Building Your Child’s Self-Confidence

• January 10, 2012 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

As parents, we want our children to have confidence but not conceit.  That is, we want our children to monitor the outcomes of their behaviors realistically, to be polite and considerate of others, but retain a sense of self that is positive and assured. I believe the mistake parents often make is thinking that constant praise of a child is the route to self-confidence. It is an easy mistake to make, especially in a society in which so much emphasis is placed on making our children feel loved and building feelings of self-worth.

I, like most new parents, constantly praised my oldest child for everything she did from swinging at the park without falling to reading a stop sign as we drove to preschool. But the problem with that is that excessive praise may create unrealistic expectations for the child when they are in the “real world” where people do not praise them all the time. I did not realize that for my daughter this was creating tremendous pressure to be successful at everything she did. Conversely, some children who hear constant praise at home may feel confused or dejected when others are not as enthusiastic about their feats and develop a fear of failure.

A young client of mine, whose mother worked very hard to build self-confidence in her children by praising them continuously, developed a host of voice problems associated with stress in elementary school.  I have worked with other children who developed a “need” for constant praise that affected their ability to enjoy competition if they could not win.

Since a large component of human brain maturation involves increased self-awareness and improved capacity for self-monitoring of behavior, parents have the opportunity to be instrumental in helping a child develop this advanced skill. By encouraging self-appraisal that is realistic while avoiding being overly judgmental, parents help their child build confidence. 

Instead of constant praise, parents can try to use praise more naturally to encourage behaviors the parent believes are worthwhile or beneficial. Statements like, “I like the way you shared your toys today” or “You seemed to be having a lot of fun on the climber, do you feel like you are getting better at that?” may help a child learn to value effort and progress as well as to self-evaluate.

It is important to remind ourselves that to adequately develop the ability to monitor our behavior we have to understand mistakes as well as achievements. It is very difficult for a parent to watch a child fail at something, but as adults most of us are well aware that some of the best lessons we had as we grew up came from our failures, as rough as they may have been at the time.

Building your child’s self-esteem ultimately will help them succeed in endeavors both in school and in life.  One of the most important jobs for parents is to help your child successfully through life’s challenges and successes, help them feel good about themselves along the way, and learn to accept mistakes as an opportunity to do better next time. 

Related Reading:

Ok, So You Made A Mistake. But Look What You Learned!

Shaming Some Kids Makes Them Aggressive

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: behavior, early learning, how children learn, play, self-esteem, toddler

Six Reader-Selected Posts in Honor of Our 2nd Blogaversary

• January 5, 2012 by Norene Wiesen

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been two years since Dr. Bill Jenkins, Dr. Martha Burns, Sherrelle Walker, and a host of staff bloggers launched the Science of Learning blog.  In those two years we’ve learned a lot and had a ton of fun while creating posts we hoped you would find valuable.

In honor of the occasion, we’d like to share some of our readers’ favorite blog posts to date.  Here are just a few of the posts that readers have told us they’ve liked best: 

Kathy recommends: How Learning to Read Improves Brain Function

“As an adult literacy tutor, I was fascinated to read Stanislaus Dehaene's research showing that students who don't learn to read may experience severe difficulties with other forms of instruction as a result. This underscores the critical importance of funding such programs as Second Start Adult Literacy in Oakland, a city with a high level of adult illiteracy. And, fact-based research like this gives us a more powerful defense than emotion-based anecdotes, as we fight to protect city and state literacy funding. Thank you, Scientific Learning!”

Jennifer recommends two posts:

The Question Formulation Technique: 6 Steps to Help Students Ask Better Questions

“In a learning environment that tends increasingly towards 'teaching to the test,' our nation’s students are losing the skills crucial to a lifetime of knowledge acquisition.   Without good questions we cannot find good answers, good solutions, or grow good thinkers. This article outlines a tested method for teaching children how to go about formulating a complex and well thought out question.”

