From the “Well, yeah!” Department:
A study published this month in the journal Pediatrics studied the links between recess and classroom behavior among about 11,000 children age 8 and 9. Those who had more than 15 minutes of recess a day showed better behavior in class than those who had little or none. Although disadvantaged children were more likely to be denied recess, the association between better behavior and recess time held up even after researchers controlled for a number of variables, including sex, ethnicity, public or private school and class size.
(The 3 R’s? A Fourth Is Crucial, Too: Recess, NYT, 2/23/09)
Sometimes a study just tells us what we already know (or should have known).
To wit:
Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, an eminent scientist has warned.
Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo are said to shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centred.
The claims from neuroscientist Susan Greenfield will make disturbing reading for the millions whose social lives depend on logging on to their favourite websites each day.
(Social websites harm children’s brains, Mail Online, 2/24/09)
Are you surprised?
Here’s one that’s counterintuitive:
GR8 news for worried parents: frequent use of text abbreviations does not harm children’s literacy – and may even improve it.
Concerns have been raised that an explosion in the use of “textisms” like “CUL8R” and “wot u doin 2nite?” could be damaging children’s reading and spelling ability. To investigate, Beverly Plester and her colleagues at Coventry University in the UK asked 88 children aged 10 to 12 to write text messages describing 10 different scenarios. When they compared the number of textisms used to a separate study of the children’s reading ability, they found that those who used more textisms were better reader.
(Texting can b gd 4 ur kids, New Scientist, 2/22/09)
(“Textisms”? A new barbarism!)
Counterintuitive means.. I don’t believe it!