The facial expressions of children in the study were videotaped an hour after taking their regular nap, and on a different day after having missed their nap time.

The study showed nap-deprived toddlers completing the solvable puzzles had a 34 percent decrease in positive emotional responses compared to the same children completing similar puzzles after their usual midday naps. The study also showed a 31 percent increase in negative emotional responses of nap-deprived toddlers when they attempted to complete unsolvable puzzles when compared with puzzle-solving attempts after they had napped.

In addition, the study found a 39 percent decrease in the expression of “confusion” when nap-deprived toddlers attempted to put together unsolvable puzzles. “Confusion is not bad — it’s a complex emotion showing a child knows something does not add up,” said LeBourgeois. “When well-slept toddlers experience confusion, they are more likely to elicit help from others, which is a positive, adaptive response indicating they are cognitively engaged with their world.”

The research begs the question whether children who consistently miss naps are at a disadvantage in their development of emotional intelligence, or ability to retain what they’ve learned.  Children who are particularly negative may have difficulty making friends or creating positive relationships with caregivers.  “This study shows that missing even a single nap causes them to be less positive, more negative and have decreased cognitive engagement” said LeBourgeois.

The benefits of rhymes listed by the author include:

• auditory discrimination
• listening skills
• a rich range of language
• concentration skills
• oral storytelling / poetry skills

Read the full article

Other Resources:

Rhymers Are Readers: The Importance of Nursery Rhymes – KBYU Eleven

When our first son was just a few months old, our PEPS parents group had an early childhood speech development expert as a guest speaker.  She provided the following simple advice: the most important thing to look for in prospective caregivers for your baby is that they are talkative.  Basically, find a chatty nanny or daycare provider.

For some time now, researchers have found that children of more talkative mothers have larger vocabularies than children of quieter moms (studies at the University of Chicago showed as much as a 400% difference among two year olds).  It’s important to recognize that the nature of the speech is important: to yield the language and vocabulary benefits, it must be directed at the child (child-directed speech).  Words heard in the background such as on a TV do not result in improved language acquisition for younger children, and indeed TV has been found to be detrimental to language development for children under 2 years old, quite likely because it distracts caregivers and results in less overall child-directed speech.

Language is particularly important for overall early childhood development since it is such a critical foundational building block for other academic and social-emotional learning.  With speech, a child can articulate and build on her memories, explore relationships in her world, and build deeper connections with people around her.  It is one of the reasons that Baby Sign Language is so appealing in developing early communication.

In October, 2010, I visited the MIT Media Lab where researchers are studying a number of emerging technologies, and had the fortune to talk at some length with a graduate student working on the Human Speechome Project.  While the project’s ultimate goal is to teach robots how to learn language, the human baby is the model for their work.  For their project, it is a particular human baby: the son of the director of this MIT lab.   The researchers there have recorded and transcribed massive amounts of audio and video – nearly every waking moment – of this child’s life for his first three years.  While there is more analysis yet to be done and there is likely bias due to the sample set of one child, the conclusions already emerging are fascinating.  They have created a formula that can predict with remarkable accuracy the time at which the child would learn a word based on his surroundings.  Specifically, the following stimuli were positively associated with language acquisition:

1. Frequency – the number of times a word was spoken
2. Recurrence – the repetition of the word within a short window of time, e.g. “See the dog?  What a cute black dog.  The dog has a ball.”
3. Pronunciation and Emphasis, measured in length (“dooog” v. “dog”) and intensity/focus on the word in speech.   Higher pitch was also more effective, reinforcing the hypothesis that “parentese” helps kids learn words.
4. Average length of sentences containing that word – the shorter (generally less complex) the sentence, the more likely the child was to learn the words.

Perhaps surprisingly to many of us parents: the child’s nanny was more effective than both the mother and father in encouraging the child to learn new words (even controlling for the amount of language heard from each of the three primary childcare providers).