School Gardens: Sowing the Seeds of Experiential Learning

“School gardens are an invaluable interdisciplinary learning tool that gets students out of the classroom and allows them to use classroom knowledge in a real world scenario. A school garden acts as a place to learn, test out theories, and acquire life skills, as well as providing a space of beauty and an object of school pride.  In my time as a garden educator, I found the bounty of opportunity to teach in the garden near limitless, and believe that all children should have the opportunity to see what they can discover in the garden.” 

Teresa recommends two posts:

The Magical Combination of Love and Limits: Tips for Teaching Positive Behavior and Kindergarten Math Readiness and the Cardinal Principle

“All of the blogs have good information for parents, educators and caregivers, but the one I like the most is the one about love and limits. I think this post is applicable to all children.  The math readiness post is a close second, as I did not know about the "cardinal principle." If more parents knew about the information in the love and limits article, we would have happier and more well-adjusted children.”

Linda recommends: Bringing Learning to Life in the Classroom: Technology for 21st Century Schools

“I've got my backpack ready to take a 3-D field trip in learning!  This mode of education sounds incredibly exciting for students.  The sky will be the limit for learners who become engaged in this technology. Thank you Scientific Learning from a retired Maine Elementary School Counselor!”

Thanks so much for your readership and feedback.  We are already hard at work on more high quality posts for the new year, and are looking forward to sharing them with you.

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, behavior, creativity, digital natives, health and well being, math, play, science, technology in education, toddler

Happy New Year 2012 from Scientific Learning

• December 29, 2011 by Norene Wiesen

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Categories: Reading & Learning

Tags: play

School Gardens: Sowing the Seeds of Experiential Learning

• December 15, 2011 by Norene Wiesen

Many children’s songs and rhymes reference gardens and the vegetable world, but when I was a student we stayed indoors singing rather than experiencing that world firsthand. But in the last two decades, schools have introduced gardening into the curriculum as a way for students to learn lessons only nature can provide. Allowing students to research, design, and build a garden gives a teacher an opportunity to demonstrate the practical application of classroom subjects in a real world scenario.

Activities such as composting, selecting appropriate plants for a climate zone, and profiling soils are directly related to science and ecology. Building trellises, measuring wood for fences, and solving garden equations such as “If a row is 10 feet long and we plant our corn 12 inches apart how many corn stalks can we grow in one row?” all contribute towards mathematical problem solving. Having students keep a handwritten and illustrated journal is a great way for them to develop handwriting and written communication skills, and to scientifically observe and chronicle the seed-to-plant life cycle.  The opportunities for learning go on and on, from collecting bugs and insects in a terrarium and observing their habitat and behavior, to researching the nutritional composition of vegetables grown, to learning safe kitchen procedures and following a recipe in preparation for cooking the harvest later in the school year.

When I was a child I detested most vegetables, even ones I had yet to taste! Because students are often willing to taste vegetables they have helped to grow, school gardens can improve a child’s eating habits, giving them nutrient rich foods that may be lacking in their diet. It’s also fun for children to participate in the preparation of meals, adding a sense of accomplishment in seeing their harvest from seed to plate. Students can opt to sell their vegetables and flowers to raise money for their school or a class field trip to a local garden. Introducing a business plan and how to handle money is a great hands-on math assignment that can be rewarding for students.

Just as important as the practical, hands-on skills that the garden teaches, are the aspects of self-regulation required to bring plants to maturity.  A student who wishes to eat a carrot must leave the carrot in the ground until it is grown rather than pulling it up as soon as it sprouts.  This lesson is quickly learned, as is the lesson that the carrot plant must receive proper care and nurturing  in the form of sun and water and protection from frost and pests so it can fully develop.  For many students, a garden provides a rare opportunity to experience first hand the importance of patience and nurturance as life skills.  There are no short cuts, and pulling a big orange carrot out of the ground is an irrefutable reward for a job well done.

School gardens provide a highly practical and direct form of education, where children can see the results of their decisions and actions. Learning how to grow good food not only gives students a chance to apply classroom learning in a practical setting, but can also improve health, provide a livelihood, and increase self-sufficiency.

So find out how you can get involved in your school’s garden, or start to build one with your students.  What a difference it can make.

