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Children's learning & development

Infant Development

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Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website

New screening tool helps identify children at risk

An exam, called the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) Network Neurobehavioral Scale (NNNS), has been created to identify newborns who may have problems with school readiness and behavior at age four. This opens up the possibility of early intervention to prevent these problems. The screening exam has been tested on 1248 babies, mostly black and on public assistance. Five discrete behavioral profiles were reliably identified; the most extreme negative profile was found in 5.8% of the infants. Infants with poor performance were more likely to have behavior problems at age three, school readiness problems at age four, and low IQ at 4 ½ — 40% had clinically significant problems externalizing (impulsivity and acting out), internalizing (anxiety, depression, withdrawn personalities), and with school readiness (delays in motor, concepts and language skills), and 35% had low IQ.

Liu, J., Bann, C., Lester, B., Tronick, E., Das, A., Lagasse, L., et al. (2010). Neonatal Neurobehavior Predicts Medical and Behavioral Outcome. Pediatrics, 125(1), e90-98. doi: 10.1542/peds.2009-0204.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/bu-nst120709.php

New view of the way young children think

It seems that young children neither plan for the future nor live completely in the present — rather they call up the past as they need it. A study in which 3 ½ year-olds and 8-year-olds played a computer game that involved teaching children simple rules about two cartoon characters and their preferences for different objects has found that 8 year olds had no trouble remembering the preferences and clicking either a happy or sad face when the character had an object they liked or disliked, but 3 year olds found the task difficult. Measuring pupil dilation (a reflection of mental effort), it was found that the older children found the sequence easy because they could anticipate the answer before the object appeared, but preschoolers waited until they saw the object. The researchers suggest that rather than repeat something again and again that requires a young child to prepare for something in advance, you should try to highlight the problem that they are going to have.

Chatham, C.H., Frank, M.J. & Munakata, Y. 2009. Pupillometric and behavioral markers of a developmental shift in the temporal dynamics of cognitive control. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 5529-5533.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/uoca-crp032409.php
http://www.physorg.com/news157123504.html

Infants have limited ability to draw on past to understand other people's behavior

We know that providing advance information about the goal of instruction helps people learn. Now it appears that this is true even for infants, but they need the additional prompt of the same location. The study involved infants first being shown, five times, an assistant reach for and pick up one of two plastic toys while saying "Wow!" The infants were then randomly selected to stay in the same room or go to a different one. It was found that those who stayed in the same room were more likely to show surprise when the assistant changed her mind about which toy she wanted.

Sommerville, J.A. & Crane, C.C. 2009. Ten-month-old infants use prior information to identify an actor's goal. Developmental Science, 12 (2), 314-325.

http://www.physorg.com/news151853797.html
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uow-ido012209.php

Even toddlers can ‘chunk' information for better remembering

We all know it’s easier to remember a long number (say a phone number) when it’s broken into chunks. Now a study has found that we don’t need to be taught this; it appears to come naturally to us. The study showed 14 months old children could track only three hidden objects at once, in the absence of any grouping cues, demonstrating the standard limit of working memory. However, with categorical or spatial cues, the children could remember more. For example, when four toys consisted of two groups of two familiar objects, cats and cars, or when six identical orange balls were grouped in three groups of two.

Feigenson, L. & Halberda, J. 2008. Conceptual knowledge increases infants' memory capacity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 (29), 9926-9930.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-07/jhu-etg071008.php

Toddlers can learn complex actions from picture-book reading

A study of preschool children has found picture books not only encourage reading development, but also help toddlers learn about the real world. However, very young children (18 months) were much less likely to be able to imitate specific target actions on novel real-world objects when the pictures were colored-pencil drawings rather than life-like color photographs.

Simcock, G. & DeLoache, J. 2006. Get the picture? The Effects of Iconicity on Toddlers' Reenactment from Picture Books. Developmental Psychology, 42 (6)

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-11/apa-tlc103006.php

Psychological reasoning begins earlier than had been thought

According to conventional wisdom, babies don't begin to develop sophisticated psychological reasoning about people until they are about 4 years old. A study of 15-month-olds proves otherwise. The study used a non-verbal approach, for obvious reasons, and the researchers suggest earlier studies that found 3 year olds unable to reason about what others believe used verbal tasks that were overly complex for the young children.

Onishi, K.H. & Baillargeon, R. 2005. Do 15-Month-Old Infants Understand False Beliefs? Science, 308, 255-258.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-04/uoia-prb041405.php

Early learning leaves lasting changes in brain

An owl study points to the importance of early childhood education, by demonstrating that early learning experiences forever change the brain's structure. While some parts of the brain remain relatively flexible throughout life, other parts lose the ability to make large-scale changes in connections early in life. Those brain regions that help sense and interpret the world are most affected by early childhood experiences.

Linkenhoker, B.A., von der Ohe, C.G. & Knudsen, E.I. 2005. Anatomical traces of juvenile learning in the auditory system of adult barn owls. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 93 – 98.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-12/sumc-ell121704.php

Infants Don't Encode Long-Term Memories Until Second Year

It appears that the area of the brain thought to play a key role in encoding long-term memory matures in spurts. A new study demonstrates that a major spurt happens after a person's first year and then takes a second year to fully mature. Babies exposed to a series of actions when they were 9, 17 or 24 months old, were tested four months later. Those babies who had been 17 or 24 months old recalled the actions well, but the younger babies didn’t. The dramatic growth that occurs in the brain between 8 and 12 months may be required for long-term memory.

Liston, C. &Kagan, J. 2002. Brain development: Memory enhancement in early childhood. Nature, 419 (6910), 896.

tags development: 

Child Development

Children's cognitive development

See separate pages for

Infant development

Language development

Adolescence

 

Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website

Math theory explains children's cognitive development

Around age five, children begin to understand that if John is taller than Mary, and Mary is taller than Sue, then John is also taller than Sue – Transitive Inference. They also begin to understand that there are more fruit than apples in a grocery store – Class Inclusion. Now a mathematical theory explains why these two reasoning skills appear at the same time. It seems that both involve the ability to apply two lines of thinking about a problem at the same time, whereas younger children are limited to one. The theory provides a good account not only of Transitive Inference and Class Inclusion, but also five other forms of inference that are acquired around the same age: Matrix Completion, Cardinality, Card Sorting, Balance Scale, and Theory of Mind.

Phillips, S., Wilson, W. H., & Halford, G. S. (2009). What Do Transitive Inference and Class Inclusion Have in Common? Categorical (Co)Products and Cognitive Development. PLoS Comput Biol, 5(12), e1000599. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000599. Full text available at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000599

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/plos-omr120709.php

Genes more important for IQ as children get older

Data from six studies carried out in the US, the UK, Australia and the Netherlands, involving a total of 11,000 pairs of twins, has revealed that genes become more important for intelligence as we get older. The researchers calculated that genes accounted for some 41% of the variation in intelligence in 9 year olds, rising to 55% in 12 year olds, and 66% in 17 year olds. It was suggested that as they get older, children get better at controlling (or perhaps are allowed to have more control over) their environment, which they do in a way that accentuates their ‘natural’ abilities — bright children feed their abilities; less bright children choose activities and friends that are less challenging.

Haworth, C.M.A. et al. 2009. R Plomin The heritability of general cognitive ability increases linearly from childhood to young adulthood. Molecular Psychiatry, advance online publication 2 June 2009; doi: 10.1038/mp.2009.55

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327174.600-genes-drive-iq-more-as-kids-get-older.html

Brain's organization switches as children become adults

Imaging studies of the brain while it is supposedly doing nothing have identified four brain networks with varying responsibilities. The networks typically involve tight links between several brain regions that are physically distant from each other. A new study involving 210 subjects aged 7 to 31 has now found that in contrast to the adult brain, most of the tightest connections in a child's brain are between brain regions that are physically close to each other. As the child grows to adulthood, the brain switches from an organization based on local networks based on physical proximity to long-distance networks based on functionality.

Fair, D.A. et al. 2009. Functional Brain Networks Develop from a “Local to Distributed” Organization. PLoS Computational Biology, 5(5), e1000381. Full text available at http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1000381

http://www.physorg.com/news161605421.html
http://www.physorg.com/news160920910.html
http://www.livescience.com/health/090518-child-brain.html

Maturity brings richer memories

New research suggests adults can remember more contextual details than children, and that this is related to the development of the prefrontal cortex. While in a MRI scanner, 49 volunteers aged eight to 24 were shown pictures of 250 common scenes and told they would be tested on their memory of these scenes. In both children and adults, correct recognition of a scene was associated with higher activation in several areas of the prefrontal cortex and the medial temporal lobe when they were studying the pictures. However, the older the volunteers, the more frequently their correct answers were enriched with contextual detail. These more detailed memories correlated with more intense activation in a specific region of the PFC. A number of studies have suggested that the PFC develops later than other brain regions.

The report appeared in the August 5 advance online edition of Nature Neuroscience.

http://www.physorg.com/news105549812.html
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-08/miot-msm080107.php

A first glimpse at healthy brain and behavioral development

Initial data from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) MRI Study of Normal Brain Development, a large, population-based study that began in 1999 and is documenting structural brain development and behavior from birth to young adulthood, has revealed that:

  • Norms were higher with only healthy children being considered (the study excluded children who had any signs or known risk of serious neurological or psychiatric disorders).
  • Gender differences were less evident. Boys performed better on perceptual analysis, and girls performed better on processing speed and motor dexterity. The slight advantage girls showed in verbal learning disappeared by adolescence. There was no difference in math ability.
  • Income predicted IQ and academic achievement, but lower-income children performed better than in previous studies, with the study being restricted to healthy children.
  • Performance climbed steeply from age 6, but leveled off overall for most tests between 10 and 12 years of age, then improved more slowly or not at all during adolescence.

For more information see http://www.brain-child.org/.

Waber, D.P. et al. 2007. The NIH MRI Study of Normal Brain Development: Performance of a Population Based Sample of Healthy Children Aged 6 to 18 Years on a Neuropsychological Battery. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 13, 1-18.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-05/chb-afg051607.php
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-05/nion-nst051507.php
http://www.physorg.com/news98692796.html
http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=A15FAD05-E7F2-99DF-34B5A1856E790722&chanID=sa003

Kids can remember events even if they can't remember times

How do we remember when an event has occurred? Most of the time we do it by reconstructing the event and inferring the time from details stored. Given that, it should perhaps be no surprise to learn that while children aged 4 through 13 can recall the details of an event fairly well, they are unable to extrapolate further and link those details with a specific time of year, even when it occurs around a major holiday. The finding has implications for legal testimony, where lawyers are inclined to cast doubt on memories if the child is unable to recall when the event occurred.

Friedman, W.J. & Lyon, T.D.2005. Development of Temporal-Reconstructive Abilities. Child Development, 76(6), 1202

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-11/sfri-kcr110805.php

Development of working memory with age

An imaging study of 20 healthy 8- to 30-year-olds has shed new light on the development of working memory. The study found that pre-adolescent children relied most heavily on the prefrontal and parietal regions of the brain during the working memory task; adolescents used those regions plus the anterior cingulate; and in adults, a third area of the brain, the medial temporal lobe, was brought in to support the functions of the other areas. Adults performed best. The results support the view that a person's ability to have voluntary control over behavior improves with age because with development, additional brain processes are used.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-10/uopm-dow102104.php

Reese, E. & Brown N. 2000. Reminiscing and recounting in the preschool years. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 14, 1-17.

