Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Researchers Need Community Partners to Create Lasting Initiatives This post was co-authored by Karlena D. Ochoa, Ph.D., & Andres S. Bustamante, Ph.D. Psychology researchers are eager to design interventions, develop curricula, and suggest policy changes for communities. Yet, too often, interventions from developmental science don’t hold up as expected when put into practice. As researchers, […]

5 Signs of a Mother At least once or twice a week, I get a message from a mother of an adult daughter—usually someone who has been cut out of that adult child’s life—accusing me of aiding and abetting estrangement because my work “blames” mothers. This isn’t true, of course; while I believe estrangement has […]

Black Death: The Epidemic Experienced by Black Children By Erica D. Marshall-Lee, Ph.D., and Naadira C. Upshaw, Psy.D., on behalf of the Atlanta Behavioral Health Advocates Mental health professionals are well-aware of the high rate of suicidal and parasuicidal behaviors for pre-teens and adolescents (Ruch et al., 2021). However, there is a chasm in this […]

Why Consistent Parenting Is So Important, and So Hard It’s the middle of February, which, if you’re like most people, is right about the time those New Year’s resolutions taper off, and we tell ourselves something along the lines of “I’ll get back to it later.” Whether that was a healthier eating routine, exercise, reading, […]

Recent Study Finds That Masks May Impact Face Processing A recent study, published in the journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, concluded that face masks may interfere with the ability to recognize and process faces in children aged 6 to 14 years. In this study, the researchers found that children showed greater impairment in processing […]

Treatment of Bedwetting in Children Most children outgrow bedwetting by the age of 5 years. However, 7% of boys and 3% of girls take longer to stop bedwetting. By the early teen years fewer than 2% of children still experience this problem. Medical causes of bedwetting include urinary tract infections, constipation, and diabetes. Most of […]

Can’t Pry Your Kids Away from Electronics? Seeing young people spending excessive amounts of time on their electronics has been a growing concern for many in recent years—but my latest trip to the post office made me realize how much these devices have in some ways imprisoned our kids. It didn’t take but a minute […]

10 Traits of Highly Sensitive Children Almost all of the families who reach out to me for help have highly sensitive children (HSC.) These children are wired to process and react to their experiences in the world more deeply than other children, and they are often misunderstood. They are amazing kids who tend to be […]

The Case for Removing Competition from Youth Sports Many people have fond memories of playing sports back in school. The smell of the fresh-cut grass, the blow of the coach’s whistle, the slap of a high-five from a teammate. But for many children, these pleasant memories are overshadowed by recollections of intense pressure, anxiety, and […]

What to Know About Adolescent Pornography Exposure A far cry from looking at a sensual magazine centerfold, today’s adolescents are viewing online pornographic videos with motions and sounds, depicting every potential sexual act that can be imagined. The internet, which has been called the “Triple-A Engine” due to its affordability, accessibility, and anonymity (Cooper, 1998), […]

Does Preschool Really Provide an Academic Advantage? A recent study examined the impact of children attending a free preschool program in Tennessee. Researchers found that, although the children who attended the preschool scored higher on kindergarten readiness, they showed lower reading, math, and science scores in both third grade and sixth grade. They were also […]

How Do People Become Prejudiced? How does prejudice start? To understand, we need to consider turn to two aspects of affect—inborn capacity of affects to assess differences in stimuli, and temperament)and two aspects of cognition: what one is taught and what one experiences. Affect and cognition may interact to produce increased vulnerability to prejudice Consider […]