Related Reading:

Modeling Healthy Choices: Three Habits for Optimal Brain Health

Individualizing Instruction Through Understanding Different Types of Learners

 

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: creativity, how children learn, learning environment, learning through play, math, motivating students, novelty, nutrition, play, school leader effectiveness, science, teacher effectiveness, teacher impact

Kindergarten Math Readiness & The Cardinal Principle

• October 20, 2011 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

Something very interesting happens in the brains of young children when they reach age four, or thereabouts.  They start to understand “how many” items are in a set—and in particular, they begin to be able to differentiate sets of “four” items or more.  This ability signals that they have discovered “the cardinal principle,” the idea that the last number reached when counting the items in a set represents the entire set.

Of the many challenging concepts that preschoolers need to master for kindergarten math readiness, the cardinal principle is one of the harder ones, and it takes about a year to develop. It is a major milestone in a child’s mathematical development, after which the child is able to demonstrate a good understanding of “how many” in a variety of ways, such as matching sets of unlike items when the number of items in each set is the same.

Most parents believe that their child’s mathematical skills are developed largely by formal schooling, but research indicates that certain kinds of parent-child interactions in the preschool years, commonly referred to as “number talk,” are a primary driver of children’s mathematical ability through at least 5^th grade. Number talk includes activities such as rote counting (counting “one, two, three, four,” as when playing hide and seek), counting tangible objects such as Cheerios (“one, two, three, four Cheerios”), and labeling the number of items in a set (“there are four Cheerios”).

As with verbal literacy, there is wide variation in the math knowledge of four year olds, with a one to two year gap between children who are more mathematically advanced and their less advanced peers.  Children with more exposure to number talk, and specifically to number talk about sets of four or more items, catch on to the cardinal principle faster than those who engage in less number talk or in number talk that focuses mostly on smaller sets of one to three items.

Unfortunately, few parents are informed about how kindergarten math readiness develops, and they tend not to know which math skills are developmentally appropriate for their child in the preschool years.  For example, parents often do not realize that their young child, who can easily count to 10, may not be able to identify a group of 10 objects.  Parents also tend to spend more time engaged in number talk around smaller sets of one to three items instead of larger sets of four and more, while the opposite has been shown to be more beneficial.

How to Encourage Kindergarten Math Readiness

There are simple things that parents and caregivers can do to help preschoolers learn about numbers and prepare for kindergarten math:

• Ask children to count objects they can touch, such as Cheerios, pieces of cheese, or blocks, and objects they can see, like pictures of dogs on a page of the book Go, Dog. Go!
• Label the number of items in sets of objects children use throughout the day.  For example, “You have six crayons.”
• When counting tangible objects, label the number of items in the set, too, to point children toward the crux of the cardinal principle—that the last number counted represents the entire set of objects.  For example, “one, two, three, four crackers; you have four crackers.”
• Talk about larger sets more often.  What children learn about larger sets helps them perform better on tasks involving smaller sets as well.
• Expose children to age-appropriate, educational math games for preschoolers, such as the Eddy’s Number Party!™ game, a new iPad app from Scientific Learning that develops counting, number matching skills, and more.  The game, designed with cognitive scientists and educators, is based on research into how the brain learns.

Perhaps one day in the not-too-distant future, public awareness of the importance of building preschool math literacy will match that of building preschool verbal literacy.  But for now, parents and caregivers who are in the know can begin to engage preschoolers with the right kinds of activities to give them an edge in developing the early childhood math skills needed for success throughout the elementary grades. 

I encourage you to try the some of the tips outlined above if you have young children of your own and to share this article with other parents of preschool-age kids, as we work together to raise our children’s opportunities for future success.

For further reading:

Gunderson, E. A., Levine, S. C., Some types of parent number talk count more than others: relations between parents’ input and children’s cardinal-number knowledge. Developmental science. 14:5 (2011), pp 1021–1032.

