Latest Research News

Students come into classrooms filled with inaccurate knowledge they are confident is correct, and overcoming these misconceptions is notoriously difficult. In recent years, research has shown that such false knowledge can be corrected with feedback. The hypercorrection effect, as it has been termed, expresses the finding that when students are more confident of a wrong answer, they are more likely to remember the right answer if corrected.

This is somewhat against intuition and experience, which would suggest that it is harder to correct more confidently held misconceptions.

I always like gesture studies. I think I’m probably right in saying that they started with language learning. Way back in 1980 it was shown that acting out action phrases meant they were remembered better than if the phrases had been only heard or read (the “enactment effect”). Enacted items, it turned out, “popped out” effortlessly in free recall tests — in other words, enactment had made the phrases highly accessible.

More data from the long-running Mayo Clinic Study of Aging has revealed that, in this one part of the U.S. at least, MCI develops at an overall rate of 6.4% a year among older adults (70+), with a higher rate for men and the less-educated.

The study involved 1,450 older adults (aged 70-89), who underwent memory testing every 15 months for an average of three years. By the end of the study period, 296 people had developed MCI, a rate of 6.4% per year. For men, the rate was 7.2% compared to 5.7% for women.

Quarter of British children performing poorly due to family disadvantage

A British study involving over 18,000 very young children (aged 9 months to 5 years) has found that those exposed to two or more “disadvantages” (28% of the children) were significantly more likely to have impaired intellectual development, expressed in a significantly reduced vocabulary and behavioral problems.

The study involved 74 non-smokers with amnestic MCI (average age 76), of whom half were given a nicotine patch of 15 mg a day for six months and half received a placebo. Cognitive tests were given at the start of the study and again after three and six months.

After 6 months of treatment, the nicotine-treated group showed significant improvement in attention, memory, speed of processing and consistency of processing. For example, the nicotine-treated group regained 46% of normal performance for age on long-term memory, whereas the placebo group worsened by 26%.

Iron deficiency is the world's single most common nutrient deficiency, and a well-known cause of impaired cognitive, language, and motor development. Many countries therefore routinely supplement infant foods with iron. However, a new study suggests that, while there is no doubt that such fortification has helped reduce iron deficiency, it may be that there is an optimal level of iron for infant development.

Is there, or is there not, a gender gap in mathematics performance? And if there is, is it biological or cultural?

Why is diabetes associated with cognitive impairment and even dementia in older adults? New research pinpoints two molecules that trigger a cascade of events that end in poor blood flow and brain atrophy.

The olfactory bulb is in the oldest part of our brain. It connects directly to the amygdala (our ‘emotion center’) and our prefrontal cortex, giving smells a more direct pathway to memory than our other senses. But the olfactory bulb is only part of the system processing smells. It projects to several other regions, all of which are together called the primary olfactory cortex, and of which the most prominent member is the piriform cortex.

I recently discussed some of the implications of head injuries and how even mild concussions can have serious and long-term consequences. A follow-up study looking at the effects of childhood traumatic brain injury ten years after the event has found that even those with mild TBI showed some measurable effects, while those with severe TBI had markedly poorer performance on a number of cognitive measures.