Literacy News

September 19, 2025

Top Headlines

Why so Many Young Kids with ADHD Are Getting the Wrong Treatment

Sep. 16, 2025 — Preschoolers with ADHD are often given medication right after diagnosis, against medical guidelines that recommend starting with behavioral therapy. Limited access to therapy and physician pressures drive early prescribing, despite risks and reduced ...

Experts Warn: Smartphones Before 13 Could Harm Mental Health for Life

Sep. 6, 2025 — Getting a smartphone before age 13 may drastically increase the risk of poor mental health later in life, according to data from more than 100,000 people. Early use is linked to suicidal thoughts, aggression, and detachment, largely driven by social ...

Overimitation Begins in Infancy but Is Not yet Linked to In-group Preference

May 26, 2025 — A new study examines the emergence of overimitation in infants aged between 16 and 21 months to see if and how it is linked to social affiliation and other forms of imitation. The researchers found ...

AI Is Here to Stay, Let Students Embrace the Technology, Experts Urge

May 26, 2025 — A new study says students appear to be using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) responsibly, and as a way to speed up tasks, not just boost their ...

PREVENT Equation Accurately Estimated 10-year CVD Risk and Those with Calcium Buildup

May 23, 2025 — A new risk calculator accurately identified participants who had calcium buildup in their heart arteries and those who had a higher future heart attack risk, in an analysis of about 7,000 adults in ...

The Key to Spotting Dyslexia Early Could Be AI-powered Handwriting Analysis

May 14, 2025 — A new study outlines how artificial intelligence-powered handwriting analysis may serve as an early detection tool for dyslexia and dysgraphia among young ...

Lower Tackle Height Changing Face of Women's Rugby, Study Says

May 12, 2025 — Lowering the legal tackle height in women's rugby is proving effective in reducing head contacts between players, a new study suggests. Changes to the tackle height law in women's community rugby in Scotland is linked to reductions in head-to-head ...

Addressing Hearing Loss May Reduce Isolation Among the Elderly

May 12, 2025 — Providing hearing aids and advice on their use may preserve social connections that often wane as we age, a new study shows. Its authors say that this approach could help ease the loneliness epidemic that older Americans ...

Non-inherited Genes Affect Children's Development

May 8, 2025 — Parents' genes -- even when not directly inherited by a child -- may play a role in their educational and mental health outcomes, finds a new ...

Spanking and Other Physical Discipline Lead to Exclusively Negative Outcomes for Children in Low- And Middle-income Countries

May 5, 2025 — Physically punishing children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has exclusively negative outcomes -- including poor health, lower academic performance, and impaired social-emotional ...

STEM Students: Work Hard, but Don't Compare Yourself to Others

May 4, 2025 — A new study shows how damaging it can be for college students in introductory STEM classes to compare how hard they work to the extent of effort put in by their ...

Essay Challenge: ChatGPT Vs Students

May 1, 2025 — Researchers have been putting ChatGPT essays to the test against real students. A new study reveals that the AI generated essays don't yet live up to the efforts of real students. While the AI essays were found to be impressively coherent and ...

Latest Headlines

updated 9:58am EDT

Children's Reading and Writing Develop Better When They Are Trained in Handwriting

Apr. 30, 2025 — Researchers explored how manual and keyboard practice influenced children's abilities in their reading and writing learning process. 5-year-olds were ...

Study Shows Addressing Working Memory Can Help Students With Math Difficulty Improve Word Problem-Solving Skills

Apr. 22, 2025 — Working memory is like a mental chalkboard we use to store temporary information while executing other tasks. Scientists worked with more than 200 ...

Novel Treatment Approach for Language Disorder Shows Promise

Apr. 21, 2025 — Neuroscientists have developed a new treatment approach for a language disorder that combines traditional speech therapy with noninvasive electrical stimulation of the brain. Brain stimulation helped ...

Father's Mental Health Can Impact Children for Years

Apr. 21, 2025 — Five-year-olds exposed to paternal depression are more likely to have behavioral issues in grade school, researchers ...

Hidden Potential in Multiple Disabilities

Apr. 14, 2025 — Using eye-tracking -- a technique for recording and analyzing eye movements -- a team has shown that individuals with multiple disabilities can improve their social and emotional skills. Although ...

Exposure to Air Pollution May Harm Brain Health of Older Adults

Apr. 7, 2025 — Long-term exposure to high levels of air pollution may harm the brain health of older adults in England, finds a new ...

Science 'Storytelling' Urgently Needed Amid Climate and Biodiversity Crisis

Apr. 4, 2025 — Scientists should experiment with creative ways of communicating their work to inspire action to protect the natural world, researchers ...

Fear of Rejection Influences How Children Conform to Peers

Apr. 4, 2025 — The fear of rejection -- familiar to many children and adults -- can significantly impact how kids behave in their peer groups, according to new ...

How GPS Helps Older Drivers Stay on the Roads

Apr. 3, 2025 — New research shows that Sat Nav systems are helping keep older drivers on the roads for longer. The study reveals that over 65s with a poorer sense of direction rely more on help from GPS navigation ...

