals in their environment.
December 6, 2004
Juveniles may find it harder than adults to foresee the consequences of their actions. The finding may explain why teenagers act compulsively and take more risks.
November 22, 2004
Peers have little influence over your child's taste in food, music and television.
November 22, 2004
Babies exposed to plenty of daylight are more likely to sleep better during the night.
November 10, 2004
Infant pacification may have led to the origins of language.
October 29, 2004
The age at which kids first fall victim to bullying could influence how strongly they are affected, suggests a new study. And, surprisingly, it is not the youngest kids who are hurt the most in the long term.
October 26, 2004
Babies who enthusiastically imitate their parents develop a sense of right and wrong earlier than those who don't.
October 22, 2004
Rich kids have little time for their elderly parents. The ingratitude!
October 20, 2004
A US study found parents who were married or living together before conception were slightly more likely to have a boy than those who were not.
October 5, 2004
New research shows that the adolescent brain may be programmed for a kind of laziness that makes it harder for parents to get help around the house and to keep teens from engaging in risky behavior.
September 28, 2004
Substantially more men than women favor routine paternity testing when a baby is born but the surprise to researchers is that the percentage of men favoring such testing wasn't higher.
September 15, 2004
Ten-year-olds' free time activities—as well as whom they spend their free time with—are linked to gender development, academic interests, school grades and self esteem at age 12.
September 7, 2004
Newborn babies prefer to look at attractive faces, says a UK researcher, suggesting that face recognition is hardwired at birth, rather than learned.
August 26, 2004
It takes a lot more than testosterone to make a father out of a man. New research shows that hormonal changes in both sexes help shape men into devoted dads.
August 26, 2004
Growing up in a chaotic home could be bad for a child's developing mind.
August 23, 2004
Ecologist Bob Trivers and mathematician Dan Willard said that large healthy mammals produce more male offspring when living in good conditions and more female offspring in stressful conditions.
August 20, 2004
The idea that studying music improves the intellect is not a new one, but at last there is incontrovertible evidence.
August 18, 2004
Female blue tits put in more parental effort if the father of their chicks is attractive, shows a new study.
August 4, 2004
Women who think they will live to a ripe old age are more likely to give birth to sons than daughters, reveals a study of UK women.
August 3, 2004
There are many benefits to children of having a dad around: the risk of juvenile delinquency, substance abuse, sexual abuse, early pregnancy and dropping out of high school is six times higher for children whose biological fathers are not part of their lives.
August 2, 2004
A mother's instinct to fearlessly protect her child may be down to levels of a brain hormone.
July 23, 2004
Good mothering can abolish the impact of a "bad" gene for aggression, suggests a new study, adding spice to the "nature-versus-nurture" controversy.
July 23, 2004
The hand you prefer to use as a 10-week-old foetus is the hand you will favour for the rest of your life, research suggests.
July 15, 2004
Findings support the idea that human infants have an innate sensitivity to the rhythm of language and engage it however they can.
July 13, 2004
After nine months of weekly training in piano or voice, new research shows young students' IQs rose nearly three points more than their untrained peers.
July 8, 2004
High levels of church attendance in the ninth grade may protect some African-American teenagers from getting involved in risky behaviors throughout the rest of their high school career, a new study suggests.
July 7, 2004
Men treated with kid gloves as young babies are more likely to succeed in work and relationships, according to a UK psychiatrist.
June 25, 2004
The opioid system, which is linked to pain, pleasure and addictive behaviors, appears to play a role in mother-infant bonding.
June 22, 2004
Genghis Khan left a genetic legacy shared by 16 million people alive today.
June 10, 2004
Grandparents systemically prefer some grandchildren to others because of doubts about genetic lineage new research confirms.
June 1, 2004
Brain imaging research has uncovered new details about how young brains develop through the teenage years.
May 26, 2004
For children growing up poor, money isn't the only solution to overcoming the challenges of poverty.
May 18, 2004
Brain clue to why teenagers are so unreasonable.
May 10, 2004
The way couples divide up the household chores may give a clue as to whether they are likely to have a second baby.
May 6, 2004
One of the longest and most thorough studies of child development ever attempted has shown that parents appear to have relatively little effect on how children turn out, once genetic influences are accounted for.
May 3, 2004
While parents may describe their baby as a difficult eater or an overeater, it could be just a sign that the child is more tuned in to the eating habits of those around him.