Related Reading:

Introducing the Eddy's Number Party! Game - the First iPad App from Scientific Learning

Still the Write Stuff: Why We Must Continue Teaching Handwriting

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: accelerate learning, cognitive skills, early learning, how children learn, learning through play, math, play, toddler

Introducing the Eddy’s Number Party! Game – the First iPad App from Scientific Learning

• October 17, 2011 by Erin Ellinwood

Hi! My name is Erin Ellinwood and I’m a product manager at Scientific Learning.   I am super excited to write about our first ever iPad App, the Eddy’s Number Party!™game, for preschool and kindergarten aged children.  Our products have always been grounded in science and built with scientific advisors, and this game is no exception.  Equally pairing early math curriculum with two critical cognitive skills, working memory and attention, Eddy’s Number Party! helps prepare kids for success in kindergarten and beyond. In the game, kids help Eddy’s friends surprise him with the biggest dog birthday party ever and practice counting, remembering, and matching numbers.

Designed for Young Learners

Our roots here at Scientific Learning are in developing cutting edge adaptive learning games for delivery on desktop or laptop computers.  Because this game targets a younger audience, we talked to teachers and educational experts to see what technology they thought would be best for preschool and kindergarten age learners.  The resounding feedback we heard was that our game would be most developmentally appropriate on the iPad.  And so, our first iPad app was born.

Makes Learning Fun (We’re Getting Great Reviews from Our Kid Testers!)

Sometimes learning can feel monotonous, especially for 3 to 5 year olds, so we added some key components to help break things up: 

• Story:  Nothing engages kids like a good story.  Since most young children love birthday parties, the game is centered around a party for the adorable dog, Eddy.  “But,” the game asks, “where are all his friends?” As kids advance through the game levels, they round up more and more friends, culminating in a fun party scene and acknowledgement of the child’s accomplishment: “You did it, you got all of Eddy’s friends to his party!”
• Bonus levels: The bonus levels add variety and keep interest while reinforcing the learning objectives.  Our cognitive science advisors call the bonus activities “palate cleansers,” a nice but productive break from the “drill”. 
• Engagement: We’ve pumped up the engagement in a big way, because we know that when it comes to kids and iPads, it’s all about fun.
• In-app sticker play: As a child masters each learning level, the game awards a sticker, but not just a regular sticker—it’s a funny “talking” sticker.   It has been so much fun to see each of our kid testers collect the stickers and get excited about creating their party!   Plus, research shows that kids benefit from a reward structure.  Stickers are a reward that preschool and kindergarten age children really identify with, and the sticker play can add hours of creative interaction.

Includes and Enables Parents

Grown-Up Central is a unique feature among apps for kids (and my favorite part of the app).  I believe that it is important to give parents the ability to review the game’s goals, tour all game levels, and learn about the underlying research and development behind the game. In addition to all of the information it provides about the app itself, Grown-Up Central also features a visual report card that shows a child’s progress and gives suggestions at each level for “what to look for” (such as a child beginning to count up from a known quantity) and how to further “bring learning to life” (such as cooking with the child from a recipe).

Being the product manager for the Eddy's Number Party! game has been a fantastic challenge, and I’m proud of the result.

I hope to see you at the party! Click here to download from Apple’s iTunes App Store or visit the App Store and search for "Eddy’s Number Party!”

And, if you like the app, please consider leaving a review in the App Store!

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research

Tags: accelerate learning, attention, brain training, cognitive skills, digital natives, early learning, how children learn, innovation, learning through play, math, memory, play, technology in education, video

Toddler Vocabulary Development: Shopping With Your Child

• October 11, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

There is no better time to teach your toddler the names of things than when you go out shopping together. The wonderful thing about shopping with your child at a grocery store or clothing store is that he can sit in a shopping cart and interact with you while pointing to all the interesting colors, shapes and objects around him.

Never mind that as he gets closer to two years old he may want you to focus on the candy aisle, or buy everything fuzzy or toy-like.  Use the time to provide names for all the wonderful objects you can see.

 “Wow!  Look at these oranges today—they are so big. They look like big balls don’t they?”

“Hey, those peppers are green and red and yellow, just like Christmas lights—what fun!”

“I see blue shirts and white shirts. What color do you like?”