Finding: Parents can help their child remember events that have happened to them by reminiscing with them (recalling with them events that they have shared) and encouraging them to recall details about unshared events.

Talk about past events can be classified as either reminiscing (discussingshared experiences) or recounting (discussing unshared experiences).
This study looked at reminiscing and recounting between preschoolers and their mothers. Forty children between three and five participated in the experiment. It was found that children reported more unique memory information when they were discussing unshared experiences (recounting) rather than shared. Mothers who provided morememory information during reminiscing and asked for more information during recounting had children who reported more unique information about events.

Buckner, J.P. & Fivush, R. 1998. Gender and self in children's autobiographical narratives. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 12, 407-29.

Finding: Gender differences in conversational style seem to appear at an early age. At age 8, girls' recounting of personal experiences are already more detailed and socially contexted than boys' narratives are.

This study looked at the differences between girls and boys in recounting personal experiences. The children were aged eight, and from a middle-class background. As has tended to be found with adults, it was found that the girls' narratives were longer, more coherent and more detailed than were the boys' narratives. The girls' narratives also tended to mention more people and more emotions, and to be placed in a social context.

Adolescence

Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website

Aerobic fitness boosts IQ in teenage boys

Data from the 1.2 million Swedish men born between 1950 and 1976 who enlisted for mandatory military service at the age of 18 has revealed that on every measure of cognitive performance, average test scores increased according to aerobic fitness — but not muscle strength. The link was strongest for logical thinking and verbal comprehension, and the association was restricted to cardiovascular fitness. The results of the study also underline the importance of getting healthier between the ages of 15 and 18 while the brain is still changing — those who improved their cardiovascular health between 15 and 18 showed significantly greater intelligence scores than those who became less healthy over the same time period. Those who were fittest at 18 were also more likely to go to college. Although association doesn’t prove cause, the fact that the association was only with cardiovascular fitness and not strength supports a cardiovascular effect on brain function. Results from over 260,000 full-sibling pairs, over 3,000 sets of twins, and more than 1,400 sets of identical twins, also supports a causal relationship.

[1486] Åberg, M AI., Pedersen N. L., Torén K., Svartengren M., Bäckstrand B., Johnsson T., et al.
(2009).  Cardiovascular fitness is associated with cognition in young adulthood.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 106(49), 20906 - 20911.

http://www.physorg.com/news179415275.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6692474/Physical-health-leads-to-mental-health.html

Amphetamine use in adolescence may impair adult working memory

Rats exposed to high doses of amphetamines at an age that corresponds to the later years of human adolescence showed significant declines in working memory as adults, long after the exposure. The researchers tested two types of amphetamine exposure: intermittent (a steady dose every other day) and "binge-escalation," in which increasing amounts of the drug were given over a period of four days, followed by a simulated binge – a high dose every two hours for eight hours on the fifth day. The type of exposure did not make a significant difference.

Stanis, J.J. et al. 2009. Amphetamine-induced deficits in a working memory task are more significant in drug-exposed adolescent rats than drug-exposed adults. Presented October 21 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/uoia-aui101909.php

Linking education to future goals may boost grades more than helping with homework

A review of 50 studies looking at what kinds of parent involvement helps children's academic achievement has revealed that the most important thing parents can do for their middle school children (early adolescence) is relate academic achievement to future job goals, and give advice on specific study strategies. Parents' involvement in school events also had a positive effect, but a smaller one. Helping with homework had mixed results.

Hill, N.E. & Tyson, D.F. 2009. Parental Involvement in Middle School: A Meta-Analytic Assessment of the Strategies That Promote Achievement. Developmental Psychology, 45 (3), 740-763.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/apa-tet051909.php

Adolescent binge drinking may compromise white matter

An imaging study of 28 teens, of whom half had a history of binge drinking (but did not meet the criteria for alcohol abuse), has found that those who had engaged in binge drinking episodes had lower coherence of white matter fibers in 18 different areas across the brain. The findings add to a growing literature indicating that adolescent alcohol involvement is associated with specific brain characteristics. White matter integrity is essential to the efficient relay of information in the brain.

[1426] McQueeny, T., Schweinsburg B. C., Schweinsburg A. D., Jacobus J., Bava S., Frank L. R., et al.
(2009).  Altered white matter integrity in adolescent binge drinkers.
Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research. 33(7), 1278 - 1285.

http://www.physorg.com/news159646086.html
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-04/ace-abd041509.php

Childhood sleep problems persisting through adolescence may affect cognitive abilities

A longitudinal study involving 916 twins whose parents reported their children's sleep problems from age 4 until 16, of whom 568 completed tests of executive functioning at 17, indicates that those whose sleep problems persisted through adolescence had poorer executive functioning at age 17 than children whose problems decreased to a greater extent. Sleep problems as early as age 9, but particularly around age 13, showed significant associations with later executive functions. Some problems appear to be more important than others: changes in levels of 'sleeping more than other children' and 'being overtired' were most important, and nightmares and 'trouble sleeping' the least. However, a child's level of sleep problems early in life don’t appear to be an important factor.

[930] Friedman, N. P., Corley R. P., Hewitt J. K., & Wright K. P.
(2009).  Individual Differences in Childhood Sleep Problems Predict Later Cognitive Executive Control.
Sleep. 32(3), 323 - 333.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/aaos-csp022709.php

From 12 years onward you learn differently

Behavioral studies have found eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback, with negative feedback having little effect. Twelve-year-olds, however, are better able to process negative feedback, and use it to learn from their mistakes. Now brain imaging reveals that the brain regions responsible for cognitive control (specifically, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and superior parietal cortex, and the pre-supplementary motor area/anterior cingulate cortex) react strongly to positive feedback and scarcely respond at all to negative feedback in children of eight and nine, but the opposite is the case in children of 11 to 13 years, and also in adults.

van Duijvenvoorde, A.C.K. et al. 2008. Evaluating the Negative or Valuing the Positive? Neural Mechanisms Supporting Feedback-Based Learning across Development. The Journal of Neuroscience, 28, 9495-9503.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-09/lu-f1y092508.php
http://www.physorg.com/news141554842.html

Frequent TV viewing during adolescence linked with risk of attention and learning difficulties

A long-running study of 678 families in upstate New York, surveyed children at 14, 16 and 22 years old (averages), and again when the children in the study had reached an average age of 33. At age 14, 225 (33.2%) of the teens reported that they watched three or more hours of television per day. Those who watched 1 or more hours of television per day at mean age 14 years were at higher risk of poor homework completion, negative attitudes toward school, poor grades, and long-term academic failure. Those who watched 3 or more hours of television per day were most likely to experience these outcomes, and moreover were at higher risk of subsequent attention problems and were the least likely to receive postsecondary education. Analysis of the data also indicated that television watching contributes to learning difficulties and not vice versa.

Johnson, J.G., Cohen, P., Kasen, S. & Brook, J.S. 2007. Extensive Television Viewing and the Development of Attention and Learning Difficulties During Adolescence. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 161 (5), 480-486.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-05/jaaj-ftv050307.php

Prefrontal cortex loses neurons during adolescence

A rat study has found that adolescents lose neurons in the ventral prefrontal cortex in adolescence, with females losing about 13% more neurons than males. Human studies have found gradual reductions in the volume of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex from adolescence to adulthood, but this finding that neurons are actually dying is new, and indicates that the brain reorganizes in a very fundamental way in adolescence. The number of neurons in the dorsal prefrontal cortex didn’t change, although the number of glial cells increased there (while remaining stable in the ventral area). The finding could have implications for understanding disorders that often arise in late adolescence, such as schizophrenia and depression, and why addictions that start in adolescence are harder to overcome than those that begin in adulthood.

Markham, J.A., Morris, J.R. & Juraska, J.M. 2007. Neuron number decreases in the rat ventral, but not dorsal, medial prefrontal cortex between adolescence and adulthood. Neuroscience, 144 (3), 961-968.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070314093257.htm

Brain still developing at age 18

In a study of 19 freshman college students, it’s been found that, anatomically, significant changes in brain structure continue after age 18. The changes were localized to regions of the brain known to integrate emotion and cognition — specifically, areas that take information from our current body state and apply it for use in navigating the world (right midcingulate, inferior anterior cingulate gyrus, right caudate head, right posterior insula, and bilateral claustrum).

Bennett, C.M. & Baird, A.A. 2006. Anatomical changes in the emerging adult brain: A voxel-based morphometry study. Human Brain Mapping, Article published online 29 Nov 2005 in advance of print./span>

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-02/dc-bcs020606.php

Study links adolescent IQ/activity levels with risk of dementia

An analysis of high school records and yearbooks from the mid-1940s, and interviews with some 400 of these graduates, now in their 70s, and their family members, has found that those who were more active in high school and who had higher IQ scores, were less likely to have mild memory and thinking problems and dementia as older adults.

Fritsch, T., Smyth, K.A., McClendon, M.J., Ogrocki, P.K., Santillan, C., Larsen, J.D. & Strauss, M.E. 2005. Associations Between Dementia/Mild Cognitive Impairment and Cognitive Performance and Activity Levels in Youth. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 53(7), 1191.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-07/cwru-sla070105.php

Teen's ability to multi-task develops late in adolescence

A study involving adolescents between 9 and 20 years old has found that the ability to multi-task continues to develop through adolescence. The ability to use recall-guided action to remember single pieces of spatial information (such as looking at the location of a dot on a computer screen, then, after a delay, indicating where the dot had been) developed until ages 11 to 12, while the ability to remember multiple units of information in the correct sequence developed until ages 13 to 15. Tasks in which participants had to search for hidden items in a manner requiring a high level of multi-tasking and strategic thinking continued to develop until ages 16 to 17. "These findings have important implications for parents and teachers who might expect too much in the way of strategic or self-organized thinking, especially from older teenagers."

[547] Luciana, M., Conklin H. M., Hooper C. J., & Yarger R. S.
(2005).  The Development of Nonverbal Working Memory and Executive Control Processes in Adolescents.
Child Development. 76(3), 697 - 712.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-05/sfri-tat051205.php

The best way to get teens to learn

A recent study has been investigating how to motivate teenagers to learn. Using obese and non-obese early adolescents and a text on health-related issues, researchers found that telling the teenagers that learning more about these issues and adopting a healthier lifestyle was important for their health (an intrinsic goal) was more effective than telling them that it would help them become more physically attractive and appealing (an extrinsic goal). They also found that trying to pressure the teens by using guilt-inducing language was less effective than a more autonomy-supportive approach that enabled them to experience their studying as more self-chosen and volitional.

Vansteenkiste, M., Simons, J., Lens, W., Soenens, B. & Matos, L. 2005. Examining The Impact Of Extrinsic Vs. Intrinsic Goal Framing And Internally Controlling Vs. Autonomy-Supportive Communication Style Upon Children's Achievement. Child Development, 76 (2), 483-501.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-03/sfri-tbw032105.php

Smoking associated with working memory impairment in adolescents

A study of 41 adolescent daily smokers and 32 nonsmokers has revealed that adolescent smokers had impairments in accuracy of working memory performance. Male adolescents as a group begin smoking at an earlier age than female smokers and were significantly more impaired during tests of selective and divided attention. All of the adolescent smokers also showed further disruption of working memory when they stopped smoking.

