Monthly Archives: October 2015

The teenage years have long been described as a period of “storm and stress.” It’s a time for parental clashes, moodiness, risky behaviors, and a lot of cringe-worthy confessional songwriting.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Teen angst isn’t universal or inevitable, as these “storm and stress” behaviors are less pronounced in more traditional non-Western cultures¹.

Why is this the case? One hypothesis is that it has to do with Western culture’s focus on individualism. This focus might set the stage for conflict by putting a premium on exploration and risk as teens figure out how to be independent from their families.

What can families and educators do to help kids weather the storm of adolescence? Here, we’ll explore one potential buffer identified by developmental science: having meaningful familial obligations.

The “Terrible Teens”

Before we continue, it’s worth thinking about whether “storm and stress” is necessarily a bad thing. Some aspects of the underlying neurobiology may be related to teens’ interests in new learning experiences, especially those involving their peers. These experiences might teach valuable skills for navigating complex social decisions. Similarly, the “Terrible Twos” are as much about social, cognitive, and motor milestones as they are about moodiness and tantrums.

On the other hand, while risks taken by two year-olds are largely managed by their caregivers, risk in the teenage years may have more profound, adult consequences. Adolescence may also be a vulnerable period for developing mental health disorders, including addiction, depression, and psychosis². It’s important to keep this balance in mind: how do we support the benefits of the teenage experience while minimizing potential long-term damage?

Risk & Reward

Some researchers have theorized that teen behavior is influenced by two brain systems: a sensitive “acceleration” system and a developing “braking” system. The acceleration system is thought to be well-developed and sometimes hypersensitive during adolescence. It is related to teens’ penchant for rewards, like positive social feedback or financial gain³. The braking system is thought to still be developing during adolescence, such that it may be more difficult for them to control their impulses in rewarding situations. These theories suggest that the different rates of development for these systems may inform our understanding of adolescent risk-taking behavior.

Of course, this research is still new and many researchers believe this explanation does not capture the full complexity of adolescent development. Some think that the evidence connecting changes in the brain systems to real world behavior is not strong enough⁴. Others believe that adolescent risk taking might be more calculated or planned than we give them credit for.⁵

Despite ongoing questions in the field, we know that in some situations, teenagers tend to take on more risk in their decisions than other ages. We know that’s not true for all teenagers, or all of the time. So this led researchers to ask the question: why do some teenagers decide to play it safe?

Resisting Temptation

One 2013 study led by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign scientist Eva Telzer asked teens to complete risk-taking and inhibition activities in an MRI scanner.⁶

In the risk-taking activity, teens saw a series of red balloons with a dollar amount written on them. For each balloon, they were faced with two options:

Choice A: They could press a button to “cash out,” and win the dollar amount that they saw.

Choice B. They could press a button to inflate the balloon, in which case the balloon might increase in size/value. However, this could also lead the balloon to explode, in which case they would win nothing.

So, choosing to inflate the balloon was the risky option, but it came with the chance of a greater reward. In this case, researchers were interested in how this risky decision related to the value teens place on family obligations. In a survey, they asked teens how much time they felt they should spend helping out with household responsibilities and participating in family life, like attending meals and weekend activities.

The adolescents in the study that more strongly valued family obligation tended to cash out with lower balloon pumps. In other words, they were willing to give up a chance at a greater reward to avoid the risk of winning nothing. On average, these teens were more “risk-averse”.

Using fMRI, the scientists also found increases in blood flow to one region of the brain called the ventral striatum (suggesting that area was more active) as teens claimed bigger rewards while “cashing out” in the balloon game. The ventral striatum is a part of the brain often found to be sensitive to the size of rewards and highly involved in processing rewards.

Interestingly, teens that placed a higher value on family obligations had, on average, lower ventral striatum activity during the “cashing out” part of the balloon experiment. This suggests that those teens might have taken fewer risks because they weren’t as sensitive to the reward in the first place.

Learning When to Push the Brakes

With the same participants, researchers also studied teens’ regulatory abilities.

In the scanner, teens were presented with single letters in rapid succession. They were told to press a button to all of the letters, except for the letter X, which appeared 25% of the time. Participants got used to mostly pressing the button. But when the X appeared, they needed to quickly resist the impulse to respond.

Performance on this task wasn’t related to how teens thought of their family obligations. Teens that placed lower value their family obligations did just as well as those who thought that family obligations were really important.

However, Telzer and her colleagues saw differences in the dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), the upper portions of the prefrontal cortex that are more to the sides of the head than in the center. During inhibition, the dlPFC was more active, on average, for teens that more strongly valued family obligations.

What does this brain data mean?

While we can’t say for sure, generally, the prefrontal cortex is involved in regulation and cognitive control. In this study, there was a positive correlation between dlPFC activation during inhibition and how much teens reported they thought through their every day life decisions.

Taken together, this might suggest that for adolescents, valuing family relationships and obligations can be related to better self-regulation.

We know that families can be an important resource for developing kids of all ages. Could it be that these results are just related to some teens having better family support?

Researchers asked this question, and it turns out the answer is “no”. It seems that having a warmer, more supportive family isn’t related to risk taking or inhibition. Instead, how much teens valued their family obligations made the difference in these behaviors and related neural processes.

The researchers suggest that adolescents who value family obligations may have more practice prioritizing others’ needs and regulating their own. They might also be more motivated to stay out of trouble, as one kind of obligation to their family.

This may also help explain why teens tend to express lower levels of “storm and stress” behaviors in more traditional, family-obligation oriented cultures.

Implications for Education

How teens deal with the often-rocky transition to adulthood depends, in large part, on their social worlds. An aspect of this, the value that adolescents place on giving back to their families, may be related to less risky decision-making and better regulation.

Though challenging, one way to put this research into action is for educators to plan creative ways, like projects or community discussions of research, to encourage caregivers and teens to see the value in meaningful household responsibilities and family time. It might also be that these findings go beyond family obligations. Though more research needs to be done in this area, it’s plausible that having meaningful responsibilities in the classroom, school, and community may help teens’ well-being and the development of valuable regulatory skills.

What We Don’t Know

However, before considering sweeping changes, you may have noticed that the study we’ve been discussing doesn’t address causality. Causality is a way to describe the relationship between two things – namely that one thing caused the other. In this case, it’s the question of whether valuing family obligations causes what we see in the lab. Having meaningful family obligations might be protective for developing teens, but it could also be that teens who are risk averse and better at regulation just happen to also like structured, safe activities like family time and household chores.

Another caveat to this study is that its participants were Mexican-American teens, who are part of a culture that tends to value family obligations. These teens were also of low socioeconomic status. It’s not clear how well these particular results generalize to other cultures and groups.

Of course, limitations don’t mean these studies aren’t useful. Thankfully, in science, we can turn to a larger body of work to get more answers (and more questions!). In my next post, I’ll talk about a few studies in different groups looking at changes over time. This kind of long-term research is one way of disentangling the issue of causality by asking “Which came first?” I’ll also introduce the concept of “protective pro-sociality,” or the ways that doing things for others may benefit personal well-being. I’ll explore what this might mean for classroom structures and community service programming.

So far, we’ve examined one example of “protective prosociality”: Beyond being an affordable babysitting option, having teens care about giving back to their families might benefit their abilities to resist temptation and self-regulate.