As you talk about all the shapes and colors, your tot will begin to want you to tell him more names. If he can’t ask you “What is that?” yet, he will start to point to objects he wants you to name or let him touch. (Of course you don’t want him touching fresh food items or knocking down items on shelves, but there is no harm in letting him feel a soft cloth or looking more closely at the funny picture on a box of cereal.)

Here are some tips for making shopping both fun and educational for your child:

• Color, shape, and size: Notice colors, shapes, and sizes as you shop the fruit and vegetable aisle with your toddler. Tell your child that bananas are “long and yellow,” and that oranges, apples, limes and lemons look like “orange, red, green and yellow balls.” At the clothing store, “big pants” may be for “big daddy” and tiny shoes may be “just the right size” for your child.
• Texture and touch:  Clothing stores are all about touch. PJ’s are usually “soft,” and raincoats are “smooth and stiff,” while some coats may be “furry.” Your child will love feeling all the different textures.
• Questions: Note that celery has “leaves” and broccoli has “flowers.” Ask questions, “Why do you think cauliflower is named that way?” Point out that potatoes have “eyes” and wonder aloud, “Why do they have so many and we have only two?”
• My shopping cart: Some grocery stores have begun offering small grocery carts for young children to push around. You may want to wait until your tot is two or a little older, but it can be fun to let him choose apples, oranges or boxed cereals and push them in his own cart. At home you can use empty boxes to “play store” on a rainy day.

You might hear yourself saying, “not today” or “not now” as your child wants you to add everything to your basket (or his), but giving him the opportunity to explore the world around him is a valuable experience for both of you.  You get to cross a few items off your to-do list, while your toddler works on vocabulary development through conversation and play, with his favorite person—you.

Related Reading:

The Magical Combination of Love and Limits: Tips for Teaching Positive Behavior

Story Strategies for Building the Best Bedtimes

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain development, early learning, how children learn, language learning, learning through play, oral language skills, play, toddler, vocabulary

Using Fiction Writing Activities to Develop Creative Thinking in the Classroom

• September 29, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

We are always on the lookout for more effective ways of teaching creativity in the classroom. With much attention on the decreasing status of the United States in the world economy, the need for a stronger creative class, and the realization that the next generation of professionals and leaders will have to be more innovative than ever to solve the world’s problems, educators need more ways to teach children the ability to engage in creative thinking.

In the classroom, so much of what we do focuses on teaching our students to recognize and repeat patterns. Mathematical functions follow patterns. Letters and languages represent graphical and sound patterns that have meaning because of their repetition.

Creativity, on the other hand, is the breaking of patterns. In the creative act, the mind proceeds to a place where there is no existing path to follow, building something new where there was nothing before.

So therein lies our problem: if teaching strengthens the mind’s ability to recognize patterns of meaning, how do we teach creativity – an act that by its very nature breaks with patterns?

The neuroscience research behind brain plasticity has shown us how the brain responds to stimuli by forming neural pathways, and that the brain constantly changes, much like a landscape changes under the influence of the forces of water and wind. The brain adapts in order to more efficiently recognize and make use of the information and patterns that make up the world in which we live.

The answer: we need to teach the patterns that support creative thinking. Writing fiction and storytelling offer immense power and potential for us to help our students learn to break their patterns of thinking and develop these creative habits of mind.

Creative idea generation is not easy; in fact, it can be quite intimidating for a great many youngsters, not to mention adults. Our goal should be to help our students let go of their inhibitions and become comfortable with – or even better, excited about – undertaking creative challenges.

From a practical standpoint, we have access to endless activities to spur our students on to cultivate their creativity through writing fiction. These are just three of them:
 

• Ask students to develop a “what if” question and then answer it with a story. That simple act of creating their “what if” question forces the mind to go to a place it has never been before, and in writing the story, they get to spin out that idea as far as it will go.
  Example: “What if mice could read minds?” or “What if we could send a spaceship to a black hole?”
• Give each student a character from one well-known story, place that character in the context of another well-known story, and ask them to write about what happens. Example: “The giant climbs down the beanstalk and meets three little pigs. What happens next?”
• Ask each student to select one item they would want with them if they were stranded on a desert island. Then, ask them to write a story about how they got to the island and how that item ensured their survival. Example: “I would want a small folding knife. When I fell off the ship during a storm, I had had it in my pocket because I had been carving a stick on the deck. Luckily, it didn’t fall out of my pocket when I hit the water…”

While it offers a higher level of challenge, I’d like to offer one final exercise to consider adapting for your students: the six word short story. Perhaps the most famous example is Ernest Hemingway’s story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” This kind of poetic and conceptual challenge forces students to combine creative thinking with a laser-focus on word choice.

