About The Study: In this cohort study of middle-aged and older adults across 4 countries, both higher maternal and paternal education were generally associated with slower cognitive decline, and these associations were mediated by participants’ own education. These findings highlight the long-term relevance of parental education for offspring cognitive health across diverse cultural or socioeconomic contexts, and support the potential benefits of improving educational attainment to reduce intergenerational disparities in late-life cognitive health.

The interplay of different ideas shapes how students learn and understand specific concepts in biology. A new study has investigated how a scientific understanding of evolution can be promoted / publication in ‘Science Education’

In a Perspective, Mark Hanson and Peter Gluckman explore how maternal stress, caregiving quality, and early environmental conditions can shape the development of executive functions and emotional regulation in children, and how these factors contribute to the emergence of anxiety disorders in young people. Mounting evidence reveals a significant rise in anxiety disorders among adolescents ages 12 to 19, especially in developing countries like the United States, which cannot be fully explained by contemporary stressful events like the COVID-19 pandemic. This pattern suggests that broader longer-term societal or developmental factors are driving the growing prevalence of adolescent anxiety. Here, Hanson and Gluckman highlight how environmental conditions in the earliest stages of life – beginning even before birth – can significantly shape a child’s developing brain, particularly the systems responsible for emotional regulation and executive functioning. According to the authors, these early cues may "prepare" children for adversity, but if the anticipated threats never fully materialize as they grow, such heightened emotional responses may lead to anxiety disorders, especially in adolescence. This mismatch is further compounded by the rapid and dynamic social and technological changes young people now face. “Societies face an emerging burden of mental health issues, especially in young people. Although appropriate interventions are needed to help those already affected, preventative approaches are also critical,” write Hanson and Gluckman. “Solutions will need to adopt a lifecourse perspective, involving more cohesive thinking about parental and caregiver support and the early childhood years by policymakers across health, education, and social welfare."

According to the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, approximately 1 in 6 children in the United States have developmental disabilities which include physical, learning, language or behavior-related disabilities. Students with disabilities often receive accommodations (how students access and learn the same content as their classmates) at school, but teachers rarely explain them to typically-developing classmates. Children with disabilities are increasingly included in general education classrooms alongside typically-developing classmates. Accommodations such as an adult helper to work one-on-one with the student, preferential seating, or extra time to navigate the school between classes ensure the success of many children with disabilities in these settings. When teachers do not discuss accommodations or their purpose with typically-developing classmates, those classmates may have to make sense of the accommodations themselves. The findings showed that with increasing age, children evaluated disability-related accommodations as increasingly fair. Older children also demonstrated greater understanding of how specific accommodations help to address specific needs, which might account for why they judged accommodations as fairer.  The research was featured in a new Child Development article with authors from Vanderbilt University, in the United States.