 

References & Further Reading

1. Arnett, J. J. (1999). Adolescent storm and stress, reconsidered. The American Psychologist, 54(5), 317–326. [Paper]
2. Paus, T., Keshavan, M., & Giedd, J. N. (2008). Why do many psychiatric disorders emerge during adolescence? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9 (December), 947–957. [Paper]
3. Casey, B. J., Jones, R. M., & Somerville, L. H. (2011). Braking and accelerating of the adolescent brain. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 21(1), 21–33. [Paper]
4. Pfeifer, J. H., & Allen, N. B. (2012). Arrested development? Reconsidering dual-systems models of brain function in adolescence and disorders. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(6), 322–329. [Paper]
5. Willoughby, T., Good, M., Adachi, P. J. C., Hamza, C., & Tavernier, R. (2013). Examining the link between adolescent brain development and risk taking from a social–developmental perspective. Brain and Cognition, 83(3), 315–323. [Paper]
6. Telzer, E. H., Fuligni, A. J., Lieberman, M. D., & Galván, A. (2013). Meaningful family relationships: neurocognitive buffers of adolescent risk taking. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25(3), 374–87. [Paper]

• Steinberg, L. (2008). A Social Neuroscience Perspective on Adolescent Risk Taking. Developmental Review, 28(1), 1–27. [Paper]

 

“Mindfulness” is a buzzword popping up everywhere from the New York Times, prestigious science and education journals, to grade school and university curriculum. Headlines offer intriguing statements like, “Mindfulness meditation may have positive effects on stress, anxiety, and reshape the brain!” If you’re curious about the bold claims of mindfulness but are not quite sure what mindfulness is, you’ve come to the right place.

Like the start of a fresh classroom unit, our first post in this mindfulness series begins at the root of Bloom’s Taxonomy: defining what mindfulness actually is. What is its goal? We’ll start in digestible terms and even try out a brief practice before introducing scientific definitions and research application in the classroom.

As we explore deeper questions in meditation and education research, see this post as a way to reground in common understanding of mindful practices.

What mindfulness is not:

One of my favorite teaching strategies is to offer learning by way of contrast. In other words, first identifying what mindfulness isn’t. Thich Nhat Hanh, world-renowned peace leader and poet, reminds us of the simple opposite of mindfulness: forgetfulness.

“Most people are forgetful; they are not really there a lot of the time. Their mind is caught in their worries, their fears, their anger, and their regrets, and they are not mindful of being there. That state of being is called forgetfulness—you are there but you are not there.”¹

If you’re now laughing to yourself thinking about when you forgot where you placed your keys earlier this week, I mindfully invite you to come back to the present moment. Let’s now draw attention to what mindfulness is.

What mindfulness is:

Mindfulness, put simply, is being aware of and allowing yourself to be in the present moment. In the words of Thich Nhat Hanh:

“The opposite of forgetfulness is mindfulness. Mindfulness is when you are truly there, mind and body together. You breathe in and out mindfully, you bring your mind back to your body, and you are there. When your mind is there with your body, you are established in the present moment. Then you can recognize the many conditions of happiness that are in you and around you, and happiness just comes naturally.”¹

Right now, take a moment to observe yourself where you are. You may notice yourself sitting with your chin resting on your wrist in a chair, breath long and slow. You might be standing on a subway platform scrolling through this article on a phone, breathing in and out quickly, the strap of your bag tugging at your shoulder.

Now try taking a full inhalation deep into the belly and into the chest, feeling the ribs comfortably expand. What does it feel like to inhale fully? Now exhale slowly and completely, lungs and belly hollowing comfortably. What does it feel like to exhale fully? Continue this practice of fully inhaling and fully exhaling for a few more cycles of breath. How does your body feel? Where are your thoughts focused? Allow yourself to observe your own thinking without judgment and come back to your breathing.

Perhaps just now from focusing attention on the in-breath and out-breath you feel a little different. Scan your body and mind. Perhaps you find yourself feeling less tense and a little less caught up in the future or past. The changes may be subtle or distinct.

In mindfulness, the breath often serves as a physical tool to help bring the mind and body back to the moment at hand. Breathing awareness – observing the length and sensations of your breath – is one way of practicing being mindful. Body awareness – noticing the physical position of and sensations within your body – is another way. Awareness of emotions and thinking as well as different forms of meditation such as guided visualization, insight meditation or tuning “inward,” are also forms of mindfulness practice.

Mindfulness is historically rooted in Buddhist practices and Indian yoga, though evidence of mindful practices exists across cultures, religions, and even in acts of creating music, art, cooking, knitting, and exercise. As aptly suggested by Kabat-Zinn in framing mindfulness in the West, we are all inherently mindful as humans.

The scope of “mindfulness practices” is far-reaching and varied to meet the needs of children and adults, but the fundamental experience of all is similar: to practice being attentive to the present moment.

What is the goal mindfulness?

The intent of mindfulness is to relieve the natural human suffering that often occurs from maladaptive habits of which we’re unaware². In other words, the more we do something with or without our awareness, the more connected the underlying neural pathways become, making it more automatic even if the habit doesn’t make us feel good. For example, we might unknowingly rehearse self-critical thoughts that lead to negative emotions. Mindfulness is meant to help relieve us of those patterns by building awareness and practicing change.

Much of today’s neuroscience and psychology research seeks to relieve the same symptoms of human suffering – anxiety, depression, indecision, stress, lack of focus, and memory loss. Mindfulness has therefore been adapted for scientific study as possible treatment for wellbeing in children and adults. Growing data is promising, allowing mindful practice to begin making its way into more schools than ever before.

Overview of Mindfulness Research 

Researchers in mindfulness have adapted research-friendly definitions from Eastern practice. Ellen Langer, social psychologist and founding mindfulness researcher at Harvard University, defines mindfulness as “a process that cultivates sensitivity to subtle variations in context and perspective about the observed subject rather than relying on entrenched categorizations from the past.”³ The operating definition used by Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor of medicine, student of Thich Nhat Hanh, and originator of the renowned Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, is “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment.”⁴

The last four decades have featured numerous neurological and psychological studies that support mindfulness practices in adult populations. In healthy adults, mindfulness meditation has been associated with increased attention and reduction of stress.⁵ In physically, mentally, and emotionally-demanding professions like teaching, such practices like breath awareness and meditation may help teachers sustain their own well-being as leaders in the classroom.

More inquiry is under way on the benefits of mindful practice for adolescents and children. One pilot study of note by Karen Bluth and colleagues assessed the effectiveness of the BREATHE mindfulness program as compared to a substance-abuse control program in ethnically diverse, including at-risk adolescents. Students in the mindfulness program showed more reduction in symptoms of depression and stress as compared to students in the control group.⁶ Such results suggest that mindfulness may support adolescents in psychological wellbeing, making more room for academic and social success.

More studies in mindfulness are emerging in elementary and early childhood settings as well. Lisa Flook and colleagues recently found that second and third graders who were less self-regulated showed more improvement in executive functioning after participating in an 8-week long mindful awareness program (MAP) as compared with those in the control group.⁷ Flook since teamed with Richard Davidson, known for his brain meditation research with monks, to develop a mindfulness-based Kindness Curriculum (KC) to evaluate prosocial and self-regulatory behaviors in preschool children. The mindful kindness group showed greater gains in socio-emotional development and social competence as measured on report card grades by the teacher as compared to the control group, which demonstrated more selfish behaviors over time.⁸ Such findings suggest that mindfulness practice may developmentally appropriate not only for adults and adolescents, but for young children as well.