Additional research led by Michael H. Goldstein, an assistant professor of psychology at Cornell, suggests that babies learn sounds and sound patterns better if parents verbally interact with a baby in response to her babble.  As the New York Times reported in October, 2010,

The experimenters argue that a baby’s vocalizations signal a state of focused attention, a readiness to learn language. When parents respond to babble by naming the object at hand, the argument goes, children are more likely to learn words. So if a baby looks at an apple and says, “Ba ba!” it’s better to respond by naming the apple than by guessing, for example, “Do you want your bottle?”

Recommendations for Parents

• Talk with your child: all the time, any time!  Talk even when you don’t need to, like on walks or in the car.  Even before your child can speak, describe the things around you and whatever inspires you.  When he can express interests, try to choose topics that relate to his focus.  If it helps for inspiration, choose a random topic of the day and find pictures or other opportunities to discuss the chosen subject.
• Likewise, seek out a caregiver – nanny, babysitter, or day care provider – who is naturally talkative.  When doing reference checks with other parents who’ve employed the person, ask about whether they would characterize the provider as talkative with kids.
• In particular, respond to your baby’s babbles, when they’re particularly receptive to learning language.  Focus on the objects that are likely gaining the attention of the child, rather than trying to interpret the sound of the babble.

Key Benefits of Family Meals:

* Nutrition: Families who eat together “every day” or “almost every day” are more likely to eat healthier meals and get more vitamins and nutrients in their food, and less overall fat according to a Harvard study.  Other studies link family meals with greater consumption of fruits and vegetables for children.  In addition to the possibility that parents put more thought into creating a balanced meal when the family sits down to eat together, kids learn through observation: they are encouraged to eat a variety of healthy (and more interesting) foods if they see their parents doing so.  Additionally, according to WebMD, “when younger kids frequently eat dinner with their families, they are less likely to be overweight than other children.”

Moreover, Research from the University of Missouri published in June 2010 revealed that adolescents who ate protein-rich breakfasts (containing eggs) better controlled their appetite throughout the day and ate fewer total calories.

* Vocabulary: According to studies, preschoolers have better language skills when their family regularly eats together.  Diane E. Beals, Ed.D., assistant professor of education at Washington University at St. Louis explains,

Mealtime is a particularly good source of rare word use. It’s a very interesting, juicy place to get stories, explanations, discussions about words.  Mealtime conversations tend to be longer. Any topic can come up –what we did last week at the amusement park or the asparagus that we’re eating. There’s a broad range of topics that can come up at mealtimes that wouldn’t necessarily be introduced in other kinds of settings.

* Better School Performance: The academic benefits of family meals continue later in life, with studies demonstrating that 7-11 year old students and high school seniors who regularly eat with their family score higher on school achievement tests.  According to analysis of a University of Michigan study published in 2001 of young children’s time (ages 2-12),

“…more mealtime at home was the single strongest predictor of better achievement scores and fewer behavioral problems. Mealtime was more powerful than time spent in school, studying, church, playing sports or art activities. Results were statistically controlled for age and gender of child, race and ethnicity, education and age of the head of the family, family structure and employment, income and family size.”

* Less Risky Behavior and Better Relationships: Kids who frequently eat with their families are more likely to avoid cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and illicit drugs, and were less likely to be depressed.  Teens were more motivated at school and had better relationships.

* Communication: Most importantly, meal times provide opportunities for open communication between parents and children.  In addition to the benefits above, communication fosters improved parent-child relationships.

Recommendations for Parents:

* Try to eat dinner, and ideally breakfast together every day.  Even 4-5 meals a week together would provide the benefits known so far, according to the Washington State University Nutrition Education site

* Avoid eating meals or snacks in front of the TV, even if it’s educational programming.  Kids, like adults, tend to eat mindlessly while in front of a video, increasing the likelihood of overeating.  If my kids insist on a snack during their video time, I’ll give them fresh veggies to munch on.

* Don’t stress about trying to be the perfect Mom or Dad: the meals don’t have to be fancy.  The key behavioral and academic benefits of family meals are driven by conversations and time spent together.

