ADHD is the most common mental health condition in adolescents and children, with six per cent of children in Australia diagnosed with ADHD – about one in every classroom, according to lead researcher Leanne Williams.

Currently diagnosis is made by doctors based on arbitrary assessments. But with increasing agreement among doctors that ADHD is a brain disorder, it seems to make sense to devise a standard diagnosis tool.

The way the computer test worked was to examine memory and attention while measuring brain activity and heart rate. Children who had difficulty concentrating on the game in the test or made impulsive decisions (common characteristics of children with ADHD) displayed slower brain activity and a decreased heart rate, said Professor Williams.

Biological tests performed afterwards showed a 96 per cent accuracy rate with the computer testing model.

[Source]

Evidence That Kids Reduce Happiness

Take this article from last year’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, for example. The researchers followed couples for eight years and reported a general downward trend of happiness in the marriage after kids. The worst time for the couples’ relationship was after the birth of their first child, when ninety percent of the participants reported that the quality of their marriage had plunged. Another study used data from 13,000 households and found lower levels of emotional wellbeing and higher rates of depression among parents.

But how can this be? Most of us chose to have a kid (and then maybe chose to have more) and wouldn’t think of doing things differently. Many happiness researchers, however, say that we think kids make us happy because one toothy grin or warm nuzzle from our babies can suddenly erase eight hours of nappies and meal preps. It’s true that those moments have an intense hold on us, even at a chemical level. Love-inducing neurotransmitters like oxytocin are released in those cuddly times. Do they have an amnesic power?

Evidence That They Don’t

A recent study from the University of Glasgow, however, had more positive news for parents. The Glasgow researchers tracked people in 10,000 U.K. households and found that kids do increase life satisfaction. Nor should you stop at one; they found that the biggest boost to life enjoyment came with two or three kids.

Knowing that their findings buck the prevailing wisdom (and most other recent studies), the Glasgow team explains that their data paints a rosier picture of parenthood because they isolated certain variables, like age, sex, and marital status. Married people with middle-class incomes were the ones who reaped the most kid benefits, while unmarried couples or those under extreme financial hardship fared less well. The authors of the study say they think kids improve quality of life when it’s the “right time” for the couple.

But What Is Happiness?

In reconciling all these studies, however, let’s remember that happiness is a slippery term. Yes, if you’re asking about day-to-day fun — eating out, travelling, etc. — then life pre-children is probably going to win. But kids add a level of meaning and purpose to our lives, and generally people tend to feel better when they are emotionally connected to something important. People without kids find meaning in romantic partners, friends, other family members, work, and hobbies. But when kids are in the picture, watching them grow — and feeling our relationships with them grow too — can be hugely satisfying.

Another study released late last year — not about families, but about hard work — speaks to this point. The Journal of Happiness Studies reported that people feel happy when they work hard at something, but they don’t necessarily feel happy in the moment. While they’re struggling with a difficult task or new skill, enjoyment goes down and stress goes up. But those same activities made them feel happy and satisfied when they looked back on their day as a whole. So yes, if you asked a mum while she’s prepping dinner, with one baby on her hip and another one climbing on the dining room table, if she’s feeling over the moon, the answer might be no. But, at the end of the day, ask her what the most important thing in her life is and she’s bound to say her kids.

Grabbing the honour for the physics prize were Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati,  Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard University, and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, whose study “Fetal Load and the Evolution of Lumbar Lordosis in Bipedal Hominins”, was published in December 2007 in the Journal of Nature.

As a once pregnant woman, I’ve got to admit the question has merit — your entire centre of gravity is off thanks to that foetal load (really wish I’d know that term when I was preggers — sounds so much better than “thing hanging under my growing boobs”).

So what’s the answer? Straight from the research: “Human females have evolved a derived curvature and reinforcement of the lumbar vertebrae to compensate for this bipedal obstetric load”. Which is fancy shcmany scientific talk for “because woman are highly evolved creatures”, right?

The Ig Nobel awards are given for research that makes people laugh…and then think. This one sounds more qualified than most.

Congrats to the winners — and to all you pregnant women who have managed not to tip over. It’s hell trying to get back up.

Via: Daily Telegraph

Image: Tourist on Earth via Flickr

New research based on that model, that looks at issues like dyslexia, can now predict that babies are prone to the condition and start early interventions that can lessen or prevent it in the majority of kids who would get it.

Central principles that are coming to light in this multidisciplinary approach are that learning is computational, social, and driven by brain circuitry. In regular person language, that means that babies can learn patterns far earlier than originally thought, that they learn far better from people than from technology, and that students who identify with their teachers learn better.

