Category: Child Development

A unique approach to early literacy work with families where children develop their language skills and their ability to read and write from an early age has had a huge success.

Researchers from the University of Sheffield funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) initially planned to use the approach with around 60 families, but discovered that around 6,000 had actually benefited from their work.

Professor Cathy Nutbrown of the University of Sheffield, who led the project, shared her approach to family literacy with Early Years practitioners including nursery workers, teachers, child-minders and family support units to help them plan and evaluate their family literacy work.

A report by the National Literacy Trust in May this year found that children in the UK are more likely to lack the basic reading and writing skills than children in Australia or Canada — even though the UK spends four per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on family benefits relating to children compared to 1.2 per cent in the USA and 1.4 per cent in Canada.

The Sheffield research team further developed the 'ORIM Framework in the Raising Early Achievement in Literacy' project in the late 1990s. The framework focuses on four key elements: opportunities, recognition, interaction and models (ORIM). The key to the framework is that it highlights parents' roles and offers ideas for how they can help their child.

1. Opportunities included resources for engaging with literacy such as books, writing materials, and use opportunities to see and discuss printed work.

2. Recognition showed parents the small steps in literacy progress their children were making to encourage their efforts.

3. Interaction outlined situations where parents could positively involve themselves in literacy activities — writing birthday cards, saying nursery rhymes, reading stories or spotting print images in the neighbourhood.

4. Modelling was where the parents lead by example and their children could see that they were using reading, writing and print in everyday life.

Around 20 practitioners learned the theory behind the practical work they do and how it can benefit children's literacy. They agreed to adopt the framework and report back on its application, how they adapted it, and impact. Most said that it helped promote many activities including enhancing parents' recognition of the reading behaviour in three and four year-old bilingual children, encouraging talk in two year olds and encouraging young, reluctant boys to begin communicating with writing.

"We have been excited to see how the Early Years practitioners involved in this project are taking our ideas and developing them further to work with parents who have young children, so that they can help develop their interest in literacy from an early age," says Professor Nutbrown.

Professor Nutbrown was delighted to discover that the initial 20 practitioners had shared the approach with some 300 colleagues, far more than anticipated. She added: "This has greatly exceeded our expectations and by the end of the project the new approach reached over 6,000 families."

— Living in poverty is often accompanied by conditions that can negatively influence cognitive development. Is it possible that being bilingual might counteract these effects? Although previous research has shown that being bilingual enhances executive functioning in middle-class children, less is known about how it affects lower income populations.

In a study forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientist Pascale Engel de Abreu of the University of Luxembourg and colleagues examine the effects of speaking two languages on the executive functioning of low-income children.

"Low-income children represent a vulnerable population," says Engel de Abreu. "Studying cognitive processes in this population is of great societal importance and represents a significant advancement in our understanding of childhood development."

Existing research, conducted with older bilingual children and bilingual adults from middle class backgrounds, suggests that knowing two languages may have different effects on different aspects of executive functioning: while being bilingual seems to have a positive influence on the ability to direct and focus attention (control), researchers have found no such benefit for how people encode and structure knowledge in memory (representation).

Engel de Abreu and her colleagues hypothesized that this pattern would also hold for younger bilingual children who were low-income.

A total of 80 second graders from low-income families participated in the study. Half of the children were first or second generation immigrants to Luxembourg, originally from Northern Portugal, who spoke both Luxembourgish and Portuguese on a daily basis. The other half of the children lived in Northern Portugal and spoke only Portuguese.

The researchers first tested the children's vocabularies by asking them to name items presented in pictures. Both groups completed the task in Portuguese and the bilingual children also completed the task in Luxembourgish.

To examine how the children represented knowledge in memory, the researchers asked them to find a missing piece that would complete a specific geometric shape. The researchers also measured the children's memory, using two different tasks to see how much visual information the children could keep in mind at a given time.

The children then participated in two tasks that looked at their ability to direct and focus their attention when distractions were present. In the first task, they had to find and match 20 pairs of spacecrafts as quickly as possible, a task that depended on their ability to ignore all the non-matching spacecrafts. In the second task, the children were presented with a row of yellow fish on a computer screen and they had to press a button to indicate which direction the fish in the center was facing. The other fish either pointed in the same or opposite direction of the fish in the middle.

Although the bilingual children knew fewer words than their monolingual peers, and did not show an advantage for representation tasks, they performed better on the control tasks than did the monolingual children, just as the researchers hypothesized.

"This is the first study to show that, although they may face linguistic challenges, minority bilingual children from low-income families demonstrate important strengths in other cognitive domains," says Engel de Abreu.

