Social Media Ideas for Annie Murphy Paul

In 2018, researchers at NYU and UC Irvine redid Walter Mischel’s famous “marshmallow test” with 918 four-and-a-half-year...

You have probably heard the story: a four-year-old who can resist a marshmallow is quietly headed for a better life, and one who grabs it is not. In 2018, a large new study took th...

The Mirage of the Gifted Child

Critics say the systems we use to educate the brightest kids are flawed and exclusionary. What if it’s the very premise of giftedness that’s faulty?

How the Experience of Wonder Shapes Children

Babies are not passive learners. From birth, they actively use wonder to transform experience into understanding. Learn how to cultivate wonder at home and in the classroom.

What Are ‘iPad Kids’ Turning Into As Teens? Teachers & Psychologists Answer

What do iPad kids turn into as teens? Psychologists explain what happens when young kids never have to cope with boredom and delayed gratification.

What Are ‘iPad Kids’ Turning Into As Teens? Teachers & Psychologists Answer

What do iPad kids turn into as teens? Psychologists explain what happens when young kids never have to cope with boredom and delayed gratification.

Nature and Creativity: The Science of “Soft Fascination” and How the Natural World Resets the Brain

"Our everyday experience does not prepare us to assimilate the gaping hugeness of the Grand Canyon or the crashing grandeur of Niagara Falls. We have no response at the ready; our...

Stop Protecting Your Child's Brain and Start Building It

Parents focus on limiting screen time when they should be asking what conditions actually build a child's capacity to think. The answer is older than any device.

How to build kids’ ‘cognitive endurance’ in an age of distraction

The ability to run “mental marathons” is a skill children can learn through simple, but dedicated, practice

What if It’s Not the Phones?

Gray’s theory, which he laid out in a 2013 book called Free to Learn, quickly found a welcome audience. The book was celebrated by advocates of free-range parenting and won endorse...

Emily Finn

Studying why people interpret the same thing in different ways

Raising Decision-Makers in a High-Stakes World

We know brains aren't fully developed until age 25. Here's how to help your kids make good choices in the meantime.

We’ve been blaming screens for anxious kids. A new study points to a completely different culprit

As a kid, I was a perfectionist who had meltdowns if I colored even a little outside the lines. Arguably, my unrealistic standards for myself might have helped me perform better in...

Emily Finn: Young American Scientist Studying How People Interpret the Same Things Differently

Neuroscientist Emily Finn often trawls Reddit for disagreements about television shows, movies, books or podcasts—any narratives that “evoke really different reactions in different...

Here’s the latest.

How to raise a kid who gives a damn (without telling them what to think)

The entry point is simpler than it might feel.

Why Scientific Curiosity Is One of the Best Gifts We Can Give Our Children 

Children are natural scientists. From the moment they begin asking “Why is the sky blue?” or “What happens if I mix these?” they are doing something remarkable. They are observing,...

The people with the sharpest minds in their 70s and 80s tend to share a habit that has little to do with formal educatio...

We are writers reading the research here, not clinicians, psychologists, or neurologists. What follows is reflection on studies of how minds age, most of them observational, which...

Smart Leaders Make Time for Glue Sticks and Glitter

Forget productivity hacks. An "old lady hobby," ideally one that involves both hands, may be a path to thinking sharper, creating more, and leading better.

A study that followed 184 thirteen-year-olds for ten years found that the ones their classmates rated as the ‘coolest’ i...

Researchers at the University of Virginia, led by psychologist Joseph Allen, recruited 184 thirteen-year-olds from public middle schools in suburban and urban areas of the southeas...

As children’s free play declined from the 1950s onward, measures of anxiety, depression and helplessness rose across man...

It is easy to treat children’s free play as the leftover part of the day. It is what happens after school, after homework, after lessons, after errands, after the adult calendar ha...

Not All Screen Time Is Created Equal

A screen that answers back can teach a child to think, or teach them not to.

Our brains change as a result of parenthood – just not in the way you think

Up to 81 per cent of women who have been pregnant report “baby brain”. So why does a new study confirm it’s a myth?

Debunking Common Myths About Reading and Child Development

Parents want to support their child's development, but many aren't sure what works. Here are five common reading myths and what research tells us instead.

Hundreds of Teen Poems, One Surprise Finding

Statistics about depression, mental health, and screen time cause concern for young people along with older people’s judgment that “today’s generation doesn’t read or doesn’t care....