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“How We Learn”: Wise Teaching Guidance from a Really Brainy Guy
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson

Imagine that you ask a neuro-expert: “What’s the most important brain information for teachers to know?”

The answer you get will depend on the expertise of the person you ask.

If you ask Stanislas Dehaene, well, you’ll get LOTS of answers — because he has so many areas of brain expertise.

He is, for example,  a professor of experimental cognitive psychology at the Collège de France; and Director of the NeuroSpin Center, where they’re building the largest MRI gizmo in the world. (Yup, you read that right. IN THE WORLD.)

He has in fact written several books on neuroscience: neuroscience and reading, neuroscience and math, even neuroscience and human consciousness.

He’s also President of a newly established council to ensure that teacher education in all of France has scientific backing: the Scientific Council for Education. (If the United States had such a committee, we could expunge Learning Styles myths from teacher training overnight.)

If that’s not enough, Dehaene is interested in artificial intelligence. And statistics. And evolution.

So, when he writes a book called How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better than Any Machine…for Now, you know you’re going to get all sorts of wise advice.

Practical Teaching Advice

Dehaene wants teachers to think about “four pillars” central to the learning process.

Pillar 1: Attention

Pillar 2: Active engagement

Pillar 3: Error feedback

Pillar 4: Consolidation

As you can see, this blueprint offers practical and flexible guidance for our work. If we know how to help students pay attention (#1), how to help them engage substantively with the ideas under discussion (#2), how to offer the right kind of feedback at the right time (#3), and how to shape practice that fosters consolidation (#4), we’ll have masterful classrooms indeed.

Learning, of course, begins with Attention: we can’t learn about things we don’t pay attention to. Following Michael Posner’s framework, Dehaene sees attention not as one cognitive process, but as a combination of three distinct cognitive processes.

Helpfully, he simplifies these processes into three intuitive steps. Students have to know:

when to pay attention

what to pay attention to, and

how to pay attention.

Once teachers start thinking about attention this way, we can see all sorts of new possibilities for our craft. Happily, he has suggestions.

Like other writers, Dehaene wants teachers to focus on active engagement (pillar #2). More than other writers, he emphasizes that “active” doesn’t necessarily mean moving. In other words, active engagement requires not physical engagement but cognitive engagement.

This misunderstanding has led to many needlessly chaotic classroom strategies, all in the name of “active learning.” So, Dehaene’s emphasis here is particularly helpful and important.

What’s the best way to create cognitive (not physical) engagement?

“There is no single miraculous method, but rather a whole range of approaches that force students to think for themselves, such as: practical activities, discussions in which everyone takes part, small group work, or teachers who interrupt their class to ask a difficult questions.”

Error Feedback (pillar #3) and Consolidation (#4) both get equally measured and helpful chapters. As with the first two, Dehaene works to dispel myths that have muddled our approaches to teaching, and to offer practical suggestions to guide our classroom practice.

Underneath the “Four Pillars”

These four groups of suggestions all rest on a sophisticated understanding of what used to be called the “nature/nurture” debate.

Dehaene digs deeply into both sides of the question to help teachers understand both brain’s adaptability (“nurture”) and the limits of that adaptability (“nature”).

To take but one example: research with babies makes it quite clear that brains are not “blank slates.” We come with pre-wired modules for processing language, numbers, faces, and all sorts of other things.

One example in particular surprised me: probability. Imagine that you put ten red marbles and ten green marbles in a bag. As you start drawing marbles back out of that bag, a 6-month-old will be surprised — and increasingly surprised — if you draw out green marble after green marble after green marble.

That is: the baby understands probability. They know it’s increasingly likely you’ll draw a red marble, and increasingly surprising that you don’t. Don’t believe me? Check out chapter 3: “Babies’ Invisible Knowledge.”

Of course, Dehaene has fascinating stories to tell about the brain’s plasticity as well. He describes several experiments — unknown to me — where traumatized rats were reconditioned to prefer the room where the traumatizing shock initially took place.

He also tells the amazing story of “neuronal recycling.” That is: the neural real-estate we train to read initially housed other (evolutionarily essential) cognitive functions.

Human Brains and Machine Learning

Dehaene opens his book by contemplating definitions of learning — and by contrasting humans and machines in their ability to do so.

By one set of measures, computers have us beat.

For instance, one computer was programmed with the rules of the game Go, and then trained to play against itself. In three hours, it became better at the game than the human Go champion. And, it got better from there.

However, Dehaene still thinks humans are the better learners. Unlike humans, machines can’t generalize their learning. In other words: that Go computer can’t play any other games. In fact, if you changed the size of the Go board even slightly, it would be utterly stumped.

And, unlike humans, it can’t explain its learning to anyone else.

And, humans need relatively little data to start learning. Machines do better than us when they can crank millions of calculations. But, when they calculate as slowly as we do, they don’t learn nearly as much as we do.

As his subtitle reassures us, brains learn better than any machine. (And, based on my conversation with him, it’s clear that “…for now” means “for the long foreseeable future.”)