[1252] Jacobsen, L. K., Krystal J. H., Mencl E. W., Westerveld M., Frost S. J., & Pugh K. R.
(2005).  Effects of smoking and smoking abstinence on cognition in adolescent tobacco smokers.
Biological Psychiatry. 57(1), 56 - 66.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-02/yu-scc020105.php

Alcohol's damaging effects on adolescent brain function

A number of speakers at Symposium speakers at the June 2004 Research Society on Alcoholism meeting in Vancouver, reported on research concerning the vulnerability of the adolescent brain to the damaging effects of alcohol. Some of the findings presented were:

  • The adolescent brain is more vulnerable than the adult brain to disruption from activities such as binge drinking. Adolescent rats that were exposed to binge drinking appear to have permanent damage in their adult brains.
  • Subtle but important brain changes occur among adolescents with Alcohol Use Disorder, resulting in a decreased ability in problem solving, verbal and non-verbal retrieval, visuospatial skills, and working memory.
  • The association between antisocial behavior during adolescence and alcoholism may be explained by abnormalities in the frontal limbic system, which appears to cause "blunted emotional reactivity".
  • Alcohol-induced memory impairments, such as "blackouts", are particularly common among young drinkers and may be at least in part due to disrupted neural plasticity in the hippocampus, which is centrally involved in the formation of autobiographical memories.

[1238] Monti, P. M., Miranda, Jr R., Nixon K., Sher K. J., Swartzwelder S. H., Tapert S. F., et al.
(2005).  Adolescence: Booze, Brains, and Behavior.
Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. 29(2), 207 - 220.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-02/ace-ade020705.php

Changes in the brain during adolescence

A study of the post-mortem cerebral cortexes of six 12- to 17-year-olds and five 17- to 24-year-olds has revealed a number of physical differences between the adolescent and the adult brain. The average pyramidal soma size was 15.5 % smaller in the older age group, while a number of other measures (including cortical thickness and neural density) were slightly larger. These changes are thought to reflect certain cognitive changes that occur during adolescence - specifically, the increase in knowledge and understanding, and the decrease in the ability to acquire new sounds and speech patterns.

Courten-Myers, G.M. 2002. Paper presented at the American Academy of Neurology 54th Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, on April 19.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-04/aaon-bug040502.php

tags development: 

Children's Learning

Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website

Aschermann, E., Dannenberg, U. & Schulz, A. 1998. Photographs as retrieval cues for children. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 12, 55-66.

Finding: Photographs, frequently used as cues to remembering in adults, also appear to be effective with children as young as three.

This study looked at the value of photographs as retrieval cues for young children. Fifty-seven children (3,6-7, and 8 years old) participated in a fishing game. Ten days later the children were questioned about the game. Those children who were shown relevant photos recalled more details than those who were simply verbally reminded of the game. Appropriate props also improved accuracy of recall.

Bjorklund, D.F., Miller, P.H., Coyle, T.R. & Slawinski, J.L. 1997. Instructing Children to Use Memory Strategies: Evidence of Utilization Deficiencies in Memory Training Studies. Developmental Review, 17, 411-441.

Finding: When teaching young children learning strategies, care should be taken to keep it simple. Simply providing instructions is preferable than providing both instructions and a rationale.

The term "utilization deficiencies" refers to the use of an effective strategy without any improvement in performance. Thus, if a child dutifully rehearsed items without being able to remember them any better than items she had not rehearsed, this would be a deficiency in utilization.

Utilization deficiencies appear to be common among children. They are more common, unsurprisingly, with younger children, and more common when strategy training has included multiple procedures rather than a single procedure.

Manion, V. & Alexander, J.M. 1997. The Benefits of Peer Collaboration on Strategy Use, Metacognitive Causal Attribution, and Recall. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 67, 268-289.

Finding: Working in groups with children who understand and use memory strategies can help children with poorer metacognitive skills increase their understanding and strategy use.

Metacognition - knowledge and understanding of your own cognitive processes - is increasingly being recognized as important in determining whether or not you can use cognitive strategies effectively. This study looked at the benefits of children with different levels of metacognitive understanding working together.

Children were tested as to their knowledge about the effectiveness of a sorting strategy, and then placed in small groups. These groups were given instructions to explicitly discuss their strategies. It was found that children with a lower metacognitive understanding improved their understanding and strategy use as a result of being placed with children with a higher level of understanding.

Harnishfeger, K.K. & Pope, R.S. 1996. Intending to Forget: The Development of Cognitive Inhibition in Directed Forgetting. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 62, 292-315.

Finding: Intentional forgetting is a learned skill, which children acquire gradually, and which is not fully acquired by age 10.

Although we tend to decry forgetting, and regard it as a failure of memory, forgetting is an important ability. Not everything is worth remembering. Certainly we don't want to remember everything all at once!

Part of efficient remembering involves ignoring information that is irrelevant. It is thought that "directed ignoring" plays an important role in controlling what goes into working memory. Interestingly, it has been suggested that one of the reasons for memory problems in old age is a diminished ability to ignore irrelevant information.

This research looks at directed ignoring in children. First, third, and fifth graders and adults were given a "forget" or "remember" cue midway through the presentation of a list of words. At recall, the subjects were asked either to remember all the words (even the ones they had been instructed to forget) or to remember only to-be-remembered words.

It was found that the children were less able than the adults to forget the to-be-forgotten words. The results suggested that the ability to intentionally inhibit recall of irrelevant information improves gradually over the elementary school years, but is not fully mature by fifth grade. A further experiment checked that the different results were due to differences in memory rather than a failure to understand the instructions.

Oyen, A. & Bebko, J.M. 1996.The Effects of Computer Games and Lesson Contexts on Children's Mnemonic Strategies. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 62, 173-189.

Finding: Learning in the context of a computer game may be more difficult for young children than in the context of a more structured lesson. Interest is higher, but the complexity of the game (number of distracting details) may hinder learning.

This study looked at the effect of embedding a memory task in the context of a computer game. Four to seven year olds participated in one of two computer games and a more formal "lesson" condition. While the game context appeared to stimulate much more rehearsal, this was because the rehearsal was more overt. The amount of rehearsal when both overt and covert rehearsal were included, was similar for both the lesson and the game condition.

There was, as expected, an increase in rehearsal with age - at each age level the number of rehearsers nearly doubled. Rehearsers did, of course, recall more items than those children who did not rehearse.

Regardless of rehearsal, recall of items experienced in the game context was less than that for items experienced in a more formal "lesson". The games were more interesting for the children, but the multiplicity of goals and distractions in the games may have made the task more difficult.

Event memory in young children

Reese, E. & Brown N. 2000. Reminiscing and recounting in the preschool years. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 14, 1-17.

Finding: Parents can help their child remember events that have happened to them by reminiscing with them (recalling with them events that they have shared) and encouraging them to recall details about unshared events.

Talk about past events can be classified as either reminiscing (discussingshared experiences) or recounting (discussing unshared experiences).
This study looked at reminiscing and recounting between preschoolers and their mothers. Forty children between three and five participated in the experiment. It was found that children reported more unique memory information when they were discussing unshared experiences (recounting) rather than shared. Mothers who provided morememory information during reminiscing and asked for more information during recounting had children who reported more unique information about events.

Buckner, J.P. & Fivush, R. 1998. Gender and self in children's autobiographical narratives. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 12, 407-29.

Finding: Gender differences in conversational style seem to appear at an early age. At age 8, girls' recounting of personal experiences are already more detailed and socially contexted than boys' narratives are.

This study looked at the differences between girls and boys in recounting personal experiences. The children were aged eight, and from a middle-class background. As has tended to be found with adults, it was found that the girls' narratives were longer, more coherent and more detailed than were the boys' narratives. The girls' narratives also tended to mention more people and more emotions, and to be placed in a social context.

Maintenance rehearsal in children

Maintenance rehearsal refers to the simple repetition of items to hold them in working memory, where we are conscious of them. Thus, when we want to remember a phone number for long enough to ring it, or write it down, we repeat it to ourselves until we have completed our action.

Maintenance rehearsal no doubt seems a self-evident strategy to any adult, simple as it is and long accustomed as we are to using it. However, it is, like any strategy, something we have to learn to do. It is rare in five year olds, common in ten year olds (although still not universal).

Rehearsal is an effective strategy for short-term recall, and young children (at least as old as six) can be taught to use the strategy. However, continued use of the strategy (without explicit instruction) is more unlikely than not. It may be however, that training was insufficient to impress upon the children the usefulness of the strategy, and with better feedback they might be encouraged to use the strategy spontaneously.

Flavell JH, Beach DR & Chinsky JM 1966. Spontaneous verbal rehearsal in a memory task as a function of age. Child Development, 37, 283-99.

Finding: Spontaneous rehearsal found among 10% of 5 year olds; 60% of 7 year olds, 85% of 10 year olds.

Keeney TJ, Cannizo SR & Flavell JH 1967. Spontaneous and induced verbal rehearsal in a recall task. Child Development, 38, 953-66.

Finding: 6 & 7 year olds who rehearsed spontaneously (without instruction) were significantly better at recalling a list of items than that of non-rehearsers. Training of non-rehearsers resulted in improvement almost to the level of the spontaneous rehearsers; however on later trials (given the option to rehearse) 10 of 17 newly taught rehearsers abandoned the strategy.

Categorizing

Categorizing is another very basic strategy that many of us use to help us remember items. Thus, if you are given a list:

BANANA VAN PANSY TRUCK CARNATION PLUM PEACH MOTORCYCLE ROSE MARIGOLD MANGO CAR

the items will be much easier to remember if you note that the items belong to only three categories — fruit, vehicles, flowers. Noting that there are four examples of each will also help. The category labels help considerably when it comes to retrieving the information (and knowing how many items in each category tells us when we can stop searching that category and move on to another).

Most educated adults do this sort of thing automatically. But, again, like any strategy no matter how simple, it is not something we are born knowing.

Very young children are not likely to group items at all, but if they do, it will be most likely according to some sort of association (cornflakes — milk, baby — bottle, paper — pencil). If young children are taught to group items into taxonomic categories, they will still not use category labels effectively when retrieving the information, without explicit instruction.

From around 6 or 7, children seem to benefit more from instruction in categorization strategies. If the children are very young, such instruction may only confuse them. Using category labels as retrieval cues appears to be a more complex strategy than the first step of learning to group according to category, and doesn’t appear until later. Even children as old as 11 may benefit from explicit reminders to use category labels as retrieval cues and search the categories exhaustively before moving on.

At around 7, about 50% of children appreciate the value of categorization as a memory strategy. This doesn’t increase all that much over the next few years (about 60% of ten year olds), although nearly all 17 year olds understand the strategy.

Moely BE, Olson FA, Halwes T & Flavell J 1969. Production deficiency in young children’s clustered recall. Developmental Psychology, 1, 26-34.

Finding: Children were shown pictures of animals, furniture, vehicles and clothes, and told they could arrange the pictures in any way that would help them remember. 5th graders sorted them into these taxonomic categories. 3rd graders were able to arrange them that way once the experimenter labeled each category and pointed out members. Kindergarten and 1st graders needed a lot of help — to sort the items, label the categories, and count the number of pictures in each category.

Moely BE & Jeffrey WE 1974. The effects of organization training on children’s free recall of category items. Child Development, 45, 135-143.

Finding: most 6 and 7 year olds could sort successfully when given the suggestion that the items could be divided into “groups of things that are alike in some way or kind of go together”. Some children needed help to label the categories. When given the instruction, during recall, to think of a category label and name all the members in the category, then to repeat this with each category, recall was improved.

