Children’s behavior and personality are equally conditioned by genes and environment. But, which environment? Studies on siblings, twins and adopted children say that the environment outside home counts a lot more than the home environment. Similarities between parents and biological children are prevalently due to shared genes. Children are programed to succeed in a social...
Privacy is an important aspect of the doctor patient relationship. However, too much privacy is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes patients have serious conditions that require long treatments and doctors might not be able to continuously check if patients are adhering to dietary restrictions or physical exercise programs or medical prescriptions. Forms of intervention...
To calm a crying infant singing is more effective than speaking. A study has revealed that infants under one year of age who cry because their mother has left the room, stop crying when they hear someone singing and remain calm for twice as long with respect to when they listen to someone speaking. The...
Small children are surrounded by an enormous amount of stimuli and information. How to they know what to use and ‘learn’ and what to ignore? Ever since they are newborns children use past experiences to make forecasts. Events that are in line with the forecast (such as a ball that rolls and stops when it...
Adults and children often speak using their hands. In the case of children this helps them learn better. A child who does not yet know the word “dog” but points at a dog will probably hear his mother say “well done, that’s a dog”. A child who says the word “dog” and points towards a...
Studies reveal that there is a close relationship between living abroad for some time and being creative. Five series of comparable individuals (groups differed in terms of level of education, job, age and certain personality traits) from various European countries and USA were studied in four different situations where being creative helped solve some problems....
REM sleep is a phase of sleep in which we dream. In this stage the brain is active just as if we were engaged intellectually. It has been discovered that during REM sleep neurons form certain connections in various areas of the brain and certain neurological circuits awaken (which otherwise are dormant when one is...
Six-month old infants who obviously cannot speak, can discriminate between the sounds of different consonants. However, if they are sucking a pacifier the distinction is much harder because the pacifier interferes with tongue movements that help the infant attempt to repeat the sound of the consonants it just heard. Remove the pacifier and the infant...
Chimps make no distinction in asking people whether blindfolded or not for food. Hide a banana under one of three plates and then signaling to the chimp under which plate the banana is hidden will not help the chimp find it. Dogs instead will understand, but not chimps, even if they are our close cousins....
Ever more children and youngsters who live in Europe are bilingual. This is different from immigrants born in one culture and brought up in another. It is also different from children brought up in a single culture and single language context who then for some reason become multicultural and multilingual. For many youngsters in Europe...
