By the time your rent a van and pay for gas and campgrounds, would you be better off just driving your car and paying for hotels? Here’s the bottom line. Read More
The last few weeks of school are an opportunity for your child to wring every last drop of education from the remaining precious minutes of instruction. And then you wake up. Read More
Math anxiety and along with it math performance come down to adjusting the sliders on a giant mathematical mixing board: push the right sliders up and down, and even students who have felt helpless may have a chance to succeed. Read More
Study in ‘Nature’ shows that creativity and psychosis may have the same genetic roots. Read More
A study in the journal Child Development shows that our intuition about positive reinforcement can be exactly wrong: Rewarding a child’s sharing resulted in the child choosing to share less. Read More
Insight doesn’t always tell you you’re looking at a llama’s nostrils. But when it does, it’s probably right. Read More
Unfairness trickles down from one person to others. A new study in the journal Scientific Reports shows how to stop the flow. Read More
Who is besties with a narcissist? Research on best friend pairs shows that narcissists may be stuck with themselves. Read More
In elementary school the kids in the “redbird” and “bluebird” reading groups tended to be grouped together for math too. Why is that? Why do math and reading ability go hand-in-hand? And why do some kids break this mold to excel in only one? Read More
Does immigration create a rich melting pot or lead to tension? In STEM fields that require complex problem solving, birthplace diversity increases productivity. Read More
When the going gets tough, should the tough get going or should the tough try something new? Read More
On his fourth attempt, Leif stood in a position of relative rest halfway through the climb and you could see the panic starting to set in as he looked at the next hold, still impossibly far away… Read More
As a society, we systematically fail to take into account issues of workplace safety that affect or have the potential to affect Santa Claus and his ungulate co-workers every Christmas Eve. A commentary by University of Alberta medical researcher Sebastian Straube hopes to change that. Read More
Study finds that “the Christmas period is related to a decrease in life satisfaction and emotional well-being.” But not among the very religious… Read More
By compiling millions and millions of League of Legends data points, researchers hint at “psychological traits across global populations.” Read More
“The present findings could mean that interventions in education that try to increase intrinsic motivation may not be the best approach in the early school years.” Care to discuss? Read More
How does a child’s sense of fairness develop? A fascinating MIT study shows fairness depends on number sense and not necessarily age or socialization. Read More
After testing the knowledge of older and younger brains, you give them the right answers and a chance to make changes. Here’s what happens. Read More
Studies show that “cultural dysfluency” — Halloween plates on Labor Day, a purple wedding tux, a “good riddance” obituary — jolts brains from complacency and makes people perform better on cognitive tests. This, my friends, is why the geek brain thinks while the mainstream brain coasts. Read More
Let’s bond over math the same way we bond over reading–a study in ‘Science’ shows that over the course of a school year ‘Bedtime Math’ pushes kids’ math skills 3 months further than a similar reading app. Read More
If children followed the rules of real estate, you would expect the poorer mathematician in a friendship to benefit at the better mathematician’s expense. Study says…? Read More
Might happiness be more than simply feeling good without feeling bad (and maybe the lingering afterglow of smugness)? Read More
Most kids who are good or bad at math in first grade are similarly good or bad at math as 15-year-olds. Most but not all. A few get better or worse and a new study shows what’s behind the migration of math ability. Read More
Imagine you’re driving through a crowded grocery store parking lot when a man on a cell phone walks out in front of you and holds up a hand toward you, palm out. What does he mean by this gesture? Studies show that your interpretation depends on your mood. Read More
Research is showing that procrastination isn’t a defect in ability or personality but rather a disconnect between the demands of a task and what motivates the procrastinator. Read More
How to help your kids stay in the Goldilocks zone of productive stress even when life makes the porridge too hot. Read More
Are the offsprings’ brains better off setting the alarm for 6:00am and hitting snooze for a blissful half an hour, or setting the alarm for 6:34am and sledding to breakfast on a piece of greased cardboard? The answer has to do with crickets… and brain waves… and insight. Read More
Creativity isn’t the lucky gift it seems. “This research demonstrates that persistence is a critical determinant of creative performance and that people may undervalue and underutilize persistence in everyday creative problem solving,” write authors Brain Lucas and Loran Nordgren from Northwestern University. Read More
What caught my ear wasn’t the fact that a young, hipsterish guy struggled with subtraction Captchas; it was the fact that he excused it, saying, “Hey, I’m not a numbers person…” Read More
“The whole of ‘Minecraft’ is what we refer to as ‘A.I. complete.’ If you can do all of ‘Minecraft’ you could solve anything,” says Brown University researcher. Read More
