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Support can boost belief and outcomes, according to results of UChicago field experiments A new study from the University of Chicago investigates one potential source of discrepancy in child skill level: disparity in parents' beliefs about their influence over their children's development. Through experimental studies involving hundreds of families across the Chicagoland area, the researchers show parental knowledge and beliefs differ across socioeconomic status.

Carnegie Mellon University Engaging students through interactive activities, discussions, feedback and AI-enhanced technologies resulted in improved academic performance compared to traditional lectures, lessons or readings, faculty from Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute concluded after collecting research into active learning.

A practice used by education pioneer Montessori in the early 1900s has received further validation, with studies showing that finger tracing makes learning easier and more motivating. Imagining an object after tracing it can generate even faster learning, for children and adults alike. Finger tracing has been used by teachers to help students learn for more than a century.

National Curriculum Key Stage 2 tests taken by 10- and 11-year-old children in England to assess progress in English and Mathematics do not seem to affect children's wellbeing, according to new UCL-led research. The peer-reviewed study, published today in Assessment in Education, analysed data from around 2,500 children who live in England (where the KS2 tests are conducted) and in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales (where the tests do not take place) and are all participants of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS).

Time spent together in families significantly contributes to mothers and fathers' happiness when compared to being alone, shows new research from a UCL academic. The research also finds that couple time spent alone without children contributes to the largest increase in wellbeing Published today in Sociology , the study analyses data from 236 couples who participated in the 2014-2015 United Kingdom Time Use Survey and finds that fathers often reported enjoying family time more than mothers do.

As the debate continues over gathering data to advance teaching and learning in a way that lets students have a say over how their information is used, a University of Michigan study shows that giving them the opportunity to opt out may skew the data, biasing it against the people institutions most want to help.

For more than 20 years, the University of Toronto's  Elizabeth Johnson has studied the ways babies and children acquire language: How do children begin learning the meaning of words? How do they cope with unfamiliar languages and voices? How do they learn language so quickly? Now, with the support of the Canadian Foundation for Innovation's John R. Evans Leaders Fund , the professor of psychology and director of the Child Language and Spe

Hyperlexia is a condition where preschool children display an intense early interest in letters in a way that is very advanced for their age. They can decode words accurately, but without understanding their meaning. It is most common among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) - with approximately 6-20% of children with autism demonstrating hyperlexia.

The regions that form the reading network in the brain mainly develop in the first two years of primary school. After that, the growth of these brain regions stabilises. This has been shown by a year-long study conducted by KU Leuven. Neurobiological differences in dyslexia are already present at pre-school age  The regions that form the reading network in the brain mainly develop in the first two years of primary school.

Physical activity among young people can be improved by well-designed and delivered online interventions such as 'exergames' and smartphone apps, new research shows. According to a review study carried out at the University of Birmingham, children and young people reacted positively in PE lessons to the use of exergames, which deliver physical activity lessons via games or personalised activities.

A child's educational success depends on the genes that they haven't inherited from their parents, as well as the genes they have, according to a new study led by UCL researchers. Funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the study confirms that genes a person inherits directly are most likely to contribute to their achievements in education.

A new study by researchers at the Yale Child Study Center demonstrates that puppets can attract and hold the attention of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), raising the potential for developing more engaging therapies that strengthen social engagement and facilitate learning. The study, published in the journal Autism Research, is the first to test anecdotal evidence that children with ASD, like most youngsters, pay attention to puppets.

A new approach to tackling the spread of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, which combines affordable, easy-to-administer blood tests with machine learning and unbreakable encryption, has generated encouraging early results in Uganda. Malaria is one of the world's leading causes of illness and death, sickening around 228 million people each year, more than 400,000 of them fatally.

For the first time, researchers have used machine learning to successfully measure attachment in children - the vital human bond that humans first develop as infants to their caregivers. In new multi-disciplinary research, led by the University of Glasgow and published in PLOS ONE, the study team present a quick and easy way to measure attachment through a computer game, that has the potential to be used in largescale public health monitoring.

Older adults may be slower to learn actions and behaviours that benefit themselves, but new research shows they are just as capable as younger people of learning behaviours that benefit others. Researchers at the Universities of Birmingham and Oxford found that youngsters, in contrast, tend to learn much faster when they are making choices that benefit themselves.

A new study suggests money worries prompt parents to talk less to their kids, exacerbating the "word gap.” (iStockphoto) Three decades ago, child development researchers found that low-income children heard tens of millions fewer words in their homes than their more affluent peers by the time they reached kindergarten.

Scientists have long known that while listening to a sequence of sounds, people often perceive a rhythm, even when the sounds are identical and equally spaced. One regularity that was discovered over 100 years ago is the Iambic-Trochaic Law : when every other sound is loud, we tend to hear groups of two sounds with an initial beat.

Attention training in young people with autism can lead to significant improvements in academic performance, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Birmingham in the UK along with institutions in São Paolo, in Brazil, tested a computer programme designed to train basic attention skills among a group of autistic children aged between eight and 14 years old.

Research led by Göttingen University shows constructing microscope improves children's understanding Microscopy is an essential tool in many fields of science and medicine. However, many groups have limited access to this technology due to its cost and fragility. Now, researchers from the Universities of Göttingen and Münster have succeeded in building a high-resolution microscope using nothing more than children's plastic building bricks and affordable parts from a mobile phone.

Study on use of tablets in mathematics Low-achieving pupils benefit more in mathematics lessons from learning materials on tablet PCs than high-achieving children. They are obviously helped by individualized learning paths, immediate feedback and the hands-on processing of interactive content. This conclusion was reached in a study conducted by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) with sixth-grade students.