Zinobar JW Cermak LS Cermak SA & Dickerson DJ 1975. A developmental study of categorical organization in short-term memory. Developmental Psychology, 11, 398-9.

Finding: found 3rd and 4th graders spontaneously used taxonomic categories, but 2nd graders didn’t.

Bjorklund DF, Ornstein PA & Haig JR 1977. Developmental differences in organization and recall: Training in the use of organizational techniques. Developmental Psychology, 13, 175-83.

Finding: 3rd and 5th graders were much better at categorizing when given explicit instructions about what to look for.

Denney NW & Ziobrowski M 1972. Developmental changes in clustering criteria. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 13, 275-83.

Finding: if 1st graders grouped items at all (spontaneously), they do it according to associations, e.g. pipe-tobacco, baby-crib.

Black MM & Rollins HA 1982. The effects of instructional variables on young children’s organization and free recall. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 33, 1-19.

Finding: 1st graders taught to categorize pictures of common objects ( such as furniture, clothes, animals, food) using two different methods of instruction:

  • explanatory
  • questioning (using direct questioning to lead the child to consider ways to remember and to develop a verbal explanation of the strategy).

These methods were further differentiated according to how general or specific the instructions were. Thus:

  • In the general explanation group, the experimenter explained why organization was helpful in recall while demonstrating with the picture cards (“If I put cards together that are similar, such as all the animals, it will be easier to remember”).
  • In specific explanation, the instructions were directed towards specific items (“I will put the dog next to the cat”).
  • In general question, the experimenter asked questions and encouraged the child to manipulate the cards. The question emphasized the purpose for an organizational strategy (“Why do we put the animals together?”). Correct answers were provided if the child couldn’t answer correctly.
  • In specific question, the questions were directed to specific items.

In all cases, the training lasted 10 — 12.5 minutes. All types of training appeared to be effective in improving recall, and there was little difference between them. Explanation was slightly better than questioning, and general strategies were slightly better than the corresponding specific ones.

Kobasigawa A 1974. Utilization of retrieval cues by children in recall. Child Development, 45, 1067-72.

Finding: young children not only fail to categorize, even when they have been explicitly instructed to categorize they don’t use categories effectively during retrieval. Thus, when asked to remember the items, if they remember a category label, they tend to be satisfied as soon as they have retrieved one item from the category instead of searching the category exhaustively.

Scribner S & Cole M 1972. Effects of constrained recall training on children’s performance in a verbal memory task. Child Development, 43, 845-57.

Finding: when children were reminded at presentation and recall that there were four categories, and told to recall all items from a category before moving on, recall was better for all ages (7, 9 and 11 years).

Yussen SR, Kunen S & Buss R 1975. The distinction between perceiving and memorizing in the presence of category cues. Child Development, 46, 763-8.

Finding: interestingly, preschool children seemed to do better when they were not given such instructions, but simply asked to remember as much as they could.

Davies GM & Brown L 1978. Recall and organization in five year old children. British Journal of Psychology, 69, 343-9.
Davies G & Rushton A 1979. Presentation mode and organizational strategies in young children’s free recall. In MP Friedman, JP Das, & N O’Connor (eds) Intelligence and learning. NY: Plenum Pr.

Finding: some evidence that spontaneous categorization is less likely with pictures (the usual experimental stimulus); that young children are far more likely to categorize when faced with real objects.

Wimmer H & Tornquist K 1980. The role of metamemory and metamemory activation in the development of mnemonic performance. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 3, 71-81.

Finding: children questioned to find out to what extent they understood the value of categorizing in aiding remembering. They found 50% of 7 year olds, 60% of 10 year olds, and nearly all 17 year olds did.

 

The value of category labels in helping young children learn

Category labels don’t appear to particularly help recall in children before the age of ten.

Picture recognition is assisted by labeling in children as young as four.

Researchers have had mixed results in labeling pictures as an aid to learning paired associations in young children.

Labeling pictures does not appear to help very young children remember the order of items, but can be helpful to children from six years old until they are of an age to spontaneously label, when such explicit labeling may interfere with their own learning strategy. Such spontaneous labeling probably occurs around ten.

Labeling however is often part of a wider strategy, and may well be helpful to young children for other reasons than improving recall. For example, it may be useful in helping children acquire language.

Kobasigawa A & Middleton D. 1972. Free recall of categorized items by children at three grade levels. Child Development, 43, 1067-1072.
Moely BE 1977. Organizational factors in the development of memory. In R Kail & J Hagen (eds) Perspectives on the development of memory and cognition. Hillsdale: NJ: LEA.

Finding: categorization (labeling categories of items during presentation) improves recall in children in the 5th grade (10 year olds), but not younger.

Horowitz AB 1969. Effect of stimulus presentation modes on children’s recall and clustering. Psychonomic Science, 14, 297-8.

Finding: increased recall but no increased organization by 5 and 8 year olds who had to label auditory or visual items during presentation (vs children who simply looked at or listened to the items).

Williams KG & Goulet LR 1975. The effects of cuing and constraint instructions on children’s free recall performance. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 19, 464-475.

Finding: telling children category names before presenting the items (prelabeling) didn’t help recall in 4 year olds.

Nelson K 1969. The organization of free recall by young children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 8, 284-295.

Finding: prelabeling didn’t help recall in 5 and 8 year olds.

Ward WC & Legant P 1971. Naming and memory in nursery school children in the absence of rehearsal. Developmental Psychology, 5, 174-5.

Finding: labeling pictures appeared to help picture recognition in 4 year olds

Nelson KE & Kosslyn SM 1976. Recognition of previously labeled or unlabeled pictures by 5-year-olds and adults. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 21, 40-45.

Finding: labeling pictures appeared to help picture recognition in 5 year olds and adults. Such labeling probably modifies attention to particular elements.

Rohwer WD, Lynch S, Levin JR & Suzuki N. 1967. Pictorial and verbal factors in the efficient learning of paired associates. Journal of Educational Psychology, 58, 278-84.

Finding: labeling pictures aided paired-associate learning in kindergarten children, 1st, 3rd & 6th graders.

Rohwer WD, Kee D & Guy K. 1975. Developmental changes in the effects of presentation media on noun-pair learning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 19, 137-152.

Finding: labeling pictures didn’t help paired-associate learning in 2nd graders.

Means & Rohwer 1974 (unpublished study)

Finding: labeling pictures didn’t aid paired-associate learning in nursery school children,1st or 4th graders.

Hagen JW & Kingsley PR. 1968. Labelling effects in short-term memory. Child Development, 39, 113-121.

Finding: Overt labeling of animal pictures resulted in no improvement in recall of serial position in nursery children (around 5 years old); did improve serial recall in 6-8 year olds who didn’t spontaneously label; didn’t improve serial recall in 10 year olds who spontaneously labeled.

Ghatala ES & Levin JR. 1976. Children’s recognition memory processes. In JR Levin & VL Allen (eds) Cognitive learning in children: Theories and strategies. NY: Academic Pr

Finding: Overt labeling produced substantially better recall than covert labeling in elementary school children.

Anesthesia

Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website

Anesthesia exposure before age 3 found not to impact cognitive performance

A twin study challenges findings that receiving anesthesia at a very young age (below four) is associated with subsequent learning problems. The Dutch study involved 1,143 pairs of identical twins, and compared groups where both twins had been exposed to anesthesia before age 3, where neither had been exposed to anesthesia, or where only one member of the pair had been exposed to anesthesia. Cognitive performance at age 12 was assessed from a standardized national exam administered to all children in the Netherlands at that age. It was found that there was no difference in cognitive performance between twins where one had been exposed to anesthesia and the other had not. It therefore seems likely that the association is due to children likely to undergo surgery early in life having significant medical problems that are associated with a vulnerability to learning disabilities.

[1217] Bartels, M., Althoff R. R., & Boomsma D. I.
(2009).  Anesthesia and cognitive performance in children: no evidence for a causal relationship.
Twin Research and Human Genetics: The Official Journal of the International Society for Twin Studies. 12(3), 246 - 253.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-08/uov-grn080409.php

Common pediatric anesthesia drugs cause brain damage and learning and memory problems in infant rats

A new study has found that drugs commonly used to anesthetize children can cause brain damage and long-term learning and memory disturbances in infant rats. The rats appeared to behave normally in most other ways, and there were no outward signs of brain damage.

[207] Jevtovic-Todorovic, V., Hartman R. E., Izumi Y., Benshoff N. D., Dikranian K., Zorumski C. F., et al.
(2003).  Early Exposure to Common Anesthetic Agents Causes Widespread Neurodegeneration in the Developing Rat Brain and Persistent Learning Deficits.
J. Neurosci.. 23(3), 876 - 882.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-02/wuso-cpa013003.php

tags lifestyle: 

Language development

Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website

Children under 3 need adult help to learn action words from TV

Three studies of 96 children aged 30–42 months have explored their ability to learn from educational television. The studies looked specifically at the learning of verbs, since these are generally harder for children to learn than names of objects. The children saw characters performing unfamiliar actions that were labeled with invented words. It was found that children under age 3 could not learn the words directly from the program, without an adult providing help. Children over 3, however, could learn the verbs directly from the video program, without adult assistance. The findings are a warning about the benefits of educational videos for infants and toddlers.

Roseberry, S. et al. 2009. Live Action: Can Young Children Learn Verbs From Video? Child Development, 80 (5), 1360-1375.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090915100947.htm

Babies' language learning starts from the womb

Analysis of the cries of 60 healthy newborns (three to five days old), 30 born into French-speaking families and 30 born into German-speaking families, has revealed clear differences in the shape of the melodies, based on their mother tongue. Consistent with characteristic differences between the two languages, French newborns tend to cry with a rising melody contour, whereas German newborns seem to prefer a falling melody contour in their crying. It’s speculated that melody contour may be the only aspect of their mother's speech that newborns are able to imitate. Earlier studies have shown that human fetuses are able to memorize sounds from the external world by the last trimester of pregnancy, with a particular sensitivity to melody contour in both music and language. The finding is consistent with the idea that cry melody is the beginning of language development.

Mampe, B. et al. 2009. Newborns' Cry Melody Is Shaped by Their Native Language. Current Biology, Published online 05 November 2009.

http://www.physorg.com/news176636288.html
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1105/2?etoc

Interestingly, another recent study reported that five-month-old infants matched speech, but not human nonspeech vocalizations, specifically to humans, and monkey calls to monkey faces, but not duck vocalizations to duck faces, even though infants likely have more experience with ducks than monkeys.

Vouloumanos, A. et al. 2009. Five-month-old infants' identification of the sources of vocalizations. PNAS 106 ( 44), 18867-18872.

The effect of gamma waves on cognitive and language skills in children

Gamma waves are fast, high-frequency brainwaves that spike when higher cognitive processes are engaged. Research suggests that lower levels of gamma power might hinder the brain's ability to bind thoughts together. In the first study of the "resting" gamma power in the frontal cortex in young children (16, 24 and 36 months old), it’s been revealed that those with higher language and cognitive abilities had correspondingly higher gamma power than those with poorer language and cognitive scores. Children with better attention and inhibitory control also had higher gamma power. There were no differences in gamma power based on gender or socio-economic status, but children with a family history of language impairments showed lower levels of gamma activity. The finding may enable more accurate pinpointing of a child’s development, enabling earlier, and better targeted, intervention.