And many of the kind of things that help babies learn – reading to them, teaching them patterns (as simply as singing songs or playing with blocks), etc. are actually fun. I remember asking a woman I know who’s well versed in early learning how I could help my then-newborn baby learn better, and she told e something that’s stuck with me: “Talk, play, sing, every day.”

Sounds natural – and really pretty fun.

Baby botanists get ready, get set, get digging.

The Young Scientists Club has a new spring kit for little kids to get their thumbs – and the rest of their fingers – dirty. The Science on a Garden Adventure set is stocked with a small plastic terrarium, peat pellets and seeds for spinach, wheat, marigold and zinnias – plus all they need to put together a real science experiment.

There’s the makings of a sun dial, mini garden tools for mini garden makers and pH tests to cover all the bases (and acids too).

And in case this is sounding too much like science class, they threw in a few sheets of stickers and a pack of plastic bugs to make this educational adventure a whole lot of fun.

Get the kit from Kid Science Kits.

Girls who were not breastfed had a much higher risk of re-hospitalisation for respiratory illness than boys, but breastfed girls were almost never re-hospitalised. In boys, the difference between breastfed and not was insignificant. (The researchers hasten to point out that there are plenty of other benefits of breastfeeding that still hold true for boys.)

The fascinating part of this is that a gender difference may point to breastmilk’s protective properties working differently than previously supposed. Maybe it’s not just delivering mum’s immunities until the kid gets its own—why would there be a gender difference in that? Could breastmilk prompt anti-viral protection in the absence of exposure to viruses somehow, interacting directly with the baby’s developing immune system? (Of course, why would there be a gender difference in that either?) The report from Vanderbilt Medical Center speculates maybe, though they have no idea how.

Sounds to me for now like another thing to throw on the “we don’t know what breastmilk is well enough to replicate it” evidence pile.

What sort of sound could possibly perk up and pop out your sagging girls?

A baby’s cry, naturally.

Hideto Tomabechi, researcher of artificial intelligence and the mind, wants to show that sounds affect more than just the mind — they also affect our bodies. So he took a recording of a crying baby and stripped it down to its essential sounds. He hypothesises (generalisation alert!) that women will respond physiologically to the recorded sound of a crying baby in the same way they respond to the real sound. By responding so frequently, their breasts will grow.

Does he mean women all over Tokyo are going to be letting down every time the phone rings? Or do women respond in some way to babies’ cries that I’m not aware of. I’m willing to concede that I (and my lactating boobs) respond physiologically to the sound of a crying baby … NOW … ever since having my first. But before ever having kids, I’m not entirely convinced I could even tell the difference between a crying baby and, say, an angry cat. Besides, if all it takes is a baby’s cry, I should look like Pamela Anderson by now.

Of course, this Tomabechi guy is the same man authorities called on to de-program the Aum Shinrikyo cult members (of sarin gas on the subway fame), and he’s held up as some kind of mad genius. So maybe the nation’s dissatisfied flat-chested should download the baby wails and answer the call to a more confident and happier you.

Photo: NoiseAddicts.com

Keep Kids At School Longer For Core Skills
The OECD has called on Australian education authorities to consider raising the school leaving age to ensure children have core reading and maths skills. The Australian

Infant Disorders: Biological Clock Ticks For Men, Too
Children born to older fathers perform less well in intelligence tests during infancy and early childhood, research shows, adding to the body of evidence linking paternal age to neuro-developmental disorders in offspring. SMH

Australians Refused Insurance Because Of Poor Genes
Australians have been refused insurance protection because of their genetic make-up, researchers have shown in the first study in the world to provide proof of genetic discrimination. SMH

Primary Schools Give Sex Education To Children As Young As Seven After The Alfie Patten Case
Dozens of primary schools have started giving sex education to children as young as seven in the wake of child father Alfie Patten’s story, it emerged today. Daily Mail

Scientists doing a survey in Columbia have found ten new species of amphibians there. By “new,” they mean previously unknown to scientists. The tiny, beautiful creatures are considered some of the most vulnerable to changes in the environment from climate change to toxic contamination. But the discovery of new species is happy news for biologists concerned about preservation.

The Guardian offers a slideshow of the animals. Call your four-year olds over to the computer screen, cozy up and enjoy these little jewels of nature!

Image: thedailygreen.com

It’s a fact of life that nothing is ever as good as it was when you were a kid. Take chemistry sets. Back in the 1940s (OK, older than me), they included sodium cyanide in their kits. You know, the stuff of suicide capsules. Today, you don’t even get chemicals that go bang. Boring!

Make zine has put together a great set of photos of old chemistry sets and instructions on how to re-create them, within legal limits.

If you’re not ready to ask for suspicious-sounding chemicals at photography stores, Make also recommends a few modern kits that pass muster.

[Make via Gizmodo]