Final Thoughts

At this point, you see what I mean when I wrote that Dehaene has an impressive list of brain interests, and therefore offers an impressive catalog of brain guidance.

You might, however, wonder if this much technical information ends up being a little dry.

The answer is: absolutely not.

Dehaene’s fascination with all things brain is indeed palpable in this book. And, his library of amazing studies and compelling anecdotes keeps the book fresh and easy-to-read. I simply lost track of the number of times I wrote “WOW” in the margin.

This has been a great year for brain books. Whether you’re new to the field, or looking to deepen your understanding, I recommend How We Learn enthusiastically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=62&v=23KWKoD8xW8&feature=emb_logo

When Parents Teach Reading, Do They Also Promote Math Skills?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson

Parents begin teaching children well before schooling starts. Obviously.

In fact, parents often teach children topics that we might consider “academic”: say, how to read, or, how to count.

Researchers might investigate this parental pre-school teaching with some reasonable hypotheses.

For instance:

Presumably, the way that parents teach reading influences the reading skills that their children develop.

Likewise, presumably, the way parents teach numbers and counting influences the math skills that their children develop.

Let’s ask a more counter-intuitive question:

Does the way that parents teach reading influence their children’s math skills?

In other words, does early teaching in one discipline influence understand in a different discipline?

That question might raise skeptical eyebrows, for a number of reasons. In particular, most research that asks this kind of transfer question comes back with a negative answer.

That is: learning in one discipline (say: playing piano) doesn’t usually make you better at another discipline (say: doing calculus).

Today’s Study

Researchers in England wanted to explore this surprising hypothesis. They had hundreds of parents fill out questionnaires. Some questions focused on parental approaches to reading:

How often does the child discuss the meaning of a story with an adult?

or

How often is the child encouraged to name letters or sound out words?

Other questions focused on parental approaches to numbers:

How often is the child encouraged to identify numbers in books or the environment?

They then tested the children on a variety of number and math skills.

Can you put two ducks in the pond?

Can you point to the number 5?

If two horses are on the path, and another joins them, how many horses are on the path?

So, what did they find? Did either of the reading approaches predict number and math skill? Did they predict those skills better than the parents’ direct focus on numbers and math?

The Results

Yes, and yes.

The parents’ approach to reading predicted math success better than the parents’ focus on numbers.

And, when comparing the two approaches to reading,

A focus on letters and sounds led to better math performance than did a focus on the meaning of the story.

In the dry language of research:

Only letter-sound interactions could predict statistically significant unique variance in counting, number transcoding and calculation.

What Should Parents Do?

This research pool is deep and complicated, and — as far as I can see — we’re not yet able to offer definitive parenting advice.

So, this study found that parental focus on letter-sound interactions improved later math skills.

But:

Self-reports aren’t always reliable (although they’re very common in this field), and

The differences weren’t all that great, and

We have many different goals when we teach children to read.

That is: if our only goal were to help students understand numbers, then this study would encourage parents to focus substantially on letter-sound relationships.

But, of course, we want our children to think about the meaning of stories too. That’s one way they learn important developmental lessons. That’s how they think about meaning in their own lives.

This study — especially if it’s confirmed by later research — encourages us to use several strategies to teach our children about words and reading.

And, it gives us reason to think that those multiple approaches will help them with books, and with numbers too.

Big Hairy Audacious Education Proposal of the Month
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson

John Medina’s books have been a gateway drug for many a brain-focused teacher.

parenting teens

(Like so many others, I myself was introduced to the field by his book Brain Rules.)

His most recent book, Attack of the Teenage Brain!, joins a growing list of very helpful authors focused on adolescence and adolescents. (For instance: Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Lisa Damour.)

Medina offers many suggestions: you can read about them here.

One in particular stands out for its combined wisdom and audacity: educating parents.

Follow the Logic

Medina follows a straightforward logical chain to his audacious proposal. It goes like this:

To succeed academically, high school students need extra high doses of executive function (EF).  Sadly, because of the neurobiological tumult of adolescence, the various neural networks that allow for EF struggle to get the job done.

All that myelination, all that blooming and pruning: it can add up to a cognitive muddle that we call “teenage behavior.”

Given a) the importance of executive function, and b) the difficulty of EF during adolescence, what can we do to give our teens a boost?

Sidebar: Defining Executive Function

Because we hear so much about EF, you might think that everyone knows what it is.

In fact, you might have noticed that everyone’s list of executive functions is different — and worry that you’re the only one who doesn’t understand why.

Don’t fear; it’s not you. Definitions of EF vary widely.

Medina boils executive function down to three key features: working memory, self-control/inhibition, and mental flexibility. (That last one creates all sorts of room for definitional variety. So: planning, organizing, task-switching, prioritizing, strategically postponing…you get the idea.)

To strengthen executive function, we can’t really improve working memory. But, we might be able to help with self-control and mental flexibility. How might we do so?

