Jorge's blog

Trump held a press conference claiming that taking Tylenol during pregnancy raises the risk of autism.   (📷:empowervmedia) I n a highly publicised September 22, 2025 news conference , US President Donald Trump warned pregnant women against using acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol® ), claiming it “can be associated with a very increased risk of autism” if taken during pregnancy. Medical experts and agencies immediately pushed back. Leading paediatricians and health organisations pointed out that extensive research finds no proven link between acetaminophen and autism . For example, the maker of Tylenol ( Kenvue ) and regulators in the US, UK and elsewhere affirmed that when used as directed, acetaminophen is widely considered safe . Physicians warned that Trump’s claims echoed long-debunked myths and could spread fear, and that continuing to circulate such misinformation and disinformation can be dangerous . Similarly, autism researchers cautioned that alarmist claim...

Social Identity Theory shows that who we are is deeply tied to the groups we belong to.   (📷:empowervmedia) A t its core, Social Identity Theory says that people define themselves by the social groups they belong to . Whether it’s a family, team, club, or nation, these group memberships become part of our “self.” In the 1970s, psychologist Henri Tajfel and colleagues gave this idea rigorous form by showing that even arbitrary group labels can powerfully affect behaviour. In classic experiments, strangers were placed into random teams and then treated teammates kindly but competitors poorly (simply because of their group label). From these findings, Tajfel and Turner built a theory of how we think of ourselves as “us” or “them”. They argued that “social identity” emerges when we categorise ourselves as part of a group and compare it to other groups . In other words, social identity theory specifies when we see ourselves as individuals versus as members of groups. These ideas help...

Trauma alters brain circuits to strengthen conditioned fear.   (📷:empowervmedia) C lassical conditioning is a type of learning where a neutral stimulus becomes linked to an important event. For example, imagine Pavlov ’s famous dogs: they learned to salivate (response) to a bell (neutral cue) because the bell was repeatedly paired with food . In similar fashion, our minds can learn fear. Classical conditioning means we automatically associate a neutral cue with something scary, so that the cue alone later sparks that same fear response . 'Pavlov's Dogs' ▶️3m02s In a trauma scenario, the traumatic event (like a car crash, assault, or explosion) acts as a powerful unconditioned stimulus that naturally provokes terror. Neutral details from that moment (a sound, an odour, a place) get stamped in as conditioned stimuli. Later, those once-ordinary cues can trigger panic or distress even when no danger is present. For instance, a war veteran might suddenly feel terror upon ...

Oracy and literacy are deeply intertwined.   (📷:empowervmedia) T he term oracy ( coined by Andrew Wilkinson in 1965 ) refers to our ability to communicate through spoken language (essentially, speaking and listening skills). It is sometimes called “the literacy of the spoken word” . In contrast, literacy refers to reading and writing (the skills of decoding letters and encoding ideas in text). Importantly, children acquire oracy naturally long before literacy: we learn to talk, sing and understand speech well before we learn to read or write. In practice, this means that the vocabulary, sentence structures, and thinking skills we develop through talking provide the scaffolding for understanding written text and expressing ourselves in writing. In fact, research shows that oral language ability tends to place an upper limit on reading comprehension (if you cannot recognise a word by listening, you cannot fully understand it when reading) . In short, oracy and literacy are like tw...