The present challenge in evaluating mindfulness research in academic settings is that most existing studies rely on teacher or parent observation of change in young students. As unbiased as we like to be as caregivers, our perceptions may be unintentionally skewed. Bias may also exist in adolescent reports of their own wellbeing.

With initial promise of mindfulness in children and young adults, however, more rigorous inquiry will likely involve magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and functional imagining to observe structural and functional changes in the brain. Given the jam-packed days we already face as teachers, corroborating or clarifying results from brain research could help inform time and type of mindful practice that is both reasonable and still beneficial for academic settings.

The journey of mindfulness in Western science and education may be just beginning, but its roots are deep and its practices simple. As research starts to stabilize in a crisper understanding and evaluation of mindfulness, implementation in the classroom will become clearer. For now, let’s mindfully navigate the bumps together and trust in its unfolding.

 

References & Further Reading

1. Hanh, T. N. (2010). Thich Nhat Hanh on the Practice of Mindfulness. [Web Article]
2. Vago, D. R. (2014). Mapping modalities of self-awareness in mindfulness practice: a potential mechanism for clarifying habits of mind. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1307: 28–42. [Paper].
3. Langer, E., Cohen, M., & Djikic, M. (2012). Mindfulness as a Psychological Attractor: The Effect on Children.Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 42(5), 1114-1122. [Paper]
4. Kabat-Zinn, J. (2003). Mindfulness-based interventions in context: Past, present, and future.Clinical Psychology-Science And Practice, 10(2), 144-156. [Paper]
5. Lazar, S. W., Bush, G. L., Gollub, R., Fricchione, G., Khalsa, G., & Benson, H. (2000). Functional brain mapping of the relaxation response and meditation. NeuroReport,11(7), 1581-1585. [Paper]
6. Bluth, K., Campo, R. A., Pruteanu-Malinici, S., Reams, A., Mullarkey, M., & Broderick, P. C. (2015). A school-based mindfulness pilot study for ethnically diverse at-risk adolescents. Advance online publication. [Paper]
7. Flook, L., et al. (2010). Effects of mindful awareness practices on executive functions in elementary school children. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 26(1), 70-95. [Paper]
8. Flook, L., Goldberg, S. B., Pinger, L., & Davidson, R. J. (2015). Promoting prosocial behavior and self-regulatory skills in preschool children through a mindfulness-based kindness curriculum. Developmental Psychology, 51(1), 44-51. [Paper]

I recently watched a Ted Talk¹ by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris where she addressed the effects of childhood trauma on health. Her 16 minute talk discussed how trauma leads to higher risks of heart disease, early death, and even lung cancer. At the heart of her talk was the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study², a groundbreaking research project that examined the relationship between the exposure to different types of trauma during childhood, and adult health outcomes. Listening to the passionate doctor speak about the life long implications of childhood trauma caused me to immediately think of the students I serve on a daily basis. If the exposure to childhood trauma had such dire implications for health later in life, what kind of effects were these experiences having on my students right now?

Urban Youth and Trauma

It’s no secret that urban youth, particularly minority urban youth, are exposed to higher rates of violence than in other areas³. One study found that 80% of “inner-city kids” has experienced one or more traumatic life events⁴. Recent studies done in urban hospitals have found that as many as 4 in 10 victims of violent crimes displayed many of the same symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as Vietnam War veterans. When put into perspective, this makes sense. War veterans are put into areas where their lives are constantly in danger. They may see their comrades killed right before their eyes, and then, once the war is over, they are sent home, where they are seemingly safe but they can’t immediately put their defense down. In the same way, young people who are repeatedly exposed to traumatic events may feel like they are in a warzone since, like soldiers, they are in a state where their safety is a constantly questioned. Like soldiers, even when put into seemingly safe environments, their defenses are up.

Different Types of Stress

As an educator, I’m often stressed. I always have more papers than I have time to grade, more parents to call than I can manage, lessons that need to be planned, data that needs to be analyzed and the list goes on. While I’ve become numb to the stress that my job entails, the everyday stress of being a teacher does not produce the kind of stress that a traumatic event does. Depending on the situation, your brain produces positive, tolerable or toxic stress responses. There are several different types of stress and how your brain and body reacts to each of them is different. Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child⁵ defines three types of stress responses as follows:

• Positive stress responses are a necessary part of development. They are characterized by brief increases in heart rate and elevations of hormone levels. Some situations that might trigger a positive stress response are the first day of school or getting a shot at the doctor’s office.
• Tolerable stress responses cause the body to react a bit stronger, the heart rate increases even more and hormone levels are higher. Events such as losing a loved one, or a natural disaster can cause this response in children. The severity of this stress response is directly correlated to the presence of supportive adults to help the child adapt.
• Toxic stress responses can occur with the experience of prolonged traumatic events, such as abuse (physical and emotional), neglect, or the exposure to violence without the support of an adult. Toxic stress responses cause the most severe reactions. This kind of prolonged activation of the stress response system can disrupt the development of brain functioning.

The stress that most people deal with on a daily basis most likely causes positive or tolerable stress responses. While sometimes uncomfortable, you are physiologically able to deal with this kind of stress. Traumatic events such as divorce, can cause a toxic stress response in children if they don’t have the support of a caring adult to help them navigate the situation. Neglect, abuse and household dysfunction are all types of traumatic experiences that can cause the body’s stress management system to be in overdrive. It’s important to note that the key factor that results in a toxic stress response is time. The dangers are greatest when children are faced with theses traumatic situations over extended periods of time, without a strong support system to help them get through it.

Implications for Educators

Not every student experiencing traumatic events will experience a toxic stress response, but it’s important for educators to be aware of this risk. One possible manifestation of such exposure is PTSD. Students suffering from PTSD are at risk for a plethora of health concerns as noted in Dr. Burke-Harris’ TED Talk, but aside from their health, PTSD has other implications. Children suffering from PTSD often have lower grade point averages and reading abilities, more missed days of school, and decreased high school graduation rates⁶. As educators, this is where we can make a difference. Knowing the signs and having strategies to help our students be successful can make a huge difference. Certain behaviors in a classroom setting may signify that a student is suffering from PTSD. Students should be referred to the school’s social worker if you suspect he/she is suffering from PTSD. While not all teachers are equipped to help students dealing with PTSD, there are steps that we can all take to help our students be successful in school.

What to look for and what to do about it⁷

1. Student is overly aggressive with other students.
If a student has an overly unexpected response to a situation in the classroom, (e.g. getting very angry in a situation that does not seem to warrant such a reaction), it’s important to remain calm. Modeling calm behavior in your tone and body language can make a huge difference in how a student reacts. When a student is in “defense mode” it is best to not engage with the student in a way that could cause more aggression. Give the student time to cool off and then address the situation later to prevent escalation.
2. Student seems withdrawn, sad or distracted in class.
Following a traumatic experience, it is very common for people to experience emotional and social isolation. This is something that can occur subconsciously without the student even realizing they are doing it. Simply checking in on the student and asking how he/she is doing is an important step. The student will need to rebuild his/her support system. Encourage the student to work with friends on group projects and to take responsibility in the classroom. These kinds of activities allow students to feel they have the support of consistent adults, in this case teachers, in their lives; a key to coping with traumatic events for children.
3. Student is engaging in self-destructive behaviors or showing signs of depression.
If you ever suspect a student is hurting him/herself, you should contact your school social worker immediately. Students who are suffering from depression should also be referred to a social worker. While wanting to help our students is natural, it’s just as important to know when something is too big for us to handle.