April 20, 2004
If you're looking for the source of mother love, you might consider the orbitofrontal cortex. A new study finds that this part of the brain, just above the eyes, is active when new mothers view pictures of infants... perhaps studies of the orbit-ofrontal cortex could shed light on the underlying causes of post-partum depression.
April 8, 2004
Many American teenagers attend high schools with as many as several thousand kids enrolled. A study says kids learn more in smaller schools. But how small is smaller?
April 6, 2004
Education researchers are questioning whether high self-esteem brings academic success or the other way around.
April 5, 2004
The eating habits we develop in the first few months of life can shape our tastes for life.
March 19, 2004
It is not enough to survive and have children. Your line has to continue through your grandchildren. In this context, the survival of women beyond menopause makes sense if it translates into extra grandchildren.
March 18, 2004
A new study suggests that children posing such a question might actually be seeking the object's function, not simply its name.
March 11, 2004
New study sheds light on menopause and long life spans.
March 10, 2004
New research suggests that petulant behavior could actually be due to normal brain "remodeling" that occurs during adolescence.
March 1, 2004
Worshipping a favourite star may be a healthy part of growing up, say psychologists, and this may have evolutionary origins.
February 27, 2004
When a new mom gazes at her baby, it's not just her mood that lights up?it's also a brain region associated with emotion processing.
February 25, 2004
Scientists had believed for years that the brain was almost structurally mature at about age 5. But several studies found that it continues to mature throughout adolescence into adulthood.
February 25, 2004
Adolescents show less activity than adults in brain regions that motivate behavior to obtain rewards.
February 13, 2004
Researchers at University College London (UCL) have shown that romantic and maternal love activate many of the same specific regions of the brain, and lead to a suppression of neural activity associated with critical social assessment of other people and negative emotions.
February 5, 2004
Some parents may think it is undignified or detrimental, but baby talk is essential to the full development of a baby's brain.
January 28, 2004
Women are more likely to cradle babies on their left-hand side because it activates bonding-related brain regions, research suggests.
January 7, 2004
Relationships with friends play a significant role in whether teenage girls think about suicide, but have little impact on suicidal thoughts among boys, according to a new nationwide study.
December 22, 2003
The brains of mums and dads are tuned in to the sound of toddlers' cries, reveals a brain-imaging study. Non-parents, on the other hand, remain largely oblivious.
December 18, 2003
Children who spent more time in sports activities and had higher aerobic fitness reported fewer "sick" days, and those with body fat higher than 25% reported significantly more such events.
December 2, 2003
The majority of the toddlers and preschoolers studied showed no evidence of delay in their English language development as compared with their US-born age-mates. Indeed, many of the adopted children had language skills that would be considered excellent for children born in the United States.
December 1, 2003
Thirty years ago, men spent an average of 15 minutes a day with their children. Today, it's three hours. And new research shows it's the amount of 'father time' which is driving down juvenile crime and pushing up levels of literacy.
November 14, 2003
Primping and passing time with peers may serve a serious purpose, suggests a new study. The more time wild female baboons spend in the company of other adult baboons, particularly while occupied with grooming activities, the more likely their offspring are to live until their first birthday.
November 13, 2003
Are violence and aggression genetic or a response to our upbringing? As this ScienCentral news video reports, psychologists say it's both—but parenting can shape the effects of childrens' genes.
November 13, 2003
Some of us would never go up and talk to strangers at a party, while others may prefer to work the room. As this ScienCentral News video reports, psychologists could see the signature of shyness imprinted in the brain, from toddlers to twenty-year-olds.
November 12, 2003
New studies find much to recommend in pregnancy and motherhood. Findings include that: pregnancy produces heightened smell sensitivity; suckling one’s young puts brain reward systems into high gear; lactation increases the rate of wound healing; and motherhood protects against stress.
November 7, 2003
Parents are more likely to interfere in their daughters' dating choices, especially in steering them toward high-achieving mates.
October 24, 2003
New research may help to explain why meerkats, kookaburras, and many other group-living animals forgo their own chance to have offspring and help others rear pups and chicks instead.
October 14, 2003
Steve Landsburg argued (see below: "Do daughters cause divorce?") that the most plausible reason that couples with daughters divorce more often than couples with sons is that parents, on average, prefer boys. He's changed his mind and thinks he has a much better way to explain the facts.
