Children who began reading for pleasure early in life showed a slew of benefits

 

Reading for pleasure – from tucking into a Jane Austen classic to devouring a Heartstopper graphic novel – is linked to better mental health, greater empathy and a lower risk of dementia, say researchers.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have joined with The Queen’s Reading Room – the charity founded by Her Majesty The Queen – to highlight the benefits of reading for pleasure at any age as part of the National Year of Reading.

In 2025, Professor Barbara Sahakian and Dr Christelle Langley from the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge published Brain Boost: Healthy Habits for a Happier Life. It was while writing this book that they became aware of how widespread the benefits to reading for pleasure are – but also, how there was surprisingly little research in this area.

Today, in a review published in Psychological Medicine, Professor Sahakian and Dr Langley, together with Vicki Perrin, CEO of The Queen’s Reading Room, argue that it doesn’t matter what or how we read, reading for enjoyment can bring huge benefits – and reading with others, whether it’s as part of a book club or a parent reading with their children, can bring even greater rewards.

Professor Sahakian said: “Reading is a great way to support our brain health, develop important cognitive skills and boost our wellbeing. It’s something we ought to be encouraging from an early age, given the increasing evidence of its benefits, particularly to children, but really, it’s never too late to start, and it can bring benefits throughout our lives and into old age.”

Reading among children and adolescents is at its lowest levels since records began, surveys have shown, particularly among adolescent boys and children from disadvantaged backgrounds. But even those who say they enjoy reading the least still recognise its educational value, with nearly half saying it helps them learn new words or new things.

Some of the strongest evidence of the benefits of reading for pleasure come from a study by Professor Sahakian, Dr Langley and colleagues of more than 10,000 young people, which found that children who began reading for pleasure early in life showed benefits including : better attention, memory, and executive functioning, greater academic achievement, fewer mental health problems, and healthier lifestyles, including more sleep and less screen time.

Dr Langley said: “Given how beneficial reading for pleasure is at a young age, we should be doing everything we can to introduce children and young people to reading. The important thing is to find something they’d really enjoy reading about – it might be a TV programme or a game – and use this as a way in. Reading comics and graphic novels could also be a helpful introduction as they might be seen as less intimidating, maybe less boring, than novels.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, reading is strongly associated with improved literacy skills – but it is even linked to mathematical achievement, as reading and maths share similar cognitive processes such as language skills, memory, and executive function.

The benefits are not limited to children and young people. Surveys have suggested a multitude of benefits for adults, particularly related to wellbeing, including reduced stress and better relaxation, greater empathy and understanding of others, and a more tolerant attitude to different perspectives.

Reading has emerged as the most popular method for stress relief, with almost two in five adults (38%) choosing books as their ultimate way to unwind. A neuroscience study commissioned by The Queen’s Reading Room in 2024 found that just five minutes of fiction can reduce stress by up to 20%, as well as boosting concentration and problem-solving skills and helping readers feel less lonely. One survey even found that more people turned to books for comfort (35%) than to wine (31%) or a hot bath (10%).

The benefits can be particularly important later in life. Leisure activities that stimulate the brain – particularly reading – are linked to slower cognitive decline and a reduced risk of dementia in older adults. For example, in a study of almost 5,500 adults aged 55 years and older, individuals who frequently engaged in activities including reading were significantly less likely to develop cognitive impairment over a five-year follow-up period. Another study found that reading newspapers, magazines, and books was associated with a 33% reduction in the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

So, why is reading for pleasure so beneficial? Brain imaging studies show a link between reading and differences in brain structure, including: larger volumes and cortical areas in brain regions involved in language, learning, emotional regulation, and executive control; stronger white matter connectivity supporting language processing; and increased cortical thickness in key language-related brain areas.

While most studies only show associations, evidence is emerging of a causal link. Structural brain changes have been shown to follow reading interventions. For example, a small study of 11 children with dyslexia aged 7–11 found that an eight-week training programme focused on mental imagery, articulation, and tracing of letters, letter groups, and words significantly improved reading skills – and these improvements were accompanied by increases in grey matter volume in key brain regions.

The Queen’s Reading Room was first launched on social media in January 2021 as a way of sharing book recommendations and connecting readers during lockdown and has since grown into a global movement of more than 12 million people in 184 countries. The charity works to restore reading to the heart of daily life, through its flagship festival and neuroscientific study, and works in homeless shelters and domestic violence refuges where it uses shared reading as a therapeutic tool in recovery. This social connection can be important to our mental and physical wellbeing, particularly later in life.