Parenting Matters: So, Try Educating Parents

Medina devotes chapter 4 of Attack to research on parenting and EF.  We have all sorts of research to show that the right kind of parenting boosts executive function, and the wrong kind undermines it.

If good parenting enhances EF, we might improve high school learning by promoting the right kind of parenting. His big hairy audacious suggestion: “a night school annex for parents.”

As Medina writes:

“The argument for creating such a program is rooted in a blunt observation: most adults are woefully unprepared to rear children.” (p. 105)

Simply put, the “right kind of parenting” can indeed be taught. It’s called “authoritative” parenting — contrasted with “indulgent,” “indifferent,” and (unhelpfully) “authoritarian” parenting.

Medina’s parenting annex would teach authoritative parenting, thereby improve teens’ EF, and thereby enhance their learning.

Objections, and Answers

Objection #1: who are you to define “the right kind of parenting”? Is my parenting wrong just because you say so?

Answer: Medina walks his readers through lots of research on this question. The short answer: “the right kind of parenting” results in healthy and effective adults.

“Permissive” or “authoritarian” parenting isn’t bad because Medina (and Laurence Steinberg) say so. It’s bad because children parented that way struggle as adults.

You might not agree with their answer, but that’s what they say.

Objection #2: A night school annex for parents? Let’s be practical: how on earth would that work? The money. The time. The curriculum. The headaches.

I mean, really?

Answer: Medina has a curriculum answer, but leaves the other questions for another day. If we as a society ever agree to tackle this problem, we’ll find the money. We’ll fix the headaches.

In brief: when we decide that educating teens calls for educating parents, we will get the job done.

 

Strategies that Backfire: Monitoring Screen Time
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson

Teachers and parents, reasonably enough, worry about the time that children spend looking at screens. Given the phones, tablets, phablets, laptops, and televisions that surround them, it seems normal to worry about the long-term effects of screens, screens, screens.

monitoring screen time

Monitoring screen time seems the obvious parenting strategy, and obvious teacher recommendation.

Not So Fast…

Recent research out of Canada throws doubt on this seemingly sensible approach.

Researchers surveyed parents of young children (ages 1.5-5), asking about their technology habits and parenting approaches.

Sure enough, they found that monitoring screen time correlates with an increase in the child’s technology use.

That is: when parents reward children with extra screen time, those children use more screens. Ditto parents who punish with reduced screen time. Ditto parents who simply keep track of their child’s screen time.

YIKES.

What’s a Parent to Do?

As is so often true, our behavior points the way. Parents who use screens less often in front of their children model the behavior they want to see. Result: less screen time.

This finding holds true especially for screens at mealtimes.

The best advice we’ve got so far: if you don’t want your children to obsesses over their tables, avoid monitoring screen time.

Several Caveats

First, given the survey methodology, the study can find correlation, but can’t conclude causation.

Second, the nitty-gritty gets complicated. The research team kept track of multiple variables: mothers’ behavior vs. fathers’ behavior; screen time on week days vs. screen time on weekends. To understand the specific connections, click the link above.

Third, this study focused short-term correlations with very young children. We simply don’t know about older children. Who knows: teens forbidden from playing Minecraft more than 3 hours a day might just play less Minecraft.

Finally, I think research about bright screens before sleep is well-established enough to be worth a reminder here. Blue light from computer screens can muddle melatonin onset, and thereby interfere with sleep. In this case in particular, we should model healthy screen behavior.

Should Mothers Help Children With Homework?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson

Does a mother’s homework help benefit her children? Do they study better? Do they learn more?

mother's homework help

Over the years, researchers have found conflicting answers to these questions.

Perhaps that conflict results from the different kinds of “help” that mothers might provide. Researchers in Finland wanted to find out.

Asking the Right Questions

Jaana Viljaranta and her colleagues worked with several hundred 2nd-4th graders, their mothers, and their teachers.

(The researchers don’t explain why they focus on mothers. I imagine they assume that mothers offer more help than fathers, and – to be precise – focus on “maternal behavior” rather than “parental behavior.”)

Rather than simply ask “do you help your children with their homework,” they had mothers rate themselves in three categories.

Perhaps these mothers provide actual help or guidance.

Perhaps they simply check to see if their child has done the homework.

Or, perhaps they “grant autonomy”; that is, “trust that the child takes care of home assignments by him/herself.”

They looked for a connection between these self-ratings and two results.

First, what effect did this maternal behavior have on task-persistence? They had teachers answer questions like “does the student actively attempt to solve even difficult situations and tasks?”

And second: what effect did it have on students’ learning? Here, researchers used a standard measurement of reading and math skill – not the students’ grades.

A Mother’s Homework Help: Finding the Answers

Because researchers measured so many variables, they’ve got a lot of potential relationships to map.

The short version is:

When mothers help with homework, children are less task-persistent on their own.

When mothers grant autonomy, children are more task-persistent.

And, when mothers check that homework got done, that doesn’t influence task-persistence either way.

