Group items tagged

Older siblings play an important role in the lives of their younger siblings. Like parents, older brothers and sisters act as role models and teachers, helping their younger siblings learn about the world. This positive influence is thought to extend to younger siblings' capacity to feel care and sympathy for those in need: Children whose older siblings are kind, warm, and supportive are more empathic than children whose siblings lack these characteristics. A new longitudinal study looked at whether younger siblings also contribute to their older sisters' and brothers' empathy in early childhood, when empathic tendencies begin to develop. The research found that beyond the influence of parents, both older and younger siblings positively influence each other's empathic concern over time.

Researchers studied an ethnically diverse group of 452 Canadian sibling pairs and their mothers who were part of the Kids, Families, and Places project and from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. They wanted to determine whether levels of empathy in 18- and 48-month-old siblings at the start of the study predicted changes in the other siblings' empathy 18 months later. The researchers videotaped interactions in the families' homes and mothers completed questionnaires. Children's empathy was measured by observing each sibling's behavioral and facial responses to an adult researcher who pretended to be distressed (e.g., after breaking a cherished object) and hurt (e.g., after hitting her knee and catching her finger in a briefcase).

"Our findings emphasize the importance of considering how all members of the family, not just parents and older siblings, contribute to children's development," suggests Sheri Madigan, Canada Research Chair in Determinants of Child Development and assistant professor of psychology at the University of Calgary, who coauthored the study. "The influence of younger siblings has been found during adolescence, but our study indicates that this process may begin much earlier than previously thought."

Memory’s speed and accuracy begin to slip around age 25 and keep on slipping.

Now comes a new kind of challenge to the evidence of a cognitive decline, from a decidedly digital quarter: data mining, based on theories of information processing

Since educated older people generally know more words than younger people, simply by virtue of having been around longer, the experiment simulates what an older brain has to do to retrieve a word. And when the researchers incorporated that difference into the models, the aging “deficits” largely disappeared.

mental faculties that improve with age.

Knowledge is a large part of the equation, of course. People who are middle-aged and older tend to know more than young adults, by virtue of having been around longer, and score higher on vocabulary tests, crossword puzzles and other measures of so-called crystallized intelligence.

the older brain offers something more, according to a new paper in the journal Psychological Science. Elements of social judgment and short-term memory, important pieces of the cognitive puzzle, may peak later in life than previously thought.

Earth is old. The sun is old. But do you know what may be even older than both? Water.

more than 4.6 billion years ago.

That means the same liquid we drink and that fills the oceans may be millions of years older than the solar system itself.

About one-third of Americans older than 65 now live alone, and half of those over 85 do. People in poorer health — especially those with mood disorders like anxiety and depression — are more likely to feel lonely. Those without a college education are the least likely to have someone they can talk to about important personal matters.

Loneliness can accelerate cognitive decline in older adults, and isolated individuals are twice as likely to die prematurely as those with more robust social interactions. These effects start early: Socially isolated children have significantly poorer health 20 years later, even after controlling for other factors. All told, loneliness is as important a risk factor for early death as obesity and smoking.

The loneliness of older adults has different roots — often resulting from family members moving away and close friends passing away. As one senior put it, “Your world dies before you do.”

Today it feels like the days peel on by, and a vacation which may last days or weeks is gone in mere hours. This is a common human experience.

There are an awful lot of theories that give us insight. But a direct scientific law so far remains elusive.

In 1877, the “ratio theory” was born, which states that we compare intervals to the total amount of time we’ve been alive. This can also be called “proportional theory,” the idea that as we age, our sense of the present begins to feel short as compared to our total lifespan.

The research “shows you can take older people who aren’t functioning well and make them cognitively younger through this training,” said Earl K. Miller, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not affiliated with the research. “It’s a very big deal.”

Neuroscientists there, led by Dr. Adam Gazzaley, worked with developers to create NeuroRacer, a relatively simple video game in which players drive and try to identify specific road signs that pop up on the screen, while ignoring other signs deemed irrelevant.

One of the main early findings of the study reinforced just how challenging it is to multitask successfully, particularly as people age.

THIS fall, one in 11 kindergarten-age children in the United States will not be going to class. Parents of these children often delay school entry in an attempt to give them a leg up on peers, but this strategy is likely to be counterproductive.

Teachers may encourage redshirting because more mature children are easier to handle in the classroom and initially produce better test scores than their younger classmates.

This advantage fades by the end of elementary school, though, and disadvantages start to accumulate. In high school, redshirted children are less motivated and perform less well. By adulthood, they are no better off in wages or educational attainment — in fa

When she was a young physician, Dr. Martha Gulati noticed that many of her mentors were prescribing vitamin E and folic acid to patients. Preliminary studies in the early 1990s had linked both supplements to a lower risk of heart disease.She urged her father to pop the pills as well: “Dad, you should be on these vitamins, because every cardiologist is taking them or putting their patients on [them],” recalled Dr. Gulati, now chief of cardiology for the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix

But just a few years later, she found herself reversing course, after rigorous clinical trials found neither vitamin E nor folic acid supplements did anything to protect the heart. Even worse, studies linked high-dose vitamin E to a higher risk of heart failure, prostate cancer and death from any cause.

More than half of Americans take vitamin supplements, including 68 percent of those age 65 and older, according to a 2013 Gallup poll. Among older adults, 29 percent take four or more supplements of any kind

Instead of self-confident and self-centered answers, the author humbly asks fundamental questions: What is economics? What is its meaning? Where does this new religion, as it is sometimes called, come from? What are its possibilities and its limitations and borders, if there are any? Why are we so dependent on permanent growing of growth and growth of growing of growth? Where did the idea of progress come from, and where is it leading us? Why are so many economic debates accompanied by obsession and fanaticism?

The majority of our political parties act with a narrow materialistic focus when, in their programs, they present the economy and finance first; only then, somewhere at the end, do we find culture as something pasted on or as a libation for a couple of madmen.

most of them—consciously or unconsciously—accept and spread the Marxist thesis of the economic base and the spiritual superstructure.

The question remains compelling: What is wisdom, and how does it play out in individual lives?

Most psychologists agree that if you define wisdom as maintaining positive well-being and kindness in the face of challenges, it is one of the most important qualities one can possess to age successfully — and to face physical decline and death.

Based on an analysis of their answers, she determined that wisdom consists of three key components: cognition, reflection and compassion.

A new study, published Tuesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests that the way sleep patterns change with age may be an evolutionary adaptation that helped our ancestors survive the night by ensuring one person in a community was awake at all times. The researchers called this phenomenon the “poorly sleeping grandparent hypothesis,” suggesting that an older member of a community who woke before dawn might have been crucial to spotting the threat of a hungry predator while younger people were still asleep. It may explain why people slept in mixed-age groups through much of human history.

The Hadza sleeping environment may have similarities to that of earlier humans, researchers said. They sleep outdoors or in grass huts in groups of 20 to 30 people without artificially regulating temperature or light. These conditions provide a suitable window to study the evolutionary aspects of sleep.

more than 220 total hours of sleep observation, researchers found only 18 minutes when all adults were sound asleep simultaneously. Typically, older participants in their 50s and 60s went to bed earlier and woke up earlier than those in their 20s and 30s. On average, more than a third of the group was alert, or lightly dozing, at any given time.