Jennifer E Graham-Engeland, Martin J Sliwinski, David M Almeida, Christopher G Engeland
{"title":"Psychological Stress and Cognitive Brain Health: Policies to Reduce Dementia Risk.","authors":"Jennifer E Graham-Engeland, Martin J Sliwinski, David M Almeida, Christopher G Engeland","doi":"10.1177/23727322241303761","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23727322241303761","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) pose a massive public health challenge, affecting over 6.7 million Americans aged 65 and older-a number projected to double by 2050. Despite advances in pharmacological treatments, there remains no cure or method to reverse the disease. This paper highlights the role of psychological stress as a critical yet underappreciated risk factor for cognitive decline and reviews its complex interplay with behavioral, social, and biological mechanisms. Chronic psychological stress drives physiological and behavioral changes that are linked to accelerated cognitive deterioration, particularly in older adults. Early interventions can target stress management and behavioral prevention strategies, which include physical activity, healthy diet, and social engagement. Further, key barriers to meaningful policy change to prevent and slow ADRD include lack of public awareness, stigma around mental health and aging, and misaligned funding incentives. Policy initiatives can improve brain health literacy, increase equitable access to services, and enhance community-level and environmental factors to promote healthy aging. Prioritizing stress reduction and promoting early detection and prevention can meaningfully reduce ADRD risk and progression, improving public health broadly.</p>","PeriodicalId":52185,"journal":{"name":"Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"12 1","pages":"94-101"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12043074/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144046025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Supporting Early Language by Supporting Systemic Solutions.","authors":"Elika Bergelson","doi":"10.1177/23727322241268909","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23727322241268909","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A large body of research shows connections between infants' and toddlers' home language input and a wide range of receptive and expressive early language skills. Some facets of caretaker input and early language skills are associated with socioeconomic status (SES), though not all. Given the complexity of language learning, language use, and its many pathways of connection to SES, testing causal links between these dimensions is difficult at best. Interventions aimed at changing parent language use have seen mixed success, in part because \"language infusions\" generally fail to target underlying challenges facing underresourced families, and perhaps because parent language is the wrong target. System-level interventions such as paid parental leave and expansion and enrichment of childcare and early education options hold greater promise for improving families' lives, with positive repercussions for a broad range of family and child outcomes, including linguistic ones.</p>","PeriodicalId":52185,"journal":{"name":"Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"11 2","pages":"156-163"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12054708/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144057112","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Catalyzing Equity in STEM Teams: Harnessing Generative AI for Inclusion and Diversity.","authors":"Nia Nixon, Yiwen Lin, Lauren Snow","doi":"10.1177/23727322231220356","DOIUrl":"10.1177/23727322231220356","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Collaboration is key to STEM, where multidisciplinary team research can solve complex problems. However, inequality in STEM fields hinders their full potential, due to persistent psychological barriers in underrepresented students' experience. This paper documents teamwork in STEM and explores the transformative potential of computational modeling and generative AI in promoting STEM-team diversity and inclusion. Leveraging generative AI, this paper outlines two primary areas for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. First, formalizing collaboration assessment with inclusive analytics can capture fine-grained learner behavior. Second, adaptive, personalized AI systems can support diversity and inclusion in STEM teams. Four policy recommendations highlight AI's capacity: formalized collaborative skill assessment, inclusive analytics, funding for socio-cognitive research, human-AI teaming for inclusion training. Researchers, educators, and policymakers can build an equitable STEM ecosystem. This roadmap advances AI-enhanced collaboration, offering a vision for the future of STEM where diverse voices are actively encouraged and heard within collaborative scientific endeavors.</p>","PeriodicalId":52185,"journal":{"name":"Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"11 1","pages":"85-92"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10950550/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140186266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sarah M. Edelson, Jordan E. Roue, Aadya Singh, Valerie F. Reyna
{"title":"How Decision Making Develops: Adolescents, Irrational Adults, and Should AI be Trusted With the Car Keys?","authors":"Sarah M. Edelson, Jordan E. Roue, Aadya Singh, Valerie F. Reyna","doi":"10.1177/23727322231220423","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23727322231220423","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reviews the developmental literature on decision making, discussing how increased reliance on gist thinking explains the surprising finding that important cognitive biases increase from childhood to adulthood. This developmental trend can be induced experimentally by encouraging verbatim (younger) versus gist (older) ways of thinking. We then build on this developmental literature to assess the developmental stage of artificial intelligence (AI) and how its decision making compares with humans, finding that popular models are not only irrational but they sometimes resemble immature adolescents. To protect public safety and avoid risk, we propose that AI models build on policy frameworks already established to regulate other immature decision makers such as adolescents.","PeriodicalId":52185,"journal":{"name":"Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"50 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139149602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Adriana Weisleder, Alejandra Reinoso, Murielle Standley, Krystal Alvarez-Hernandez, Anele Villanueva
