Children
Topics from the archives of the Mad Science Museum related to research involving children. Arranged in descending chronological order.
Electrified Sheep
& Elephants on Acid
 |  |
Categories
 The Benefits of Reading to Dogs. (2010) This is weird in a feel-good kind of way. Researchers from the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University took a group of 18 second-grade students and split them into two groups. The first group had to read aloud to a dog for a few minutes every week during their 2010 summer vacation. The second group had to read aloud to a human. The result: those who read to dogs saw improvements both in their reading ability and in their positive attitude toward reading. However, those who had to read to humans saw declines in both. Also, a third of the kids dropped out of the read-to-a-human group. But no one dropped out of the dog group. So obviously dogs are intellectually stimulating companions. The unanswered question here is: what about reading to cats? Links: tufts.edu, sciencedaily.com.
|
|
In the summer of 1942 Professor Lawrence Leshan stood in the darkness of a cabin in an upstate New York camp where a row of young boys lay sleeping. He spoke aloud, repeating a single phrase over and over, "My fingernails taste terribly bitter. My fingernails taste terribly bitter." |
|
The Ape and the Child (1931)
 |