Dan Willingham

Q&A: Why are a child’s first 1,000 days so critical for brain building? Many parents think the school years matter most for neurological development, but a UVA expert says the biggest gains start much earlier.

"During the first 1,000 days, the brain builds itself at a breathtaking pace, forming up to a million neural connections per second..." news.virginia.edu/content/qa-w...

Generative AI has been adopted in US workplaces more rapidly than PCs or the internet pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1...

“Let’s talk about you teaching me some of that psychology so I can manipulate people?”

Sending babies to nursery completely reshapes their microbiomes Socializing at a young age helps to develop greater diversity in children’s microbiota, according to an analysis of baby-to-baby transmission of gut bacteria.

Sending babies to nursery (daycare, for Americans) completely changes their microbiome www.nature.com/articles/d41...

CEOs Say AI Is Making Work More Efficient. Employees Tell a Different Story. How much time workers say the technology saves them on the job is vastly different from what executives report.

Executives say AI is a huge time-saver. Their employees disagree. (link is WSJ gift article) www.wsj.com/lifestyle/wo...

That New Yorker article The New Yorker article “Alphabet Soup” (Dec 29/Jan 5 issue) did a good job of conveying the complexity of dyslexia, the frustrations of dyslexics and their families, and the promise of schools such as...

It's not the case that children with dyslexia need identical instruction as typically developing kids, just a higher dose: Mark Seidenberg explains www.seidenbergreading.net/blog/oexqqvu...

Dragons, Sex and the Bible: What Drove the Book Business This Year

Contra predictions of a decade ago, physical bookstores and sales of paper books are doing well www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/b...

Decades of lab evidence show spacing effect but S's self-report spaced study doesn't correlate w grades. Why? Bes E asked about study sessions, not whether same material was repeated in spaced sessions. When you ask that Q, you see predicted correlation. psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-...

Here’s what we know, and don’t know, about declining test scores Experts (and everyone else) have theories but no definitive answers just yet.

@mattbarnum.bsky.social with a sensible take on declining test scores...no one knows what's going on, and it's probably complicated. cbnewsletters.chalkbeat.org/p/what-expla...

Data from 117 grad programs at one university indicate that making applications GRE-optional did not increase diversity of applications. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

I'll no longer review for journals that use an editorial platform. If I provide free a service to publishers, I think
1) they should care about my convenience, and these platforms are a pain
2) the data use statement should simply say "we don't" but, predictably, it doesn't.

New meta-analysis concludes that prequestions confer an advantage to content relevant to the prequestions, but the advantage does not bleed over to other content. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

To AI-proof exams, professors turn to the oldest technique of all A small but growing number of educators are experimenting with oral exams to circumvent the temptations presented by powerful AI platforms.

In the face of chatbot cheating, more professors turning to oral exams. Not really an option in my class of 350... www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...

New American Educator article with Eric Turkheimer @ent3c.bsky.social on what IQ scores mean. www.aft.org/ae/winter202...

Ask the Cognitive Scientist: What Do IQ Scores Mean?

New article with Eric Turkheimer: "What Do IQ Scores Mean?" www.aft.org/ae/winter202...

'I taught an octopus piano' - the video the internet can't get enough of! In one of the most bizarre, brilliant, and unexpectedly wholesome musical experiments of the year, Swedish musician and YouTuber Mattias Krantz has done the unthinkable: he spent six months teaching a...

B. F. Skinner: *shrugs*
www.pianistmagazine.com/blogs/i-taug...

Math anxiety: meta analysis of longitudinal studies suggests a bi-directional relationship. Being bad at math makes you anxious when doing it AND being anxious about it impairs performance. psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

A Smartphone Before Age 12 Could Carry Health Risks, Study Says

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/w...

Many possible reasons...

Retractions in medical journals disproportionately less likely to include women authors. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Using PISA data from 73 countries, researchers estimated the extent to which growth mindset mediates the association of SES on achievement, and find results consistent w/ the picture of the last 10 years. It's a real effect. It's small. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Exercise improves academic performance in Norwegian college students (open) www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1...

Every psychologist knows this feeling: you’re not mad that these two sections are adjacent. You’re grateful that they’re separate sections.

Data from Peru: telling women they've met the exam cut-off to pursue a STEM major increases the probability they'll take it. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Although it's commonly believed that left-handedness is associated with creativity...it's not. link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Opinion | The science that extended Dick Cheney’s life was a choice The biomedical research engine will create more breakthroughs — if we keep it up and running.

Really inspiring review of five decades of cardiac medicine that almost certainly kept Dick Cheney alive, his first heart attack was at age 37...and the importance of the US scientific infrastructure--currently under existential threat--to those miracles. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

The circle of hell Dante forgot - Who Raised You - is teeming w people who put their bags on Amtrak seats. Their curse is to eternally battle NJ Transiters watching videos at full blast & those who trample tiny kids to deplane 30 sec sooner. Feels like a promising reality tv concept.

What makes PhD students happy? Good supervision Supervisors who invest in positive mentoring relationships with their PhD candidates also reap the benefits for their own research.

BREAKING: Survey by @nature.com reveals that "supervisors who make a conscious effort to support and mentor their PhD candidates have more-satisfied students."
Science marches on!
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

RCT of Montessori preschool: at end of K, significantly higher reading, short-term memory, theory of mind, and executive function scores. Intention-to-treat effect sizes > .20. www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....