{"title":"Supporting Multilingualism in Immigrant Children: An Integrative Approach","authors":"Adriana Weisleder, Alejandra Reinoso, Murielle Standley, Krystal Alvarez-Hernandez, Anele Villanueva","doi":"10.1177/23727322231220633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23727322231220633","url":null,"abstract":"Immigrant children are a growing and demographically important segment of the world's population. One key aspect of immigrant children's experience is navigating multiple languages, creating both opportunities, and challenges. However, the literature on bilingualism rarely centers the experiences of immigrant children. Focusing on immigrant children in the United States, this article brings together cognitive science research on bilingualism with the integrative risk and resilience model of adaptation in immigrant-origin children to elucidate how common contexts that immigrant children encounter can support or discourage multilingualism. Policy must consider immigrant children's intersecting identities—both as immigrants and as learners of minoritized, and often racialized, languages. A proposed framework can guide policies to support multilingualism in immigrant children, with downstream consequences for their health and development.","PeriodicalId":52185,"journal":{"name":"Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"26 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138949171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Michael A. Webster, Mohana Kuppuswamy Parthasarathy, Margarita L. Zuley, Andriy I. Bandos, Lorne Whitehead, C. K. Abbey
{"title":"Designing for Sensory Adaptation: What You See Depends on What You’ve Been Looking at - Recommendations, Guidelines and Standards Should Reflect This","authors":"Michael A. Webster, Mohana Kuppuswamy Parthasarathy, Margarita L. Zuley, Andriy I. Bandos, Lorne Whitehead, C. K. Abbey","doi":"10.1177/23727322231220494","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23727322231220494","url":null,"abstract":"Sensory systems continuously recalibrate their responses according to the current stimulus environment. As a result, perception is strongly affected by the current and recent context. These adaptative changes affect both sensitivity (e.g., habituating to noise, seeing better in the dark) and appearance (e.g., how things look, what catches attention) and adjust to many perceptual properties (e.g., from light level to the characteristics of someone's face). They therefore have a profound effect on most perceptual experiences, and on how well the senses work in different settings. Characterizing the properties of adaptation, how it manifests, and when it influences perception in modern environments can provide insights into the diversity of human experience. Adaptation could also be leveraged both to optimize perceptual abilities (e.g., in visual inspection tasks like radiology) and to mitigate unwanted consequences (e.g., exposure to potentially unhealthy stimulus environments).","PeriodicalId":52185,"journal":{"name":"Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":" 34","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138963737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Joanna A. Christodoulou, Adriana M. Azor, Rebecca A. Marks
{"title":"Reaching Students with Reading Disabilities During the Summer","authors":"Joanna A. Christodoulou, Adriana M. Azor, Rebecca A. Marks","doi":"10.1177/23727322231220636","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23727322231220636","url":null,"abstract":"The extended summer break from school brings a renewed opportunity to offer high-quality literacy experiences to vulnerable readers, including children with reading disabilities (RD). Students with RD trail their peers in reading progress during the school year; the summer months present an opportunity to address the gap in reading achievement. Policy makers can support reading achievement during summer vacation empowered by interdisciplinary knowledge spanning cognitive neuroscience and education. The science of brain plasticity emphasizes the requirement of impactful reading experiences, especially for word-level skills, toward building reading brain networks. A review of research on summer programming and current policies culminates in recommendations to capitalize on summer opportunities to advance reading achievement.","PeriodicalId":52185,"journal":{"name":"Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"29 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139176350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"ED-AI Lit: An Interdisciplinary Framework for AI Literacy in Education","authors":"Laura Kristen Allen, Panayiota Kendeou","doi":"10.1177/23727322231220339","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23727322231220339","url":null,"abstract":"Artificial intelligence (AI) is a transformative force in education. Realizing the full potential of AI in education requires a multidisciplinary and holistic AI literacy framework that can inform research, practice, and policy. This novel ED-AI Lit framework includes six components: Knowledge, Evaluation, Collaboration, Contextualization, Autonomy, and Ethics. This framework stresses the importance of developing a deep understanding of how AI systems function, critically evaluating their implications, and fostering collaborative relationships between individuals and AI.","PeriodicalId":52185,"journal":{"name":"Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139174878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Brian A. Anderson, Namgyun Kim, Laurent Gregoire, Niya Yan, Changbum Ryan Ahn
{"title":"Attention Failures Cause Workplace Accidents: Why Workers Ignore Hazards and What To Do About It","authors":"Brian A. Anderson, Namgyun Kim, Laurent Gregoire, Niya Yan, Changbum Ryan Ahn","doi":"10.1177/23727322231218190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23727322231218190","url":null,"abstract":"Accidents readily occur when workers are not attentive to the hazards of their work. For some professionals, such as workers in the construction and mining industry, exposure to workplace hazards occurs on a daily basis. Such repetitive exposure to workplace hazards poses unique challenges for the attention of workers. This review explores how, in the absence of negative consequences, repetitive exposure to hazards decreases attention to them. Recommendations, informed by the science of attention, suggest how to combat the tendency to ignore frequently-exposed hazards and restore worker vigilance, thereby reducing the frequency of workplace accidents. Experiential training incorporating virtual reality holds some promise.","PeriodicalId":52185,"journal":{"name":"Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"31 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139005030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"No Simple Solutions to Complex Problems: Cognitive Science Principles Can Guide but Not Prescribe Educational Decisions","authors":"Veronica X. Yan, Faria Sana, Paulo F. Carvalho","doi":"10.1177/23727322231218906","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23727322231218906","url":null,"abstract":"Cognitive science of learning points to solutions for making use of existing study and instruction time more effectively and efficiently. However, solutions are not and cannot be one-size-fits-all. This paper outlines the danger of overreliance on specific strategies as one-size-fits-all recommendations and highlights instead the cognitive learning processes that facilitate meaningful and long-lasting learning. Three of the most commonly recommended strategies from cognitive science provide a starting point; understanding the underlying processes allows us to tailor these recommendations to implement at the right time, in the right way, for the right content, and for the right students. Recommendations regard teacher training, the funding and incentivizing of educational interventions, guidelines for the development of educational technologies, and policies that focus on using existing instructional time more wisely.","PeriodicalId":52185,"journal":{"name":"Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences","volume":"20 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139004815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}