For Parents — Learning Scientists Blog

Jul 10

Jul 10 Cognitive Networks and Implicit Bias

Learning Scientists Posts, For Teachers, For Students, For Parents, For Researchers

As a cognitive psychology professor, I teach about cognitive networks and how we process, organize, and respond to the world around us. We are able to quickly and flexibly process and categorize items around us, understanding what they are and …

Jun 26

Jun 26 AI and Adolescent Well-Being: New APA Health Advisory

Althea Need Kaminske

For Parents, For Teachers, For Researchers, Learning Scientists Posts

With Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications expanding rapidly into daily life, The American Psychological Association (APA) has issued a health advisory on the impacts of AI on adolescent well-being (1). The health advisory synthesizes research on different aspects of AI use and provides recommendations to maximize the benefits of AI while minimizing harm.

May 1

May 1 Digest #179: Combating Summer Learning Loss

Megan Sumeracki

Digests, For Teachers, For Parents

For those of us in North America, summer is coming! Whether you have two weeks or almost two months left, the warmer weather and growing plants are a regular reminder that we’re getting closer every day. Summer break is often fun for kids and can give educators …

Apr 17

Apr 17 Retrieval Practice Improves Learning, But Will it Help ALL of My Students? More Experimental Evidence

Megan Sumeracki

Learning Scientists Posts, For Teachers, For Researchers, For Parents

In the first year that our blog was created—2016—I wrote a piece titled, Retrieval Practice Improves Learning, but Will it Help ALL of my Students? In this piece, I covered an experiment conducted by Pooja Agarwal and colleagues (1) about the benefits …

Mar 6

Mar 6 Expert Thinking and AI (Part 2)

Althea Need Kaminske

Learning Scientists Posts, For Teachers, For Students, For Researchers, For Parents

The first post in this series gave an overview of Artificial Intelligence - a broad field that seeks to both better understand human cognition through computer models and to improve task-based computer models - and some of the different AI tools that have been developed. These different AI tools have different pros and cons that make them more or less suited to certain tasks. […] In this post I want to explore how generative AI, specifically chatbots, are used and how they affect our thinking and development of expertise.

Feb 20

Feb 20 Expert Thinking and AI (Part 1)

Althea Need Kaminske

Learning Scientists Posts, For Researchers, For Parents, For Students, For Teachers

Artificial Intelligence is many things. As a field of study, Artificial Intelligence seeks to both better understand human cognition through computer models and to improve task-based computer models (that is, where the goal is to improve performance on a task and not necessarily to model how a human would perform on that task). Artificial Intelligence is in many ways a sister-discipline to cognitive psychology which also seeks to better under human cognition.