(These three findings apply to 2nd and 3rd grade, not 4th.)

In turn, increased task persistence suggested higher grades, and decreased task persistence suggested lower grades. (For both those findings, the results didn’t quite achieve statistical significance.)

In sum: help doesn’t help. Granting autonomy does.

A Mother’s Homework Help: Explaining the Answers

Why is this so? Why doesn’t homework help help?

The Finnish researchers based their study on a well-known theory about motivation: Self-Determination Theory. Edward Deci and Richard Ryan argue that people are motivated by a desire for three things: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Viljaranta and colleagues reason thus: when mothers help their children with homework, they reduce their child’s autonomy, and imply that they think their children lack necessary competence.

By holding back from helping, on the other hand, mothers boost their children’s sense of autonomy. They also show that they believe their children can get the work done on their own.

By promoting autonomy and competence, these mothers help their children develop intrinsic motivation, and thereby improve task persistence.

Not Too Fast…

All research has limitations, and we should keep this study’s limitations in mind.

This is only one study.

It was done in a very particular cultural context. (Grade school in Finland.)

And: researchers found a task-persistence effect only in 2nd and 3rd grade, not 4th. (And, they didn’t find statistically significant difference in learning at any point.)

Finally: researchers report on averages. Your child isn’t average.

Even if many (or most) children benefit when they get autonomy, others just might need some more support.

Research can help inform our decisions, but we must make those decisions one child at a time.

Addendum

After I wrote the post above, I discussed this research with a colleague who teachers in Finland. He responds thus:

The conclusion of the study may contain a cultural bias [as all research does — editor’s note.] Generally speaking, parents in Finland are quite hands off with schools — the very opposite of helicopter parenting. There is also a cultural preference for developing independence from a young age.

In other words: “granting autonomy” is already a cultural norm in Finland in ways that it might not be elsewhere. This background might influence our understanding of this research.

Motivation vs. IQ: Which Is More Important?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson

motivation vs. IQ

Do students benefit more from a high IQ or from high levels of intrinsic motivation?

Over at Quartz, Rebecca Haggerty argues for the importance of motivation. To make this argument, she draws on the research of Adele and Allen Gottfried. By gathering data on a group of children for decades, they conclude:

Kids who scored higher on measures of academic intrinsic motivation at a young age—meaning that they enjoyed learning for its own sake—performed better in school, took more challenging courses, and earned more advanced degrees than their peers. They were more likely to be leaders and more self-confident about schoolwork. Teachers saw them as learning more and working harder. As young adults, they continued to seek out challenges and leadership opportunities.

Even more than a high IQ, intrinsic motivation points students toward a fulfilling life.

Parenting to Promote Motivation

According to the Gottfrieds, how can parents encourage this trait?

Unsurprisingly, parental behavior can influence child development. Inquisitive parents foster inquisitiveness. Parents who read to their children promote a love of reading.

No matter how many parenting books say it’s okay, paying children for grades squashes a love of learning for its own sake.

In any case, the examples we set early on endure. In one of the Gottfrieds’ findings, children encouraged to be curious when they were eight took more science classes years later in high school. That’s parenting for the long haul.

(For some thoughts on teaching strategies to promote intrinsic motivation, click here.)

Motivation vs. IQ: A Caveat and Two Puzzles

A caveat:

Whenever thinking about the “motivation vs. IQ” question, we should pause to remember its complexity. It might be tempting to discount IQ completely. And yet, we know that something like intelligence exists, and that it’s good to have.

Richard Nisbett explores these questions here.

Two points in Haggerty’s article strike me as puzzling.

First, the Gottfrieds speak of children being “motivationally gifted.” However, we know from Dweck’s research that such praise demotivates students.

We should stop praising children for who they are (“gifted, talented, a natural”) and focus on praising them for what they do (“detailed and imaginative work”).

Second, a detail. Haggerty writes that 19% of the Gottfrieds’ subjects have an IQ of higher than 130. That’s an astonishingly high number.

In a typical population, just over 2% of people have an IQ in that range.

In raw numbers: 25 of their subjects have “genius-level” IQ, and we would expect than number to be about 3.

If Haggerty got that number right, then we should be hesitant to extrapolate to the general population from this remarkable sample.

Military Parents Serving Overseas: What Happens To The Children?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson

deployment hinders learning

We got a Twitter question earlier this week about the educational experience of military children. A quick review of the research suggests we can start to answer this question: does military deployment hinder learning for those children?

The most comprehensive study I found looks at data for over 56,000 (!) children. Researchers Engel, Gallagher, and Lyle wanted to know: when a parent goes away on deployment, what happens to their child’s academic performance?

Of course, parental absence might well upset children and prompt greater academic struggles. Children typically benefit from the structure that intact households can provide.

The researchers also hypothesize that deployment might improve academic performance. The child, they reason, might develop a greater sense of responsibility when one parent is away. Or, perhaps, the extra household income that comes from “hostile fire pay” might benefit learning.

