Kindergarden: Garden of Children

Kindergarten means a garden of children, and Froebel, the inventor of it, or rather, as he would prefer to express it, the discoverer of the method of Nature, meant to symbolize by the name the spirit and plan of treatment. How does the gardener treat his plants? He studies their individual natures, and puts them into such circumstances of soil and atmosphere as enable them to grow, flower, and bring forth fruit,-- also to renew their manifestation year after year. 

 Standing Desks Improve Student Engagement

The research looked at the results of an experiment in which 282 participants in grades 2-4 were observed in the fall and spring during one school year. Student engagement was monitored by actions such as answering a question, raising a hand, or participating in discussion, while off-task behaviors included talking out of turn. Engagement of the "treatment" classrooms was compared with the engagement of "control" classrooms. The researchers noted that both groups showed "general increases in...

 Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)

The goal of this new manual, as with all previous editions, is to provide a common language for describing psychopathology. While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart diseas...

 A Very Qualified Statement on Experimenting on Patients

I think it perfectly just, that he who, from the love of experiment, quits an approved for an uncertain practice, should suffer the full penalty of Egyptian law against medical innovation; as I would consign to the pillory, the wretch, who out of regard to his character, that is, to his fees, should follow the routine, when, from constant experience he is sure that his patient will die under it, provided any, not inhuman, deviation would give his patient a chance.

 Seeing the Baby on the Ultrasound

There’s no doubt that seeing one’s future child on an ultrasound monitor is a powerful experience, the first visual evidence of the fetus in a culture in which seeing is believing. The encounter can be so compelling, in fact, that some medical providers are using it not just as a diagnostic tool, but as a treatment in itself. Zack Boukydis, a professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology, has been working with doctors for almost a decade to expand routine screenings into...

 Rhetoric of Beer Advertising

Beer commercials are notorious for this kind of treatment. "Sell the sizzle, not the steak," goes the advertising truism. Well, why not? When you're pushing a product made from rotten vegetation whose primary effects are to dull your wits, pad your paunch, and make you belch, any sizzle would be a big help.