Child Development News

May 27, 2025

Top Headlines

Unconditional Cash Transfers Following Childbirth Increases Breastfeeding

May 27, 2025 — The U.S. is facing a maternal health crisis with higher rates of maternal mortality than any other high-income country. Social and economic factors, including income, are recognized determinants of maternal morbidity and mortality. In addition, more ...

Why After 2000 Years We Still Don't Know How Tickling Works

May 27, 2025 — How come you can't tickle yourself? And why can some people handle tickling perfectly fine while others scream their heads off? Neuroscientists argue that we should take tickle research more ...

Overimitation Begins in Infancy but Is Not Yet Linked to in-Group Preference

May 22, 2025 — A new study examines the emergence of overimitation in infants aged between 16 and 21 months to see if and how it is linked to social affiliation and other forms of imitation. The researchers found ...

Good News for People With Migraine Who Take Drugs Before or During Pregnancy

May 21, 2025 — There's good news for people with migraine who take common drugs before or during pregnancy -- a new study found no increase in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and ADHD in their children. ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:46pm EDT

Increased Risk of Psychopathology Found in Offspring of People With Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder

May 21, 2025 — A new study confirms that children of people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder have a higher risk of developing psychopathology compared to ...

Early Puberty Increases Risk of Overweight Later in Life for Girls

May 19, 2025 — Unique Danish longitudinal study with over 136,000 measurements reveals the connection between pubertal development and weight throughout ...

Language Isn't Just for Communication -- It Also Shapes How Sensory Experiences Are Stored in the Brain

May 20, 2025 — Our ability to store information about familiar objects depends on the connection between visual and language processing regions in the brain, ...

New Study Raises Concerns About the Safety of Long-Term ADHD Medication Treatment in Children

May 14, 2025 — A recent study reveals that the average duration of ADHD medication for children and adolescents is more than three years. However, reliable, ...

Too Much Sleep Can Hurt Cognitive Performance, Especially for Those With Depression

May 14, 2025 — Sleeping nine hours or more per night is associated with worse cognitive performance, and it is even more the case for those with ...

The Key to Spotting Dyslexia Early Could Be AI-Powered Handwriting Analysis

May 14, 2025 — A new study outlines how artificial intelligence-powered handwriting analysis may serve as an early detection tool for dyslexia and dysgraphia among young ...

Postpartum Depression and Bonding: Long-Term Effects on School-Age Children

May 14, 2025 — Postpartum maternal mental health and mother-to-infant bonding are well-established as critical factors in a child's psychosocial development. However, few studies have explored the combined impact ...

New Survey Shows Privacy and Safety Tops List of Parental Concerns About Screen Time

May 13, 2025 — As kids spend more time on screens, a new national survey conducted by Ipsos on behalf of The Kids Mental Health Foundation, founded by Nationwide ...

Mapping a New Brain Network for Naming

May 13, 2025 — Researchers identified two brain networks involved in word retrieval -- the cognitive process of accessing words we need to speak. A semantic network processes meaning in middle/inferior frontal ...

Evidence of Mother-Offspring Attachment Types in Wild Chimpanzees

May 12, 2025 — A team of researchers has identified distinct mother-offspring attachment types in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus). Drawing parallels with human psychology, the study provides compelling ...

The Origins of Language

May 9, 2025 — Wild chimpanzees alter the meaning of single calls when embedding them into diverse call combinations, mirroring linguistic operations in human language. Human language, however, allows an infinite ...

Music Therapy Helps Brain-Injured Children

May 8, 2025 — Music could provide a breakthrough in assessing consciousness levels in children who have suffered significant brain injuries, according to new ...

Non-Inherited Genes Affect Children's Development

May 7, 2025 — Parents' genes -- even when not directly inherited by a child -- may play a role in their educational and mental health outcomes, finds a new ...

Losing a Parent May Increase Children's Risk of Being Bullied

May 7, 2025 — A new study surveyed 21,000 children in China and found that the association between parental bereavement and school bullying varied by sex of the child and deceased parent, age when the death ...