The Power of Resilience

While the topic of trauma and young people can seem disheartening, it’s important to remember that you do not have to be a psychologist to be a positive support system in your students’ lives. While trauma does have adverse effects on our youth, they can overcome, and we can help. As educators, it’s important that we educate ourselves on topics that affect the lives of our students. Teachers especially can play an important role in helping their students prevail through tough situations. We may not be able to control what happens to our students outside of our classrooms, but we can control how we react to the consequences; and for some students, that could make all the difference.

 

References & Further Reading

1. Burke-Harris, Nadine. (2015). How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime. Ted Conferences. [Ted Talk]
2. Felitti, V. J., & Anda, R. F., et al. (1997) The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [Study Report].
3. Roberts, A. L., Gilman, S.E., Breslau, J., Breslau, N., and Koenen, K.C. (2011). Race/ethnic differences in exposure to traumatic events, development of post-traumatic stress disorder, and treatment-seeking for post-traumatic stress disorder in the United States. Psychological Medicine, 41, pp 71-83. [Paper]
4. Collins, K., Connors, K., Donohue, A., Gardner, S., Goldblatt, E., Hayward, A., Kiser, L., Strieder, F. Thompson, E. (2010). Understanding the impact of trauma and urban poverty on family systems: Risks, resilience, and interventions. Baltimore, MD: Family Informed Trauma Treatment Center. [White Paper]
5. Center for the Developing Child (2015). Key Concepts: Toxic Stress. [Article]
6. Kataoka, S., Langley, A., Wong, M., Baweja, S., & Stein, B. (2012). Responding to Students with PTSD in Schools.Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 21(1), 119–x. [Paper]
7. Minnesota’s Association for Children’s Mental Health. (n.d.) Children’s Mental Health Fact Sheet for the Classroom: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. [Classroom Resource]

From the moment a child is born (and in some cases even before), their environment and experiences will have an impact on his or her brain. Equipped with our many senses and associated sensory organs, our dynamic perceptual systems help to shape and direct the constant changes that take place in our brains. From the molecular to the electrophysiological to the cortical, limited only by our developmental constraints, the human brain is constantly refining to better suit its context. “Neuroplasticity” is the umbrella term that refers to this incredible capacity to reorganize and adapt in response to our experiences. You may also have heard the term “plasticity”, which basically refers to the ability to change. Once thought to occur primarily during early childhood, we now know that this is an inherent quality of the brain that is maintained throughout the lifespan¹.

The Rise of Neuroplasticity

In the past decade, neuroplasticity has been a hallmark of an insurgence of neuro-franchises, engulfing the brain-training and “brain education” market with remarkable tenacity. Everywhere we turn we are assured that our so-called “self-directed” plasticity will make us smarter, happier, better. Sometimes referred to as “neuroessentialism”, this strategic adoption of neuroscientific concepts to enhance psychological or sociological claims has flooded the educational market².

The good news is that the power of these frameworks has effectively combatted once-held conceptualizations of the brain as a static, unchanging machine. Albeit an old concept dating as far back as the late 1800s, the notion of a plastic brain has only recently permeated the public sphere (reassuring those in an endless battle to learn Mandarin or “boost their IQ” that their efforts may not be in vain). Perhaps unsurprisingly, informing students of their ability to “change their own brain” can be a source of empowerment for disillusioned pupils with less-than-desirable test scores. However, to avoid misconceptions and exploitation, this type of information must be communicated carefully — and in a manner that is compliant with current scientific literature.

The Difference between “Science-Sounding” and Science

Over the past several years, teachers around the world have been on the receiving end of a number of brain-based learning packages that all too often contain startling levels of misinformation. What on the surface appear to be credible evidence-driven solutions are often comprised of sensationalized, distorted, or entirely fabricated concepts spun to sound like neuroscience. Pertinent examples include detailed diagrams on the categorization of students into “left-brain” or “right-brain” learners, as well as reports of encouragement for classroom instructors to teach skills in sync with their respective “periods of synaptogenesis” in order to effectively alter neural networks³. In both cases, the ideas sound like science, with one major problem – they aren’t.

These frameworks are a misattribution of funds at best, and damaging at worst. If a young girl is labeled “right-brained”, but develops a love for mathematics, who’s to say her trajectory won’t be shaped by the fact that she believes she has the wrong sort of brain for numbers? And how does the blanket claim that students need to sit in silence to form a new connection affect the child with ADD who already struggled to stay still through class? Without any real scientific basis for their effectiveness, such products were packaged to sell, not to serve.

These products can also obscure how important it is for good teaching practice to be responsive to factors such as attention deficits, learning disabilities and testing anxiety. Many children are affected by developmental and learning disabilities, which many brain training programs claim to “make smarter”. Such programs claim to “identify and attack the root problems of disability”, using mental exercises to train “cognitive skills”. For example, one training task from a popular program was designed to improve visual perception and alter neural growth by requiring students to match patterns under timed conditions⁴. The reality is that we don’t know much about what these tasks are doing, if anything. One reason is simply because the exact mechanisms of neuroplasticity and neural reorganization are still the subject of intense investigation. The other is that, in all likelihood, it’s not going to be the same for every student. Making unsupported promises to struggling students doesn’t always end well: they may not see progress, and may attribute such failure to themselves rather than the program.

Neuroplasticity is just one example of a concept from neuroscience that has been irresponsibly translated by unregulated organizations for financial gain. It’s equally important to note that not all brain-based programs lack evidence. Some are excellent applications of carefully researched phenomena. The problem is, of course, figuring out how to tell the difference. There’s no easy answer or foolproof method to this, but a good starting point is getting to know how the concept in question (in this case neuroplasticity) does work, so that we’re less susceptible to products that pitch us on ways that it doesn’t.

So, What Do We Know? Neuroplasticity through the Lens of Sensory Impairment

Neuroplasticity has been studied in many ways. One of the most interesting and fruitful is through the lens of sensory deprivation or impairment (e.g. blindness, deafness). Indeed, children born without one or more senses have historically been viewed as “impoverished” by developmental theory. The focus has often been on the devastating effects that their disabilities may have on their learning, academic performance and quality of life.

Fortunately, considerable research from the past decade has shown that is possible for children living with sensory impairment to adapt remarkably well, often superseding learners with intact sensory function. In fact, behavioral work stretching back to the early 1990s has revealed blind participants outperforming their normally sighted counterparts on a wide range of tasks including (but not limited to) tactile identification and discrimination, sound localization and identification, as well as enhanced olfactory abilities⁵. Such enhancements include executive functions (e.g. memory) and navigational skills. For example, one study that used a route-learning wayfinding task to compare blind (including congenital blindness as well as individuals who went blind later in life) and normally sighted participants found that blind participants made fewer errors in following a pre-memorized path compared to the normally sighted wayfinders⁶. This suggests that increased memory use and navigational skill are employed to compensate for their lack of sight, not only in the case of those who are blind at birth, but also for those who lose their vision later in life.

