A study published in Nature – International Journal of Science confirms that individuals with extra copies of chromosome 21, as found in individuals with Down syndrome, have genes that block certain types of cancer growth. This may have far-reaching implications in the therapies we use to treat cancer. Most types of cancer are rare in…
A newly published study explored the effects of reading to your child versus having them use other media, such as watching a cartoon or listening to an audiobook. “In a single generation, the explosion of screen-based media has transformed the experience of childhood, from TV and videos, to an unlimited range of content available…
A study out of Simon Frazer University indicates that cognitive-motor function begins to decline at the age of 24. In this study the researchers analyzed the data derived from 3,305 players, ranging in age from 16 to 44, of a complex computer game called Starcraft 2. According to Joe Thompson, the lead investigator of the…
A 2012 study of child prodigies conducted by Joanne Ruthsatz and Jourdan B. Urbach found that all the children studied tested in the 99th percentile for working memory. Each of the child prodigies tested at what was considered a moderately elevated intelligence and exhibited high scores relative to their attention to detail. But the most…
Researchers at the University of Montreal and its affiliated Saint-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital reported that each weekly hour of TV watched by 2.5- to 4.5-year olds had statistically significant effect correlation to athletic ability and waist size by the second and fourth grade, respectively, for those children. Parents of 1,314 children reported…
A recent research article published in The Journal of Family Psychology reported the use of guilt-inducing parenting causes distress and anger that is still measurable the next day. Guilt-inducing parenting is when a parent tries to impact a child’s behavior by trying to make them feel guilty. An example might be when a child…
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing reported that children who ate breakfast more often had significantly higher IQ scores on the full scale, verbal, and performance tests. The study included 1,269 six-year-old children. After controlling for seven potential sociodemographic variables, the study found children who ate breakfast on a near-daily basis…
The Tucson Children’s Assessment of Sleep Apnea Study was published this year in the journal SLEEP [1]. In this study of 263 youth, sleep study and neurobehavioral data was collected twice, five years apart. Twenty-one of the children had persistent sleep apnea throughout the entire study. These children were six times more likely to…
Historically, it has not been considered a “realistic” goal in the mainstream world for a child with autism to ever lose their diagnosis, let alone lose all the symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder and move completely into the non-autistic range of normal social interaction and communication. Although much recent research has documented individuals with ASD…
Anxiety disorders are supposedly the most common mental health issue today for adolescents, with one national study of more than 10,000 adolescents finding that about 31% qualified for an anxiety disorder at least at one point in their lives (Merikangas et al., 2010). Prescriptions given to children for these anxiety disorders are antidepressants that include selective …