October 9, 2003
In the United States, the parents of a girl are nearly 5 percent more likely to divorce than the parents of a boy. The more daughters, the bigger the effect: The parents of three girls are almost 10 percent more likely to divorce than the parents of three boys. In Mexico and Colombia the gap is wider; in Kenya it's wider still. In Vietnam, it's huge: Parents of a girl are 25 percent more likely to divorce than parents of a boy.
September 30, 2003
Girls who go through puberty earlier than their peers are more likely to be involved in delinquency, but not for the reasons often suspected, according to a new study.
September 12, 2003
The ability to recognize speech patterns isn't something that has to be learned—it's present at birth. Researchers found that when a newborn baby is exposed to speech sounds, the left hemisphere of the brain becomes active, just as it does in an adult. Yet, if that same infant listens to backwards speech, the left hemisphere largely ignores the input.
September 11, 2003
In a finding that surprised researchers, a recent three-year study of five baboon groups at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya reveals that baboon fathers overwhelming side with their offspring when intervening in disputes.
September 3, 2003
Mice with virtually identical genes can grow into quite different-looking animals—fat and yellow, or lean and brown—depending on what their mothers ate during pregnancy. As this ScienCentral News video reports, researchers are studying a twist to heredity that goes beyond our genes.
September 2, 2003
A groundbreaking study of the interaction among genes, environment and IQ finds that the influence of genes on intelligence is dependent on class. Genes do explain the vast majority of IQ differences among children in wealthier families, the new work shows. But environmental factors—not genetic deficits—explain IQ differences among poor minorities.
August 26, 2003
Babies learn to follow objects with their eyes at between four and six months old. They even work out where the objects are going to end up when they go out of view. "Our research provides the first conclusive documentation of how and when infants learn about object concepts, and serves as a strong argument against theories that infant knowledge in this area is innate."
August 22, 2003
If you have trouble learning new languages now, maybe you should have started when you were an infant. Babies are born "citizens of the world," able to distinguish among sound used in all languages. Nine-month-old American babies can pick up Chinese from a live teacher in just a few hours.
August 21, 2003
The first five years of life are a crucial period for learning - a short but spectacular window of time when experiences such as a whisper, a hug and a bedtime lullaby can change the architecture of the developing brain.
August 14, 2003
There is a lot going on in the heads of babies—probably more than most people think, says Texas A&M University psychologist Teresa Wilcox, who studies the way babies think about and interact with their physical world. She's examining how and when babies begin learning about objects they encounter.
August 7, 2003
More and more girls under 18 are being arrested for violent crimes. They're still far less likely than boys to get picked up for things like robbery and assault. But the gap is narrowing. That's led to the perception that girls have become much more violent in recent decades. But as NPR's Jonathan Hamilton reports in Part Three of the series "Girls and the Juvenile Justice System," experts on juvenile crime have another theory.
August 5, 2003
American kids who light up a cigarette for the first time probably follow the lead of close friends who smoke, according to a study of Texas high school students. But other factors, including some that vary sharply by race or ethnicity, also influence which students took up the habit.
July 31, 2003
Children who witness their parents using violence against each other and who regularly receive excessive punishment are at increased risk of being involved in an abusive relationship as an adult, according to a 20-year study that followed children into adult romantic relationships.
July 30, 2003
A burst of brain activity recorded by scientists could offer clues to a baby's level of understanding of the world around it.
July 28, 2003
Those dreaded piano lessons pay off in unexpected ways: According to a new study, children with music training had significantly better verbal memory than their counterparts without such training. Plus, the longer the training, the better the verbal memory.
July 28, 2003
Parents might in future have something a little more technical to discuss with teachers during consultation evenings than their offspring's writing, artwork and test results: brain scans.
July 10, 2003
A non-invasive test which allows faster, cheaper, and less risky prenatal genetic screening was announced by Australian researchers at the International Genetics Congress in Melbourne today.
July 3, 2003
Genes affecting conduct problems, more so than environment, cause teenaged girls to smoke, drink alcohol and use drugs. But boys who experiment with drugs and alcohol tend to be influenced more by their family and friends than genes.
June 30, 2003
"These findings are important because they cast doubt on nativist claims that babies are born with some sort of innate pre-wiring that means awareness of objects is well developed at birth," Professor Bremner points out. "In fact, our results suggest a very different developmental process from that presented by nativists," he adds.