Thanks to functional neuroimaging methodologies, we have learned about the occurrence of crossmodal plasticity, which means that one or more physical brain structures are recruited to perform the function of a different sense. When we say “recruit”, we mean that there is an area or network in the brain that tends to be involved with that behavior. In the blind, evidence of crossmodal reorganization is evident during tactile (tasks that involve touch) or auditory tasks. Structures of the brain that are typically responsible for vision and visual processing are instead recruited to relay the necessary and accessible sensory information from the tactile or auditory stimuli^{7, 8}. In other words, no areas of the brain go to waste – they are just used in different ways to make sensory processing as efficient as possible for that individual. This kind of evidence makes it apparent that the brain’s ability to reorganize itself is not only striking from a research perspective, but can also provide remarkable benefits to atypically developing brains.

Sensory impairment research has also shed light on the “dark side” of neuroplasticity; namely the maladaptive consequences of neuroplastic changes. For example, adult deaf patients with newly implanted cochlear devices struggle to use their newfound hearing to learn and use language, often choosing to continue with sophisticated communication skills such as ASL or lip-reading instead⁹. Similar struggles have been observed in blind participants in vision rehabilitation programs whose diagnoses were due to curable conditions (e.g. congenital cataracts). Furthermore, it has been suggested that –in some cases — areas of the brain most susceptible to neuroplastic changes may be the same areas considered most vulnerable in individuals at risk for developmental or learning disabilities. For example, one study comparing the ability of deaf and dyslexic individuals to process motion showed deaf participants were indeed better at processing motion than their dyslexic counterparts. In other words, brain processes that are most modifiable by experience may be most vulnerable in developmental disorders and the most compensatory enhancement following sensory deprivation¹⁰.

What this tells us about Science-Sounding Products

These types of findings highlight the need to not take neuroscientific concepts like neuroplasticity at face value. Not only can it be misleading, but given the great deal of scientific inquiry still to be done, the implementation of such concepts into a training or education paradigm is often meaningless without a strong scientific basis for their effectiveness within the context of the product in question. Indeed, according to the “synaptogenesis” theory mentioned previously by a popular training program, those who go blind later in life would be unlikely to regain necessary behavioral skills in light of them having surpassed the so-called “window of opportunity”. Finally, the chorus that neuroplasticity is an invariably positive manifestation is inaccurate and misrepresentative.

To say these findings are but the tip of the iceberg is an understatement. Not only in terms of our somewhat limited understanding of the underlying mechanisms of the brain’s plasticity, but also for the potential implications for teaching, education research and rehabilitation. The surplus of neuroscience-sounding misinformation dominating education is not only dangerous and nonsensical, but also takes away from the much more consequential strides actually made by cognitive neuroscience. The exact mechanisms of plasticity remain a source of ongoing investigation, but the current evidence in both normal and atypically developing brains is a crucial starting point for evaluating the merits of neuroplasticity-wrapped educational products.

Unfortunately, these products are unlikely to go away any time soon, and any attempts to regulate them are not yet reliable. It’s impossible to know everything, but by arming ourselves with knowledge of the science, we can begin to vet product quality and promote appropriate application within classroom settings; and perhaps most importantly, take steps towards eradicating the misuse of neuroscientific concepts and perpetuation of neuromyths inside and outside of the classroom.

 

References & Further Reading

1. Greenwood, P.M. (2007). Functional plasticity in cognitive aging: review and hypothesis. Neuropsychology. 16, 657-673. [Paper]

2. D Hanson. (2014, January 23). Neuroessentialism: The “Dark Side” of Focus on Brain Plasticity? [Web blog].

3. Goswami, U. (2006). Neuroscience and education: From research to practice? Nature Reviews Neuroscience Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 406-413. [Paper]

4. Schultz, M. (2015, July 5th). Brain Training center treats learning disabilities. WUFT.org. [Web Article]

5. Hirsch, G.V., Bauer C.M. and Merabet, L.B. (2015). Using structural and functional brain imaging to uncover how the brain adapts to blindness. Annals of Neuroscience and Psychology, 2, 5. [Paper]

6. Fortin, M., et al. (2008). Wayfinding in the blind: larger hippocampal volume and supranormal spatial navigation. Brain, 131(11), 2995-3005. [Paper]

7. Sadato N., et al. (1996). Activation of the primary visual cortex by Braille reading in blind subjects. Nature. 380, 526–528. [Paper]

8. Merabet, L. B. and Pascual-Leone, A. (2010). Neural reorganization following sensory loss: the opportunity of change. Nature Reviews Neuroscience ,11, 44-52. [Paper]

9. Giraud A.L., Lee H.J. (2007). Predicting cochlear implant outcome from brain organization in the deaf. Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, 25, 381–390. [Paper]

10. Stevens, C., Neville, H. (2006). Neuroplasticity as a double-edged sword: deaf enhancements and dyslexic deficits in motion processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18(5), 701-14. [Paper]

 

Science seems to always challenge our intuitive understanding of the world. Even as an adult, I am constantly confronted with new scientific advancements and discoveries that don’t always line up with my preconceived notions. These ideas, be it physics or biology, can be considered counterintuitive in that they often present themselves in ways that are counter to one’s intuitive notions¹).

One of the most challenging and powerful of these concepts, the theory of evolution by natural selection, also happens to be one of the most rewarding; its ability to explain the complexity of life on earth, and even (to a certain extent) human nature, is unprecedented. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most controversial, especially in the United States. Reports suggest that only 60% of American’s believe in evolution, and even some of those who claim to don’t seem to fully grasp its implications ².

Why is the concept of evolution so hard to understand and accept?

Recent research lead by Deborah Kelemen^3,4 and Will Gervais ⁵ is helping to explain this. Previous research has shown that belief in evolution can be predicted by many demographic and cultural factors, such as religious ideology ⁶, political affiliation ⁷, and even what country you live in ⁸. However, research within the fields of psychology and the cognitive science of religion are beginning to uncover the cognitive mechanisms that underlie this phenomena. This new research also hints at some important strategies: we should begin teaching children how to grasp concepts like evolution while they are young, rather than waiting until they are teenagers.

Regardless of their religious beliefs, adults, and especially children, are inclined to see design and purpose everywhere^9,10. This tendency may be one of the main contributors as to why individuals who favor intelligent design or creationism are reluctant to incorporate evidence for evolution into their worldview. Kelemen has documented this way of thinking, termed “promiscuous teleology”, in children as young as preschool, though it is an inclination we all share throughout the lifespan. She has found in previous research that when children were asked what the purpose of a sharp rock was, they responded with purposeful statements like “Rocks are jagged so animals can scratch themselves”¹¹. By elementary school (ages 6-10), kids begin to develop their own “folk biology” theories (that is, how people classify and reason about the organic world) about the world around them, giving explanations for biological facts in terms of intention and design.

This can be seen in children’s design-driven descriptions for the purpose for a giraffe’s long neck – so they can reach the leaves at the top of the trees. This suggests that believing in creationism may be a very natural tendency, and that introducing evolutionary frameworks in childhood may help lay the groundwork for balancing promiscuous teleology with analytical thinking.

