Sign Up for a Free Trial

Research -- StepUp to Learn

Why Writing By Hand Makes Kids Smarter

Why Writing By Hand Makes Kids Smarter

New brain research shows that writing by hand helps children learn more and remember better. At the same time, schools are becoming more and more digital.
Posted in Attention, Education, Handwriting, Memory

Busy Pictures Hinder Reading Ability in Children

Busy Pictures Hinder Reading Ability in Children

New study shows extraneous images draw attention from text, reducing comprehension in beginning readers.

Posted in Education, Reading Skills, School Readiness

Children Use Both Brain Hemispheres to Understand Language, Unlike Adults

Children Use Both Brain Hemispheres to Understand Language, Unlike Adults

Whereas adults process most discrete neural tasks in specific areas in one or the other of their brain's two hemispheres, young children use both the right and left hemispheres to do the same task. The finding suggests a possible reason why children appear to recover from neural injury much easier than adults.

Posted in Language, Movement & Exercise, Neuroscience, School Readiness, Speech & Language

Children Will Wait to Impress Others—Another Twist on the Classic Marshmallow Test

Children Will Wait to Impress Others—Another Twist on the Classic Marshmallow Test

When it comes to self-control, young children are better able to resist temptation and wait for greater rewards if they take into consideration the opinions of others, a new study finds.
Posted in Neuroscience, Social Development, Social Skills

Early Reading in Spanish Helps Children Learn to Read English

Early Reading in Spanish Helps Children Learn to Read English

Children who had strong early reading skills in their native Spanish language when they entered kindergarten experienced greater growth in their ability to read English from kindergarten through fourth grade.

Posted in Language, Reading Skills, School Readiness, Speech & Language

Visual-Spatial Learning Disorder Is More Common Than Thought

Visual-Spatial Learning Disorder Is More Common Than Thought

Nonverbal learning disability (NVLD), a poorly understood and often-overlooked disorder that causes problems with visual-spatial processing, may affect nearly 3 million children in the United States, making it one of the most common learning disorders.
Posted in Education, Health & Wellness, Mathematics, Memory, Movement & Exercise, Neuroscience, Reading Skills, Social Development

Playfulness Can Be Trained - Here's Why You Should Do It

Playfulness Can Be Trained - Here's Why You Should Do It

Playfulness is a personality trait that is expressed differently in people. "Particularly playful people have a hard time dealing with boredom....
Posted in Engagement, Health & Wellness, Motivation, Social Development, Social Skills

Naming Guides How 12-Month-Old Infants Encode and Remember Objects

Naming Guides How 12-Month-Old Infants Encode and Remember Objects

Even for infants just beginning to speak their first words, the way an object is named guides infants' encoding, representation and memory for that object, according to new research. Encoding objects in memory and recalling them later is fundamental to human cognition and emerges in infancy. Evidence from a new recognition memory task reveals that as they encode objects, infants are sensitive to a principled link between naming and object representation by 12 months.

Posted in Memory, Neuroscience, Speech & Language

What Jigsaw Puzzles Tell Us About Child Development

What Jigsaw Puzzles Tell Us About Child Development

New research shows that children only learn to do jigsaw puzzles once they have reached a certain stage of development. Three-year-olds use trial and error, but four-year-olds are able to use information in the picture to complete the puzzles. The research team say this understanding is the foundation of learning to draw and paint.
Posted in Education, Engagement, Memory

Young Children Would Rather Explore Than Get Rewards

Young Children Would Rather Explore Than Get Rewards

Young children will pass up rewards they know they can collect to explore other options, a new study suggests. Researchers found that when adults and 4- to 5-year-old children played a game where certain choices earned them rewards, both adults and children quickly learned what choices would give them the biggest returns. But while adults then used that knowledge to maximize their prizes, children continued exploring the other options.
Posted in Attention, Engagement, Motivation, Social Skills

Socio-Economic Status Predicts Boys’ Development of Essential Thinking Skills

Socio-Economic Status Predicts Boys’ Development of Essential Thinking Skills

A comparison of children in Hong Kong, mainland China and the UK has found that British boys’ development of key thinking skills, known as ‘executive functions’, is unusually reliant on their socio-economic status.
Posted in Education, Mathematics

Academic Achievement Is Influenced by How Pupils 'Do' Gender at School

Academic Achievement Is Influenced by How Pupils 'Do' Gender at School

Pupils' achievements at school are often shaped by the way that they 'act out' specific gender roles, according to a new study which warns against over-generalizing the gender gap in education.
Posted in Attention, Education, Engagement, Motivation, Social Development