It has been found that young children can use gestures before language development begins, and these gestures can also predict future language development. The majority of previous studies that focused on gestures in young children have only observed them in neurotypical children; however, there is an increasing amount of work that also examines children who have been diagnosed with autism. One of the criteria necessary for an autism diagnosis is impairment in nonverbal communication, and it affects about 1 in 54 children in the United States. Since gestures have been proven to help aid in early identification and interventions for children who are more likely to experience language difficulties, this article looked to compare findings from both neurotypical and autistic children.

Neurotypical children are able to communicate with gestures before they are able to use spoken language. Their first gestures usually include showing or pointing, and the objects that they point to are more likely to be added to their spoken vocabulary. These gestures emerge around 10 months and by 14 months, pointing specifically at different objects actually predicts their language outcomes. Specifically, index-finger pointing and declarative pointing have been more strongly tied to vocabulary growth than whole-hand and imperative pointing. Painting has also been shown to be connected to an increase in vocabulary, with earlier and more frequent painting serving as strong predictors. Once children can combine speech and gesture (~2 years old) and they can convey meaning beyond single words, these combinations can predict syntactic development.

Children with Autism have shown a reduced amount of gesture production from infancy all the way through adolescence with declarative gestures. The findings for gesture production in children with ASD are mixed, with some studies showing lower performance and others showing similarities. Furthermore, Infants at an elevated likelihood of ASD, especially those who have an older sibling who is diagnosed, are at higher risk for language impairments. Some infants with elevated likelihood can perform as well as or better than neurotypical children, while others, mostly those who are diagnosed later, show reduced gesture use. Children with ASD and an elevated likelihood of ASD produce similar amounts of gesture types and gesture and speech combinations, which help predict language skills as well.

New research is suggesting that the quality and type of gestures may be more important than frequency. Gestures combined with vocalizations, or those used for joint attention and social interaction, are especially predictive of later language. On the other hand, gestures for behavioral regulation are not. In other words, for infants with ASD, the types of gestures rather than just the amount play a huge role in language development.

Overall, gestures allow children to convey meanings before they can do so in speech, and these early gestures consistently precede and predict vocabulary, syntax, and narrative development.

To read more, click here!

Alexandra Lagaros

UConn KIDS Research Assistant

The answer to last week’s question, “How developed is a child’s brain by age 5?”

Is 90% !!!

This week’s trivia question is:

At what age is the brain fully developed?

A. 8 years old

B. 10 years old

C. 16 years old

D. 20-30 years old

Tune in next week to find out the answer to this week’s question!

Every parent wonders: Does the way I raise my child really shape who they become? There are 4 main parenting styles, defined by the ways parents interact with and set rules for their kids: Authoritative (parents are warm and caring, but also set clear rules and expect children to follow them), Authoritarian (parents have strict rules, demand obedience, and show less warmth), Permissive (parents are loving and kind but don’t enforce many rules or expectations), and Neglectful (parents show low warmth and don’t set many rules or monitor the child much). Each style shows how each one can affect a child’s emotions, school success, friendships, and behavior. 

The findings suggest that the “sweet spot” is being both caring and structured. Kids raised with warmth and clear rules tend to thrive the most. But it’s not that simple–culture, family resources, stress, and even technology all change how parenting styles play out in real life. What works well in one family or culture may not in another. Being too permissive might feel loving but can leave the kids struggling with self-control. In today’s world, questions about digital media and modern family life add even more layers. 

This article opens up an important conversation: not just about which style is “right,” but about how parents, communities, and societies can better support their children so they have the chance to thrive no matter their circumstances!

 

If you want to read more, click here!

Erin Mulroy

UConn KIDS, Research Assistant

Erin is a research assistant for UConn KIDS from Shelton, CT. She is a sophomore Physiology and Neurobiology major and Spanish minor. She is happy to be a part of UConn KIDS because it gives her the opportunity to become more involved with children and the various research opportunities at UConn.

After graduating, she plans on attending medical school where she will pursue pediatric neurology. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, running, painting, and spinning for the UConn Color Guard!

 

When we look at babies, the first thought that comes to mind might be how cute they are and how new they are to the world. However, one aspect we often overlook is how babies think, process information, and perceive their surroundings. Patricia Kull delves into how babies are linguistic geniuses, as they have the ability to acquire a second language extremely quickly until the age of seven. After puberty, we observe a sharper decline to the point where it completely disappears. She mentions that there is a critical period in development, where babies attempt to master the sounds in a language. The fascinating thing about babies is that they can discriminate the sounds of every language, regardless of which country it is from, which is something adults cannot do. Because adults are culture-bound listeners, they can only differentiate the sounds of their primary language, not foreign ones.

Kuhl explains further that they were able to pinpoint when babies become culture-bound listeners, as a study was conducted with babies in Tokyo and the United States, in which they listened to “ra” and “la”—sounds, which are important in English but not in Japanese. It was found that at around six to eight months, the babies were completely equivalent in ability to discriminate between these two sounds. However, only two months later, the babies in the U.S. got significantly better, and the babies in Tokyo got significantly worse. This signified that the babies were preparing for the exact language that they were going to learn in such a short span of time.