* Mix up your conversation topics; get beyond “how was your day.”  Keep the topics enjoyable for everyone, but don’t shy away from using “rare” words.  Perhaps plan an upcoming event together.   Another idea for older kids is to discuss news.  As teens, my mom would scan the morning paper as my brother and I got dressed, and pick out a few stories to discuss over breakfast.  Not only did this keep us informed of global news, but she has since revealed that she used these articles to reinforce good and bad behavior: the newspaper is often filled with examples of poor choices getting punished and good choices being rewarded.

Variety of Locations: Studying material in different settings creates subtle, possibly subconscious connections with your surroundings.   Studying the same material—say vocabulary—in different settings results in better memory retention.  The hypothesis is that our brains have additional associations to rely on when recalling the learned material.

Variety of Learning Material: Researchers have also found benefit in combining related but different concepts in a given study session, e.g. practicing vocabulary, grammar, and speaking when learning a language.   In one study, a group of fourth graders practiced examples, one equation at a time, of four equations used to calculate the dimensions of a prism.  Another group studied the four related equations mixed together.  The latter group scored twice as well on a test of the material the following day.   Researcher Dr. Doug Roher explained that, with mixed practice, “each problem is different from the last one, which means kids must learn how to choose the appropriate procedure — just like they had to do on the test.”

Similar results were found when college students and older adults were asked to learn the painting styles of twelve unfamiliar artists: those who viewed mixed collections did better in distinguishing the artists’ styles.   The hypothesis is that the brain picks up on patterns when seeing assorted collections and subconsciously or consciously factors in similarities and differences.

Variety of Times: Spacing out study time improves memory.  As the author explains, “An hour of study tonight, an hour on the weekend, another session a week from now: such so-called spacing improves later recall, without requiring students to put in more overall study effort or pay more attention, dozens of studies have found.”

Varying Study with Testing:  Finally, testing is particularly beneficial as part of the learning process, not only for self-assessment.  Researchers are finding that the process of retrieving information seems to create more persistent memory.  Carey concludes, “the harder it is to remember something, the harder it is to forget.”

Recommendations for Parents

• Keep variety in mind when helping your kids learn.  For example, when teaching the alphabet, rather than using the same tool, for example alphabet books, try different materials such as an alphabet puzzle, or play a “letter hunt” game with her favorite books (I use a letter puzzle piece while reading with my two year old so that he has a tactile association with the letter for which we’re looking).
• Reinforce topic s that your kids are learning.  For example, if your child’s preschool or play group talks about horses, look for opportunities in the following days to discuss them.    You can print out images that you find online – either photos or artwork or both.  Think about stories related to the topic (or make them up!) to help create lasting and varied associations.
• When kids are older, encourage self-assessment and practice tests

Over the past decade, researchers around the world have uncovered compelling evidence that formal music training, particularly for very young children, permanently improves cognitive capabilities and increases IQ scores.  In 2006,  researchers at McMaster University in Canada studied 4 to 6 year-olds who participated in musical training using the Suzuki method over the course of a year.  According to the BBC, those with training “performed better [than the control group] on a memory test also designed to assess general intelligence skills such as literacy and maths ability.” Lead researcher Professor Laurel Trainor said, “It suggests that musical training is having an effect on how the brain gets wired for general cognitive functioning related to memory and attention.”

The actual size of music-related areas in the brain, such as the auditory cortex, cerebellum (responsible for motor coordination) and motor cortex increase with music training.  And, importantly for parents of preschoolers, according to a 2004 Scientific American article, Music and the Brain, “the extent of increase is greater the earlier the music lessons began.”  These gains produce lifelong benefits: researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong concluded that adults who had studied music as children had improved verbal memory.

Moreover, less directly related cognitive skills appear to develop over time with music training.  Professor Ellen Winner from Boston College and her colleagues determined in 2008 that, “Children who received at least three years…of instrumental music training outperformed their control counterparts on two outcomes closely related to music (auditory discrimination abilities and fine motor skills) and on two outcomes distantly related to music (vocabulary and nonverbal reasoning skills). Duration of training also predicted these outcomes.”

