Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are donating $30 million to Reach Every Reader, an MIT and Harvard initiative that aims to tackle low elementary school literacy rates. Students younger than third grade will be the focus as “early intervention can have the most profound effect on turning students into proficient readers,” writes James Vaznis for The Boston Globe.
A new study from the McGovern Institute suggest “that one of the most effective ways to stimulate children’s brains from a young age is back-and-forth conversation,” writes Elise Takaham for The Boston Globe. “We think that it’s because back-and-forth conversation is not only about hearing more words, it’s also about practicing paying attention to someone else and involves lots of emotional and social bonding,” said Prof. John Gabrieli.
Professor John Gabrieli and graduate student Rachel Romeo speak with WBUR’s Carey Goldberg about their new research. "What we found is, the more often parents engaged in back-and-forth conversation with their child, the stronger was the brain response in the front of the brain to language," Gabrieli explains.
Chronicle of Higher Education reporter Scott Carlson speaks with Prof. Mitchel Resnick about his new book, which highlights the importance of kindergarten. Resnick explains that schools should create a more kindergarten-like environment for all students that enables “kids to follow their own ideas, to have their own agency, to make progress on problems and projects they really care about.”
Prof. Mitchel Resnick speaks to Radio Boston’s Meghna Chakrabarti about his research with the Lifelong Kindergarten group and what makes the kindergarten teaching method ideal. Children in kindergarten, “spend a lot of time playfully creating things in collaboration with one another,” Resnick explains, adding that “they’re really developing as creative thinkers.”
A new study by MIT researchers shows that different types of learning correspond with different brainwave frequencies, reports Brooks Hays for UPI. The findings, “could help doctors diagnose and treat learning disabilities and cognitive diseases.”
In an article published by U.S. News & World Report, Jill Barshay writes about a new study by J-PAL researchers that examines the effectiveness of specific educational technologies. Vincent Quan of J-PAL North American explains that, “we wanted to find all the studies and distill the main lessons so that decision makers can decide which programs to scale up and invest in.”
A new study by MIT researchers shows that children as young as 15 months can learn tenacity from watching their parents, reports Dennis Thompson for U.S. News & World Report. Graduate student Julia Leonard explains that the study shows, "infants are watching your behavior intently and actually learning from what you do."
Scientific American reporter Yasemin Saplakoglu writes that MIT researchers have found that watching an adult struggle and then succeed can inspire infants to try harder at their own task. Saplakoglu explains that the study shows, “babies can also infer values—such as when it is worth it to keep trying—from adults’ behaviors.”
AP reporter Malcom Ritter writes that children as young as 15 months old can be inspired to try harder at a task when they see adults struggle before succeeding. Prof. Laura Schulz explained that the findings show young children, “can learn the value of effort from just a couple of examples.”
A study by MIT researchers finds that children from lower-income families benefited more from summer reading programs, reports Andrew Grant for The Boston Globe. Of the children who participated in the study about half, “improved their test scores and most of those that did came from lower-income families.”
MIT researchers have found similarities in how the brains of babies and adults respond to visual information, reports Courtney Humphries for The Atlantic. “Every region that we knew about in adults [with] a preference for faces or scenes has that same preference in babies 4 to 6 months old,” explains Prof. Rebecca Saxe.
MIT researchers have found that reduced plasticity in the brains of people with dyslexia may explain why they experience difficulties with reading and with processing spoken speech, writes Kevin Murnane of Forbes. Murnane explains that the findings “indicate that dyslexia is not just about reading. It involves a reduction in neural adaptation to a variety of perceptual stimuli.”
TIME reporter Alice Park writes about a study by Prof. John Gabrieli that shows that the difficulty people with dyslexia experience when reading could be caused by reduced plasticity in the brain. “We need to figure out a curriculum or approach that matches the differences they have,” explains Gabrieli.
A new study co-authored by Prof. John Gabrieli shows that the brains of people with dyslexia respond differently not only to words, but also objects and faces, reports Felice Freyer for The Boston Globe. The findings point to “the core biological difference in the brains of people with dyslexia,” explains Prof. John Gabrieli.