News by Subject Social & Behavior

In a major analysis of university faculty and students in science, technology, engineering and math, Indiana University social psychologists found that professors' beliefs about intelligence play a measurable role in the success of all students, especially underrepresented minorities taking their first college-level STEM courses.

Walking simulation games signal a new literary genre Research from the University of Kent has revealed that walking simulations are blurring the boundaries of different art forms to create a new literary genre. Walking simulations -- video games where there are no winners and no one is shot at or killed -- have become increasingly popular in the last few years.

A new longitudinal study examined boys from low-income backgrounds to determine which behaviors in kindergarten are associated with earnings in adulthood. The study concluded that inattention was associated with lower earnings and prosocial behavior with higher earnings.

In a study of 920 boys from low-socioeconomic neighborhoods in Montreal, Canada, teacher ratings of inattention in kindergarten at ages 5 and 6 were associated with lower earnings as adults 30 years later, while increased ratings on prosocial behavior (such as helping, sharing and cooperating) were associated with higher earnings after accounting for child IQ and family adversity.

Do children raised by religious parents have better social and psychological development than those raised in non-religious homes? In a new study, researchers found that religion can be a mixed blessing for children as they get older.

Hyperlinks slow down reading speed only when the linked word is unfamiliar, an effect that is independent of link color, according to new research published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Gemma Fitzsimmons, Mark Weal, and Dennis Drieghe of the University of Southampton in the UK. The effect is likely due to the reader's perception that the unfamiliar word may carry special importance in the sentence when formatted as a hyperlink.

Astronomers at the University of California, Riverside, have teamed with teachers at the California School for the Deaf, Riverside, or CSDR, to design an astronomy workshop for students with hearing loss that can be easily used in classrooms, museums, fairs, and other public events. The workshop utilized a sound stage that allowed the CSDR students to 'feel' vibrations from rockets, stars, galaxies, supernovae, and even remnants of the Big Bang itself.

This observational study compared standardized test scores in reading and math for more than 630,000 Danish public school children with and without type 1 diabetes. Researchers found no significant difference in reading and math scores between the groups of children who were attending second, third, fourth, sixth and eighth grades in Denmark. The findings may not apply to other countries.