Professor Sahakian said: “Shared reading groups and book clubs appear to provide additional benefits through social interaction. They can help people feel less isolated and more connected to others, which has been shown to reduce the risk of dementia.

“While these clubs can be fun and beneficial at any age, they’re perfect for older people who may be not so mobile – they might not be able to go out as an exercise group or a cycling group, but a reading group is something most people can enjoy.”

Vicki Perrin, CEO of The Queen’s Reading Room, added: “At The Queen’s Reading Room, we have seen first-hand the transformative power of individual and shared reading to change lives. Books truly do make life better, and we’re excited to do our bit to help everyone, everywhere, make more room for reading.”

Reference

Sahakian, BJ, Perrin, V & Langley, C. Reading and associations with brain health, cognition, wellbeing and mental health. Psychological Medicine; 15 Sept 2026; DOI: 10.1017/S0033291726105625

Gender gaps in information received about work/life balance

 This paper provides the first causal evidence that gender affects the information an individual receives about careers utilizing a large-scale field experiment in which real college students seek career information from 10,000 working professionals. 

When students ask broadly for information about a career, female students receive substantially more information on work/life balance than male students. This gender difference persists when students specifically ask about work/life balance. A survey of professionals suggests non-altruistic motives for discussing work/life balance with women. 

Combining findings from the field experiment and results from an information intervention, the authors conclude that gender gaps in information received about work/life balance are consequential for gender gaps in career intentions.

The Benefits of Personalized Supports for Low-Income Students

 Children from low-income families face barriers outside the classroom that impede learning and limit opportunities for economic mobility. This study looks at Communities In Schools (CIS), a program that places coordinators in high-poverty schools to connect struggling students with personalized support. Coordinators match students to resources that address academic, behavioral, and basic needs—such as tutoring, mental health counseling, and housing stabilization. CIS is the largest program of its kind in the U.S., reaching 2 million students annually. 

Using the staggered rollout of CIS, the authors find that the program boosts test scores for struggling students. These gains persist, raising high school completion and adult earnings. Improvements in test scores explain only about half of CIS's impact on high school graduation; the remainder reflects progress on non-cognitive outcomes such as attendance and behavior. Consistent with CIS's emphasis on personalization, coordinators tailor services to distinct student needs, yet students with different needs experience comparable long-run gains. 

Placing a trusted adult in schools, backed by a network of programs and services, may offer a scalable way to improve economic mobility.

How Therapeutic Video Games Are Becoming Prescription Medicine for Mental Health

 Once the subject of concern and debate with respect to their impact on well-being, video games are increasingly being redeemed in research and developed for the express purpose of addressing and improving mental health. In this News and Perspectives article, JMIR Correspondent Benedette Cuffari reports on the state of serious games.

Key Takeaways:

• Serious video games use evidence-based psychological methods to support the development of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral skills.
• Therapeutic video games range from US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–authorized treatments for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to commercial games that may support emotional well-being and resilience.

Most mental health disorders emerge during adolescence, with peak onset at just over 14 years of age. The adolescent brain is characterized by a high degree of neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to adapt and form new connections—suggesting that adolescence may also be an ideal period of life for improving and promoting positive mental health through innovative approaches.

But stigma, high costs, and inequitable access to mental health services often prevent adolescents with mental health disorders from receiving treatment, with only half of American adolescents, for example, receiving needed mental health support. If left untreated, these individuals are more likely to drop out of school, experience behavioral difficulties, abuse drugs, and die by suicide; the need for more effective alternatives to conventional treatments is urgent.

What Are Serious Games?

Serious games have emerged as a promising strategy to address mental health concerns, particularly for adolescents, by combining entertainment with validated therapeutic approaches. Compared to traditional video games developed primarily for recreational purposes, serious games are designed by using established principles from cognitive behavioral therapy or acceptance and commitment therapyhttps://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/acceptance-and-commitment-therapy-act-therapyto support cognitive and emotional skills.

Like conventional video games, serious games can immerse users in fictional worlds through a combination of auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli that then help engage them in therapeutic cognitive, behavioral, or emotional learning processes. Typically, they incorporate an overarching storyline, accompanied by player dialogues, in-game feedback, mini-games or quizzes, and other gaming elements to simulate real-life situations. These games can be designed to prevent or treat mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, autism, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and to supplement existing therapies, emotional development education, and standardized academic evaluations.