For younger students, this can be adapted by asking students to write their own six-word versions of well-known stories and fables. More advanced students can be given the freedom to come up with their own stories.

While these fiction writing activities are primarily for elementary school students, they can all be adapted for adolescents and, especially in the case of the six-word exercise, adult learners.

But notice that each of these examples puts some limits around the creative process. This is the key to fostering creative thinking: through focusing each student’s effort into a tightly formulated creative problem, they are then freed to develop and follow their ideas to conclusion.

In such fictional writing, students learn that they have the power to break patterns of thinking and develop their own creative ways to think through problems, skills that will serve them well as they grow and mature into tomorrow’s creative thinkers and leaders.

In my own six words? Your instruction focused, their creativity unleashed.

For resources on teaching fiction writing, visit the National Writing Project and their resources for teaching fiction writing and Creative Writing: Teaching Theory and Practice.

Related Reading:

Teaching and Learning with Intent through Guided Reading Activities

The Great Homework Debate: Is Homework Helpful or Harmful to Students?

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: arts, creativity, effort, elementary learning, learning through play, motivating students, play, teacher impact, writing

Connecting the Dots Between Infant Temperament and Future Success

• August 18, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

What factors will ultimately determine a child’s ability to succeed in life? While measures like socioeconomic status might allow a child to start off on the right foot, current research is delving into the nature of temperament and how that affects a person’s ability to successfully navigate life’s many challenges.   If temperament is pre-determined, there’s not much a parent can do, but if nurture plays a role, then how can parents help their child have the best quality of life?

While temperament has long been thought of as something innate, recent research has demonstrated that only some aspects are genetic, while others are environmental.

On the genetic side, as any parent will agree, much of an individual’s personality manifests very early on in the infant’s life. Parents with more than one child often note that one of their children seems easygoing from day one, but another child is demanding. One child may be outgoing and social, while their sibling may be more shy or withdrawn.

As we consider how these seemingly innate traits develop, we cannot ignore the fact that the environment – from parental attention to nutrition – exerts a strong influence on a child’s personality development. Current research tells us that a pregnant mother’s iron levels can affect the disposition of her child. Emerging data gleaned from animal research indicates that the quality of maternal parenting styles, such as the way a mother nurses her infants or the amount of maternal grooming, affects the temperament of her offspring.

An interesting question arises: How do these early manifestations play out as the child matures? For example, will an infant who is able to self-calm herself in stressful situations by turning away from aversive stimuli or sucking her thumb, for example, continue to exhibit self-regulatory behaviors as she gets older?

Considering the interplay between innate versus cultivated aspects of temperament, what actions can a parent take to affect the development of a child’s personality to give that child the best chance at personal satisfaction, academic achievement and successful relationships later in life? As the above research – and our own parental gut instincts – suggest, we can set them up by providing:

• Excellent nutrition
• Logical, predictable rules for living with others
• Optimal environments and schedules for sleep
• Lots of interactive play with family and friends
• Less screen time
• Lots and lots of parental love and affection

 

With parents providing these positive factors for their children, every child – from shy to outgoing, from tense to easygoing – will have the best chance at developing a balanced temperament as they mature.

For further study, read: Child Temperament and Parenting, by Samuel Putnam (University of Oregon), Ann Sanson (University of Melbourne), Mary Rothbart (University of Oregon). 

