Babies can recognise combinations of words even before they have uttered their first word, a study suggests, challenging ideas of how children learn language. Assessments in 11-12 month-olds show that infants at the cusp of talking are already processing multiword phrases such as ‘clap your hands’. Assessments in 11-12 month-olds show that infants at the…

Research has shown empathy gives healthcare workers the ability to provide appropriate supports and make fewer mistakes. This helps increase patient satisfaction and enhance patient outcomes, resulting in better overall care. Informally, empathy is often described as the capacity to put oneself in the shoes of another. Empathy is essential to patient-centered care and crucial…

A study conducted in Hungarian schools showed that seating students next to each other boosted their tendency to become friends — both for pairs of similar students and pairs of students who differed in their educational achievement, gender, or ethnicity. According to earlier research, proximity between people can promote friendships. However, people also tend to…

A new study of brain activity patterns in people doing a memory task finds that the way we make inferences — finding hidden connections between different experiences — changes dramatically as we age. The study’s findings might one day lead to personalized learning strategies based on a person’s cognitive and brain development. The researchers found…

A study found that food insecurity among college students is associated with lower college graduation rates and lower chances of obtaining a bachelor’s or advanced degree. Food insecurity is a household’s lack of consistent access to adequate food resources. The study examined a nationally representative sample of 1,574 college students in 1999-2003 to assess whether…

Students who used immersive virtual reality (VR) did not learn significantly better than those who used two more traditional forms of learning, but they vastly preferred the VR to computer-simulated and hands-on methods, a new study has found. «We didn’t know exactly what we were going to see,» said Jack Madden, doctoral student in astronomy…

Parents with higher reading-related knowledge are not only more likely to have children with higher reading scores but are also more attentive when those children read out loud to them. Young children learning to read and write English often need to identify patterns in words to be able to read and spell them. For example,…

Children who attend preschool enter kindergarten with greater skills than those who don’t, but that advantage is nearly halved by the end of the year as their counterparts quickly begin to catch up, according to new research. «Ensuring that young children enter kindergarten ready to learn has been of great research and policy interest. By…

New research finds that statewide K-12 teacher evaluation systems have proven to phase out lower performing teachers and retain more effective teachers for longer periods of time — particularly in urban districts and low-performing schools. «While we found that the rollout of a statewide evaluation system is associated with increased turnover, we saw it as…

Researchers have found that a readiness test can predict kindergarteners’ success in school after 18 months. Now, University of Missouri College of Education researchers have found that a readiness test can predict kindergarteners’ success in school after 18 months. Melissa Stormont, a professor of special education, says identifying students early in the academic year who…