How Video Games Became Prescription Medicine

For practicing clinicians, therapeutic video games connect evidence-based strategies with patient engagement. “Video games create a safe environment where clients can explore complex emotional themes and practice real-life coping mechanisms,” notes Megan Connell, PsyD, ABPP—a board-certified clinical psychologist specializing in neurodivergent care for women and girls. “Games offer a diverse range of experiences where patients can process challenges through an interactive medium.”

Now, one of them can even be prescribed: EndeavorRx, the first and only video game to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for children between 8 and 17 years of age with primarily inattentive or combined-type ADHD. The basis of EndeavorRx is for users to guide alien avatars traveling on flying saucers through dynamic worlds with changing landscapes and moving obstacles.

‎

It’s designed to challenge users’ ability to pay attention to multiple things at once, improving their ability to focus and filter out distractions. Powered by a proprietary adaptive algorithm, EndeavorRx continuously adjusts its difficulty to personalize the treatment experience for each patient, which maintains engagement by encouraging them to perform better during each game. With a prescription of up to 25 minutes of play, 5 days a week, for at least 4 consecutive weeks, EndeavorRx has been shown to improve attention capacity in 73% of children.

EndeavorRx should not, however, be considered a stand-alone treatment for ADHD or a replacement for standard medication. Rather, it should be incorporated as one component of a broader treatment plan that may include medication, educational programs, and/or therapy.

From Serious Games to Commercial Games With Serious Impact

Beyond FDA-authorized software, commercial off-the-shelf video games—not explicitly built for therapeutic purposes—are nonetheless increasingly being evaluated as low-cost and accessible mental health interventions. “We utilize indie games like Gris quite a bit,” says Connell, referring to a video game where users guide the main character as she processes a deeply emotional loss. “Each level explores a different aspect of grief, finding yourself, and discovering your own purpose while confronting challenges.”

Eudaimonic video games, like Gris, aren’t designed as mental health treatments but can evoke meaning and improve mood through self-growth experiences that directly address emotional states. In addition to enhancing resiliency to stress, frustration, or sadness through meaningful and reflective scenarios, these video games could function as therapeutic tools for promoting relaxation and emotional well-being.

Even video games like Dark Souls, which was originally created for entertainment purposes alone, may have eudaimonic effects. This combat-focused action role-playing game is incredibly challenging, even for experienced players, and requires characters to die repeatedly as part of the core experience. Yet, research examining the themes present in an online forum dedicated to the game suggests that individuals respond favorably to this dynamic and view it as useful for coping with difficult emotional experiences, like depression. By forcing players to sit with frustration, Dark Souls teaches players to practice perseverance, even when their depression tells them to give up, through frequent failures accompanied by rewarding moments of achievement and victory, while also prompting existential reflection and providing community.

Like EndeavorRx, Dark Souls, Gris, and other nonprescription video games can complement established treatment approaches for their respective indications rather than serve as a replacement for standard treatment. This caveat is particularly important for users who turn to these games to escape from or avoid negative moods, as their overuse can contribute to problematic or excessive gaming rather than help players develop and apply real-world coping skills.

The Future of Serious Games

Many existing serious games are limited by a one-size-fits-all design that requires all players to interact under the same rules, with minimal adaptation to individual differences. To overcome this limitation, AI tools are being explored for their potential to create personalized and realistic environments that adapt, in real time, to changes in the players’ behavior during gaming. Additional customizations can be based on the players’ learning styles, personal strengths, and challenges to make the gaming experience more personalized and engaging.

Virtual gaming experiences can also be enhanced with immersive technologies like virtual reality, which blurs the lines between reality and the digital world to create a more realistic experience that allows players to focus their attention on targeted stimuli. For example, the PainWaive game combines a brain-monitoring headset with the game application to help users learn how to consciously regulate brain activity linked to chronic nerve pain. PainWaive and similar digital therapeutics offer a nonpharmacological alternative that can reduce reliance on addictive prescription opioids.

Incorporating physiological sensors to monitor heart rate, skin conductance, or brain activity also adds a useful layer—providing feedback to users and feeding back into game parameters. As these tools evolve, clinicians emphasize that their integration into the clinic must remain thoughtful. “Any intervention can be helpful or harmful; it depends on how you want to wield it and use it,” Connell concludes.

