Bruce Bower

Bruce Bower

Behavioral Sciences Writer

Bruce Bower has written about the behavioral sciences since 1984. He often writes about psychology, anthropology, archaeology and mental health issues. Bruce has a master's degree in psychology from Pepperdine University and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. Following an internship at Science News in 1981, he worked as a reporter at Psychiatric News, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association, until joining Science News as a staff writer. In 1996, the American Psychological Association appointed Bruce a Science Writer Fellow, with a grant to visit psychological scientists of his own choosing. Early stints as an aide in a day school for children and teenagers with severe psychological problems and as a counselor in a drug diversion center provided Bruce with a surprisingly good background for a career in science journalism.

All Stories by Bruce Bower

  1. IQ Yo-Yo: Test changes alter retardation diagnoses

    Mental retardation placements in U.S. schools rose dramatically in the first five years after a commonly used IQ test was revised, raising concerns about how IQ scores are used to diagnose mental retardation.

  2. Poor Relations: Casino windfall reveals poverty’s toll on Cherokee kids’ behavior

    A study of Indian families before and after they began receiving an annual financial windfall supports the theory that poverty undermines psychological health, at least among children.

  3. Anthropology

    Erectus Ahoy

    A researcher who explores the nautical abilities of Stone Age people by building rafts and having crews row them across stretches of ocean contends that language and other cognitive advances emerged 900,000 years ago with Homo erectus, not considerably later among modern humans, as is usually assumed.

  4. Neuroscience

    Restoring Recall: Memories may form and reform, with sleep

    Two new studies indicate that memories, at least for skills learned in a laboratory, undergo a process of storage and restorage that depends critically on sleep.

  5. Faint smells of schizophrenia

    A loss of the ability to tell different odors apart may represent an early sign of schizophrenia.

  6. Mothers reveal their baby faces

    Mothers in different cultures use three distinctive facial expressions to communicate with their infants.

  7. Anthropology

    Y Trail of the First Americans: DNA data point to late New World entry

    Scientists identified a gene variant on the Y chromosome that allowed them to estimate that people first reached the Americas no earlier than about 18,000 years ago.

  8. Archaeology

    Ancient tunnel keeps biblical date

    Radiocarbon dating of material from an ancient tunnel in Jerusalem indicates that the passage was built around 700 B.C., supporting a biblical account of the tunnel's construction.

  9. Archaeology

    Origins of Smelting: Lake yields core of pre-Inca silver making

    Metal concentrations in soil extracted from a Bolivian lake indicate that silver production in the region began 1,000 years ago, 4 centuries before well-known silver-making efforts by the Incas.

  10. Widows show third-year rebound

    Women whose husbands die largely overcome their grief-related problems, including depression and social isolation, by about 3 years after their loss, according to a national study.

  11. Brains generate a body of feeling

    Happiness, sadness, and other basic emotions activate unique networks of brain areas that track the body's internal status.

  12. Abused kids lose emotional bearings

    Physical abuse and neglect appear to undermine preschoolers' emotional development in different ways.