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Lydia Denworth

Author of I Can Hear You Whisper

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The Magic of Reading Aloud to Babies

May 5, 2017 by Lydia Denworth 1 Comment

New research shows even infants benefit from books and reading.

You’re never too young for books. Reading to babies as young as six months of age leads to stronger vocabularies and better early literacy skills four years later, just as the children are getting ready to go to school. That’s the finding being presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting on May 8. How often and how vividly kids and adults engage in books together through the toddler years also mattered, predicting early reading and writing skills. “Even though children may not be talking yet, that doesn’t mean they’re not learning,” says developmental psychologist Carolyn Cates, a research assistant professor in the department of pediatrics at NYU Langone Medical Center and lead author of the study.

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Topics: Profiles

Even Fish Need Friends

April 21, 2017 by Lydia Denworth Leave a Comment

New research explores how social connections ease stress.

The presence of a friend can lower stress levels. That’s an established phenomenon known as “social buffering.” Given how lethal stress can be, this is very good to know. But exactly how do friends calm us down? Does it matter which friend? And under what circumstances? Scientists are exploring these open questions in everything from fish to 15-year-olds. A series of recent studies provide some interesting new hints to better explain the power of social connection.

Read more at Psychology Today.com.

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Topics: Profiles

The Inside Story of How Slow Breathing Calms You Down

April 7, 2017 by Lydia Denworth Leave a Comment

New research reveals brain connections between breathing and states of mind.

Take a deep breath. That’s routine advice for how to calm down or slow down. Yoga instructors, therapists, parents, and even elementary school teachers use long, slow breathing exercises to instill tranquility or reduce anxiety. Now, researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine are giving the same advice, with brand-new neuroscience to back it up. In a recent study, they and their colleagues have uncovered a direct and powerful connection in the brain between breathing and states of mind.

Read more at Psychology Today.com.

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Topics: Emotions and Relationships, Science and Health, Social Behavior

It’s Not Me, It’s You

March 23, 2017 by Lydia Denworth Leave a Comment

New research reveals how pronouns help us cope with negative experiences.

You is one of the most common words in the English language, but you might be using it in ways you didn’t appreciate. Grammatically, you is a second-person pronoun used to refer to someone who is not, well, you — “the verbal equivalent of pointing to one’s audience,” say psychologists who study this. But you is also a way of referring to people in general, as in “you win some, you lose some.” And a study just published in Science reveals that we use you in that generic way not only to express norms, but also to describe personal negative experiences. Doing so provides psychological distance and helps us find meaning in the hard things that happen to us.

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Topics: Emotions and Relationships, Parenting and Family, Science and Health, Social Behavior

How to Train Your Brain like a Memory Champion

March 8, 2017 by Lydia Denworth 2 Comments

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New research shows that an ancient technique strengthens brain connectivity.

You, too, can train your brain to become a memory athlete—one of those prodigious memorizers who compete to remember the longest sequence of playing cards, or put the most names to faces in the least amount of time. To perform such cognitive feats, memory athletes rely on an ancient mnemonic strategy called method of loci (Latin for places) or memory palace, the term Joshua Foer used in his popular book on memory champions, Moonwalking with Einstein. A new study published this week in Neuron compares, for the first time, the brains of memory athletes to those of regular folks given six weeks of training in the method of loci system. The non-athletes not only achieved similar feats of memory, but they also exhibited the same brain changes seen in the memory athletes with much stronger functional connectivity across relevant networks.

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Topics: Learning, Science and Health

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A few times a month, I post updates on the latest thinking about sound, perception, language, and learning, on developments in hearing and Deaf culture, and how it all connects to being a parent—of any child.

Topics

  • Autism
  • Emotions and Relationships
  • Hearing and Sound
  • Learning
  • Mental Health
  • Parenting and Family
  • Profiles
  • Science and Health
  • Social Behavior

Recent Posts

  • The Magic of Reading Aloud to Babies
  • Even Fish Need Friends
  • The Inside Story of How Slow Breathing Calms You Down
  • It’s Not Me, It’s You
  • How to Train Your Brain like a Memory Champion

Recent Comments

  • Sue Leitner on The Magic of Reading Aloud to Babies
  • Lydia Denworth on How to Train Your Brain like a Memory Champion
  • JULIE MORGAN on How to Train Your Brain like a Memory Champion
  • Dr William P Williamson ii on The Gift of Time
  • Alan Loeb on The Importance of Connections

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