Classroom Talk Plays a Key Part in the Teaching of Writing

Mar. 30, 2025 — The way teachers manage classroom discussion with pupils plays a key role in the teaching of writing, a new study ...

Adulting Is Hard on the Heart: Teen to Young Adulthood Is a Critical Time to Address Risk

Mar. 26, 2025 — Many youth have heart disease risk factors by their late teens, and preventing or addressing these risks early may reduce the risk of developing cardiovascular disease in the future, according to a ...

How Family Background Can Help Lead to Athletic Success

Mar. 20, 2025 — Americans have long believed that sports are one area in society that offers kids from all backgrounds the chance to succeed to the best of their abilities. But new research suggests that this belief ...

To the Brain, Esperanto and Klingon Appear the Same as English or Mandarin

Mar. 18, 2025 — New research finds the brain's language-processing network also responds to artificial languages such as Esperanto and languages made for TV, such as Klingon on 'Star Trek' and High ...

When Did Human Language Emerge?

Mar. 18, 2025 — Humans' unique language capacity was present at least 135,000 years ago, according to a survey of genomic evidence. As such, language might have entered social use 100,000 years ...

Re-Purposed FDA-Approved Drug Could Help Treat High-Grade Glioma

Mar. 13, 2025 — A study shows that high-grade glioma tumor cells harboring DNA alterations in the gene PDGFRA responded to the drug avapritinib, which is already approved by the United States Food and Drug ...

More Than Marks: How Wellbeing Shapes Academic Success

Mar. 11, 2025 — A world first* study of more than 215,000 students, researchers found that while standardized tests measure academic skills, different dimensions of wellbeing -- emotional wellbeing, engagement, and ...

New Research Reveals Psychological 'Booster Shots' Can Strengthen Resistance to Misinformation Over Time

Mar. 11, 2025 — A new study has found that targeted psychological interventions can significantly enhance long-term resistance to misinformation. Dubbed 'psychological booster shots,' these interventions ...

AI-Based Math: Individualized Support for Schoolchildren

Mar. 10, 2025 — Researchers have developed an AI-based learning system that recognizes strengths and weaknesses in mathematics by tracking eye movements with a webcam to generate problem-solving hints. This enables ...

New Study Examines How Physics Students Perceive Recognition

Mar. 5, 2025 — Experts see peer recognition as important to student success in physics, and a new study gives college-level physics instructors insight into how students perceive the message from their classmates ...

Creativity Boosts Standardized Literacy and Numeracy Test Scores: Australia

Mar. 4, 2025 — A groundbreaking study shows that creativity plays an essential role in academic success, suggesting that students who think outside the box are more likely to excel in literacy and numeracy ...

Teaching Kids How to Become Better Citizens

Mar. 3, 2025 — In our polarized society, a new study offers hope for the future: Even young children can learn to discuss and argue about meaningful problems in a respectful and productive way. Researchers found ...

ChatGPT on the Couch? How to Calm a Stressed-out AI

Mar. 3, 2025 — Distressing news and traumatic stories can cause stress and anxiety -- not only in humans, but these stories can also affect AI language models, such as ChatGPT. Researchers have now shown that these ...

We Need a New Definition of Dyslexia, Research Says

Feb. 25, 2025 — A new definition of dyslexia is needed to more accurately describe the learning disorder and give those struggling with dyslexia the specific support they require, says new ...

Clashing With Classmates: Off-Putting Traits Spark Enemy Relationships

Feb. 25, 2025 — Making enemies isn't random. Traits like emotional instability, aggression, and disruptive behavior early in life can lead to antagonistic relationships. Research on students aged 9-14 found ...

Like Human Brains, Large Language Models Reason About Diverse Data in a General Way

Feb. 19, 2025 — Researchers find large language models process diverse types of data, like different languages, audio inputs, images, etc., similarly to how humans reason about complex problems. Like humans, LLMs ...

Improved Brain Decoder Holds Promise for Communication in People With Aphasia

Feb. 6, 2025 — A new AI-based tool can translate a person's thoughts into continuous text, without requiring the person to comprehend spoken words. This latest advance suggests it may be possible, with further ...

School Bans Alone Not Enough to Tackle Negative Impacts of Phone and Social Media Use, Researchers Find

Feb. 5, 2025 — Students attending schools that ban the use of phones throughout the school day aren't necessarily experiencing better mental health and wellbeing, as the first worldwide study of its kind has ...

Fool Yourself: People Unknowingly Cheat on Tasks to Feel Smarter, Healthier

Feb. 5, 2025 — When given the opportunity, individuals will cheat to feel smarter or healthier, engaging in diagnostic self-deception to convince themselves that their performance is due to their ability and not ...

Study in India Shows Kids Use Different Math Skills at Work Vs. School

Feb. 5, 2025 — A study by economists shows a wide gap between the kinds of math problems kids who work in retail markets do well and the kinds of problems kids in school do ...

COVID Lockdowns Disrupted a Crucial Social Skill Among Preschoolers, Trailblazing Study Finds

Jan. 29, 2025 — Researchers discovered children ages 3 to 5 tested before and after COVID lockdowns had a significant gap in a key cognitive skill, particularly for children from homes with low financial resources ...