To see whether young children could understand the mechanism of natural selection before the alternative intentional-design ideas had fully set in, Dr. Kelemen and colleagues presented 5- to 8-year-olds with a 10-page picture book that illustrated an example of natural selection with a fictional character (the “pilosas”). In the book, the pilosas are described as insect eating mammals, with some of them having thick trunks and some with thin. The children are then told about a sudden shift in climate that drives all of the insects into narrow underground tunnels. Because of this, the thin-trunked pilosas were the only ones to be able to reach the insects, causing those with thick trunks to die off. Therefore, the next generation of pilosas all had thin trunks.

Before they heard this story, the children were asked to explain why a different group of fictional animals had a particular trait. Most of them, consistent with previous research, gave explanations based on intentional design. However, after they heard the “pilosas” story, the answers they gave were very different. They began to understand the basic tenants of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Even three months later, their understanding and analytical explanations persisted.
While Dr. Kelemen’s research sheds light on our natural tendencies to think of evolution as a counterintuitive concept, there are still questions as to how the differences between individuals (such as religiosity, political orientation, or other demographic factors) produce different beliefs about evolution, and how these individual differences interact with culture and environment.

New research by Will Gervais has found an association between cognitive style and beliefs about evolution. Cognitive style refers to two distinct mental systems that everyone uses for processing information: one system provides quick and effortless intuitive responses, where as the other system relies on more effortful and analytical processing.

In an experiment with hundreds of Kentucky undergraduates, Gervais presented participants with a common task to measure the extent to which they would engage in immediate, intuitive judgments or more explicit, analytical deliberations (which can sometimes override the initial intuitive response). He found a significant relationship between the degree to which individuals would engage in more analytical styles of thinking and their endorsement of evolution. These results still held significant even after controlling for religious beliefs and political conservatism.

Gervais’ research presents three possibilities: (1) the more an individual engages in reflective, analytical thinking, the more likely it is that they will essentially ‘override’ their natural intuitive responses when presented with evidence, thus making concepts like evolution easier to grasp, (2) some individuals may naturally have stronger intuitive responses than others, which, though beneficial in some situations, may make it particularly challenging to successfully override these teleological thoughts, and (3) an individual’s cognitive style (analytical or intuitive) may be affected by cultural input. Within this third possibility, for individuals who grow up in an environment where intellectual design and creationism are more widely accepted, overriding these natural intuitions isn’t just about implementing more analytical, reflective thinking, it also involves overriding the norms of one’s community and upbringing.

This research helps to explain why counterintuitive concepts like evolution aren’t just controversial for social or scientific reasons, but are also controversial for cognitive ones. It also helps us understand the most recent Gallup poll results, which found that nearly half of the US population rejects evolution, with creationism remaining stable for the past 30 years¹²*.

There seems to be a constant struggle over teaching evolution in U.S. schools¹³, which makes it even harder for educators in anti-evolution policy states to take action. However, the above research suggests that educators and parents should start to introduce these ideas to children when they are young, rather waiting until high school, and organizations, like the National Center for Science Education, are working to support communities in this endeavor.

Deborah Keleman has shown that children as young as 5 can grasp these concepts (and retain the information); they just need to be taught through innovative ways like storytelling. Over the past few years some excellent evolutionary children’s books have come out on the market, such as Great Adaptations, Grandmother Fish, and Our Family Tree to name a few. These can be excellent tools for teaching these concepts, second only to applying some imagination and having children create their own species and animals like Dr. Keleman’s “pilosas”. These practices should be written into the curriculum for each grade, allowing the concepts to be reinforced each year.

Counterintuitive concepts like evolution can be challenging to grasp for anyone. By taking a deeper look at the underlying cognitive reasons for this, we can improve our future approaches to science education and policy, and work towards better understanding how our social and cultural environments affect our minds — and more importantly, our children’s minds.

*It is important to note that science deals with evidence and makes no claims on the existence of God, and while many people believe evolution to be consistent with their religious beliefs¹², it is still essential for public schools to focus on and implement only those theories and concepts that are supported by evidence and analytical thinking structures. Personal beliefs such as religion can then be handled and discussed outside of the classroom.

References & Further Reading

1. Champagne, A. B., Gunstone, R. F., & Klopfer, L. E. (1985). Instructional consequences of students’ knowledge about physical phenomena. In L. H. T. West & A. L. Pines (Eds.),Cognitive structure and conceptual change(pp. 61-90). New York: Academic Press. [Book]
2. Pew Research Center. (2013). Public Views on Evolution. [Survey Report]
3. Kelemen, et al. (2014) Young Children Can Be Taught Basic Natural Selection Using a Picture Storybook Intervention. Psychological Science, p.1-10 [Paper]
4. Kelemen, D. (2012). Teleological minds: How natural intuitions about agency and purpose influence learning about evolution. In K. S. Rosengren, Brem, Evans & Sinatra (Eds.), Evolution challenges: Integrating research and practice in teaching and learning about evolution. Oxford: Oxford University  [Book Chapter]
5. Gervais, W. (2015) Override the controversy: Analytic thinking predicts endorsement of evolution, Cognition, 142, p.312-321 [Paper]
6. Pew Research Center. (2009). Religious Differences on the Question of Evolution. [Survey Report]
7. Pew Research Center. (2013). Public Views on Evolution. [Survey Report]
8. Miller, J.D., Scott, E.C., & Okamoto, S., (2006) Public Acceptance of Evolution, Science, 313 (5788), 765-766. [Paper]
9. Kelemen, D. & Rosset, E. (2009). The human function compunction: Teleological explanation in adults. Cognition, 111(1), 138–143. [Paper]
10. Kelemen, D. (2004). Are children ‘intuitive theists’? Reasoning about purpose and design in nature. Psychological Science, 15(5), 295–301. [Paper]
11. Kelemen, D. (1999). Why are rocks pointy? children’s preference for teleological explanations of the natural world. Developmental Psychology, 35(6), 1440-1452. [Paper]
12. (2014). Evolution, Creationism, Intelligent Design. [Report]
13. Kopplin, Z. (2014). Bill Nye the Science Guy is trying to reason with America’s creationists. The Guardian. [Web Article]

I went to a school in the foothills of the Himalayas in Pakistan. The school consisted mostly of western children of aid workers, which meant that for the majority of my school years my family members were the only students of color. The school followed a U.S. school system, with bits of the British system interspersed throughout. Although I was not fully aware of it at the time, I look back at my early years in school and realize how often I was confused and slower than my peers at grasping what was going on in the lesson.

I remember sitting in math class trying to figure out a word problem about chipmunks. We were supposed to be counting their acorns but I found myself trying to figure out what the heck a chipmunk was to begin with. In English class I would listen to a British story about “A Day at School” with some strange “lollipop lady*” who would stand on the road and hold up a giant lollipop sign. Forget the point of the story, what is a lollipop lady? Try reading “The Magic School Bus” to a young girl from rural Pakistan. I was mesmerized. While all the other kids moved on to the amazing adventure of riding down the tongue and inside the human body, I was stuck on the cool yellow bus. Years later, when I first came to the U.S., I took a picture of a yellow school bus and sent it to my siblings with the caption, “the magic school buses!”

