Skip to Content Skip to Content

Michele Berger

Articles from Michele W. Berger
Parental nicotine use and addiction risk for children
A put-out cigarette standing on its end, next to half of another crumpled cigarette. In the background are two whole cigarettes.

Parental nicotine use and addiction risk for children

In research done using rats, Penn Nursing’s Heath Schmidt and colleagues found that males that engaged in voluntary nicotine use had offspring more likely to do so, too. Some offspring also developed impaired memory and anxiety-like behavior.

Michele W. Berger

Frontline voices from the pandemic’s early days
Guobin Yang and the cover of the book called "The Wuhan Lockdown by Guobin Yang." The image shows a person fully covered in what appears like a hazmat suit next to a person in a hospital bed. They are outside.

Frontline voices from the pandemic’s early days

In his new book, “The Wuhan Lockdown,” Guobin Yang uses personal diaries from that city’s residents to recreate how it felt at the epicenter of what was then a scary and unknown new virus.

Michele W. Berger

Incarceration associated with negative mental health risks for Black men
The door of a prison cell open, with closed cells behind it.

Incarceration associated with negative mental health risks for Black men

A review of literature from the past decade found that for this group in the U.S. such a detention was linked to higher levels of psychological distress, more severe symptoms of PTSD and depression, and more.

Michele W. Berger, Ed Federico

Making meaning from the loss of a child
woman sitting cross-legged on sofa using breast milk pumps

Pumping and donating milk to a nonprofit milk bank offers a way to channel grief for some bereaved parents whose child died at birth, according to research by Diane Spatz of the School of Nursing and colleagues. 

nocred

Making meaning from the loss of a child

Research by Diane Spatz of the School of Nursing and colleagues reveals how donating milk served as an important part of the grieving process for some parents who had lost a baby before or at birth.

Katherine Unger Baillie, Michele W. Berger

‘Oft-delayed but never deterred,’ Class of 2020 and 2021 grads celebrate
graduates toss caps at commencement

(Homepage image) An in-person Commencement, held at Franklin Field on May 22, represented a long-awaited milestone for the Class of 2020 and graduate students from the Class of 2021.

‘Oft-delayed but never deterred,’ Class of 2020 and 2021 grads celebrate

Embodying adaptability and persistence, themes of the speech by Angela Duckworth, alums from the classes of 2020 and 2021 returned to campus to make up for a missed milestone.
COVID mortality age patterns changed significantly during pandemic
An empty hospital bed in a hospital room.

COVID mortality age patterns changed significantly during pandemic

Between March 2020 and October 2021, death rates from the virus decreased for those 80 and older and increased for those 25 to 54, results that held across racial and ethnic groups.

Michele W. Berger

New journal focuses on how the mind and brain process language
A cartoon drawing of two silhouetted heads facing each other, with lines to indicate speaking, moving from the mouths to the brains around in a circle.

New journal focuses on how the mind and brain process language

The open-access, online-only Glossa Psycholinguistics recently published its inaugural issue after more than two years of effort from Penn linguist Florian Schwarz and colleagues around the world.

Michele W. Berger

The past, present, and future of the Positive Humanities
Book cover that reads "Oxford Library of Psychology, edited by Louis Tay, James O. Pawelski, The Oxford Handbook of The Positive Humanities" next to a picture of James Pawelski.

The past, present, and future of the Positive Humanities

A new Oxford Handbook from Penn’s James Pawelski and Louis Tay of Purdue explores this emerging field, which brings together positive psychology, philosophy, the humanities, and the arts.

Michele W. Berger

Moving away from ‘average,’ toward the individual
David Lydon-Staley sitting in a chair, pointing at the front of the room. David Lydon-Staley is an assistant professor of communication and principal investigator of the Addiction, Health, & Adolescence Lab in the Annenberg School for Communication.

Moving away from ‘average,’ toward the individual

In a course from Annenberg’s David Lydon-Staley, seven graduate students conducted single-participant experiments. This approach, what’s known as an “n of 1,” may better capture the nuances of a diverse population than randomized control trials can.

Michele W. Berger, Julie Sloane

Load More