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. Babble Rousers: Babies find their voice when given social push

    Eight-month-old infants utter more complex, speechlike sounds when their mothers encourage them with well-timed touches and smiles rather than with words offered as models to imitate.

  2. Findings puncture self-esteem claims

    People who report high levels of self-esteem experience few of the beneficial effects often assumed to flow from this attitude.

  3. Anthropology

    Humanity’s pedestal lowered again?

    A new genetic study reaches the controversial conclusion that chimpanzees belong to the genus Homo, just as people do.

  4. Scripted Brains: Learning to read evokes hemispheric trade-off

    From childhood through adolesence, the process of learning to read involves an amplification of specific types of left-brain activity and a dampening of right-brain responses, a new brain-imaging study finds.

  5. Repeat After Me

    New research suggests that the ability to infer the thoughts and feelings of others grows out of a capacity for imitation exhibited by human infants and perhaps by other animals, as well.

  6. Anthropology

    Stone Age Genetics: Ancient DNA enters humanity’s heritage

    Genetic material extracted from the bones of European Stone Age Homo sapiens, sometimes called Cro-Magnons, bolsters the theory that people evolved independently of Neandertals.

  7. Harvesting Intelligence: IQ gains may reach rural Kenya’s kids

    Researchers say they've uncovered a dramatic IQ increase among Kenyan children over a recent 14-year period that may be due to environmental factors such as better nutrition and a greater parental emphasis on schooling.

  8. Anthropology

    Ancestral split in Africa, China

    Environmental conditions may have encouraged Homo erectus to develop a level of social and tool-making complexity in Africa that the same species did not achieve in China.

  9. Anthropology

    Wari skulls create trophy-head mystery

    A 1,000-year-old Peruvian site has yielded the remains of decapitated human heads that were used as ritual trophies but, to the researchers surprise, did not come from enemy warriors.

  10. Anthropology

    Jaw-dropping find emerges from Stone Age cave

    A nearly complete lower jaw discovered in a Romanian cave last year and dating to around 35,000 years ago may represent the oldest known example of anatomically modern Homo sapiens in Europe.

  11. Paleontology

    First Family’s last stand

    New evidence indicates that about 3.2 million years ago, at least 17 Australopithecus afarensis individuals were killed at the same time by large predators at an eastern African site.

  12. Anthropology

    Ancestral Bushwhack: Hominid tree gets trimmed twice

    In separate presentations at scientific meetings, two anthropologists challenged the influential view that the human evolutionary family has contained as many as 20 different fossil species.