So, which is it?

Military Deployment Hinders Learning, Slightly…

Engel, Gallagher, and Lyle found that a parent’s absence because of deployment does affect their children’s learning.

Specifically, deployment itself brings down standardized test scores 0.42%; each additional month prompts and additional 0.11% reduction. The averages are slightly higher in math and science, and lower in reading in social sciences and reading.

Importantly, these effects last. Engel & Co. found that these children were still slightly behind their peers four years later. By the fifth year, however, they had — on average — fully caught up.

The researchers got data only for those children who attend on-base schools. Engel & Co. argue that schools run by the military are better equipped to help these students than other school systems, and so the gaps may be even greater for children in school off base.

These data, by the way, come only from army bases. There’s no obvious reason that the numbers would be different for other branches of the military.

What to make of these numbers?

On the one hand, 0.11%/month hardly seems like much. That’s one tenth of a percentage point — hardly enough to notice.

On the other hand, those numbers add up quickly. For a 12-month deployment — with the initial decrement of 0.42% — that adds up to almost two full percentage points. Knowing that students experience even greater difficulties in math and science, we can genuinely worry about their progress in these disciplines.

And, this pattern creates problems for lots of families. In 2007, 700,000 children saw a parent leave on military deployment.

When we’re talking about that number of children, we should be keenly interested in helping.

How We Can Help?

In the first place, it’s important for teachers to know about these data. When a student’s parent deploys, we should be on the lookout for some initial academic difficulties. And, we should know that they might well increase over time.

Math and science teachers in particular should keep this potential on their radar.

The best way to help, of course, will vary. Perhaps a teacher can provide extra support and understanding. Perhaps a school has programs that provide much-needed structure.

We should also note that these problems might linger. Few of us are surprised that a child whose parent is leaving experiences distress, or that this distress might lead to academic struggle.

However, we might well be surprised that this struggle can last for years. And so, we should keep our eyes on those students whose parents have recently deployed, and also those whose parents have returned in the last few years.

At the same time, we should keep in mind that this research reports averages. Some students clearly struggle during this difficult time. However, not all of them do. Some might — as the researchers initially hypothesized — see a parent’s absence as a time to assume greater responsibility.

Clearly, student resilience is an important story in these data.

With this information in mind, teachers and schools can better serve the children whose parents are serving their country.

Head Start: Right on Time
Austin Matte
Austin Matte

AdobeStock_90368980_Credit

“Children who grow up in poverty often exhibit delays in academic and social-emotional school readiness that undermine their school progress at kindergarten entry and initiate a lifelong trajectory of underachievement and underemployment.”

 

What a powerful concept — a lifelong trajectory of underachievement that is initiated by the time a child reaches kindergarten. Kindergarten! Most people are just aging out of childhood amnesia by this point, and already, a potentially lifelong trajectory has been established.

In a research article published last month, Karen Bierman and colleagues (2017) open with the line quoted above. They go on to mention that, in addition to the differences in academic and professional outcomes, there are also disparities in physical and mental health experienced by children growing up in poverty.

One focus of the study is a well-known problem regarding early childhood interventions: fadeout. Fadeout occurs when children show immediate gains in response to a given education program only for these gains to dissipate over time, leaving the children ostensibly no better off than those who did not participate in the program.

Such fadeout was found to be the case with the federally-funded Head Start program, which is also the focus of the Bierman study. Those who founded the Head Start program recognized the formative potential of the earliest years of life, though studies have found that the program does not live up to its potential. A 2012 federal impact study noted that Head Start “improved children’s preschool outcomes across developmental domains, but had few impacts on children in kindergarten through 3rd grade“ (Puma, et al., 2012).

Another study assessing federal- and state-funded preschools found the instructional quality of such institutions to be “especially problematic” (Early, et al., 2005). Policy-makers have cited such research to back their argument that the Head Start program is not worth the billions of dollars it receives.

I understand not wanting to invest in a program which was found to have no lasting results (of what was measured). Though let us not forget that the issue isn’t whether or not to invest in young children — investing in young children may be the most efficacious way to spend education dollars. This issue then is how we are investing in young children. We ought to be making sustained investments to figure out what program elements produce the best results, and for whom.

Bierman and her colleagues suggest that, in part, the nature of the intervention is to blame for the fading of positive, initial gains. They say that the transient results may be due to the quality of the program.

I agree that improvements made to a given program can make for more lasting results, however, there’s an additional point to be made: people misunderstand the implications of fadeout. Fadeout has been framed to mean that a given program did not achieve what was intended, despite the fact that just the opposite may be true.

I will go into further detail about this when I talk about fadeout below, but first, I’ll review the Bierman study.

The Current Study

Bierman and her colleagues understand that high-quality early childhood education yields positive results. In this study, they go a step further and attempt to elucidate which may be the active ingredients that enable programs to produce positive, long-term outcomes.

Toward that end, the researchers designed a study with one control group and two experimental groups to receive different interventions in preschool. Then, they assessed the students years later when they neared the end of second grade. Below is a simplified summary of the groups and assessments.