Benasich, A.A. et al. 2008. Early cognitive and language skills are linked to resting frontal gamma power across the first 3 years. Behavioral Brain Research, 195 (2), 215-222.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-10/ru-teo102108.php

Kids learn more when mother is listening

Research has already shown that children learn well when they explain things to their mother or a peer, but that could be because they’re getting feedback and help. Now a new study has asked 4- and 5-year-olds to explain their solution to a problem to their moms (with the mothers listening silently), to themselves or to simply repeat the answer out loud. Explaining to themselves or to their moms improved the children's ability to solve similar problems, and explaining the answer to their moms helped them solve more difficult problems — presumably because explaining to mom made a difference in the quality of the child's explanations.

Rittle-Johnson, B., Saylor, M. & Swygert, K.E. 2008. Learning from explaining: Does it matter if mom is listening? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, In press.

http://www.physorg.com/news120320713.html

Connection between language and movement

A study of all three groups of birds with vocal learning abilities – songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds – has revealed that the brain structures for singing and learning to sing are embedded in areas controlling movement, and areas in charge of movement share many functional similarities with the brain areas for singing. This suggests that the brain pathways used for vocal learning evolved out of the brain pathways used for motor control. Human brain structures for speech also lie adjacent to, and even within, areas that control movement. The findings may explain why humans talk with our hands and voice, and could open up new approaches to understanding speech disorders in humans. They are also consistent with the hypothesis that spoken language was preceded by gestural language, or communication based on movements. Support comes from another very recent study finding that mice engineered to have a mutation to the gene FOXP2 (known to cause problems with controlling the formation of words in humans) had trouble running on a treadmill.

Relatedly, a study of young children found that 5-year-olds do better on motor tasks when they talk to themselves out loud (either spontaneously or when told to do so by an adult) than when they are silent. The study also showed that children with behavioral problems (such as ADHD) tend to talk to themselves more often than children without signs of behavior problems. The findings suggest that teachers should be more tolerant of this kind of private speech.

Feenders, G. et al. 2008. Molecular Mapping of Movement-Associated Areas in the Avian Brain: A Motor Theory for Vocal Learning Origin. PLoS ONE, 3(3), e1768.

Winsler, A., Manfra, L. & Diaz, R.M. 2007. “Should I let them talk?”: Private speech and task performance among preschool children with and without behavior problems. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 22(2), 215-231.

http://www.physorg.com/news124526627.html
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=song-learning-birds-shed

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/gmu-pkd032808.php

Different educational approaches appropriate for boys and girls?

An imaging study of some 50 children aged 9 to 15 revealed that girls showed significantly greater activation of the language areas of the brain when doing a language task than did boys. The boys showed greater activation of the specific sensory brain areas--visual or auditory--required by the task. This pattern suggests that girls rely on a supramodal language network, whereas boys process visual and auditory words differently. This difference may reflect the fact that males take longer to mature than females, rather than a lifelong gender difference, but it does have implications for education.

Burman, D.D., Bitan, T. & Booth, J.R. 2008. Sex differences in neural processing of language among children. Neuropsychologia, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 4 January 2008

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/307/1?etoc

Why do children experience a vocabulary explosion at 18 months of age?

At about 18 months children experience a vocabulary explosion, suddenly learning words at a much faster rate. A new study using computer simulations suggests that the reason for this has little to do with brain maturity or cognitive development but is the result of several simple factors: the repetition of words over time, the fact that children learn many words at the same time, and the fact that words vary in difficulty. This factor, that children must be learning a greater number of difficult or moderate words than easy words, is crucial.

McMurray, B. 2007. Defusing the Childhood Vocabulary Explosion. Science, 317 (5838), 631.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070802182054.htm
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa017&articleID=2BFCF553-E7F2-99DF-34E7D16A89DCF458

Baby DVDs may hinder, not help, infants' language development

Random telephone interviews with more than 1,000 families found that for every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants eight to 16 months of age understood an average of six to eight fewer words than infants who did not watch them. Baby DVDs and videos had no positive or negative effect on the vocabularies on toddlers 17 to 24 months of age. Daily reading and storytelling by parents were, however, associated with slight increases in language skills. The researchers believe the content of baby DVDs and videos is different from the other types of programming because it tends to have little dialogue, short scenes, disconnected pictures and shows linguistically indescribable images.

Zimmerman, F.J., Christakis, D.A. & Meltzoff, A.N. 2007. Associations between Media Viewing and Language Development in Children Under Age 2 Years. Journal of Pediatrics, 151 (4), 364-368.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-08/uow-bdv080307.php

Kids learn words best by working out meaning

An undergraduate project involving 100 children aged 3 to 3 ½, provides evidence that children learn words better when they figure out the words' meaning for themselves, rather than when they are simply told their meaning.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070315213151.htm

Fathers influence child language development more than mothers

A study of parents’ contribution to children’s language skills found that, in families with two working parents, fathers had greater impact than mothers on their children's language development between ages 2 and 3. Observations of the language interactions between parents and child revealed that 2-year-old children whose fathers used more diverse vocabularies had greater language development when they were tested one year later, but the mothers' vocabulary did not significantly affect a child's language skills. The study also found that high-quality child care during the first three years of life was associated with higher scores at age 3 on a test of expressive language development, but this was less important than family language.

Pancsofar, N. & Vernon-Feagans, L. 2006. Mother and father language input to young children: Contributions to later language development. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 27 (6), 571-587.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061030183039.htm

Skills related to early language learning

A study of more than 120 children aged 21 months — a peak time for language learning — has found a link between language learning and several motor and cognitive skills. Children who were poor at moving their mouths (for example not being able to lick their lips, or blow bubbles) were particularly weak at language skills, while those who were good at these movements had a range of language abilities. Children who were good at pretending that one object is another, such as using a block for a car, or a box for a doll's bed, or giving a doll a tea party, were also better at language, but there was no relationship with more general thinking skills, such as doing puzzles. Children who could say new words an adult asked them to repeat, were best at language. Being able to listen to a new word or a funny sound and work out which picture it went with also distinguished between children with advanced and not so strong abilities.

Alcock, K. 2006. The Vocabulary Burst and Individual Differences. Study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). http://tinyurl.com/qssx7

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060628095606.htm

Early gaze-following associated with early language

The ability to detect the direction of another's glance has been recognized as a crucial component of human social interaction for some time. New research now reveals that babies start to follow the movement of another person’s head at around 9 months, and by 10-11 months they follow the head and eyes. Sometimes they will make sounds as they follow the gaze. Those who simultaneously followed the eyes of the researcher and made vocalizations when they were 10 or 11 months old understood an average of 337 words at 18 months old while the other babies understood an average of only 195 words.

Brooks, R. & Meltzoff, A.N. 2005. The development of gaze following and its relation to language. Developmental Science, 8(6), 535.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-11/uow-wic110905.php

Too much knowledge can be bad for some types of memory

Following on from an earlier study reported last year, in which children were found to have better memories than adults in certain circumstances, researchers have found that adults did better remembering pictures of imaginary animals than they did remembering pictures of real cats. The reason has to do with the effects of categorization. While categorization is often vital, it can lead people to ignore individual details. The trick is to know when it’s important to categorize and when it’s better to note specific details. The new study added to the earlier findings by showing that there is a gradual decrease in recognition memory from children to adults, rather than an abrupt change in the way people see the world. Moreover, the difference in how adults and children perceive and remember objects is not a developmental difference, but one caused by differences in knowledge. Adults performed like children when shown imaginary animals.

Fisher, A.V. & Sloutsky, V.M. 2005. When Induction Meets Memory: Evidence for Gradual Transition From Similarity-Based to Category-Based Induction. Child Development, 76(3), 583.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-05/osu-tmk051005.php

Language cues help visual learning in children

A study of 4-year-old children has found that language, in the form of specific kinds of sentences spoken aloud, helped them remember mirror image visual patterns. The children were shown cards bearing red and green vertical, horizontal and diagonal patterns that were mirror images of one another. When asked to choose the card that matched the one previously seen, the children tended to mistake the original card for its mirror image, showing how difficult it was for them to remember both color and location. However, if they were told, when viewing the original card, a mnemonic cue such as ‘The red part is on the left’, they performed “reliably better”.

The paper was presented by a graduate student at the 17th annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, held May 26-29 in Los Angeles.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-05/jhu-lc051705.php

Baby talk helps infants learn to speak

Most adults speak to infants using so-called infant-directed speech: short, simple sentences coupled with higher pitch and exaggerated intonation. Researchers have long known that babies prefer to be spoken to in this manner. A new study of 8-month-old infants reveals that infant-directed speech also helps infants learn words more quickly than normal adult speech. Thiessen's study may also explain why many adults struggle to learn a second language.

The study was published in the March issue of Infancy.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-03/cmu-cms031505.htm

Children process words by sound while adults process by meaning

A study into the question of how false memories are formed has found evidence of an age-related, developmental shift in language, suggesting that younger children process words primarily on the basis of phonology, or sound, while older children and adults process words primarily on the basis of semantics, or meaning.

Dewhurst, S. & Robinson, C. 2004. False Memories in Children: Evidence for a Shift from Phonological to Semantic Associations. Psychological Science, 15 (11), 782-6.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-10/aps-att102604.php

Children outperform adults in memory study

An example of the perils of knowing too much! — under specific conditions, young children can beat most adults on a recognition memory test. The study compared young children (average age 5 years) with college students. Without being told what was being tested, participants were shown pictures of cats, bears and birds. Some of them were first shown a picture of a cat, and told that it had “beta cells inside its body”. They were then shown other pictures, and asked whether these animals also had beta cells. After this, they were shown other pictures, and asked whether they had been shown them before. The children were accurate on average 31% of the time; the college students only 7% of the time. The researchers suggested the reason was because the children used similarity-based induction: when asked whether each pictured animal had "beta cells", they looked carefully to see if the animal looked similar to the original cat. On the other hand, the adults used category-based induction: once they determined whether the animal pictured was a cat or not, they paid no more attention. Thus, when they were tested later, the adults didn't know the pictures as well as the children. A subsequent study taught the children to use category-based induction. Their performance then dropped to the level of the adults. Another study in which participants were simply shown the pictures of the 30 animals and told to remember them for a recognition test, found adults were accurate 42% of the time, compared to only 27% for the children.

Sloutsky, V.M. & Fisher, A.V. 2004. When Development and Learning Decrease Memory: Evidence Against Category-Based Induction in Children. Psychological Science, 15 (8), 553-558.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-07/osu-cch072104.php

Language learning declines after second year of life

A study involving 96 deaf children who had received cochlear implants during their first four years of life has found that the rate of language learning was greatest for those given implants before they turned two. Children given implants at three or four years of age acquired language skills more slowly. The finding supports the idea that there is a 'sensitive period' for language learning, and suggests that deaf children should get cochlear implants sooner (it is still relatively rare for them to be given to children younger than two).

The findings were presented on 16 May at the Acoustical Society of America conference in Vancouver, Canada.

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050516/full/050516-1.html

Childhood "amnesia" linked to vocabulary

"Childhood amnesia" is the term given to the well-known phenomenon of our almost complete lack of memory for the experiences of our very early childhood. Exactly why it occurs is long been a subject of debate. New research suggests the answer may lie in the very limited vocabulary of very young children. A study of 2- and 3-year-old children found that children can only describe memories of events using words they knew when the experience occurred. When asked about the experimental situation (involving a "magic shrinking machine") a year later, the children easily remembered how to operate the device, but were only able to describe the machine in words they knew when they first learned how to operate it.

