If you’ve ever been at a crowded bar, you may notice that it’s easier to hear your friend if you watch his face and mouth movements. And if you want to pick out the melody of the first violin in a string quartet, it helps to watch the strokes of the player’s bow. I-LABS faculty member Adrian KC Lee and … Read More
What Black Adolescents Say about Stereotypes
What does it mean to be young, Black and male? In what ways do Black male youths accommodate and resist the social stereotypes of their demographic? And how does this shape Black boys’ development of their own identity, and who they become? These are among the questions Onnie Rogers explored with Black urban teenagers in a recently published paper in … Read More
Children’s Self-Esteem Already Established By Age 5
By age 5 children have a sense of self-esteem comparable in strength to that of adults, according to a new study by University of Washington researchers. Because self-esteem tends to remain relatively stable across one’s lifespan, the study suggests that this important personality trait is already in place before children begin kindergarten. “Our work provides the earliest glimpse to date … Read More
For Babies, Copy-Cat Games Provide a Social Compass
An article published in the Wall Street Journal describes recent I-LABS findings about baby brains and social behavior, which provide some of the first evidence of “body maps” in the infant brain. “Humans have a mapping ability that lets them see themselves in relation to others, thus helping them to navigate in the social world,” the article begins. It goes on to describe … Read More
Lost Brain Pathway Found
Photo caption: The VOF identified in a postmortem human brain in 1909 but labeled with a different name. A few years ago I-LABS’ Jason Yeatman, then a graduate student at Stanford University, found himself solving a mystery of an unidentified large fiber pathway in the human brain. “It was this massive bundle of fibers, visible in every brain I examined,” said … Read More
Math and Me: Children Who Identify with Math Get Higher Scores
How strongly children identify with math (their math “self-concept”) can be used to predict how high they will score on a standardized test of math achievement, according to a new I-LABS study. The study, published in the October 2015 issue of the journal Learning and Instruction, is the first to demonstrate a link between students’ subconscious math self-concepts and their … Read More
TIME: How to Get More Girls Into Computer Science
Imagine a computer programmer. What does this person look like? What is this person doing? Is the person with anyone? What kinds of hobbies might he or she have? In an article for TIME, Allison Master, an I-LABS postdoctoral researcher, writes about her research showing how dispelling computer science stereotypes could help narrow the gender gap in computer science by … Read More
KOMO TV: Body Maps and Babies’ Brains
KOMO TV, an ABC news affiliate, featured I-LABS research on body maps and babies’ brains in a story that aired during their evening broadcast. The KOMO piece begins: “This is for any parent who’s looked at a child and wondered what’s going on in that little brain of theirs. Researchers at the University of Washington wonder too, and they’re getting answers.” I-LABS … Read More
Two Human Brains Linked, Play ’20 Questions’
In the latest advance in brain-to-brain communication, I-LABS researchers demonstrate how two brains collaboratively problem solve. University of Washington researchers recently used a direct brain-to-brain connection to enable pairs of participants to play a question-and-answer game by transmitting signals from one brain to the other over the Internet. The experiment, detailed September 23 in PLOS ONE, is thought to be … Read More
Cover Story: Body Maps in the Infant Brain
On the cover of its September issue, Trends in Cognitive Sciences showcases pioneering I-LABS research on body maps in the infant brain. Neural “body maps,” which have been documented with adults, show that different areas of the cortex become active when a corresponding location of the body is touched. But little is know about body maps in infant brains or … Read More