Evidence is accumulating that age-related cognitive decline is rooted in three related factors: processing speed slows down (because of myelin degradation); the ability to inhibit distractions becomes impaired; working memory capacity is reduced.
A new study adds to this evidence by looking at one particular aspect of age-related cognitive decline: memory search.
A new study claims to provide ‘some of the strongest evidence yet’ for the benefits of gesturing to help students learn.
The study involved 184 children aged 7-10, of whom half were shown videos of an instructor teaching math problems using only speech, while the rest were shown videos of the instructor teaching the same problems using both speech and gestures. The problem involved mathematical equivalence (i.e., 4+5+7=__+7), which is known to be critical to later algebraic learning.
We say so blithely that children learn by copying, but a recent study comparing autistic children and normally-developing ones shows there’s more to this than is obvious.
While it’s well-established that chronic stress has all sorts of harmful effects, including on memory and cognition, the judgment on brief bouts of acute stress has been more equivocal. There is a certain amount of evidence that brief amounts of stress can be stimulating rather than harmful, and perhaps even necessary if we are to reach our full potential.
A humanoid robot has been designed, and shows promise, for teaching joint attention to children with ASD. Robots are particularly appealing to children, and even more so to those with ASD.
http://www.futurity.org/health-medicine/interactive-robot-trains-kids-with-autism/
As many of you will know, I like nature-improves-mind stories. A new twist comes from a small Scottish study, in which participants were fitted up with a mobile EEG monitor that enabled their brainwaves to be recorded as they walked for 25 minutes through one of three different urban settings: an urban shopping street, a path through green space, or a street in a busy commercial district.
A study involving 520 intensive care patients who had been put on ventilators for acute lung injury (ALI), of whom 186 patients of the 275 survivors were followed up over the next two years, found that 35% of them had clinically significant symptoms of PTSD. Nearly two-thirds of these (62%) still had symptoms at two years.
ICU survivors with PTSD are unusual in that they often experience flashbacks to delusions or hallucinations they had in the hospital, rather than events that actually occurred
A rat study has found that infant males have more of the Foxp2 protein (associated with language development) than females and that males also made significantly more distress calls than females. Increasing the protein level in females and reducing it in males reversed the gender differences in alarm calls.
A small pilot study with humans found that 4-year-old girls had more of the protein than boys. In both cases, it is the more communicative gender that has the higher level of Foxp2.
More evidence for the importance of glia, previously regarded as mere ‘support cells’ in the brain, comes from a mouse study — which also indicates the role of astrocytes in the evolution of the human brain. The study found that mice that received transplants of human glial progenitor cells learned much more quickly than normal mice.
"The general consensus is that math anxiety doesn't affect children much before fourth grade.” New research contests that.
Study 1: found many first grade students do experience negative feelings and worry related to math. This math anxiety negatively affects their math performance when it comes to solving math problems in standard arithmetic notation.
Study 2: found that second grade math anxiety affected second grade computations and math applications. Additionally, children with higher levels of math anxiety in second grade learned less math in third grade.