June 27, 2003
Most parents shake their heads and blame hormones when their teenager storms off and slams the door. But new research suggests that such petulant behavior could actually be due to normal brain "remodeling" that occurs during adolescence.
June 24, 2003
It’s no surprise that children pick up many of the habits and behaviors from their parents. But as this ScienCentral News video reports, scientists may be getting closer to knowing why many traits get passed on from one generation to the next.
June 20, 2003
A new neuroimaging study provides the strongest evidence to date that unusual shyness in children may result from differences in their brains. Researchers at Harvard Medical School used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine adults who had been unusually shy in childhood. When these people were shown pictures of unfamiliar faces, they displayed significantly higher activity in the amygdala than people who had been unusually outgoing as children.
June 12, 2003
Violence between parents can reduce young children's IQ levels, researchers say.
June 12, 2003
Babies who are particularly small grow into adults with a high risk of heart disease. Low birth-weight has also been associated with a collection of symptoms linked together in 1988 by Gerald Reaven of Stanford University, in California, and known as “syndrome X”. The features of this syndrome are high blood pressure, disturbed fat metabolism and obesity. These, in turn, are indicators of somebody who is likely to develop heart disease and late-onset diabetes.
June 11, 2003
Dads deserve a day off on Sunday, June 15. But on every other day they should know that when they do housework with their children, their kids turn out to be better adjusted and more socially aware. And, their wives find them more attractive.
June 6, 2003
The energy intake of pregnant women is about 10% higher when they are carrying a boy rather than a girl. Our findings support the hypothesis that women carrying male rather than female embryos may have higher energy requirements and that male embryos may be more susceptible to energy restriction.
June 3, 2003
Previous studies have shown that many birds learn to sing through social interaction and feedback rather than by simply imitating others. Now research in the United States suggests infants learn to speak in much the same way.
June 3, 2003
This year, the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA has kindled many debates about the implications of that knowledge for the human condition. Arguably the most emotionally charged is the debate over the prospect of human genetic enhancement, or "designer babies."
June 2, 2003
A scientist at Oregon National Primate Research Center here, Judy Cameron is leading a study of generations of rhesus monkeys, seeking genetic similarities among young monkeys that react to unusual events with similar levels of anxiety, fear or inhibition. If Cameron and collaborators find any promising genes, scientists studying children with depression or anxiety disorders will test to see whether the same genes appear involved in human mental illnesses.
June 2, 2003
Cinderella, the world's best-known and most beloved fairy tale, sounds like the purest fantasy. But if it represents nothing but random invention and fantasy, why has the tale emerged so often over so many centuries in so many languages and mediums and cultural traditions?
May 28, 2003
Fathers who leave their families may increase their daughters’ risk for early sexual activity and teenage pregnancy, suggest the results of long-term studies in the United States and in New Zealand.
May 28, 2003
In most species, people included, males and females exist in more or less equal numbers. But there are circumstances when it might behove an individual mother to give birth preferentially to sons or to daughters. In a paper just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Mhairi Gibson and Ruth Mace, of University College, London, outline such a case in people.
February 20, 2003
Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy shocked her colleagues when she reported that male monkeys purposely kill their rivals' young, but her insights stuck and revolutionized the way anthropologists think about parenting.
February 19, 2003
It is no surprise that psychotropic use in those under 18 years of age has increased drastically over the last two decades. But what do these data really indicate?
February 17, 2003
Most men who were sexually abused as boys do not go on to abuse children themselves, a study suggests.
August 21, 2001
Brain-mapping experts at Tohoku University in Japan have compared brain scans of hundreds of teenagers playing Nintendo with those of other students doing simple arithmetical exercises and found that frontal-lobe development was inhibited in the game players. The result could lead to children unable to control violent behavior.
August 21, 2001
Do you really need to use flash cards to stimulate your baby’s brain? No, suggests Stephen Pinker, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at M.I.T. and author of Words and Rules, How the Mind Works and The Language Instinct. Pinker notes, “From their earliest months, in fact, children interpret the world as a real and predictable place. It's the parents of an infant who experience the world as a blooming, buzzing confusion, says one psychologist. This new understanding is largely the legacy of Harvard psychologist Elizabeth Spelke.”
August 20, 2001
Do children inherit their temperaments and personalities from their parents, or develop them from experiences in the home, school and outside environment? Nature or nurture? It's a question that has engaged philosophers for centuries. Now we know the answer...
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