The researchers believe that the findings could inform efforts to reduce the achievement gap between children of different socioeconomic backgrounds. "Our study suggests that intervention programs that are based on second language teaching are a fruitful avenue for future research," says Engel de Abreu. "Teaching a foreign language does not involve costly equipment, it widens children's linguistic and cultural horizons, and it fosters the healthy development of executive control."

— When it comes to cooking, grocery shopping and playing with children, American moms with full-time jobs spend roughly three-and-half fewer hours per day on these and other chores related to their children's diet and exercise compared to stay-at-home and unemployed mothers, reports a new paper by a Cornell University health economist.

Male partners do little to make up the deficit: Employed fathers devote just 13 minutes daily to such activities and non-working fathers contribute 41 minutes, finds the study, which will be printed in the December issue of Economics and Human Biology.

The findings are consistent across socio-economic lines measured by the mothers' education, family income, race and ethnicity.

To make up for this time deficit, working mothers are significantly more likely to spend time purchasing prepared foods — takeout from restaurants or prepackaged, ready-to-eat meals from grocery stores — which are generally less nutritious than home-cooked meals.

"It's inaccurate to pin rising childhood obesity rates on women, given that husbands pick up so little of the slack," cautioned lead author John Cawley, professor of policy analysis and management and of economics at Cornell's College of Human Ecology.

The study does not prove that employment alone drives the way mothers spends their time. "For example, mothers who choose to work might be those who enjoy cooking less and who would cook less whether working or not," Cawley said.

He added that working mothers produce additional benefits for children such as more money to provide for family needs.

"It's important to remember that we can take steps to enhance childhood nutrition and physical activity without advocating that women exit the workforce," Cawley said. For instance, the authors argue, parents should be better educated about the nutritional content of restaurant and prepackaged foods. "In order to make more informed decisions, consumers need to have nutrition and calorie information available where they buy their food," said Cawley, who noted that federal health care reform rules will soon require chain and fast-food restaurants nationwide to post calorie counts of the foods they sell.

Cawley noted that schools shoulder a greater burden for supporting healthy lifestyles.

"Our findings underscore the importance of schools offering high-quality foods and physical education classes," he said. "In general, the Institute of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are urging comprehensive changes in school environments to promote healthy eating and active living."

The research was funded by the Cornell University College of Human Ecology's Institute for Health Economics, Health Behaviors and Disparities and by the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

Separated and divorced couples are increasingly using emails, texting and social media to communicate with their ex-partners about their children. However, when ex-spouses use that technology to withhold or manipulate information, the children are the ones who suffer most, according to a University of Missouri family studies expert. A new study suggests divorce counselors should teach separated parents effective ways to use communication technology in order to maintain healthy environments for their children.

Lawrence Ganong, a professor of human development and family studies at MU, found that ex-partners who were cooperative with one another used emails and texting to facilitate effective co-parenting, while couples who did not get along used communication technology to avoid confrontations and control their former partners' access to their children.

"Technology makes it easier for divorced couples to get along, and it also makes it easier for them not to get along," said Ganong, who also is a professor of nursing at MU. "Parents who use technology effectively can make co-parenting easier, which places less stress on the children. Parents who use communication technology to manipulate or withhold information from the other parent can cause pain to the child."

Ganong and his colleagues interviewed 49 divorced parents individually about the quality of their relationships with their ex-partners.

Parents who had cooperative relationships saw communication technology (email, texting) as an effective tool to coordinate exchanges of their children, and some even used online calendars to share information about their children's activities. However, separated parents who had hostile relationships used the same technology to manipulate their ex-spouses and limit communication. For example, some parents in the study pretended they never received emails from their former partners. Regardless of how the couples got along, nearly all of the divorced parents used communication technology to maintain household boundaries and establish records of decisions.

When divorces end with some hostility between the parents, Ganong suggests that divorce counselors focus on teaching the couples effective ways to use technology to communicate with one another. Doing so will help children transition more smoothly between the two homes and keep them from being caught in the middle of their parents' conflicts, he said.

"Parents who are hostile need to set their feelings aside and understand that they need to communicate effectively in order to protect the emotional well-being of their children," Ganong said. "Email is a great resource for hostile parents who can't talk face-to-face. They can communicate essential information while editing what they say to avoid conflict. Also, the parents have a record of what was agreed upon."

Ganong is a professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies in the College of Human Environmental Sciences and also is a professor in the Sinclair School of Nursing.

Young children take merit into account when sharing resources, according to research published Aug. 29 in the open access journal PLOS ONE.

