25 news posts in Technology

Wearable devices: Useful medical insights or just more data?

A new review looks at devices used by everyday people and athletes to track physical and psychological health, and to achieve certain performance levels: Frontiers in Physiology

Should ethics or human intuition drive the moral judgments of driverless cars?

People may not be happy with ethical decisions made by their self-driving cars: Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

Robotics and AI

22 Sep 2017

Google Glass app helps autistic children with social interactions

Wearable technology described in Frontiers in Robotics and AI can recognize conversational prompts and provide the user with suitable responses.

Psychology

21 Sep 2017

Tablets can teach kids to solve physical puzzles

Contrary to popular belief, a Frontiers in Psychology study shows that children who learn to solve a puzzle on a tablet can transfer the learning to the physical world.

Humanities

26 Jul 2017

Beyond the Score: Interview with Professor Johanna Devaney

Professor Johanna Devaney is new Specialty Chief Editor for Digital Musicology. In this interview, she discusses her goals and motivations for the section

Neuroscience

18 Jul 2017

Creating music by thought alone

Neurologists have created a hands-free, thought-controlled musical instrument, which they’ve recently described in a report in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Psychology

29 Jun 2017

Screen time or story time?

New study published in Frontiers in psychology suggests electronic media may pose less of an impact to learning for toddlers than is the case for preschoolers

Psychology

09 May 2017

How do toddlers learn best from touchscreens?

New research, published in Frontiers in Psychology, shows that touchscreens can either help or hinder learning in toddlers.

Psychology

13 Sep 2016

Touchscreens may boost motor skills in toddlers

by Conn Hastings, Frontiers Science Writer Younger use of touchscreens by toddlers correlates with increased fine motor control. Does your toddler use a touchscreen tablet? A recent study published in Frontiers in Psychology has shown that early touchscreen use, and in particular actively scrolling the screen, correlates with increased fine motor control in toddlers. Smartphones and tablets are now commonplace at work and in the home. If you are reading this on your morning commute on public transport, it is likely to be on a touchscreen device, while surrounded by people who are completely absorbed by their own touchscreens. There has been a dramatic increase in the ownership and use of tablets and smartphones in recent years. In the UK, family ownership of touchscreen devices increased from 7% in 2011 to 71% in 2014. It is therefore not surprising that children are using touchscreens from a very early age, but is this a good thing or not? The effects of using touchscreens on young children are a concern for some parents and policymakers. Popular opinion holds that using touchscreens at an early age is likely to delay the cognitive development of children. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises that […]

Life sciences

27 Apr 2016

Are brain-training apps effective?

By Tania FitzGeorge-Balfour, Frontiers science writer In recent years there has been an explosion in the number of smartphone apps aimed at ‘brain training’. These games often make confident statements about improving our mental performance, but there is little scientific evidence to show that they do. A new study in the open-access journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience has investigated why consumers decide to download these apps, how they use them and what they think their benefits may be. “While the evidence of the effectiveness of brain training remains controversial, our results suggest that the public is interested in learning more about the actual science behind the claims made by the app developers,”says Dr. John Torous, a clinical psychiatrist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, lead author of the study. Young people and those with internet access tend to have high rates of smartphone ownership, so Dr. Torous and his co-authors designed a survey targeted at this group. They asked participants about their thoughts, use and experience of brain-training apps. Over three thousand people responded, making this the largest internet survey to date asking consumers about these apps; the results were insightful. Over two thirds of those that responded […]