Group 1 – The Control Group

Students in this group attended their Head Start center, just as they would have otherwise.

Group 2 – Added Classroom Program

Students in this group also attended their Head Start center, though their classrooms benefitted from an added curriculum that promoted the development of children’s social-emotional, language, and literacy skills.

Group 3 – Added Classroom Program and Home Visits

In addition to the added curriculum that the students in group 2 received, the parents of students in group 3 also received home visits. During these home visits parents were shown how to encourage their children’s literacy growth and develop their children’s learning and self-control.

The Assessments

Three years later, when the students were finishing second grade, the researchers assessed the students’ mental health and academic outcomes via teacher reports, student self-reports, and assessments of reading and math skills.

Results

Group 1 Vs. Group 2

Relative to children in the control group, those in a Head Start classroom with the added curriculum showed improved mental health on four out of five teacher-rated measures: classroom participation, social competence, student–teacher relationships, and reduced peer problems. These students also showed near-significant improvements on the fifth measure: learning behaviors. These students also saw improvements in their perceptions of their own social competence.

These students did not appear to benefit academically from the added curriculum.

Group 2 Vs. Group 3

Adding home visits did not further improve any of the mental health measures as rated by the teachers, above and beyond the gains that the children experienced due to the added curriculum alone. Though these children experienced enhanced perceptions of their own social competence, in addition to reduced perceptions of peer problems.

Interestingly, students who received the added curriculum and whose parents received home visits showed improved results on three of the five academic measures (sight words, reading skills, and math skills), with near significant improvements in a fourth measure (letter-word identification).

In brief: the additional class prompted mental health benefits, whereas the home visits yielded additional mental health and academic benefits.

What Have We Learned

Parents matter

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: work through the parents. The current study produced the best results when parents were purposefully encouraged and enabled to bolster their children’s learning.

I feel we have yet to truly harness the influential power of the parents. Studies testing this notion continue to show promising results, and I am convinced that the purposeful design and application of programs meant to build the capacity of caretakers will yield impactful results. These positive effects will be compounded when combined with high-quality, targeted curricula and tailored experiences for young children.

Fadeout

I’d like to make two points about fadeout.

My first point is that the fading out of initial gains brought about from a preschool intervention is not the rule. Because the academic gains achieved by Head Start do not last does not mean that an early intervention’s academic gains cannot last. As we see with the present study, the intervention made improvements to the program and was thus able to bring about sustained change.

Whether or not positive results are attained at all, and whether or not these results last, is completely contingent on each individual’s experience with the given program. Different programs will yield different results with different individuals, the effects of which will last varying durations with each participant. Programs will fare better when they meet children’s individual needs.

The second point I’d like to make regarding fadeout is the following: in order for there to be fadeout, gains must have been made initially. And if gains were made initially, the program worked! Is it the fault of the intervention for not creating gains that are present years later, or is it the fault of the subsequent years of schooling for not maintaining those gains?

Allow me to draw a parallel. You, a novice runner, decide you’re going to run a marathon. You hire a trainer. This trainer assesses your abilities, designs a day-by-day training program for you, and shows up every day to motivate you to do that day’s activities. Within a few months, you’re on pace to run the entire marathon in sub-eight-minute miles. All you need to do is stick with the program.

But, a couple months before the marathon your trainer has to move away and can no longer work with you. So, you hire another trainer. This new trainer shows up everyday with a different progression of activities for you to do, to which you completely commit. However, over the subsequent weeks, you notice your mile time is slipping. Your time is not substantially improving, even though you do all the activities this new trainer has prescribed. Finally, on marathon day, you run the entire race but your average mile time is just over nine minutes.

Would you say it is the fault of the first trainer that your initial gains did not last? Saying that an early childhood program does not make an impact because students’ grades are no better off three years after the fact, in a sense, is saying just that. Providing high-quality early experiences (your first trainer), followed by suboptimal grade school experiences (your second trainer), might not yield stellar long-term results. Surprise!

Learning happens on a continuum. Experiences build on experiences. High-quality early childhood experiences will set an individual up to make the most out of the following experiences (and studies have shown that these experiences alone leave individuals better off across the lifespan). However, high-quality experiences must also follow in order to make the most of the foundation that has already been laid. Early childhood education is powerfully formative, though it is only the beginning.

Conclusion

When he announced the creation of the Head Start program in 1965, President Johnson said, “We set out to make certain that poverty’s children would not be forevermore poverty’s captives.” President Johnson’s intention of improving people’s lives by investing in them when they’re young was insightful, even though the program may have been lacking. Bierman and her colleagues also note that reducing discrepancies across the population through early intervention would be “highly strategic for public health.”