The study, conducted by Patricia Kanngiesser and Felix Warneken at Harvard University, showed that 3 and 5-year-olds considered both the amount of work they contributed themselves and their partner's contribution level when doling out rewards.

This sharing pattern is not infallible though; the researchers found that the children did have a self-serving bias, and few of them gave away more than half of the reward, even when their partner had worked more.

"It was long thought that young children only care about their own benefit when distributing rewards, but our findings show that they are sensitive to fairness principles like merit. Our sense of fairness thus already develops in early childhood," says Dr. Kanngiesser

A drug originally developed to stop cancerous tumors may hold the potential to prevent abnormal brain cell growth and learning disabilities in some children, if they can be diagnosed early enough, a new animal study suggests.

The surprising finding sets the stage for more research on how anti-tumor medication might be used to protect the developing brains of young children with the genetic disease neurofibromatosis 1 — and other diseases affecting the same cellular signaling pathway.

The findings, made in mice, are reported in the journal Cell by scientists at the University of Michigan Medical School and their colleagues. The results are also important to understanding the stem cells that become different brain cells.

Neurofibromatosis 1, or NF1, affects one in every 3,000 children, and causes benign tumors to grow throughout the body, large head size and other issues. Many children with NF1 also struggle with learning to read, write, do math and behave well.

This impact on brain function is considered the most common serious issue caused by NF1, and often appears before other symptoms, except for brown patches on the skin that are often mistaken for birthmarks. But while the tumors that erupt mostly later in life have been well-studied, NF1's effect on brain function isn't understood.

In the new paper, the team studied neural stem cells — a kind of master cell that can become any type of neural tissue. In newborn mice with two copies of the genetic mutation that causes NF1, neural stem cells in a key area of the brain were far more likely to produce a kind of "helper" nerve cell called glia. They produced far fewer cells called neurons, which send and receive crucial signals in the brain and body.

The scientists then took aim at this abnormal cell growth by giving the mice an experimental drug that has already been used in clinical trials for advanced cancer. Called PD0325901, the drug blocks a specific action within cells called the MEK/ERK pathway. It's one of a class of drugs known as MEK inhibitors.

Mice with the NF1 mutation that got the drug from birth developed normally — in stark contrast to mice with the same genetic mutations that didn't receive the drug. The untreated mice appeared normal at birth, but within a few days had become hunched and scruffy, with abnormal growth of their bodies and brain cells.

The new paper's senior author, Yuan Zhu, Ph.D., cautions that the particular drug in the trial may not be appropriate to give to children who have been diagnosed with NF1. But other MEK inhibitors are being developed against cancer.

"The important thing is that we have shown that by treating during this brief window of time early in life, when neural stem cells in a developing brain still have time to 'decide' what kind of cell to become, we can cause a lasting effect on neural development," he says. Zhu is an associate professor of internal medicine, in the Division of Molecular Medicine and Genetics, and in the Department of Cell & Developmental Biology, at the Medical School.

The scientists didn't study the drug's effect on the behavior or learning ability of the mice, nor their tendency to develop benign brain tumors that can occur in NF1. In order for any such drug-based intervention to work most effectively, he notes, it would have to be given soon after developmental delays or benign tumors are noted in an infant or toddler, and after a NF1 diagnosis is made.

About half of all people with NF1 inherited the mutated gene from a parent, while about half developed it spontaneously in the womb. The disease affects individual patients very differently — one child born to a parent with mild NF1 can have a severe form of the disease, while their siblings can have mild or moderate symptoms.

Some people with NF1 have a "double hit" form of the disease, where both copies of the gene are mutated in certain body cells. The second mutation, the scientists say, likely occurs in a neural stem cell that goes on to produce unusual neural cells. These patients often have severe learning disabilities, and an enlarged corpus callosum — a structure that connects the two halves of the brain and contains a large concentration of glia, the same cells that the mice in the new study had larger numbers of.

In addition to NF1, the researchers predict that their findings may have importance for patients with other genetic conditions that affect the same general cell-signaling pathway called RAS. Collectively called neuro-cardio-facial-cutaneous (NCFC) syndromes or ''RASopathies," they include Leopard syndrome, Noonan syndrome, Costello syndrome and Leguis syndrome — all of which, like NF1, affect the brains, circulation system and the face or head.

The new research is based on several other discoveries made by current or former U-M faculty. The gene for NF1 was discovered in the late 1980s by Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D. when he was a faculty member at the U-M Medical School, together with colleagues from other institutions. Collins is now director of the National Institutes of Health. That discovery paved the way for a genetic test that can now help definitively diagnose children with NF1, and guide their treatment.

