This post is part of our new ongoing series exploring classic experiments in the history of psychological research. In the late 1980s, a university committee at the University of Michigan called for psychology professor Dr. Claude Steele to tackle the problem of academic achievement among minority students at the university. His subsequent research resulted in …
Most people think of the word engagement and automatically start imagining a tiny box, a diamond ring, and someone down on one knee. I think of engagement and start thinking about therapy. Strange, huh? Well, if you think of what the word actually means, it’s not too strange. The noun engagement is “the act of …
“Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?” Most people easily pick up on the importance of television programming like Sesame Street and other educational shows for young children. Shows like these embed lessons about letters, manners, multiculturalism and more into their content. For adults, the lessons seem obvious, so we feel good about allowing …
One in five children in the US suffers from mental illness, but less than 25% of those children actually receive mental health services. That’s absolutely terrifying, especially if you consider all the kids who have other psychological struggles but don’t meet diagnostic criteria for a psychological disorder. How many children then aren’t getting the help …
One of the many reasons I like studying the brain is that its function is so directly tied to all the actions I do every day. As I go through the world it’s easy to forget that my brain is working hard coordinating my muscles and senses, so I like little demonstrative exercises using ones …
First published on HuffPost “This is America, where everyone has the right to life, love and the pursuit of fame.” – Ryan Seacrest, American Idol, 2010 In the new millennium, people face messages highlighting the significance of fame everywhere they look. Not only in reality television shows such as “Keeping up with the Kardashians” and …
The New York Times published an opinion piece this weekend titled, Are We Really Monolingual?. The piece mainly focuses on the various issues in how we try to estimate the number of languages a person speaks. The article writes, Since 1980, the United States Census Bureau has asked: “Does this person speak a language other …
“They agreed that computers had, so far, made surprisingly little impact on schools – far less than in other realms of society such as media and medicine and law. For that to change, Gates said, computers and mobile devices would have to focus on delivering more personalized lessons and providing motivational feedback.” Conversation between Bill …
Self-regulation is an extremely important skill to develop. In fact, as I am writing this post, with no outside person or institution forcing me to do, on a vacation day when it is sunny outside, I am demonstrating formidable self-regulation. I believe that teaching children, and adults, how to self-regulate is one of the best …
A friend recently asked me why our lab is called the “Learning and Forgetting Lab.” He pointed out, “I know learning is important, but why would you study forgetting?” That is an excellent question. Most people think of forgetting as a negative occurrence to prevent rather than an adaptive, beneficial function. In fact, forgetting something …
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