Additionally, to provide us with an understanding of how babies can perceive another language, Kuhl explains another study conducted in which they compared Taiwanese babies’ understanding of Mandarin to 6-month-old American babies (who had never heard a second language before) who were exposed to Mandarin through twelve sessions. It was found that after two months, the American babies were just as good at perceiving Mandarin as the Taiwanese babies who had been listening to Mandarin for the past 10 and a half months.

Through both of these studies, scientists were able to figure out two things: babies are listening intently to us, and they are taking statistics while doing so. They can absorb the statistics of which language they are learning, and this changes the way their brains perceive language. The way we perceive language is founded on the representations that were formed extremely early in development.

 

If you want to watch the full Ted Talk, click here!

Alexandra Lagaros

UConn KIDS Research Assistant

Welcome back to Trivia Tuesday!

This week’s question is: How developed is a child’s brain by age 5?

A. 75% developed 
B. 90% developed
C. 45% developed
D. 60% developed

Tune in next week to find out the answer to this week’s question!

Screen time for children is a tricky topic since we’re entering such a predominant technological world. It’s hard to not utilize screens when engaging and raising young children nowadays, which makes it important to learn how to do this in a healthy way. There are ways to positively promote child health and development in the digital world. Four evidence-based principles are minimizing, mitigating, mindfully using, and modelling healthy use of screens. 

 

Minimizing the use of screens is always recommended. It’s not recommended for children younger than 2 years old to use screens, and for children 2-5 years old, it’s recommended about 1 hour or less of screen time. It’s also recommended to avoid screens 1 hour before bedtime and to maintain daily screen-free times like family meals and book-sharing.  

 

Another principle for healthy use of screens is mitigating the risks associated with screentime. One way to do this is to be present and engaged when screens are being used, so it’s important that children aren’t using screens by themselves. Another way to mitigate risks is to encourage the use of screens for creative activities like drawing rather than passive viewing. Curating and monitoring young children’s media are something else that could help.  

 

Being mindful about the use of screen time is another important principle for healthy use of screens. Creating a plan for when, how, and where screens may and may not be used could help with this as well as prioritizing shared family media use like watching television or movies together, rather than having children play or watch by themselves. 

 

The last principle for healthy use of screens is that adults should model health screen use. They can do this by encouraging and participating in activities that don’t involve screens like shared reading, outdoor play, board games, and crafts. It’s also important to turn off devices during family time at and away from home as well as when not in use and avoid background television.  

 

If you want to read more, click here!  

Angelina Stofka 

UConn KIDS, Research Assistant 

Cooper Armogida is a new research assistant for UConn KIDS from Ashford, Connecticut. He is a junior Psychological Sciences major with a goal of eventually becoming a professor and conducting his own research lab! This is Coopers first semester working with us at UConn KIDS and we are so thrilled to welcome him to the team!

He has been passionate about psychology and working with kids for many years, so it’s no surprise he is ecstatic to be a part of our team!

In his free time, Cooper enjoys nature, playing basketball, and spending quality time with his loved ones.

In this Ted Talk by Rúben Martins Da Costa, he explains how children are born curious. Using a quote saying, “Every kid starts out as a natural born scientist, and then we beat it out of them,” by Carl Sogan. He goes on to explain that kids have this innate curiosity but in grade school this curiosity in minimized by encouraging formulas and memorization rather than imagination. He explains that in recent discussion people have claimed that parents and teachers should model scientific inquiry to help children learn that it is good to make a hypothesis, test it, and sometimes be wrong. But, Rúben Martins Da Costa thinks that scientists themselves can be responsible for shaping the minds of young children by including interaction moments and by connecting with the children. 

Rúben Martins Da Costa then goes on to give fascinating personal anecdotes about his interactions with children in scientific manners. He also brings up an interesting project where children are responsible, with the help of a mentor, to review scientific articles to make them more digestible for an adolescent ages 8-15. By doing this, the researcher gets a new piece of published work that is accessible for children, and the children learn the scientific review process and now have a piece of scientific information to read and learn from. 

All in all, Rúben Martins Da Costa talk about the innate curiosity of kids, and elaborates on how to harness that curiosity and not dismiss it. He gives personal anecdotes and legit studies that have done exactly this to inspire others to include kids in scientific review. A great Ted Talk to listen to, and a great initiative to help bring kids into the world of research and help them flourish within their curious minds!

If you want to watch this Ted Talk click here!

Jenna Coplon

UConn KIDS, Research Assistant

Montessori classrooms have become more popular and known overtime and have become one of the preferred ways of arranging and conducting classrooms for preschools. The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) is the most used observation system used in research, practice, and policy to look at classroom process quality. CLASS focuses mostly on teacher-child interactions as the site of learning, and Montessori classrooms focuses mostly on child-environment interactions, which might cause Montessori classrooms to score lower than conventional classrooms on CLASS. 

 

Montessori preschool classrooms tend to have more students, causing a higher child to teacher ratio, which may not seem efficient to some people. However, these classrooms see that children’s development and learning occur not only through teacher to child interactions, but through a relationship between the child, the environment, and the teacher. This is not something that CLASS typically looks at but is shown to be effective in children’s development.  

 

Montessori preschool classrooms with larger class sizes had higher emotional support and classroom organization than conventional classrooms using CLASS. They also found that classrooms with higher child to adult ratios lead to higher instructional support. This goes to show the advantages of Montessori classrooms that CLASS observations might miss! 

 

If you want to read more, click here!  

Angelina Stofka 

UConn KIDS, Research Assistant