Judith Sebolt Leopold, Ph.D., a research associate professor of radiology at the U-M Medical School, was a key member of the research team that developed PD0325901 while she worked at the Pfizer Research Laboratory formerly located in Ann Arbor.

The drug was first used in a cancer clinical trial in 2005, which was stopped when side effects on the retinas of some participants' eyes were noted. A new trial, using the drug in combination with another one, and comparing that combination with another drug combination, is now under way. Other MEK inhibitors, or MEKi drugs, are also in testing around the world, as scientists zero in on the RAS pathway as an important player in all kinds of cancer including melanoma.

In addition to Zhu, the research team includes U-M postdoctoral research fellow and former Zhu graduate student Yuan Wang, Ph.D.; Edward Kim, B.S.; former postdoctoral research fellow Xiaojing Wang, Ph.D.; and colleagues from other institutions Bennett G. Novitch, Kazuaki Yoshikawa and Long-Sheng Chang.

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Journal Reference:

1. Yuan Wang, Edward Kim, Xiaojing Wang, Bennett G. Novitch, Kazuaki Yoshikawa, Long-Sheng Chang, Yuan Zhu. ERK Inhibition Rescues Defects in Fate Specification of Nf1-Deficient Neural Progenitors and Brain Abnormalities. Cell, 2012; 150 (4): 816 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2012.06.034

Pretend play can be fun for preschool children, but a new University of Virginia study, published in the current online edition of the journal Psychological Bulletin, finds that it is not as crucial to a child's development as currently believed. Pretend play is any play a child engages in, alone, with playmates, or with adults, that involves uses of the imagination to create a fantasy world or situation, such as making toy cars go "vrrooooom" or making dolls talk.

Based on a number of key studies over four decades, pretend play is widely considered by psychologists — and teachers and parents — to be a vital contributor to the healthy development of children's intellect.

However, the new U.Va. study — a thorough review of more than 150 studies — looked for clearly delineated contributions of pretend play to children's mental development, and found little or no correlation.

Much of the previously presented "evidence" for the vitality of pretend play to development is derived from flawed methodology, according to Angeline Lillard, the new study's lead author and a U.Va. professor of psychology in the College of Arts & Sciences. She said testers might have been biased by knowledge that they were testing children who had engaged in adult-directed pretend play prior to testing.

"We found no good evidence that pretend play contributes to creativity, intelligence or problem-solving," Lillard said. "However, we did find evidence that it just might be a factor contributing to language, storytelling, social development and self-regulation."

She said it is often difficult for psychologists to separate whether children who engage in pretend play are already creative and imaginative, or if the pretend play, often encouraged by parents or teachers, actually promotes development.

"When you look at the research that has been done to test that, it comes up really short," Lillard said. "It may be that we've been testing the wrong things; and it may well be that when a future experiment is really well done we may find something that pretend play does for development, but at this point these claims are all overheated. This is our conclusion from having really carefully read the studies."

Lillard emphasized that various elements often present during pretend play — freedom to make choices and pursue one's own interests, negotiation with peers and physical interaction with real objects — are valuable, especially with appropriate levels of adult guidance.

These conditions exist both in pretend play and in other playful preschool activities that encourage children to discover their own interests and talents, such as the method used in Montessori schools.

Pretend play is also important diagnostically for children between 18 months and 2 years old, Lillard said. A complete absence of pretend play among children of that narrow age range could indicate autism, and suggests that such children be evaluated for other signs of the neurological disorder.

A growing problem, she said, is a trend in schools toward intensively preparing children for tests — often supplanting organized and informal playtime, leading to a debate over whether early childhood curricula should include materials and time for pretend play.

"Playtime in school is important," Lillard said. "We found evidence that — when a school day consists mostly of sitting at desks listening to teachers — recess restores attention and that physical exercise improves learning."

Regarding pretend play, she said, "If adults enjoy doing it with children, it provides a happy context for positive adult-child interaction, a very important contributor to children's healthy development."

Stephen Hinshaw, editor of Psychological Bulletin and a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, said, "The article by Lillard and colleagues is a game-changer — a paragon of carefully-reasoned evidence that will challenge the play-based domination of the early-childhood field for years to come."

Lillard's graduate student co-authors are Rebecca Dore, Emily Hopkins, Matthew Lerner, Carrie Palmquist and Eric Smith.

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Journal Reference:

1. Angeline S. Lillard, Matthew D. Lerner, Emily J. Hopkins, Rebecca A. Dore, Eric D. Smith, Carolyn M. Palmquist. The Impact of Pretend Play on Children's Development: A Review of the Evidence.. Psychological Bulletin, 2012; DOI: 10.1037/a0029321