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University, 47% of children age 5 years or younger are living in low-income households (link). While early childhood education is not poverty’s panacea, research has shown that quality programs can make a substantial, lifelong impact. Further, improving caretakers’ capacities will only compound the benefits reaped from providing high-quality early childhood education, making for sustained gains in academics and in life. Lastly, if we are to capitalize on high-quality early experiences, they must be followed by more high-quality experiences. Neglecting all of this is choosing to pass up on potential.

References

Bierman, K. L., Heinrichs, B. S., Welsh, J. A., Nix, R. L., & Gest, S. D. (2017). Enriching preschool classrooms and home visits with evidence‐based programming: sustained benefits for low‐income children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 58(2), 129–137. [link]

Early, D., Barbarin, O., Bryant, D., Burchinal, M., Chang, F., Clifford, R., … & Kraft-Sayre, M. (2005). Pre-kindergarten in eleven states: NCEDL’s multi-state study of pre-kindergarten and study of state-wide early education programs (SWEEP). Preliminary Descriptive Report. NCEDL Working Paper. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. [link]

Puma, M., Bell, S., Cook, R., Heid, C., Broene, P., Jenkins, F., … & Downer, J. (2012). Third grade follow-up to the Head Start Impact Study final report, OPRE Report # 2012-45, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. [link

Parenting Matters, and Earlier than You Think
Austin Matte
Austin Matte

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Studies of neglect and maltreatment of young children have revealed a lot about early brain development (e.g., Cicchetti, 2002; Nelson, 2000). These studies have highlighted that experiences in the first years of life can have profound implications across the lifespan.

In a seminal study, Nelson and others (2007) found that children reared in abject circumstances showed severe cognitive delays. Children that were adopted out of these environments and into more supportive homes experienced some cognitive recovery, with children faring better the earlier they were adopted.

Studies of neglect on the developing brain show the consequences of early detrimental environmental factors. Though at the same time, how might we be able to optimize early experiences?

We know that these years present a period when the brain is uniquely malleable. How can we leverage this malleability to set children up to achieve their full potential? What might the optimal circumstances look like for a developing child?

In the first years of life especially, the differences between the environments in which children grow and learn are driven by caregivers. They are the ones responsible for most all of the external factors that affect the child’s development. As I mentioned in my last post, research continues to elucidate specific examples of environmental factors that contribute to early development, and in particular, the role that caregivers play within that environment.

We all presume that parents play an important role in a child’s upbringing, and in fact, studies have revealed that even a normal variation in parenting can have a great influence on brain development (e.g., Francis & Meaney, 1999).

The whole gist of this preamble is to say that we know early experiences matter, and we know that caregivers are largely responsible for those experiences. While we have a good idea of what constitutes a healthy environment for development, we have yet to pin down an optimal set of experiences in the first years of life, if such a thing exists. Further, we just don’t know to what degree subtle changes in the environment affect later outcomes.

In the present post, I present an article published this past summer from the growing body of work on the effects of parent-child interactions. This particular study explores the correlation between a mother’s behavior and her child’s brain development.

The Current Study

Researchers in the present study (Bernier, Calkins, & Bell, 2016) wanted to investigate whether the quality of a mother’s parenting behavior influences the development of the infant’s frontal cortex.

Previous research has shown that the prefrontal cortex, the forward-most region of the frontal cortex, plays a large role in an individual’s executive function (EF): the suite of skills that enables an individual to control her own behavior and emotions. EF has been found to correlate with life-long outcomes. (Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child has created a video that succinctly explains the topic.)

In testing the correlation between parenting and frontal lobe development, researchers carried out two types of assessments: mothers’ parenting behavior, and children’s frontal resting electroencephalogram (EEG) power at 5, 10, and 24 months of age. (More on “EEG power” in a minute…)

Researchers assessed mothers’ parenting behavior in the first of three visits. They gave mothers two simple infant toys, keys and a rattle, and instructed them to interact with their infants as they normally would at home, for a total of two minutes. Researchers studied four areas of maternal behavior:

  1. Sensitivity – the extent to which the mother’s interactions related with the infant’s behavior. Does she acknowledge the infant’s feelings? Soothe the child? Pick up on the infant’s interests?
  2. Intrusiveness – the extent to which the mother displayed over-controlling behavior or was focused on her own agenda. Does she ignore the infant’s cues? Force toys on the infant? Demonstrate intrusive physical interactions?
  3. Positive Affect – the extent to which the mother expressed positive emotions through her tone of voice and facial expressions.
  4. Physical Stimulation – the extent to which the mother directly stimulated her infant’s body for the purpose of heightening the infant’s level of arousal. Does she tickle her infant? Exercise her infant’s limbs?

Now, I know what you’re thinking, and yes, two minutes is not a long period of time to assess the quality of a mother’s interactions with her child–especially when the researchers want to relate those two minutes to the child’s brain development. While these assessments were not meant to be robust, they are considered to be indicative of the interactions that the child has with the parent in general.

Next, children’s resting EEG power of the frontal lobe was assessed during each of the three visits, timed when the children were 5, 10, and 24 months of age.

Two points to clarify.

