Read moreShe is passionate, for example, about the madness of an 8.30/9 am school start time. ‘It’s the middle of the night for a teenager!’ she says. Teenagers release melatonin (the sleepy hormone) a couple of hours later in the day than adults and so are able to stay up later, but then they need more sleep in the morning. ‘It’s like getting us up at 5.30 am,’ Blakemore elaborates.
The full article, linked above, pretty much stands on its own.
Read moreRead moreMore than half of the 47 preschoolers diagnosed with depression displayed pathological guilt, compared with 20 percent of the non-depressed preschoolers. The researchers found that the children with high levels of guilt, even if they weren’t depressed, had smaller anterior insula volume — which has been found to predict later occurrences of depression. Children with smaller insula volume in the right hemisphere, related to either depression or guilt, were more likely to have recurring episodes of clinical depression when they got older.
Read moreMuch of what Siegel wants us to consider can be condensed into a simple phrase: “what fires together, wires together.” The idea is that when a set of neurons are stimulated, they link up with all those other neurons that are simultaneously firing. Whether the groups of neurons that are linking make sense to us as observers on the outside is beside the point. Odd pairings can occur, strange juxtapositions of feelings and sensations that, outside of the experience of a particular individual, seem almost impossible to the rest of us. I’m reminded of a narrative in the old DSM-IV casebook that describes an individual who had come to associate sexual arousal with being covered in insects.
Read moreI sat at the end of the sofa. This is the spot I’d been in all night watching people move around the room, and listening to whoever chose to sit next to me talk. This is how I used to inhibit a party. Motionless and quiet, waiting for just the right moment to hurry home.
This was not just my way of dealing with parties. It reflected the way I dealt with much of my life. Too afraid to show the world who I really was, I’d try my best to stay quiet and still. Don’t say too much. Don’t laugh too loudly. Don’t let them know you are anxious. Don’t let them notice that you are different.
Read moreWhile the data did appear to show a link between an increase in violent video game consumption and a decrease in youth violence, just as it did for films after 1990, Ferguson is not prepared to say the result is anything other than a coincidence. But what he can say for sure is that while media violence is definitely being consumed more now than ever before, there is absolutely no clear evidence to link media violence with societal violence.
Read moreWe’re all affected by the so-called modern lifestyle, but ADHD kids and adults seem to be more affected, perhaps because their brains are more sensitive, or perhaps because they simply have more energy to burn. If there’s an overlying message here, it’s to return to Mother Nature: think how our ancestors lived, and try to imitate it as closely as possible. They moved to hunt, grow, gather and pick their food; they were active during daylight hours and rested at night; and they were not exposed to artificial light, artificial foods, or artificial play. Mother Nature cannot be fooled!
Read more“Sending children away to get control of their anger perpetuates the feeling of ‘badness” inside them…Chances are they were already feeling not very good about themselves before the outburst and the isolation just serves to confirm in their own minds that they were right.” — Otto Weininger, Ph.D. Time-In Parenting
When our kids get angry, it pushes buttons for most of us. We’re not perfect, but we try to be loving parents. Why is our child lashing out like this?
Read more“Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes,” writes author and prominent business-world thinker Daniel Pink. “Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.”
A lovely thought. But new research suggests it isn’t always true.
A paper just published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin provides evidence that feelings of empathy toward a distressed person can inspire aggressive behaviour.
Read moreThe analysis found that adolescents tended to be more sexually active themselves if they perceived their peers as a) more sexually active, b) more approving of having sex, and c) exerting more pressure on them to be sexually active. “What adolescents think that their peers do (role modelling) seems to be most important: adolescents who think that their peers engage in sex are more likely to engage in sex themselves. Peers’ approval of having sex, or peer pressure to have sex, also matter, but seem to matter less,” explains lead researcher, Daphne van de Bongardt.