There have been a number of references to the correlation between music training and academic performance, including the College Board’s report on SAT scores where students who took courses in musical performance scored 22 points higher in Math and 28 points higher in Critical Reading and Writing (2009 data).  However, the McMaster and Boston College research went beyond correlation: they demonstrate a high likelihood of causality in that the control group did not see similar test gains nor changes in brain activity.

Interestingly, studies to date have not determined any particular area of the brain that specializes in music.  Rather, music appears to engage various areas of the brain responsible for other cognitive functions.  Indeed, it may be that the mental gymnastics needed to process music across multiple regions of the brain (including both hemispheres) is precisely the workout that results in the observed intellectual gains.

Recommendations for Parents
* Dr. David Perlmutter M.D. and Carol Colman, authors of Raise a Smater Child by Kingergarten: Raise IQ by up to 30 points and turn on your child’s smart genes recommend formal music training by age 4.  Because the piano engages both hands, it’s a great choice to develop fine motor skills on both sides of the brain/body.
* At any age, you can encourage music appreciation in your home by playing music of different genres.
* Likewise, singing with your child is a fun way to build interest in music early on.  Pre-verbal children can use baby signs to “sing along” to simple songs like Itsy-Bitsy Spider and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.  When your child starts to speak, encourage her to sing the lyrics and change up the words to her favorite songs.

References

• Forgeard M, Winner E, Norton A, Schlaug G (2008) Practicing a Musical Instrument in Childhood is Associated with Enhanced Verbal Ability and Nonverbal Reasoning. PLoS ONE 3(10): e3566. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003566
• Music and the Brain, Scientific American magazine, November 2004
• Y. Ho, M. Cheung, & A. S. Chan (2003) Music Training Improves Verbal but Not Visual Memory: Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Explorations in Children, and A. S. Chan, Y. Ho, & M. Cheung (1998) Music training improves verbal memory Nature 396, 128 (12 November 1998) | doi:10.1038/24075

The sun is (finally) out, and the kids can’t wait to get outside!  Young children love to dig in the dirt, play with shovels and pails, and particularly when paired with summer water toys, frequently start to resemble Charlie Brown’s friend Pig-Pen.  Like many moms, I wince when my toddler takes a break from his garden play and proceeds to grab some snack and shove it in his mouth, filthy hands and all.

But it turns out that a series of studies suggest that kids benefit from dirt – or more specifically (and frankly disgustingly), the bacteria, viruses, and worms – yes worms! – that live in less-than-sterile environments.  These organisms actually train our immune systems by providing a bit of a workout while allowing our systems to figure out what is harmless.  Most worms and bacteria are perfectly fine in our systems — indeed, beneficial.  But as we become increasingly anti-bacterial in our soaps and sanitizers and such, we may be hampering our development of robust immune regulatory systems which some researchers believe may be contributing to the rise in allergies and asthma, and immune system disorders such as multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, Type 1 diabetes, allergies, and asthma.

So as your child spends more time outdoors with the warmer weather, take heart when she experiments by shoving a fist full of dirt in her mouth.  In addition to learning that crackers taste better than dirt, she’ll be exercising her immune system in ways that yield long-term health benefits.

Recommendations:

• Let kids play in the dirt – bare feet and all, although do make sure that the areas are free from poisonous pest control products and pesticides.
• Avoid excessive use of anti-bacterial soaps and sanitizers (ideally use only when regular soap and water aren’t available).
• Consider having pets in the home, particularly dogs & cats.

If you read our post on baby brain development, you’ll recall that various areas in a child’s brain have sensitive periods during which they undergo tremendous growth.   The vestibular senses emerge quite early in the womb and develop through infancy, with peak sensitivity between 6 and 12 months, and then declining in their rate of development.   In her book, What’s Going on in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life, Dr. Lise Eliot explains that this sensitivity is why babies particularly love to be bounced and rocked.

