News by Subject Social & Behavior

Some children learn to read early. Others need more time. But we can do some things to help them, and one of them is important to do first.

A two-step task commonly used to study people's decision-making behaviors does not appear to be effective for training people to rely more on goal-oriented behaviors and less on habitual behaviors. Elmar Grosskurth of Inselspital University Hospital Bern, Switzerland, and colleagues present these findings in PLOS Computational Biology.

A new video game framework brings together two well-studied approaches to educational software in order to keep multiple players engrossed in the learning experience while fostering collaboration and problem solving. The framework is one of the first to integrate narrative-centered learning and collaborative learning techniques, laying the groundwork for future efforts in the field.

Communication skills and group work could be taught alongside regular curricula and a structured protocol, which promotes communication, can go a long way to help children with ASD to socialize with their peers, thereby aiding their development.

New research has found that people who are illiterate, meaning they never learned to read or write, may have nearly three times greater risk of developing dementia than people who can read and write. The study is published in the Nov. 13, 2019, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

A University of Houston psychologist is reporting that although assigning household chores is considered an essential component of child-rearing, it turns out they might not help improve children's self-control. Assistant professor of psychology, Rodica Damian, also found that self-control predicted better work outcomes in young adulthood.