As I observe students in our beautiful, multicultural classrooms here in the U.S., these memories of life in an international school come back to me. When I see students struggling because they can’t quite grasp the cultural nuances, I’m reminded of the out-of-place chipmunks, lollipops, and big yellow buses of my childhood. In many ways those are the only things I remember about the lessons at my little school beneath the Himalayas. It wasn’t until I began studying educational neuroscience that I was finally able to put words to what was happening. How did those cross-cultural experiences affect my learning in those early years? How many things was my working memory juggling at once? I realize now, not only was I carrying the same “cognitive load” as other students; I was carrying a “cultural load” as well. Unpacking these important ideas will help us all become better learners and better educators.

How does working memory work?

Working memory is what we use to hold on to information in the short-term, retaining the ability to use and manipulate this information. For example, if I give you a problem:

6 x 2 =?

You can keep the two numbers in your head easily and at the same time figure out the answer.

Simple, right?

The main idea of cognitive load centers around the idea that there is a limited amount of information that our brains can take in and successfully process at a given time. The more data we send to our brain, the more “processing capacity” is used.

But what if I give you this problem instead:

2 x 3 x 5 x 7 x 9 x 2 = ?

On the one hand, this will be a real test on your working memory. You most likely will not be able to hold these numbers in your head like you could with the 6 and 2. Instead, you have to keep going back and looking at the problem. This is because for the average person this problem requires greater processing capacity to figure out. Simply put, cognitive load is the amount of mental effort being used in the working memory.

Of course, like most things in life, people differ in their processing capacities. This is probably most obvious in an expert/novice relationship. Experts have greater knowledge and familiarity in their area of expertise. This makes completing a task specific to their domain of expertise less of a cognitive load compared with a novice doing the same task. The expert doesn’t have to spend as much time getting to know the problem. You can also see this in children, who naturally have fewer points of reference (knowledge) than adults for how things work. They have fewer areas in their minds to peg ideas to or build concepts on. Therefore, children have a greater cognitive load than adults when trying to perform an activity or understand a new concept. There’s a lot more work for children to do to reach the same result.

It ultimately comes down to the ability to have a point of reference that is related to the new information that is being taught. Studies show that being able to relate to new information is important for all students. This suggests that lesson plans designed to connect to students’ “real worlds” are more effective than abstract lessons. When students don’t have any background knowledge needed to perform a task or comprehend a concept, they experience greater cognitive load. The good news is this is normal. All of us experience varying degrees of cognitive load when learning. If we didn’t, we would never learn! The better question to ask is when does this become a problem in our classrooms?

What happens when you overload working memory before you get to the point?

As an elementary school student, my inability to visualize a chipmunk made it more difficult for me to spend energy on the math aspect of the word problem. It added unnecessarily to the cognitive load. And lacking a point of reference for the “lollipop lady” also taxed my cognitive load as I tried to understand the story. My working memory was trying to hold on to the words “lollipop lady” as well as the rest of the words to make sense of the story. Somewhere, my brain was also trying to understand what a lollipop lady was in the first place, not to mention why she was standing in the middle of the road! When this extra cognitive load relates to foreign or cultural references, we call this cultural load.

Cultural load is the amount of culture-specific knowledge required to understand or perform a task (like figuring out a math problem or understanding a story). The concept of cultural load has become evident in a range of studies that evaluate the role of cultural “frame[s] of reference” in student performance. Growing understanding of cultural load has inspired calls for less culturally biased tests.
Studies suggest that using cultural knowledge and experiences that directly relate to our students can avoid some of this negative cognitive and cultural overload. Researchers have also found that academic success increases when students can take ownership of their learning. Regrettably, the concept of cultural load is often overlooked in classrooms.

What happens when we don’t consider the role of cultural load in the classroom?

One 1998 report showed that a disproportionate number of students from multicultural backgrounds may be inappropriately placed in special education classes. Some case studies talk about how children are labeled mentally disabled. In fact, in many cases testing revealed the children were functioning at a normal intellectual level. Sadly, it wasn’t until years later that schools began realizing their mistaken labels. This research reinforces the susceptibility of tests to carry a cultural and social bias, and begs the question: If it’s happening in our tests and we don’t know it, what might be happening in our classrooms? Of course, there are an array of factors that play into culturally and linguistically diverse populations having a higher percentage of students in special education that have not been discussed here. That being said, the research aligns with the experiences of many students just like me: we must acknowledge the need for more culturally aware and accepting classrooms.

*Lollipop Lady – noun. British informal. A woman who is employed to help children cross the road safely near a school by holding up a circular sign on a pole to stop the traffic. Not a woman with a giant lollipop.

If you didn’t know that, you may have experienced some “cultural load” first-hand with that cultural reference 😉

References & Further Reading

1. Artiles, A. J., & Zamora-Duran, G. (1997). Reducing disproportionate representation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special and gifted education. Reston, VA: The Council for Exceptional Children. [Book]
2. Benson, E. (2003). Intelligence across cultures: Research in Africa, Asian, and Latin America in showing how culture and intelligence interact. American Psychological Association, 34(2), 56. [Paper] 
3. Campbell, T., Dollaghan, C., Needleman, H. & Janosky, J.  (1997) Reducing bias in language assessment: Processing-dependent measures. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 40, 519-525. [Paper]
4. Feger, M. (2006). “I want to read”: How culturally relevant texts increase student engagement in reading. Multicultural Education, 13(3), 18. [Paper]
5. Jordan, C. (1985). Translating Culture: From ethnographic information to educational program. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 16(2), 105–123. [Paper]
6. McClafferty, K., Torres, C. & Mitchell, T. (Eds.) (2000). Challenges of urban education: sociological perspectives for the next century. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. [Book]
7. Meyer, L. (2000). Barriers to meaningful instruction for English learners. Theory into Practice. Accessed through Wilson Web on-line database on Sept 23, 2015. [Article]

We’re told that a picture is worth a thousand words, but this adage robs words of much-deserved credit. When you’re an infant with a rapidly developing brain, words are one of the most valuable things you can receive. They’re so valuable that a new initiative in Georgia called “Talk With Me Baby” promotes the importance of “language nutrition”. When it comes to language, infants are sponges: essentially every baby growing up in a normal environment masters the complex language system he or she’s exposed to. It helps that the adults around them hold up objects and emphatically enunciate their names, saying something like “ba-na-na” while waving the fruit in the child’s face, but that’s not the only way babies learn. Infants are constantly immersed in linguistic environments that are full of people expressing real and complicated thoughts through varied sentence structures. This provides the rich experience that children need to rapidly become fluent speakers. If you’ve ever tried to learn a new language in your teens or later, you know that this sponge-like capacity doesn’t last forever. Talk With Me Baby makes no bones about why they want to increase the amount of language that babies are exposed to: hearing more words in infancy promotes stronger language skills, which in turn form a foundation for academic and other successes throughout life.

Why are words so crucial during infancy?