References:

Feder, A; Nestler, EJ; Charney, DS.  Psychobiology and molecular genetics of resilience.  Nature Reviews  Neuroscience 10 (2009) 446 – 457

Related Reading:

Building a Foundation for School Readiness for Low Income Children

The Magical Combination of Love and Limits: Tips for Teaching Positive Behavior

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, behavior, brain development, cognitive skills, decision making, early learning, how children learn, infant brain, Innate abilities, learning environment, learning through play, play

Building a Foundation for School Readiness for Low Income Children

• August 16, 2011 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

As educators with experience in child development, we understand the essential nature of being responsive to a child. Children who do not receive enough attention do not develop in the same way as those who receive consistent nurturing and feedback. Research has demonstrated how, at a physiological level – their brains simply wire themselves differently as they develop. This deficit in early childhood experiences often manifests itself as developmental delays across a wide spectrum of behaviors. These behavioral delays appear in parallel with delays in brain development.

Imagine a child growing up in a home where sensitive, responsive caregiving is rare. Maybe mom and/or dad work more hours and are simply not available. Maybe they come home too tired to read or play or simply snuggle with the child. Or, this is an environment where sensitive, responsive nurturing is not valued very highly. While it is not the case in every situation like this, at its extreme, the parent or parents may be truly neglecting the child’s needs at this early stage. Even moderate differences in these important parent-child interactions have important longer-term consequences for development.

Research has shown that in these situations a child’s brain development quickly gets derailed. Children who do not receive enough of what is known as “sensitive-response caregiving” and cognitive stimulation do not develop executive function skills as readily as their counterparts in more caring, stimulating environments. (Lengua et al., 2007; Li-Grining, 2007) In other words, children may not be encouraged to be aware of and interact with the world around them (cognitive stimulation). They also may not be encouraged to engage or develop planning, decision-making or troubleshooting skills (executive function).

Executive functions, also known as “domain-general” functions, are those called upon in various types of learning opportunities; these include such functions as working memory, regulation of emotions and attentional control. On the other hand, a “domain-specific” cognitive process is one that represents a specific skill or skill area, such as reading or counting.

But what are the implications as children grow and enter school? Recently, a team of researchers led by Janet Welsh at Penn State studied readiness for school in a group of Head Start children and how certain cognitive processes were associated with the development of certain skills. Specifically, they studied the relationship between domain-general and domain-specific cognitive processes in these low-income pre-kindergartners, and tracked them through kindergarten.

Welsh‘s study showed that skills scaffolded consistently from one level to the next, and these skill levels represented good indicators of how well the child would develop the next set of skills. In other words, good working memory and attention control predicted the development of early literacy and numeracy skills, and these skills were predictors of later math and reading achievement.

Whether through experience in the home, great work in the pre-kindergarten classroom and/or support from computer-based learning exercises, it is clearly essential that we support the early development of domain-general cognitive skills as early and as strongly as possible.

While this may seem obvious, Welsh’s research underscores the essential nature of laying a foundation in those executive functions, those domain-general cognitive abilities, for each and every student – but especially for those at an economic disadvantage if we are to close the gaps and truly offer the same opportunities to every student.

Read the full study: The Development of Cognitive Skills and Gains in Academic School Readiness for Children From Low-Income Families, Janet A. Welsh, Robert L. Nix, Clancy Blair, Karen L. Bierman, and Keith E. Nelson. Journal of Educational Psychology, 2010, Volume 102, Number 1, p. 43-53.

For further reading:    

Family Involvement in School and Low-Income Children's Literacy Performance, Eric Dearing, Holly Kreider, Sandra Simpkins, and Heather Weiss. Harvard Family Research Project. January 2007.

Early Care and Education for Children in Low-Income Families Patterns of Use, Quality, and Potential Policy Implications, Gina Adams, Kathryn Tout, and Martha Zaslow. Prepared for the Urban Institute and Child Trends. January 2006, revised May 2007.

The impact of poverty on educational outcomes for children, HB Ferguson, S Bovaird, and MP Mueller. Paediatr Child Health. October 2007. 12(8): 701–706.

Related Reading:

Building Unstructured Play Into the Structure of Each Day

Lifelong Learning and the Plastic Brain

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Categories: Brain Research, Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: achievement gap, attention, brain development, cognitive skills, early learning, emotions in learning, executive function, how children learn, learning environment, literacy, math, memory, play, processing, technology in education, toddler