First, the researchers were most interested in parenting habits that may contribute to the development of a child’s executive function, which depends on processing in the prefrontal cortex. The current study focuses on this region of the brain because of this known association between EF and the frontal lobe.

Also, what is “resting EEG power”? EEG measures electrical activity in the cortex, or the outermost layer in the brain. EEG power essentially grows in a linear fashion across infancy, and is thus thought to be an indicator of brain development (Bell & Fox, 1992; Cuevas & Bell, 2011).

Just know that higher EEG power in infancy, even at rest, is thought to indicate further brain development. (Of course, there is a lot of variation in the growth of EEG power from person to person (e.g., Cuevas et al., 2012).)

Findings

While many of this study’s findings are very nuanced, I highlight here what I believe to be the most important takeaways.

(I’ll emphasize below that the findings are strictly correlational. They might be due to causation, but given the nature of the study, we cannot say this for certain.)

To begin with, a mother’s display of positive emotions, as seen when interacting with her infant, was essentially unrelated to frontal lobe EEG power when the children were 5 months old. This finding may be due to a number of reasons: perhaps, by 5 months of age, a mother’s expression of positive emotions has not yet had time to influence the child’s brain development. Again, merely speculation.

The other interesting finding from the study I’d like to point out is in regard to children of mothers who expressed positive emotions AND heightened their children’s emotional arousal LESS through physical contact, like through moving their limbs. These mothers did not barrage their children with physical stimulation, and instead engaged them with their voice and facial expressions.

This group of children displayed higher EEG power at both 10 months and 24 months. Further, the resting frontal EEG power of these children increased at the quickest rate between 5 to 10 months of age, and then again from 10 to 24 months of age.

One possible interpretation of the results might suggest that by expressing positive emotions and refraining from heightening the level of arousal through physical contact, a mother can increase the resting EEG power of her child’s frontal lobe, thought to be a sign of cognitive development.

Possible Reasons for the Correlations – Be a Good Skeptic

I cannot convey strongly enough the skepticism with which you should consider these, and all correlational findings. In this case, the magnitude of the correlations was small, and there are a number of things that could account for these changes.

One possible, and plausible, explanation for these results may be that a mother’s behavior and her child’s brain development both encourage one another; change in one spurs change in the other.

As mentioned above, the mother’s behavior while interacting with her child was studied for only two minutes–hardly a robust assessment. The study does not take into consideration any other environmental factor which could play a role, for example:

  • paternal behavior when interacting with the child,
  • the quality and availability of toys at the children’s home,
  • child care settings,
  • siblings & grandparents, or
  • the multitude of other environmental factors that play a role in shaping how a child’s brain develops.

Or maybe an assessment of genetics would explain these correlations. Or maybe not. We just don’t know.

The Big Takeaway

I hope you–like me–find this study fascinating, and while at the very least it provides possible direction for future lines of inquiry, it is possible that this simple variation in a mother’s behavior had some effect on her child’s brain development. In fact, when taken into consideration with findings from other studies, the authors believe it to be likely that these variations in motherly interactions do in fact affect a child’s brain development. In any case, this study’s results continue to shed light on what an optimal environment may be for early brain development, underscoring specific parenting characteristics that show promise.

Further, however, there is a bigger takeaway which bolsters what we already know: early experiences matter, and they matter very early on. By 10 months of age, there are measurable differences in the frontal brain function of normally-developing infants associated with variations in maternal input. There is so much that we do not know about the developing brain, however, we do know that experiences in the first years of life have a measurable impact. We should not wait until we can define precisely what an optimal infancy looks like before we start getting serious about how we prepare the next generation.
References

Bell, M. A., & Fox, N. A. (1992). The relations between frontal brain electrical activity and cognitive development during infancy. Child Development, 63(5), 1142-1163.

Bernier, A., Calkins, S. D., & Bell, M. A. (2016). Longitudinal associations between the quality of mother–infant interactions and brain development across infancy. Child development.

Cicchetti, D. (2002). The impact of social experience on neurobiological systems: Illustration from a constructivist view of child maltreatment. Cognitive Development, 17, 1407–1428. doi:10.1016/S0885-2014(02)00121-1

Cuevas, K., & Bell, M. A. (2011). EEG and ECG from 5 to 10 months of age: Developmental changes in baseline activation and cognitive processing during a working memory task. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 80(2), 119-128.

Francis, D. D., & Meaney, M. J. (1999). Maternal care and the development of stress responses. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 9(1), 128-134.

Harvard Center on the Developing Child’s video on Executive Function http://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/inbrief-executive-function-skills-for-life-and-learning/

Nelson, C. A. (Ed.) (2000). The effects of early adversity on neurobehavioral development. The Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, 31, (Vol. 31). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers.

Nelson, C. A., Zeanah, C. H., Fox, N. A., Marshall, P. J., Smyke, A. T., & Guthrie, D. (2007). Cognitive recovery in socially deprived young children: The Bucharest Early Intervention Project. Science, 318 (5858), 1937-1940.