The idea that there’s a sacred window of time in which language can be learned – referred to as a critical period – was first articulated in 1959¹, but it’s still a widely researched and debated topic. There isn’t yet a consensus on whether attempting to learn (a first) language after the critical period is futile or just more difficult than learning it earlier, and if there is a critical period, researchers still debate about exactly when that period is. Since intentionally raising a child without linguistic input (exposure to language) would be unethical, much of the support for the critical period hypothesis comes from tragic cases of children who grew up in abnormal environments that lacked language. Genie is a classic example of a girl who spent her entire childhood locked in a room without any stimulation or proper nourishment until she was discovered at 13 years old. At that time, researchers tried to provide her with therapy for her physical and cognitive abnormalities. Although she seemed able to learn a limited vocabulary, most scholars claim that Genie never truly learned language: she could not use grammar to put words together in a meaningful way. Although her case suggests the importance of receiving linguistic input during the critical period, it’s unclear whether Genie was disadvantaged from the start – her father claimed that he locked her up because she was cognitively disabled – and there are many other aspects of Genie’s deprived childhood that could have contributed to her inability to learn language at 13.

There are a few characteristics of the developing brain that speak to why we might be better at absorbing language as babies than as adults. For one, a critical period is not unique to language. Other biological processes also have their own critical periods². Some of these periods have been demonstrated most clearly in animals deprived of specific sensory stimuli. For example, Hubel and Wiesel studied a cat whose eye was sewn closed as a kitten. When they removed the stitches, the cat was still unable to see out of the previously deprived eye. During the deprivation period, the visual cortex became dominated by the normal, unobstructed eye, which hijacked the brain space typically devoted to the second eye.

The cat’s visual cortex demonstrates a crucial feature of the brain: its plasticity. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to reorganize itself based on the inputs it receives. Our brains are constantly reorganizing themselves (that is how we learn anything), but infants’ brains are especially plastic³. Developing brains are highly sensitive to incoming information and experiences, allowing them to learn massive amounts of information rapidly.

Perhaps counter intuitively, another explanation for why immature brains are ripe for language learning is that their prefrontal cortex (PFC) – the area of the brain most associated with higher-level and rational thinking – is undeveloped⁴. A paper by Sharon Thompson-Schill, Michael Ramscar, and Evangelina Chrysikou gives an example of watching a football game to highlight how adults’ and toddlers’ pattern-learning strategies differ. In the example game, you notice that the team passes the ball 75% of the time and runs with it the other 25%. Your task is to predict what the team will do in subsequent plays. As an adult, you’re likely to match probabilities: 75% of the time you’ll guess that the team will pass, and the other 25% you’ll guess that it’ll run. You’ve taken the less frequent event (the run plays) into account. However, since you don’t know when those rare events will occur, the optimal strategy would actually be to always guess that the team will pass. That’s precisely what a toddler would do. Toddlers ignore irregularities and grasp conventions quickly, at least partially thanks to their undeveloped PFCs. Thompson-Schill and colleagues argue that toddlers’ tendency to ignore inconsistencies might be ideal for learning the foundations of language, especially the syntactic patterns that govern our grammar. Toddlers eventually discover and master their language’s irregularities, moving from forms like “drinked” to “drank” as their PFCs develop and help them filter exceptions to rules.

Infants’ and toddlers’ brains are ready and waiting for linguistic input. This input allows their brains to develop new neural pathways in response to the language conventions they’re exposed to. As they get older and continue to use language more (whether they’re listening, speaking, reading, or writing), these pathways continue to strengthen. Talk With Me Baby asserts that “early language exposure is the single strongest predictor of third grade reading proficiency,” and that third grade reading proficiency, in turn, predicts further academic and economic successes. This is because third grade is when most kids transition from learning to read to reading to learn. In this way, linguistic exposure as an infant has cascade effects that last long after infancy. Just as proper nutrition promotes physical growth and is crucial for babies’ future health, proper linguistic nutrition promotes the mental growth necessary for future success.

The 30 Million Word Gap

It’s almost impossible for a baby to grow up without any exposure to language, but many children still grow up in environments that lack sufficient language exposure. In one seminal study, researchers found that the number of words addressed to children differed dramatically across families of different socioeconomic statuses (SES)⁵. SES is a measure that combines income, occupation, and education to reflect a family’s economic and social position in society. Children from families in the highest SES category heard an average of 2,153 words per hour, while those is the lowest SES group only heard 613 words per hour. From these numbers, the researchers calculated that by 4 years old, the average child from a higher-income family hears a total of about 45 million words, while the average child from the low-income family hears a measly 13 million words. The authors referred to this disparity as the 30 Million Word Gap. The gap may result, at least in part, from the fact that parents who are struggling financially are often unable to devote the same amount of focused time to their children that parents with fewer financial struggles can⁶. Reduced linguistic input is one consequence of the quality-time deficit that lower-SES kids often experience.

If a child from a low-income family enters school at age 4 after hearing 30,000,000 fewer words than his or her other classmates have, this child will immediately have an immense disadvantage. Because learning is sequential, in the sense that that many concepts build on each other, the child on the disadvantaged side of the word gap will have difficulty learning new information that requires an understanding of language. As a result of missing out on valuable linguistic input as a baby, this student may never catch up.

Talk With Me Baby

The state of Georgia has launched an effort to close the 30 Million Word Gap⁷, acknowledging that “a lack of early language exposure has lifelong consequences,” like dropping out of high school, incarceration, becoming a teen parent, involvement in violence, unemployment, and poverty⁸. Their initiative, Talk With Me Baby, is being implemented mainly by spreading awareness. Because the word gap can have future physical health consequences and because almost all babies are seen in hospitals, nurses in particular are helping spread the message that babies are listening, even before they’re born. They’re absorbing what they hear, so they should hear as much language as possible. The website for Talk With Me Baby also advertises an app that parents will soon be able to download with features like topics to talk about, milestones to look for, reminders to talk, and resources.

Raising a child is complicated. It can be hard to know what to feed your child, when to do it, and even how to afford the ideal nutrition. Luckily, providing babies with proper linguistic nutrition is fairly straightforward and accessible to all. What words should you feed your child? As many as you can! When should you feed your child his or her words? Whenever you can! Ideally, babies should hear not only as many different words as possible, but they should also hear as many different sentence structures as possible. Long sentences are the linguistic equivalent of milk: consuming them helps children’s cognitive foundations get strong enough to support all of the lessons and skills that they’ll learn in school. Perhaps best of all, words are free and we can all make them, which means closing the 30 Million Word Gap is within our reach.

References & Further Reading

1. Penfield, W., & Roberts, L. (1959). Speech and brain-mechanisms. Princeton, N.J: Princeton Univ. Press. [Book]
2. Sengpiel, F. (2007). The critical period. Current Biology, 17(17), R742-R743. [Paper]
3. Mundkur, N. (2005). Neuroplasticity in children. Indian Journal of Pediatrics, 72(10), 855-857. [Paper]
4. Thompson-Schill, S., Ramscar, M., & Chrysikou, E. (2009). Cognition without control. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(5), 259-263. [Paper]
5. Hart, B. & Risley, T. (2003). The early catastrophe: 30 Million word gap by age 3. American Educator, Spring 2003, 4-9. [Paper]
6. National Journal. (2015). 30-million word gap divides rich and poor kids. [Web Article]
7. Deruy, E. (2015). Why boosting poor children’s vocabulary is important for public health. Atlantic Magazine. [Web Article]
8. Talk with Me Baby [Educational Initiative]