Variable Ratio Schedule for Getting Kids Addicted to Boar...

In light of the above, here’s a solid Variable Ratio Schedule for playing board games with your kid: the first time you play a particular game, let the kid win. thereafter, let the kid win some of the time. 60% of the time is good to start (you can dial it down slowly as the kid improves if you want). make the sequence of wins and losses as random as possible. critically, make the outcome as close as you can every time, especially when the kid loses. She should always feel like she barely lo...

 Wealthy Kids Acquire a Taste for Healthier Foods Because ...

But those kids can learn to like [brocolli], eventually: One 1990 study found that kids need to be presented with unknown foods somewhere between eight and 15 times before they come to accept them. This, of course, doesn’t come cheap. Once rejected, a good number of those eight to 15 servings of broccoli (or carrots or whole grains or fish) are going to end up on the floor and then in the garbage. And on top of that, parents need to buy a dependable backup food to have on hand. Who can affor...

 The Authoritative Parenting Style

The most influential proposal about such styles has come from Diana Baumrind (1972), who has looked at combinations of four of the dimensions I've just described: (1) warmth or nurturance, (2) level of expectations, which she describes in terms of "maturity demands," (3) the clarity and consistency of rules, and (4) communication between parent and child. Baumrind saw three specific combinations of these characteristics: • The authoritarian parental style is high in control and maturity dem...

 Teens Need a Psychological Moratorium

She remembered psychologist Erik Erickson's exhortation about teenagers: they need a "psychosocial moratorium," he wrote, an environment and a stretch of time in which they can explore different aspects of their personality and try on a series of identities without fear of consequence. In a way, that was what school was supposed to offer, but it didn't always do so with much success. She realized that this was exactly what virtual worlds offered all the time, to anyone with a computer and an ...

 Schools Can Blame Factors Other Than Teachers, Game Devel...

Most teachers work very hard, of course, and all of them want kids to succeed. But when kids don't learn what's been laid out for them, schools typically look for answers in the things that are going wrong in children's lives: poverty, trauma, bad parenting, poor nutrition, disability, sleep deprivation, lousy study skills. All of these are real problems that can have a tangible effect on kids' ability to learn, research shows. But if players fail at commercial video games, game designers can...

 Neurons Use Viruses to Share Information and Learn

When genes are activated, the instructions encoded within their DNA are first transcribed into a related molecule called RNA. Shepherd’s colleague Elissa Pastuzyn showed that the Arc shells can enclose RNA and move it from one neuron to another. And that’s basically what retroviruses do—they use protein shells to protect their own RNA as it moves between cells in a host. So our neurons use a repurposed viral gene to transmit genetic information between each other in an oddly virus-like way t...

 Negative Attention is Better Than No Attention at All

To give and receive attention is a fundamental human need. In the 13th century, King Frederick II of Sicily wanted to find out what language children would naturally grow up to speak if they were never spoken to. He took babies from their mothers at birth and placed them in the care of nurses who were strictly forbidden to either speak to or touch them. The babies, as it turned out, didn’t grow up to speak any language, as they all died of attention deprivation within a fortnight of the start...

 Blends, Bricolage, and Chimeras of Association in Child I...

Blends and bricolage can tell us much about the young imagination and its potential for mature creativity. No one is surprised when a child substitutes a little toy truck television show—though perhaps we should be. No matter how unremarkable, all blends reflect the imagination at work. That said, our notice of make-believe chimeras generally increases, the more unlikely the juxtaposition of their elements. What we notice and notice again in child's play are the blends and complexes that are ...

 Stoic Guide to Anger Management

So, here is my modern Stoic guide to anger management, inspired by Seneca’s advice: Engage in preemptive meditation: think about what situations trigger your anger, and decide ahead of time how to deal with them. Check anger as soon as you feel its symptoms. Don’t wait, or it will get out of control. Associate with serene people, as much as possible; avoid irritable or angry ones. Moods are infective. Play a musical instrument, or purposefully engage in whatever activity relaxes your mind. ...

 Role of Mirror Neurons in Learning to Read

In terms of early diagnosis, one study of thousands of babies “gaze-following” found that the skill appears first at about 10 to 11 months, and that babies who weren’t proficient at gaze-following by the time they were 1 year old had much less advanced language skills at age 2 (Brooks & Meltzoff , 2005). Another possibility with regard to mirror neuron research is that early and systematic priming (stimulating) of mirror neurons engaged in speech could be a strategy for building the prel...