Simcock, G. & Hayne, H. 2002. Breaking the Barrier? Children Fail to Translate Their Preverbal Memories Into Language. Psychological Science, 13 (3), 225-231.

Children's brains process words differently

An imaging study looked at brain activity in 19 children (7 - 10 years old) while saying a word in response to a written word. These images were compared with those from 22 adults (average of 25 years old). The study highlighted two brain regions in particular - regions in the left frontal and left extrastriate cortex that are known to be critical in language processing and thought to undergo substantial development between childhood and adulthood. Six subregions within these areas were identified, and two of these revealed differences in brain activity between the children and the adults.There was less activation in a left frontal region and greater activation in posterior left extrastriate cortex in children than in adults. It may be that the left frontal region is immature in children, leading to an alternative strategy that produces more activation in extrastriate regions. Or it may be that more experience is needed before the processing resources of this region can be used.

Schlaggar, B.L., Brown, T.T., Lugar, H.M., Visscher, K.M., Miezin, F.M., Petersen, S.E. 2002. Functional neuroanatomical differences between adults and school-age children in the processing of single words. Science, 296, 1476-9.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-05/wuso-wad052102.php

tags strategies: 

Language cues

Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website

What I was doing vs. what I did: How verb aspect influences memory and behavior

A new study reveals that the way a statement is phrased (and specifically, how the verbs are used), affects our memory of an event being described and may also influence our behavior. The study involved volunteers doing a word game and being asked to stop and describe what they had been doing, using either the imperfect (e.g., I was solving word puzzles) or perfect (e.g., I solved word puzzles) tense. The volunteers then completed a memory test (for the word game) or a word game which was similar to the first one they had worked on. Those who had described their behavior in the imperfect tense were able to recall more specific details of their experience compared to volunteers who had described their behavior in the perfect tense; they also performed better on the second word game and were more willing to complete the task. It seems likely that use of the perfect encouraged people to see the task as completed, and thus less likely to spend more time on it, either mentally or physically. The effects did however decay over time.

[676] Hart, W., & Albarracín D.
(2009).  What I was doing versus what I did: verb aspect influences memory and future actions.
Psychological Science: A Journal of the American Psychological Society / APS. 20(2), 238 - 244.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/afps-wiw031009.php

How alliteration helps memory

Previous studies have shown that alliteration can act as a better tool for memory than both imagery and meaning. Now a series of experiments explains why and demonstrates the effect occurs whether you read aloud or silently, and whether the text is poetry or prose. The memory-enhancing property of alliteration appears to occur because the alliterative cues reactivated readers' memories for earlier words that were similar sounding. Alliteration, then, is most powerful when the same alliterative sounds are repeated throughout the text.

[1408] Lea, B. R., Rapp D. N., Elfenbein A., Mitchel A. D., & Romine R S.
(2008).  Sweet silent thought: alliteration and resonance in poetry comprehension.
Psychological Science: A Journal of the American Psychological Society / APS. 19(7), 709 - 716.

http://www.physorg.com/news136632182.html
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-07/afps-tpo073008.php

Connection between language and movement

A study of all three groups of birds with vocal learning abilities – songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds – has revealed that the brain structures for singing and learning to sing are embedded in areas controlling movement, and areas in charge of movement share many functional similarities with the brain areas for singing. This suggests that the brain pathways used for vocal learning evolved out of the brain pathways used for motor control. Human brain structures for speech also lie adjacent to, and even within, areas that control movement. The findings may explain why humans talk with our hands and voice, and could open up new approaches to understanding speech disorders in humans. They are also consistent with the hypothesis that spoken language was preceded by gestural language, or communication based on movements. Support comes from another very recent study finding that mice engineered to have a mutation to the gene FOXP2 (known to cause problems with controlling the formation of words in humans) had trouble running on a treadmill.
Relatedly, a study of young children found that 5-year-olds do better on motor tasks when they talk to themselves out loud (either spontaneously or when told to do so by an adult) than when they are silent. The study also showed that children with behavioral problems (such as ADHD) tend to talk to themselves more often than children without signs of behavior problems. The findings suggest that teachers should be more tolerant of this kind of private speech.

[436] Feenders, G., Liedvogel M., Rivas M., Zapka M., Horita H., Hara E., et al.
(2008).  Molecular Mapping of Movement-Associated Areas in the Avian Brain: A Motor Theory for Vocal Learning Origin.
PLoS ONE. 3(3), e1768 - e1768.

[1235] Winsler, A., Manfra L., & Diaz R. M.
(2007).  "Should I let them talk?": Private speech and task performance among preschool children with and without behavior problems.
Early Childhood Research Quarterly. 22(2), 215 - 231.

http://www.physorg.com/news124526627.html
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=song-learning-birds-shed

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/gmu-pkd032808.php

Kids learn more when mother is listening

Research has already shown that children learn well when they explain things to their mother or a peer, but that could be because they’re getting feedback and help. Now a new study has asked 4- and 5-year-olds to explain their solution to a problem to their moms (with the mothers listening silently), to themselves or to simply repeat the answer out loud. Explaining to themselves or to their moms improved the children's ability to solve similar problems, and explaining the answer to their moms helped them solve more difficult problems — presumably because explaining to mom made a difference in the quality of the child's explanations.

Rittle-Johnson, B., Saylor, M. & Swygert, K.E. 2008. Learning from explaining: Does it matter if mom is listening? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, In press.

http://www.physorg.com/news120320713.html

Poetry as a memory and concentration aid

A research group at Dundee and St Andrews universities claim poems exercise the mind more than a novel. They found poetry generated far more eye movement, and also that people read poems more slowly, concentrating and re-reading individual lines more than they did with prose. Imaging also showed greater levels of cerebral activity when people listened to poems being read aloud. Interestingly, they also found this was true even when the poem and prose text had identical content; it appears people read poems in a different way than prose. The researchers suggest the findings have implications for the way English literature is taught in schools, and may be helpful for children with certain learning difficulties, or even age-related memory problems.

Carminati, M. N., Stabler, J., Roberts, A. M., & Fischer, M. H. (2006). Readers' responses to sub-genre and rhyme scheme in poetry. Poetics, 34(3),  204-218.

http://news.scotsman.com/arts.cfm?id=352752005

Support for labeling as an aid to memory

A study involving an amnesia-inducing drug has shed light on how we form new memories. Participants in the study participants viewed words, photographs of faces and landscapes, and abstract pictures one at a time on a computer screen. Twenty minutes later, they were shown the words and images again, one at a time. Half of the images they had seen earlier, and half were new. They were then asked whether they recognized each one. For one session they were given midazolam, a drug used to relieve anxiety during surgical procedures that also causes short-term anterograde amnesia, and for one session they were given a placebo.
It was found that the participants' memory while in the placebo condition was best for words, but the worst for abstract images. Midazolam impaired the recognition of words the most, impaired memory for the photos less, and impaired recognition of abstract pictures hardly at all. The finding reinforces the idea that the ability to recollect depends on the ability to link the stimulus to a context, and that unitization increases the chances of this linking occurring. While the words were very concrete and therefore easy to link to the experimental context, the photographs were of unknown people and unknown places and thus hard to distinctively label. The abstract images were also unfamiliar and not unitized into something that could be described with a single word.

[1216] Reder, L. M., Oates J. M., Thornton E. R., Quinlan J. J., Kaufer A., & Sauer J.
(2006).  Drug-Induced Amnesia Hurts Recognition, but Only for Memories That Can Be Unitized.
Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS. 17(7), 562 - 567.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060719092800.htm

Language cues help visual learning in children

A study of 4-year-old children has found that language, in the form of specific kinds of sentences spoken aloud, helped them remember mirror image visual patterns. The children were shown cards bearing red and green vertical, horizontal and diagonal patterns that were mirror images of one another. When asked to choose the card that matched the one previously seen, the children tended to mistake the original card for its mirror image, showing how difficult it was for them to remember both color and location. However, if they were told, when viewing the original card, a mnemonic cue such as ‘The red part is on the left’, they performed “reliably better”.

The paper was presented by a graduate student at the 17th annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, held May 26-29 in Los Angeles.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-05/jhu-lc051705.php

tags strategies: 

Classroom Learning

See separate pages for

Mathematics

Reading

Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website

Effect of schooling on achievement gaps within racial groups

Analysis of data from a national sample (U.S.) of 8,060 students, collected at four points in time, starting in kindergarten and ending in the spring of fifth grade, has found evidence that education has an impact in closing the achievement gap for substantial numbers of children. High-performing groups in reading were found among all races. About 30% of European Americans, 26% of African Americans and 45% of Asian Americans were in high-achieving groups by the spring of fifth grade — these groups included approximately 23% of African American children and 36% of Asian children who caught up with the initial group of high achievers over time. Only around 4% of European American students were in catch-up groups, because a higher percentage of European Americans started kindergarten as high achievers in reading. The situation was different for Hispanic students, however.  By the end of fifth grade, just over 5% of Hispanic children were high achievers in reading, while the remainder tested in the middle range. There were no low achievers and no catch-up groups. A different pattern was found in math. Only 17% of European American students were high-achievers in math by the end of fifth grade, including 13% who started kindergarten at a lower achievement level and caught up over time.  About 18% of Asian Americans were high-achievers at the end of fifth grade (11% catch-up). Only 0.3% of African Americans were high achievers at the end of fifth grade, and 26% were medium-high achievers. But about 16% of Hispanics were high achievers in math. There were no catch-up groups for either the African Americans or the Hispanics. This suggests that current schooling doesn't have as strong an impact on math achievement as it does in reading.

The study was presented in Washington, D.C. at the annual meeting of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness.

http://www.physorg.com/news123859991.html

Children's under-achievement could be down to poor working memory

A survey of over three thousand children has found that 10% of school children across all age ranges suffer from poor working memory seriously affecting their learning. However, poor working memory is rarely identified by teachers, who often describe children with this problem as inattentive or as having lower levels of intelligence. The researchers have developed a new tool, a combination of a checklist and computer programme called the Working Memory Rating Scale, that enables teachers to identify and assess children's memory capacity in the classroom from as early as four years old. The tool has already been piloted successfully in 35 schools across the UK, and is now widely available. It has been translated into ten foreign languages.

http://www.physorg.com/news123404466.html 
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-02/du-cuc022608.php

Priming the brain for learning

A new study has revealed that how successfully you form memories depends on your frame of mind beforehand. If your brain is primed to receive information, you will have less trouble recalling it later. Moreover, researchers could predict how likely the participant was to remember a word by observing brain activity immediately prior to presentation of the word.

Otten, L.J., Quayle, A.H., Akram, S., Ditewig, T.A. & Rugg, M.D. 2006. Brain activity before an event predicts later recollection. Nature, published online ahead of print 26February2006

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060220/full/060220-19.html
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-02/uoc--uri022806.php
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-02/ucl-ywr022206.php

tags strategies: 

Music

Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website

Music lessons grow brain

A number of studies have shown that adult musicians have different brains to adult non-musicians, but they haven’t answered the question of whether the brain differences are innate or developed through practice. A new study does just that. The study scanned the brains of 31 musically untrained six-year-olds, of whom 15 then received weekly keyboard lessons for 15 months. Brain scans taken at the end of that period revealed that auditory and motor areas of the brain linked respectively with hearing and dexterity grew larger only in the trainee musicians. The musicians also outperformed the others at specific tasks related to manual dexterity and discrimination of sounds.