Eliot describes the spinning study:

These researchers exposed babies, who ranged in age from three to thirteen months, to sixteen sessions of chair spinning: Four times a week for four weeks, the infants were seated on a researcher’s lap and spun around ten times in a swivel chair, each spin followed by an abrupt stop…

The spinning included one or two rotations in each direction with the babies held in each of three positions: sitting, with head tilted forward about 30 degrees, and side-lying on both left and right sides…[with a] thirty-second rest period between spins…

The results were striking.  Compared with both control groups, the babies who were spun showed more advanced development of both their reflexes and their motor skills…like sitting, crawling, standing, and walking.

Eliot describes the participation of a set of fraternal twins in the study: one in the “stimulated” group and one in the control group.  The twin who was given the vestibular stimulation through spinning had mastered head control and independent sitting by four months, whereas the twin in the control group just began to hold up his head.

I followed the study instructions with my own two boys when they were three and four months old and while they are of course a tiny sample, they were both walking at 9 months old.  I should warn that the spinning made me and my husband (we took turns) somewhat nauseous, but the boys seemed to enjoy it.  It remains to be seen whether this extra stimulation during the sensitive critical period for the vestibular system will result in a professional athletic career for either of them (not that this is something we’d expect!), but for the small amount of time it required, it seemed worth a try.  I also take heart when my brother hurls his young nephews in the air that he may also be improving their long-term motor skills, balance, and reflexes.

Resources

What’s Going on in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life by Lise Eliot, PhD published in 2000.

Carol Dweck from Stanford University (formerly Columbia) has studied the effects of praise on motivating kids.  Her researchers worked with 400 fifth graders, giving each of them a relatively easy series of IQ puzzles and then randomly either praising their intelligence: “You must be smart at this” or their effort: “You must have worked really hard.”  It was that simple.  Then, the researchers asked the kids whether they wanted to take on a more challenging puzzle that would help them learn in the process, or do another easy one.  90% of those praised for their effort chose the harder test, while the majority of those praised for their intellect chose the easier one.  Hence negative consequence #1: children become risk averse, avoiding challenges so that they can continue to look smart and avoid embarrassment.

Next, all of these fifth graders were given a difficult test (designed for seventh graders) and as expected, all of them failed.  But the responses from the two groups differed considerably.  In 2007, Po Bronson of New York Magazine reported that,

Those praised for their effort on the first test assumed they simply hadn’t focused hard enough on this test. “They got very involved, willing to try every solution to the puzzles,” Dweck recalled. “Many of them remarked, unprovoked, ‘This is my favorite test.’ ” Not so for those praised for their smarts. They assumed their failure was evidence that they weren’t really smart at all. “Just watching them, you could see the strain. They were sweating and miserable.”

Having artificially induced a round of failure, Dweck’s researchers then gave all the fifth-graders a final round of tests that were engineered to be as easy as the first round. Those who had been praised for their effort significantly improved on their first score—by about 30 percent. Those who’d been told they were smart did worse than they had at the very beginning—by about 20 percent.

The second negative consequence of praising smarts is impaired performance after setbacks, as kids lose faith in what they believed were innate abilities.

In other studies by Dweck and her team, frequently praised children are shown to be more competitive and focused on undermining others.  Indeed, a troubling finding was that 40% of those praised for their intelligence lied to their peers in overstating their scores.  So a third unfortunate consequence is that abundant praise fosters negative competitiveness and even cheating.

Despite these demonstrated downsides, 85% of American parents think it’s important to tell their kids that they’re smart.  As much as we want to praise our children’s successes, there are more effective ways to do so, namely focusing on our their process and effort.   “Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” Dweck explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

Additionally, studies by Dweck and Lisa Sorich Blackwell focusing on low-achieving seventh graders found that these students respond very well to instruction about how the brain works.  Students who were taught about how intelligence can be developed (and is not innate) demonstrated improvements in math scores relative to a control group that was taught study skills instead.  The two brain lessons totalled only 50 minutes.  The message of the lessons: the brain, like a muscle, grows stronger with exercise.

Kids who are encouraged to pursue a “mastery” orientation are taught that challenges are good.  In the face of setbacks, rather than focusing on failures, they should focus on what else to try or how they might improve through effort.  The mastery orientation encourages persistence even when external rewards and praise are absent.