Children should be given more opportunities for independence before adolescence

As thousands of children start secondary school, experts have called for children to be given more opportunities for independence before they hit adolescence.

New research, from the Outdoor Play Research Centre based at the University of Exeter, of almost 9,000 children and young people across England found that greater independence was not automatically associated with better wellbeing. Among adolescents, the context in which that independence was experienced mattered: for those who felt unsafe to travel within their neighbourhood, greater independence was associated with lower wellbeing.

The findings come against a backdrop of a substantial generational decline in children’s freedom. Previous research has shown that the proportion of primary-school children in England allowed to walk to school alone fell from 86 per cent in 1971 to 25 per cent in 2010, while children are now typically granted greater independence at around the age they move to secondary school at 11 years old.

The researchers, led by Outdoor Play Research Centre deputy director Dr Paul McCrorie, suggest that the findings raise important questions about whether children are being given enough opportunities to gradually develop the skills, confidence and familiarity with their neighbourhoods that may help prepare them for greater independence in adolescence.

Dr McCrorie of the University of Exeter said: “There is a compelling argument that children need more freedom and opportunities to do things independently.

“Our findings don’t contradict that. What they suggest is that simply giving children independence isn’t enough.

“We need to think about the conditions in which that independence happens. Asking a young person to navigate their neighbourhood independently when they don’t feel safe doing so may be a very different experience from giving them freedom in an environment where they feel confident, secure and supported.

“The goal shouldn’t therefore just be to give children more freedom. It should be to create communities where children feel able and ready to use that freedom.”

The Outdoor Play Research Centre has called on policy makers to respond to their research by moving beyond simply encouraging children’s independence towards creating the conditions that make it possible. This requires coordinated action across transport, urban planning and communities, alongside support for parents to progressively give children greater freedom. They have called for more zebra crossings, investment in crossing patrol staff - lollipop men and women – and help to establish walking buses.

The Department for Transport unveiled an active travel plan in June, pledging £4.5 billion for walking, wheeling and cycling routes and promising 10,000 safer crossings over the next five years.

Please find the full report here.

ENDS 

Kids’ brains are built for distraction. Sometimes that’s a good thing.

 Parents often learn the hard way that to make it anywhere on time, they should calculate how much time they think they need to get ready — and double it.

It’s hard enough for adults with deep-rooted mental checklists to make it out the door. For young children, such lists give way to treasure maps.

Everything from clothing choices to snacks and toys for the car require diplomatic negotiations that can’t be rushed without risking a meltdown. The clock is ticking, but your child is blissfully unaware and is suddenly more interested in staying home.

Whereas adults rely on streamlined internal mind maps to carry out their daily routines, young children’s brains appear to be wired for distraction. According to a review paper published recently in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, what might look and feel like pure chaos — or worse, obstinance — is an important window into how growing minds think and learn through exploration.

In the paper, lead author Vladimir Sloutsky, a professor of psychology at The Ohio State University, revisits research his lab previously reported in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and notes that “children tend to explore broadly, and, despite its costs, exploration confers important benefits, especially early in development, when they know little.”

In other words, Sloutsky said, “they are humans learning to be human.”

When choosing between trying something new (exploration) or repeating actions that have already proven successful (exploitation), learners of all ages encounter what researchers call the “exploration-exploitation dilemma.” Trying new things might prove to be a waste of time and energy, but repeating familiar actions could prevent someone from acquiring new skills or knowledge.

Adults are typically more exploitative, preferring to repeat actions that have previously led to successful, rewarding outcomes, while children are less selective about where they direct their attention. Sloutsky and his co-authors wanted to find out more about what is driving this exploratory behavior, particularly in children between the ages of 3 and 8 years old.

For decades, the prevailing theory was that children explore simply because they are naturally curious — or, possibly, because their decision-making is more random. Sloutsky’s work offers a different explanation: Early exploration is driven by the immaturity of a child’s working memory system.

A mature working memory helps adults hold onto a plan and selectively filter out distractions, while an immature working memory, by contrast, is set to “distributed attention,” meaning young children are prone to spreading their attention broadly. To test this, Sloutsky’s team overloaded adults’ working memory by asking them to complete a decision-making game while also reporting whenever two consecutive odd numbers appeared in a stream of continuous numbers. When their working memories were taxed, adults in the study abandoned their strategic choices and explored more broadly, exhibiting attentional patterns nearly identical to 5-year-olds.