Hyde, K.L. et al. 2009. Musical Training Shapes Structural Brain Development. Journal of Neuroscience, 29 (10), 3019–3025.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16767-music-lessons-provide-a-workout-for-the-brain.html

Time invested in practicing pays off for young musicians

A study involving 41 eight- to eleven-year-olds who had studied either piano or a string instrument for a minimum of three years and 18 children who had no instrumental training, although they had the same amount of time in general music classes at school, has found that the musicians were not only better at tasks of auditory discrimination and finger dexterity, but also had superior verbal ability and nonverbal reasoning skills. Moreover, the longer and more intensely the child had studied the instrument, the better they scored on these tests.

Forgeard, M., Winner, E., Norton, A. & Schlaug, G. 2008. Practicing a Musical Instrument in Childhood is Associated with Enhanced Verbal Ability and Nonverbal Reasoning. PLoS ONE 3(10): e3566. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003566

Full text available at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0003566

http://www.physorg.com/news145024134.html

Strong links between arts education and cognitive development

The Dana Consortium study, a 3 year study by cognitive neuroscientists from seven universities, has been investigating the effects of music, dance, and drama education on other types of learning. The researchers have identified eight key points:

  • An interest in a performing art leads to a high state of motivation that produces the sustained attention necessary to improve performance and the training of attention that leads to improvement in other domains of cognition.
  • Genetic studies have begun to yield candidate genes that may help explain individual differences in interest in the arts.
  • Specific links exist between high levels of music training and the ability to manipulate information in both working and long-term memory; these links extend beyond the domain of music training.
  • In children, there appear to be specific links between the practice of music and skills in geometrical representation, though not in other forms of numerical representation.
  • Correlations exist between music training and both reading acquisition and sequence learning. One of the central predictors of early literacy, phonological awareness, is correlated with both music training and the development of a specific brain pathway.
  • Training in acting appears to lead to memory improvement through the learning of general skills for manipulating semantic information.
  • Adult self-reported interest in aesthetics is related to a temperamental factor of openness, which in turn is influenced by dopamine-related genes.
  • Learning to dance by effective observation is closely related to learning by physical practice, both in the level of achievement and also the neural substrates that support the organization of complex actions. Effective observational learning may transfer to other cognitive skills.

You can download the complete report at http://www.dana.org/news/publications/publication.aspx?id=10760

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/df-dfr030408.php

Why music training helps language

Several studies have come out in recent years suggesting that giving children music training can improve their language skills. A new study supports these findings by showing how. The latest study shows that music triggers changes in the brain stem, a very early stage in the processing pathway for both music and language. It has previously been thought that the automatic processing occurring at this level was not particularly malleable, and the strength of neuron connections there was fixed.

And in another study, researchers have found evidence for more commonality in the brain networks involved in music and language. One network, based in the temporal lobes, helps us memorize information in both language and music— for example, words and meanings in language and familiar melodies in music. The other network, based in the frontal lobes, helps us unconsciously learn and use the rules that underlie both language and music, such as the rules of syntax in sentences, and the rules of harmony in music.

Musacchia, G., Sams, M., Skoe, E. & Kraus, N. 2007. Musicians have enhanced subcortical auditory and audiovisual processing of speech and music. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 104, 15894-15898.

Miranda, R.A. & Ullman, M.T. 2007. Double dissociation between rules and memory in music: An event-related potential study. NeuroImage, 38 (2), 331-345.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070926123908.htm (1st)
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/gumc-tat092707.php (2nd)

Early music training 'tunes' auditory system

Mandarin is a tonal language, that is, the pitch pattern is as important as the sound of the syllables in determining the meaning of a word. In a small study, a Mandarin word was presented to 20 adults as they watched a movie. All were native English speakers with no knowledge of Mandarin, but half had at least six years of musical instrument training starting before the age of 12, while half had minimal or no musical training. As the subjects watched the movie, the researchers measured the accuracy of their brainstem ability to track three differently pitched "mi" sounds. Those who were musically trained were far better at tracking the three different tones than the non-musicians. The study is the first to provide concrete evidence that playing a musical instrument significantly enhances the brainstem's sensitivity to speech sounds, and supports the view that experience with music at a young age can "fine-tune" the brain's auditory system. The findings are in line with previous studies suggesting that musical experience can improve one's ability to learn tone languages in adulthood, and are also consistent with studies revealing anomalies in brainstem sound encoding in some children with learning disabilities which can be improved by auditory training. The findings are also noteworthy for implicating the brainstem in processing that has been thought of as exclusively involving the cortex.

Wong, P.C.M., Skoe, E., Russo, N.M., Dees, T. & Kraus, N. 2007. Musical experience shapes human brainstem encoding of linguistic pitch patterns. Nature Neuroscience, 10, 420-422.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-03/nu-rfm031207.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/science/20lang.html

Evidence musical training affects brain development

A study that examined 12 young children (4—6 year olds) over the course of a year found measurable cognitive differences in those taking Suzuki music lessons compared to those having no musical training outside school. The Suzuki children not only showed greater improvement over the year in melody, harmony and rhythm processing but also in general memory skills such as literacy, verbal memory, visuospatial processing, mathematics and IQ, suggesting that musical training is having an effect on how the brain gets wired for general cognitive functioning related to memory and attention. Brain activity showed greater development consistent with establishing a neural network associated with sound categorization and/or involuntary attention.

Fujioka, T., Ross, B., Kakigi, R., Pantev, C. & Trainor, L.J. 2006. One year of musical training affects development of auditory cortical-evoked fields in young children. Brain, 129, 2593-2608.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060920093024.htm
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-09/oup-fet091906.php

Babies detect unfamiliar music rhythms easier than adults

According to a recent study, six-month-old babies can detect subtle variations in the complex rhythm patterns of Balkan folkdance tunes as easily as can adult Bulgarian and Macedonian U.S. immigrants, but other Western adults find it exceedingly difficult. A follow-up study has reported that by the time the babies are a year old, their performance more closely resembles adults. However, brief exposure to foreign music still enables 12-month-olds, but not adults, to perceive rhythmic distinctions in foreign musical contexts.

Hannon, E.E. & Trehub, S.E. 2005. Tuning in to musical rhythms: Infants learn more readily than adults. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102 (35), 12639-12643. Published online before print August 16, 2005.

Hannon, E.E. & Trehub, S.E. 2005. Metrical Categories in Infancy and Adulthood. Psychological Science, 16(1), 48-55.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/cuns-bdu081205.php

 

Playing music helps the understanding of language

A study involving adult musicians and non-musicians matched by age, sex, general language ability and intelligence found that musicians could make the rapid auditory distinctions necessary to distinguish similar word syllables (like "da" and "ba") more accurately and quickly than non-musicians. This is the first study to demonstrate that musical training improves how the brain processes the spoken word. The researchers suggest the finding could lead to improving the reading ability of children who have dyslexia and other reading problems.

Gabrieli, J. et al. 2005. Presented at the 18th Annual U.S. Psychiatric & Mental Health Congress in Las Vegas, NV.

Early music instruction raises child’s IQ

A new study confirms earlier research supporting the benefits of early music instruction. The study involved 144 children, 6 years old at the start of the study. They were given free weekly voice or piano lessons at the Royal Conservatory of Music. Another group of 6-year-olds was given free training in weekly drama classes, while a fourth group received no extra classes during the study period. Before any classes were given, all the children were tested using the full Weschler intelligence test. At the end of the school year (their first school year), the children were retested. All had an IQ increase of at least 4.3 points on average (a consequence of going to school). Children who took drama lessons scored no higher than those who had no extra lessons, but those who took music lessons scored on average 2.7 points higher than the children who did not take music lessons. Those in the drama group did however show substantial improvement in adaptive social behavior.

Schellenberg, E.G. 2004. Music Lessons Enhance IQ. Psychological Science, 15 (8), 511-514.

http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.htm3?article_id=218392326

 

Music instruction aids verbal memory

Research has shown that the region of the brain involved in verbal memory is larger in adult musicians than in those who are not musicians. Now a new study finds that children with music training had significantly better verbal memory than those without such training. The study involved 90 boys between six and 15. Half were in the school’s string orchestra and had one to five years training in classical music; the rest had no such training or experience. The boys with musical training scored about 20% higher on a test of their ability to learn new words and did slightly better at recalling words after a 30-minute break. No differences were found between the two groups in a test of visual memory.
A year later, the researchers retested the 45 boys who had been in the orchestra, including 9 who had dropped out, and 17 boys from the nonmusician group who had joined the orchestra. These 17, who had significantly lower verbal memory scores on the previous test, had made the greatest progress over the course of the year. Those who stayed with the orchestra also improved their scores, while those who had dropped out showed no improvement - but their performance was still better than those who had never played. The researchers suggest that music training during childhood helps reorganize/develop the left temporal lobe, facilitating the cognitive processing that occurs there, namely, verbal memory.

Ho, Y-C., Cheung, M-C. & Chan, A.S. 2003. Music Training Improves Verbal but Not Visual Memory: Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Explorations in Children. Neuropsychology, 17 (3).

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-07/apa-mia072103.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/29/health/29MENT.html

tags strategies: 

Reading

Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website

Literate Arabic speakers have bilingual brains

Research has found that Arabic-speaking students tend to be less proficient in reading than other students are in their native language. Spoken Arabic comes in a variety of dialects and is quite different from the common written Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic - MSA). A new imaging study has now compared brain activity in a priming task among trilinguals fluent in MSA, spoken Arabic and Hebrew. The results revealed that the cognitive process in using MSA was more similar to that employed for Hebrew, and less similar to the cognitive process of using the spoken native language. These results not only help explain why learning to read is more difficult for Arabic speakers, but also suggests that the most effective way of teaching written Arabic is by using techniques usually employed for the instruction of a second language — including exposing children to written Arabic in preschool or kindergarten.

Ibrahim, R. 2009. The cognitive basis of diglossia in Arabic: Evidence from a repetition priming study within and between languages. Journal of Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 2.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-11/uoh-wiu110409.php

Remedial reading program improves brain wiring in children

An imaging study involving 72 children aged 8 to 10 has provided the first evidence that intensive instruction to improve reading skills in young children causes the brain to physically rewire itself. The study found that the ability of white matter tracts to transmit signals efficiently improved substantially after the children received six months (100 hours) of remedial training. Moreover, those who showed the most white matter change also showed the most improvement in reading ability. Previous research has found that both children and adults with reading difficulty display areas of compromised white matter.

Keller, T.A. & Just, M.A. 2009. Altering Cortical Connectivity: Remediation-Induced Changes in the White Matter of Poor Readers. Neuron, 64 (5), 624-631.

http://www.physorg.com/news179584529.html

Remedial instruction can close gap between good, poor readers

A brain imaging study of poor readers has found that 100 hours of remedial instruction not only improved the skills of struggling readers, but also changed the way their brains activated when they comprehended written sentences. 25 fifth-graders who were poor readers worked in groups of three for an hour a day with a reading "personal trainer," a teacher specialized in administering a remedial reading program. The training included both word decoding exercises in which students were asked to recognize the word in its written form and tasks in using reading comprehension strategies. Brain scans while the children were reading revealed that the parietotemporal region — responsible for decoding the sounds of written language and assembling them into words and phrases that make up a sentence — was significantly less activated among the poor readers than in the control group. The increases in activation seen as a result of training were still evident, and even greater, a year later.
Although dyslexia is generally thought of as caused by difficulties in the visual perception of letters, leading to confusions between letters like "p" and "d", such difficulties occur in only about 10% of the cases. Most commonly, the problem lies in relating the visual form of a letter to its sound.

