News by Subject Social & Behavior

A new study from Brown researchers finds that rewards improve performance on a visual perceptual task only if participants sleep after training.

Pet dogs are highly receptive to commands from their owners. But is this due to their training or do dogs have an innate ability to understand human signals? A new study finds that 80% of untrained stray dogs successfully followed pointing directions from people to a specific location. The results suggest that dogs can understand and respond to complex gestures without any training, meaning that dogs may have an innate connection to human behaviors.

The researchers say their experiments are the first to show that children are more willing to delay gratification for cooperative reasons than for individual goals.

A new study from researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons suggests that prenatal exposure to flame retardants may increase the risk of reading problems.

A team of Princeton researchers has conducted the first study of how baby and adult brains interact during natural play, and they found measurable connections in their neural activity. In other words, baby and adult brain activity rose and fell together as they shared toys and eye contact. The research was conducted at the Princeton Baby Lab, where University researchers study how babies learn to see, talk and understand the world.

As early as 4 years old, children associate power and masculinity, even in countries considered to be more egalitarian like Norway. This is what scientists at the Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod (CNRS/UCBL1) report, in collaboration with the universities of Oslo (Norway), Lausanne and Neuchâtel (Switzerland), in a study published on Jan. 7, 2020, in Sex Roles. They also show that in some situations the power-masculinity association does not manifest in girls.

Research from Rebecca Waller of the University of Pennsylvania and Nicholas Wagner of Boston University found that children who were fearless, lacked social connection, and didn't participate in 'arbitrary imitation' -- copying acts that had no inherent function -- were more likely to develop antisocial behavior.

School test scores often show gaps in performance between white and non-white students. Understanding the complex reasons behind this can help reduce those gaps and promote social equality, explains Mary Paula Arends-Kuenning, associate professor of agricultural and consumer economics at the University of Illinois.