While children’s lack of focus might make leaving the house a test of patience, it serves a crucial evolutionary purpose, ensuring that young learners absorb as much information as possible about the world. “Because they don’t have a fully developed working memory system, children will explore and resample, especially in less familiar situations. An adult will quickly decide that something is worthy of attention and other things are not. Children do not make those selective decisions as quickly,” Sloutsky said.

For example, let’s say you’ve researched nearby gas stations and found a couple with lower prices. You might start to frequent those stations without continuing to search for better options. Meanwhile, other stations are dropping their prices and becoming more competitive, but you won’t benefit because you are certain that your initial choices are the best ones.

“Because children explore, they may not immediately optimize the benefit of the best option, but they also won’t lose out if something in the environment changes,” Sloutsky explained. “That is where exploratory behavior becomes very beneficial, guarding them against being entrapped by their own knowledge early in development.”

Sloutsky hopes studies like this help remind parents that kids “are annoying and destructive for a reason: They need to acquire a lot of knowledge in a relatively short period of time. We need to provide them with things that are OK to break, because exploring and breaking things is how they learn about the world.”

If you plot immaturity — measured by the onset of the first molar in mammals or the age of sexual maturity — against brain size, you will find an almost perfect dependence: the greater the brain size, the longer the period of immaturity, he noted.

“Children are almost completely immobile for the first year of life, disorganized for the next three, extreme risk-takers for the next 15 and self-insufficient for the first 22 years,” Sloutsky said. “It is extraordinarily costly, and that cost is mainly borne by caregivers. But it is necessary given how much kids need to learn. Organisms with bigger brains have longer periods of immaturity to allow them the flexibility to learn all that.”

Visual aids help school-aged children with ADHD recount stories

 Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Graphical illustration with two silhouetted children, one reading from a book, with a squiggly line between them.

view more 

Credit: Adrian Skov (OIST)

Whether you’re sharing a funny story told by another friend or recounting the details of a text for a school exam, accurate storytelling and retelling are an integral part of everyday communication and children’s education alike.

A new study from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) has found that children aged 8-12 with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) retell less complete and coherent stories than their neurotypical counterparts, potentially putting them at a disadvantage in social and educational settings. Visual aids helped reduce the gap. Their findings, published in Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, pave the way for creating more inclusive learning and social environments for school-aged children.

Dr. Hend Samniya from the Human Developmental Neurobiology Unit (Professor Gail Tripp) at OIST explains: “Previous research on story retelling has focused on a narrow range of variables, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of its role in communication and learning of children with ADHD. It occupies a larger role in communication than we might imagine — sharing experiences, memories, or feelings is important socially and for children’s development.”

Visual aids improve storytelling, but do not remove performance gaps

In the study, English-speaking children aged 8-12, with and without ADHD, were told two short stories from Aesop’s fables with and without visual aids. Transcripts of the retellings were then coded by researchers to capture the narrative structure, fluency, and linguistic accuracy of each participant.

The researchers found clear differences in narrative ability between children with and without ADHD. They also confirmed that visual aids helped participants with ADHD retell stories better to a much greater extent than their peers, likely because neurotypical children already performed well without visual support. However, even with visuals, their performance did not match their peers. “It’s important to note that even though we could see the general differences between participant groups, each child experienced the challenges differently — there is no one-size-fits-all intervention,” adds Samniya.

Recognizing ADHD-related challenges beyond diagnosis

ADHD is a common neurodevelopmental condition, affecting an estimated 8% of children and 3% of adults worldwide.  While the lived experiences of every person with ADHD differ, the condition generally complicates participation in social settings, particularly those that carry a high expectation of rote performance and repetition. This especially impacts school-aged children, whose challenges with ADHD are known to impact learning performance and social relationships in classroom settings. Samniya summarizes:

“It’s encouraging to see ADHD receiving more attention in recent years. I hope that our study can help increase awareness about the diverse challenges faced by people with ADHD, and help educators, clinicians, and carers in recognizing potential language and communication difficulties early to create supportive spaces for children with ADHD.” 

---

Journal

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology

DOI

10.1007/s10802-026-01494-3