Interestingly, her research on mastery (growth) orientation versus performance (fixed) orientation is also being applied in the fields of sports performance and even personalities, relationships, and morality.  According to Stanford Magazine,

In a recent study, Dweck found that people who believe personality can change were more likely than others to bring up concerns and deal with problems in a constructive way. Dweck thinks a fixed mind-set fosters a categorical, all-or-nothing view of people’s qualities; this view tends to make you ignore festering problems or, at the other extreme, give up on a relationship at the first sign of trouble…

Dweck has already found that preschoolers with this growth mind-set feel okay about themselves after they’ve messed up and are less judgmental of others; they’re also more likely than kids with a fixed view of goodness to try to set things right and to learn from their mistakes. They understand that spilling juice or throwing toys, for example, doesn’t damn a kid as bad, so long as the child cleans up and resolves to do better next time.

Recommendations for Parents

• Teach your children that the brain is like a muscle. The harder it works, the stronger it gets & the smarter you become.  This encourages a growth mind-set about intelligence.
• When you praise, be specific, and focus on the process and effort, rather than implying innate smarts or talent.  Praise them for focusing, listening, demonstrating tenacity.  Examples from Stanford Magazine:

1. “That homework was so long and involved. I really admire the way you concentrated and finished it.”
2. “That picture has so many beautiful colors. Tell me about them.”
3. “You put so much thought into that essay. It really makes me think about Shakespeare in a new way.”

• Discuss failures, don’t just brush them off by telling your child that he will do better next time.  Kids need a framework for dealing with failure.  Avoiding the topic of failure makes it seem terrible, thus discouraging challenges.  After a failure, encourage more effort or perhaps a different approach next time.

• For parents of middle-schoolers, consider subscribing to Brainology, Dweck’s online program that teach kids about how the brain can develop with exercise.

You may have heard of the “marshmallow test” that laid the foundation for research on delayed gratification.  Dr. Walter Mischel studied four year-olds at Stanford University in the 1960′s and 1970′s and has followed these children throughout their lives.  The famous test left a four year-old in a room with a marshmallow and a bell.  Whenever the child wanted, she could ring the bell and eat the marshmallow.  However, if she could wait about fifteen minutes for the researcher to return, she would get two marshmallows.

Mischel found that the children who focused on the marshmallows were least likely to successfully wait, whereas those who could distract themselves and focus on something – anything – else, were more likely to be among the approximately 30% who were rewarded with two marshmallows after waiting.  The trick was in directing attention elsewhere: singing songs, looking away, etc.

Mischel’s results are most famous for their predictive powers.  As the New Yorker explained in May, 2009,

Once Mischel began analyzing the results, he noticed that low delayers, the children who rang the bell quickly, seemed more likely to have behavioral problems, both in school and at home. They got lower S.A.T. scores. They struggled in stressful situations, often had trouble paying attention, and found it difficult to maintain friendships. The child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.

Additional research from Mischel and his team found that toddlers as young as nineteen months displayed similar behaviors when separated briefly from their mothers.  Some babies were able to self-soothe by distracting themselves, while others immediately cried.  When these same children were given the marshmallow test when they were five, the kids who cried as toddlers also also tended to be the five year olds who could not delay gratification and ate the marshmallow.

Interestingly, children seem to be able to relatively easily learn how to master their marshmallow impulses. The researchers taught mental tricks such as imagining that the marshmallow was a cloud or a picture surrounded by an imaginary frame.  These mental alternatives allowed many “low delayer” kids to withstand the full length of the experiment.  The same New Yorker article quoted Mischel: “Once you realize that will power is just a matter of learning how to control your attention and thoughts, you can really begin to increase it.”

Recommendations for Parents

• Encourage your kids to practice self-control at home.  Create habits that force some waiting, and reward that behavior.  Examples include saving allowance, waiting until Christmas morning to open presents, waiting to start eating dinner until everyone is seated, enjoying Halloween treats over time, etc.
• In her book, Mind in the Making, Ellen Gallinsky recommends exercises that reward and develop focus, such as playing Opposite Simon Says where the kids do the opposite of what the leader says and does.