science 1,200 Whimsical Stone Buddhas As a bit of a break from all the laughing babies here are some cheerful stone figures from Otagi Nenbutsu-Ji Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. There are over 1200 of them. They were assembled by sculptor Kocho Nishimura with the help of many amateur stone carvers. They've only
happiness The Science of Happiness Graphic by WebpageFX. Click to embiggen. Infographic - The Science of Happiness -via Bounce Back: Develop Your Resiliency (PsychCentral.com) A few gentle reminders of the important things in life. Although this graphic is not perfect by any means. In particular, it's not true that having children makes
science More proof that babies love tearing paper. A Chinese toddler with a penchant for tearing up books saw his habit take a costly leap after he got his hands on his parents’ life savings and ripped the lot to shreds. The unnamed four-year-old tore his way through notes worth £3,000 after discovering the stash in a
science Laughter begins with a tickle. Happy new year, everyone. Now that our baby laughter survey is over, I am going carefully through the results for a scientific write-up and for a potential book project. Appropriately for the start of a new year, I'm beginning by looking at the very earliest laughs and what
science Baby Laughter project update. A quick update on the baby laughter project 1. As you can see we've redesigned the site. I've merged the main blog and the video blog. Subscribe here. 2. Because... we have finished our laughter survey! Thank you to all the parents who took part. We
science Spit-up Night at the Improv | Kinderlab Blog I did a short interview with Kate Gammon at the excellent new baby science blog Kinderlab. Spit-up Night at the Improv | Popular Science I wasn't very on the ball when she called me up but Kate has done a great job of turning my confused rambling into clever
science The Do It All parent.. After my comments about the 'DIY baby' I think it is worth redressing the balance. Babies spend a lot of time teaching themselves how to walk, talk and throw food on the floor. But parents spend even more time being parents. I wouldn't normally post these
science The Do It Yourself baby. The recent BBC coverage of our project has lead to some interesting questions from parents. Not being a parent myself, I can only give the 'sciencey' answer but hopefully this provides a clue Having watched your recent news piece with respect to baby laughter I was intrigued by
science Your Babies #020: Infant schadenfreude? Our latest video comes from Diana and shows baby Ciera laughing as her twin brother Cole face plants the floor as he reaches for her bouncer. Ciera and Cole are just 1 year old in this video so it probably seems unlikely to you that Ciera's laughter is
science Welcome visitors from the BBC The baby laughter project was featured on the BBC News site today. So if you saw us there, thank you for visiting our site. If you didn't you can follow the links at the end to see their video and article about us. Either way, we hope you
science Our first peer reviewed publication in Comedy Studies I am pleased to say that the first scientific write up of our research has been published in the journal Comedy Studies. The science of baby laughter Caspar Addyman & Ishbel Addyman ABSTRACT The Baby Laughter Project (https://babies.lol) is a research program in developmental psychology that uses online
science Was tickling babies the first form of comedy? Did all comedy arise from tickling games played with babies? Aaron Schuster draws attention to this theory in a long and surprisingly serious essay on the philosophy of tickling. Psychologist and adult laughter expert Robert Provine has speculated that the anticipation of a tickle might have been the first ever
science New autism & ADHD research project at Birkbeck Babylab We are starting a new study at Birkbeck Babylab. We are writing to share some exciting news with you. We are launching our next phase of the Babysibs study called STAARS (Studying Autism and ADHD Risk in Siblings) to understand the early development of infants at risk for developmental disorders
science Javier Elkin's Pocket Smile app Some research for grown ups. Pocket Smile is part of my PhD project at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, exploring if looking at smiling faces throughout the day can increase happiness! Have you ever noticed how many smiles are started by other smiles? Just like yawning, smiling is contagious.
science Experimenting With Babies: Baby science for you to try at home Here's a new book, published today, that might interest readers of this blog: Experimenting With Babies: 50 Science Projects You Can Perform on Your Kid shows parents how to recreate landmark scientific studies on cognitive, motor, social and behavioral development — using their own bundles of joy as the
science The physics of babies As I've said before every baby is a scientist. It might also be true that every scientist that becomes a parent becomes a baby scientist. This was certainly true for Philip Shemella, a computational physicist working in Zurich. When his baby daughter Heidi was born he became a
science Citizen Scientists Decode Meaning, Memory and Laughter - SciAm Mind Scientific American Mind have a guest blog post from Joshua Hartshorne about citizen science. That is, science where researcher recruit 'enthusiastic amateurs' online as research collaborators. He points out that cognitive scientists have been doing this a long time and covers a range of recent projects including ours.
science The power of play – Peter Gray All young mammals spend most of their time playing. Evolutionary psychologist Peter Gray believes that this supports the clearly supports the venerable idea that play provides very important preparation for adult life. But what about young humans? With the most to learn, we would seem to need the most play.
science Q. Why do we laugh? A. Because we are happy. That's shortest answer to the question why do we laugh? But what makes us happy? Ah, well now your asking. If you're a baby then lots of things make you happy but as we get older we lose a little of that magic. Thus friday my
science What makes children laugh? One of the nicest things about laughter is that it is contagious. Some colleagues at Kingston University are now interested in childen's jokes. They'd like to hear from you. Or, in fact from your kids. They want to know their favourite jokes. You can send the
science Your little monkeys are a bit like... little monkeys. When I was born, I was quite furry with big sticky out ears. My mother thought I looked a bit like a monkey. She told the nurses, who told her off: "Mrs Addyman, he's not a monkey, he's your beautiful baby." Which, of course,
science LEGO mini-figures are getting angrier Christian Jarrett at the excellent BPS Research Digest reports on an ingenious but depressing study of the world's most popular toy. Researchers have studied the facial experessions of lego mini-figures and found that they are getting angrier, while the themes are become more 'conflict based'. Bartneck
science Let's laugh at babies for a change.. On this blog we sometimes to forget that you can laugh at the babies as well as with them. via Humor Train. via we know memes baby halloween costumes via i'm funny
science Interview with Red Orbit magazine. Back in November I did a short interview with popular science website Red Orbit. For some inexplicable reason, I forgot to include it here. It's quite a bit more 'sciencey' than usual. The science of Baby Laughter - Red Orbit
