Cognitive Development and Neurodevelopment
Research articles on cognitive development and neurodevelopment.
- Sleep and Children’s IQ: Why Bedtime Matters
How does sleep affect children’s intelligence and academic performance? Research on sleep duration, napping, and cognitive development — plus evidence-based bedtime...
- Emotional Regulation and Children’s Cognition
How does emotional regulation affect children’s cognitive development? Research on self-control, executive function, and practical strategies for helping children manage...
- Video Games and Cognitive Development
Do video games help or hurt children’s cognitive development? A balanced review of research on gaming and attention, problem-solving, and academic performance.
- Premature Birth and Long-Term Cognition
Approximately 10% of babies worldwide are born prematurely — before 37 weeks of gestation. For parents of preterm infants, particularly those born very early, a pressing...
- Does Birth Order Affect Intelligence?
The belief that firstborn children are smarter than their younger siblings is one of the most persistent ideas in folk psychology. Parents joke about it, media repeats...
- How Pregnancy Diet Affects Baby’s Brain
The nine months of pregnancy are the most consequential window of brain development in human life. Roughly 100 billion neurons are produced before birth, alongside the...
- Does Breastfeeding Make Kids Smarter?
“Breast is best” includes, in most parenting guidance, a confident claim that breastfeeding makes children smarter. The observational data are real — children who were...
- Screen Time and Children’s Intelligence
Few topics generate more parental anxiety than screen time, and few are reported with less precision. Headlines swing between “screens are rewiring children’s brains”...
- Motor Skills and Cognitive Development in Children
For a long time motor development and cognitive development were treated as parallel but mostly independent strands of children’s growth: motor skills tracked through...
- Maternal Milk and Neurodevelopment
In neonatal intensive care units across the world, mothers of babies born too early are routinely encouraged to express breast milk to be fed to their infants by tube —...
- Digital Media and Children’s Intelligence
The “screens are ruining children’s minds” narrative is one of the most durable parenting anxieties of the past decade. The “video games are mental gym equipment”...
- Screen Time and Preterm Cognitive Outcomes
Children born extremely preterm — at less than 28 weeks of gestation — start school with measurable cognitive disadvantages relative to term-born peers.
- Cognition in Small-for-Gestational-Age Children
About 10% of newborns are classified as small for gestational age (SGA), defined as birth weight below the 10th percentile for gestational week.
- Preterm Birth and Adult Intelligence Outcomes
The Eves et al. (2021) individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis published in JAMA Pediatrics answers a question that single cohorts have not been able to answer...
- Early SSRI in 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome
The Mancini et al. (2021) paper in Translational Psychiatry reports a retrospective observation that may—if independently replicated—reframe early pharmacological...
- Cannabis and IQ Decline in Youth
Heavy or dependent cannabis use during adolescence is associated with a small but measurable decline in IQ — about 2 points on average, concentrated in verbal ability.
- Early Nutrition and Cognitive Development
“The first 1,000 days” — from conception through a child’s second birthday — is the most consequential window for nutrition’s effect on the developing brain.