Parent Coaching Sparks Major Communication Growth in Infants With Social and Communication Delays

May 6, 2025 — A study found that targeted coaching for caregivers of infants as young as 8 months significantly enhances babies' communication and cognitive ...

How Individuals Grasp an Object May Offer Simpler Diagnosis for Autism Spectrum Disorder

May 5, 2025 — Getting a timely diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder is a major challenge, but new research shows that how young adults, and potentially children, grasp objects could offer a simpler way to ...

Neighborhood Stress May Impact Kids' Brains -- And Increase Depression Risk

May 5, 2025 — Children who grow up in disadvantaged neighborhoods -- areas with higher levels of crime and deprivation, and lower access to community resources -- are at risk of developing depression, and new ...

How Is Handedness Linked to Neurological Disorders?

May 5, 2025 — The fact that left-handedness resp. mixed-handedness are strikingly common in patients with certain neurological disorders such as autism spectrum disorders is a frequently reported observation in ...

Spanking and Other Physical Discipline Lead to Exclusively Negative Outcomes for Children in Low And Middle-Income Countries

May 5, 2025 — Physically punishing children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has exclusively negative outcomes -- including poor health, lower academic performance, and impaired social-emotional ...

Teens With Mental Health Conditions Use Social Media Differently Than Their Peers, Study Suggests

May 5, 2025 — One of the first studies in this area to use clinical-level diagnoses reveals a range of differences between young people with and without mental health conditions when it comes to social media -- ...

Children's Reading and Writing Develop Better When They Are Trained in Handwriting

Apr. 30, 2025 — Researchers explored how manual and keyboard practice influenced children's abilities in their reading and writing learning process. 5-year-olds were taught an artificial alphabet using ...

Study Links Childhood Trauma to Increased Substance Use and Unexpected Effects on Heart Rate and Blood Pressure in Adolescents

Apr. 30, 2025 — Childhood trauma significantly increases the likelihood of engaging in harmful alcohol consumption, smoking and illicit drug use, by the age of ...

Age, Previous Sports Experience, Stronger Predictors of Performance in Children Than Previous Concussions

Apr. 29, 2025 — A new study may offer reassuring news for parents whose children have a history of concussion, but want to get back to playing sports. Researchers spent more than a decade scouting fields, rinks and ...

Advancing AI for Diverse Applications in Manufacturing, Business and Education

Apr. 28, 2025 — Large language models (LLMs) are at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) and have been widely used for conversational interactions. However, assessing the personality of a given LLM remains ...

Trouble Hearing in Noisy Places and Crowded Spaces? Researchers Say New Algorithm Could Help Hearing Aid Users

Apr. 28, 2025 — BU researchers develop a brain-inspired algorithm that can help people with hearing loss pick out conversations in noisy, crowded ...

By 15 Months, Infants Begin to Learn New Words for Objects, Even Those They've Never Seen

Apr. 23, 2025 — A new study by developmental scientists offers the first evidence that infants as young as 15 months can identify an object they have learned about from listening to language -- even if the object ...

Adolescents Who Sleep Longer Perform Better at Cognitive Tasks

Apr. 22, 2025 — Adolescents who sleep for longer -- and from an earlier bedtime -- than their peers tend to have improved brain function and perform better at cognitive tests, researchers have shown. But the study ...

Listeners Use Gestures to Predict Upcoming Words

Apr. 22, 2025 — In face-to-face conversations, speakers use hand movements to signal meaning. But do listeners actually use these gestures to predict what someone might say next? In a study using virtual avatars, ...

Novel Treatment Approach for Language Disorder Shows Promise

Apr. 21, 2025 — Neuroscientists have developed a new treatment approach for a language disorder that combines traditional speech therapy with noninvasive electrical stimulation of the brain. Brain stimulation helped ...

Father's Mental Health Can Impact Children for Years

Apr. 19, 2025 — Five-year-olds exposed to paternal depression are more likely to have behavioral issues in grade school, researchers ...