Meyler, A., Keller, T.A., Cherkassky, V.L., Gabrieli, J.D.E.  & Just, M.A.. 2008. Modifying the brain activation of poor readers during sentence comprehension with extended remedial instruction: A longitudinal study of neuroplasticity. Neuropsychologia, 46 (10), 2580-2592.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/cmu-cmb061108.php

Aircraft noise may affect children's reading and memory

A large study involving 2844 children aged 9-10 has found exposure to aircraft noise impaired reading comprehension. The children were selected from primary schools located near three major airports — Schiphol in the Netherlands, Barajas in Spain, and Heathrow in the UK. Reading age in children exposed to high levels of aircraft noise was delayed by up to 2 months in the UK and by up to 1 month in the Netherlands for each 5 decibel change in noise exposure. On the other hand, road traffic noise did not have an effect on reading and indeed was unexpectedly found to improve recall memory. An earlier German study found children attending schools near the old Munich airport improved their reading scores and cognitive memory performance when the airport shut down, while children going to school near the new airport experienced a decrease in testing scores.

Stansfield, S.A., Berglund, B., Clark, C., Lopez-Barrio, I., Fischer, P., Öhrstrom, E., Haines, M.M., Head, J., Hygge, S., van Kamp, I. & Berry, B.F. 2005. Aircraft and road traffic noise and children's cognition and health: a cross-national study. The Lancet, 365, 1942-1949.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-06/l-eta060105.php

Imaging study points to the importance of early stimulation in making good readers

A longitudinal study that used imaging to compare brain activation patterns has identified two types of reading disability: a primarily inherent type with higher cognitive ability (poor readers who compensate for disability), and a more environmentally influenced type with lower cognitive skills and attendance at more disadvantaged schools (persistently poor readers). Compensated poor readers were able to overcome some of the disability, improving their ability to read words accurately and to understand what they read. In contrast, the persistently poor readers continued to experience difficulties; as children these readers had lower cognitive ability and more often attended disadvantaged schools. Brain activation patterns showed a disruption in the neural systems for reading in compensated readers, while persistently poor readers had the neural circuitry for reading real words, but it had not been properly activated. The results suggest that providing early interventions aimed at stimulating both the ability to sound out words and to understand word meanings would be beneficial in children at risk for reading difficulties associated with disadvantage.

Shaywitz, S.E., Shaywitz, B.A., Fulbright, R.K., Skudlarski, P., Mencl, W.E., Constable, R.T., Pugh, K.R., Holahan, J.M., Marchione, K.E., Fletcher, J.M. et al. 2003. Neural systems for compensation and persistence: young adult outcome of childhood reading disability, Biological Psychiatry, 54 (1), 25-33.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-07/yu-yri071503.php

Neural changes produced by learning to read revealed

Understanding how our brain structures change as we learn to read is difficult because of the confounding with age and the learning of other skills. Studying adult learners is also problematic because in most educated societies adult illiteracy is typically the result of learning impairments or poor health. Now a new study involving 20 former guerrillas in Colombia who are learning to read for the first time as adults has found that these late-literates showed a number of significant brain differences compared to matched adult illiterates, including more white matter between various regions, and more grey matter in various left temporal and occipital regions important for recognizing letter shapes and translating letters into speech sounds and their meanings. Particularly important were connections between the left and right angular gyri in the parietal lobe. While this area has long been known as important for reading, its function turns out to have been misinterpreted — it now appears its main role is in anticipating what we will see. The findings will help in understanding the causes of dyslexia.

Carreiras, M. et al. 2009. An anatomical signature for literacy. Nature, 461 (7266), 983-986.

http://www.physorg.com/news174744233.html

The processes in reading

In a fascinating study, researchers have disentangled the three processes involved in reading: letter-by-letter decoding, whole word shape, and sentence context. They found that letter-by-letter decoding (phonics) determined 62% of reading speed, while context controlled 22% and word shape 16%.

Pelli, D.G. 7& Tillman, K.A. 2007. Parts, Wholes, and Context in Reading: A Triple Dissociation. PLoS ONE 2(8): e680.

Specific brain region for reading

Although a number of imaging studies have provided support for the idea that there’s a specific area of the brain that enables us to read efficiently by allowing us to process the visual image of entire words, the question is still debated — partly because the same area also seems to be involved in the recognition of other objects and partly because damage in this region has never been confined to this region alone. Now the experience of an epileptic requiring removal of a small area next to the so-called visual word-form area (VWFA) in the left occipito-temporal cortex has provided evidence of the region's importance for reading. After the operation, the patient’s ability to comprehend words was dramatically slower, and the results were consistent with him reading letter by letter. A brain scan confirmed that the VWFA no longer lit up when words were read, perhaps because the surgery severed its connection to other parts of the brain.

Gaillard, R. et. al. 2006. Direct Intracranial, fMRI, and Lesion Evidence for the Causal Role of Left Inferotemporal Cortex in Reading. Neuron, 50, 191-204.

Confirmation: boys have more literacy problems than girls

Previous research has suggested the reason that reading disabilities are more common among boys is that teachers simply tend to recognize the problem in boys more often. It is sometimes thought that boys are more disruptive, so the teachers pay more attention to them. However, new research investigating four previous large-scale studies of reading in children (2 New Zealand and 2 U.K.), involving a total of some 9,800 children, seems to make it clear that boys really do have more reading difficulties than girls. Across all the studies, about 20% of the boys had reading disabilities compared with about 11% of the girls. The studies used representative samples of children, not simply children already known to be having learning difficulties - a weakness of some previous research.

Rutter, M., Caspi, A., Fergusson, D., Horwood, L.J., Goodman, R., Maughan, B., Moffitt, T.E., Meltzer, H. & Carroll, J. 2004. Sex Differences in Developmental Reading Disability: New Findings From 4 Epidemiological Studies. JAMA, 291 (16), 2007-2012.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-05/uow-rrf051304.php

Reading verbs activates motor cortex areas

A new imaging study has surprised researchers by revealing that parts of the motor cortex respond when people do nothing more active than silently reading. However, the words read have to be action words. When such words are read, appropriate regions are activated – for example, reading “lick” will trigger blood flow in sites of the motor cortex associated with tongue and mouth movements. Moreover, activity also occurs in premotor brain regions that influence learning of new actions, as well as the language structures, Broca's area and Wernicke's area. The researchers suggest that these findings challenge the assumption that word meanings are processed solely in language structures – instead, our understanding of words depends on the integration of information from several interconnected brain structures that provide information about associated actions and sensations.

Hauk, O., Johnsrude, I. & Pulvermüller, F. 2004. Somatotopic Representation of Action Words in Human Motor and Premotor Cortex. Neuron, 41, 301-7.

Growing evidence cerebellum involved in language

An imaging study of children with selective problems in short term phonological memory and others diagnosed with specific language impairment (and matched controls) found that those with selective STPM deficits and those with SLI had less gray matter in both sides of the cerebellum compared to the children in the control groups. This supports growing evidence that the cerebellum, an area of the brain once thought to be involved only in the control of movement, also plays a role in processing speech and language.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-11/sfn-ssb111103.php

Gender differences in neural networks underlying beginning reading

A recent study uses EEG readings to investigate gender differences in the emerging connectivity of neural networks associated with phonological processing, verbal fluency, higher-level thinking and word retrieval (skills needed for beginning reading), in preschoolers. The study confirms different patterns of growth in building connections between boys and girls. These differences point to the different advantages each gender brings to learning to read. Boys favor vocabulary sub-skills needed for comprehension while girls favor fluency and phonic sub-skills needed for the mechanics of reading.

Hanlon, H. 2001. Gender Differences Observed in Preschoolers’ Emerging Neural Networks. Paper presented at Genomes and Hormones: An Integrative Approach to Gender Differences in Physiology, an American Physiological Society (APS) conference held October 17-20 in Pittsburgh.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-10/aps-gad101701.php

Gathercole, S.E., Service, E., Hitch, G.J., Adams, A. & Martin, A.J. 1999. Phonological short-term memory and vocabulary development: furtherevidence on the nature of the relationship. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 13, 65-77.

Finding: The ability of a child to repeat back unfamiliar words is constrained by the capacity of their working memory rather than their ability to articulate the words. The constraining effect of working memory capacity on the ability to learn new words continues into adolescence.

The effect of phonological short-term (working) memory and vocabulary knowledge was explored in two experiments (see Gathercole et al 1994 for a discussion of this effect). In the first experiment, four-year-olds were given various working memory tests (nonword repetition; digit span; nonword recognition). The correlation between working memory capacity and vocabulary knowledge was as strong for the serial recognition task as for the recall-based tests, supporting the view that it is working memory capacity rather than speech output skills which constrain word learning. In the next experiment, the same association betweenmemory capacity and vocabulary knowledge was found to be strong in teenagers, indicating that these working memory constraints remain significant throughout childhood.

Crain-Thoreson, C. 1996. Phonemic Processes in Children's Listening and Reading Comprehension. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 10, 383-401.

Finding: Rhyme appears to be more confusing than other phonemic similarities and can affect how clearly the child remembers what a heard story was about. However recall of verbatim details does not appear to be affected, and the susceptibility of a child to phonemic confusion doesn't appear to affect their reading skill.

Kindergarten and second-grade children were told phonemically confusing stories and second-graders were given phonemically confusing stories to read. It was found that rhymes were more consistently confusing than alliteratives in both the listening and readingtasks at both grade levels. This suggests not only that rhyme is inherently moreconfusing than alliteration, but that similar information is being activated when children listen and when they readsilently.

Both kindergarten and second-grade children showed phonemic confusion in their remembering of the gist of the stories that they heard, but prereaders were less likely than readers to show signs of phonemic confusion in their verbatim recall. However, children's sensitivity to phonemic information did not appear to affect their reading skill.

Gathercole, S.E., Willis, C.S., Baddeley, A.D. & Emslie, H. 1994. The Children's test of Nonword Repetition: a test of phonological working memory. Memory, 2, 103-27.

Finding: The ability of a child to repeat back unfamiliar words is constrained by the capacity of their working memory, and affects their ability to learn new words, as well as the ability to comprehend what they hear or read.

The Children's test of Nonword Repetition (CNRep) involves the child hearing a single novel word-like item, such as "barrazon", and being required to immediately repeat it back. This occurs for 40 such items. Performance on this test is highly correlated with conventional tests of phonological working memory, and it appears that the ability to repeat back unfamiliar words is affected by the capacity of this aspect (the phonological loop) of working memory.

The test is particularly appropriate for young children, as it is a familiar task (young children are of course constantly coming up against unfamiliar words and often try to repeat them) and they usually readily understand what to do.

A number of studies have consistently found poor CNRep scores in children who are poor readers, and very low scores in children who are reading-impaired (such as dyslexics). Adults with various language processing disorders also perform poorly on this test.

Working memory capacity (which varies among individuals) affects many aspects of comprehension and recall. Among normal adults, working memory constraints usually only affect comprehension of particularly long and grammatically complex sentences. Among children, the ability to repeat back unfamiliar words affects both language comprehension and the learning of new words.

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