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Playtime May Bolster Kids’ Mental Health
“Play has become a four-letter word.” So says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a psychologist at Temple University and one of the authors of a new paper about the importance of play in children’s lives. The clinical report, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, recommends that pediatricians write a “prescription for play” at doctor visits in the first two years of life. Years of research have shown that play is an important part of a child’s development, assisting in cognition, memory, social skills, and, to a lesser extent, maybe even mental health. Yet, according to the paper, children in the United States play less, and have less free time, than in decades past.
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To Raise Confident, Independent Kids, Some Parents Are Trying To ‘Let Grow’
Walking through the woods alone can be a scary prospect for a kid, but not for 7-year-old Matthew of Portland, Oregon. He doesn't have much of a backyard at his condo, so the woods behind his house essentially serve the same purpose. He spends hours out there: swinging on a tire swing, tromping across the ravine to a friend's house, and using garden shears to cut a path. He lays down sticks to form a bridge across the small stream that flows in the winter. And he does all of this without any adult supervision. Matthew's mom, Laura Randall, wants her son to gain the sort of skills and confidence that only come with doing things yourself.
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The secret to happiness? Ask this Yale professor (and the 1,200 students taking her class)
What's the secret of happiness? Hard work. But a little help from a Yale professor — and roughly 1,200 eager classmates — probably doesn't hurt. Laurie Santos teaches Psychology and the Good Life course at Yale, a class designed to teach students how to be happy. She said that much of the anxiety she sees comes from being focused on things that don't lead to happiness. "The hope is that teaching students the right way to spend their time, and the right things to worry about, and the right things to focus on might actually shift things around," she said.
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NIH Requests Feedback on Behavioral and Social Protocol Template
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) requests input on a new optional template it has developed for NIH-funded scientists to use in writing protocols for behavioral science research. This draft protocol template is connected to NIH’s new policy of defining basic behavioral or social science research as clinical trials, which APS opposes. Psychological scientists are encouraged to consider in their responses to NIH whether a separate template for behavioral research is even necessary. If you are interested in submitting comments on NIH’s proposed behavioral and social science template, please view the comment form here and the accompanying NIH notice NOT-OD-18-167 here.
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Three reminders to help you thrive—not merely survive—in grad school
Grad school does not have the best reputation. The stereotype is that it is a time of so much despair that it seems, as Marge Simpson noted, like a terrible life choice. This idea is not entirely unfounded: Ph.D. and master’s students around the world report rates of depression and anxiety that are six times higher than the general public. When asked how things are going, grad students often respond, “I’m surviving.” And we as an academic community seem to have accepted this as par for the course. My fellow Letters to Young Scientists authors and I think it is time to change that.
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To Cope with Stress, Try Learning Something New
Stressed. Anxious. Exhausted. Drained. This is how many employees feel at work due to stressors like longer work hours, more-frequent hassles, the need to do more with fewer resources, and so on. Such work stress has been shown to induce anxiety and anger, unethical behavior, poor decision making, and chronic exhaustion and burnout — all of which impair personal and organizational performance. There are typically two ways people try to deal with this stress. One is to simply “buckle down and power through” — to focus on getting the stressful work done.
