Irregular bed times curb young kids’ brain power

Given the importance of early childhood development on subsequent health, there may be knock-on effects across the life course, suggest the authors.

The authors looked at whether bedtimes in early childhood were related to brain power in more than 11,000 seven year olds, all of whom were part of the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS).

MCS is a nationally representative long term study of UK children born between September 2000 and January 2002, and the research drew on regular surveys and home visits made when the children were 3, 5, and 7, to find out about family routines, including bedtimes.

The authors wanted to know whether the time a child went to bed, and the consistency of bed-times, had any impact on intellectual performance, measured by validated test scores for reading, maths, and spatial awareness.

And they wanted to know if the effects were cumulative and/or whether any particular periods during early childhood were more critical than others.

Irregular bedtimes were most common at the age of 3, when around one in five children went to bed at varying times. By the age of 7, more than half the children went to bed regularly between 7.30 and 8.30 pm.

Children whose bedtimes were irregular or who went to bed after 9 pm came from more socially disadvantaged backgrounds, the findings showed.

When they were 7, girls who had irregular bedtimes had lower scores on all three aspects of intellect assessed, after taking account of other potentially influential factors, than children with regular bedtimes. But this was not the case in 7 year old boys.

Irregular bedtimes by the age of 5 were not associated with poorer brain power in girls or boys at the age of 7. But irregular bedtimes at 3 years of age were associated with lower scores in reading, maths, and spatial awareness in both boys and girls, suggesting that around the age of 3 could be a sensitive period for cognitive development.

The impact of irregular bedtimes seemed to be cumulative.

Girls who had never had regular bedtimes at ages 3, 5, and 7 had significantly lower reading, maths and spatial awareness scores than girls who had had consistent bedtimes. The impact was the same in boys, but for any two of the three time points.

The authors point out that irregular bedtimes could disrupt natural body rhythms and cause sleep deprivation, so undermining the plasticity of the brain and the ability to acquire and retain information.

"Sleep is the price we pay for plasticity on the prior day and the investment needed to allow learning fresh the next day," they write. And they add: "Early child development has profound influences on health and wellbeing across the life course. Therefore, reduced or disrupted sleep, especially if it occurs at key times in development, could have important impacts on health throughout life."

Children of Blind Mothers Learn New Modes of Communication

A loving gaze helps firm up the bond between parent and child, building social skills that last a lifetime. But what happens when mom is blind? A new study shows that the children of sightless mothers develop healthy communication skills and can even outstrip the children of parents with normal vision.

Eye contact is one of the most important aspects of communication, according to Atsushi Senju, a developmental cognitive neuroscientist at Birkbeck, University of London. Autistic people don’t naturally make eye contact, however, and they can become anxious when urged to do so. Children for whom face-to-face contact is drastically reduced—babies severely neglected in orphanages or children who are born blind—are more likely to have traits of autism, such as the inability to form attachments, hyperactivity, and cognitive impairment.

To determine whether eye contact is essential for developing normal communication skills, Senju and colleagues chose a less extreme example: babies whose primary caregivers (their mothers) were blind. These children had other forms of loving interaction, such as touching and talking. But the mothers were unable to follow the babies’ gaze or teach the babies to follow theirs, which normally helps children learn the importance of the eyes in communication.

Apparently, the children don’t need the help. Senju and colleagues studied five babies born to blind mothers, checking the children’s proficiency at 6 to 10 months, 12 to 15 months, and 24 to 47 months on several measures of age-appropriate communications skills. At the first two visits, babies watched videos in which a woman shifted her gaze or moved different parts of her face while corresponding changes in the baby’s face were recorded. Babies also followed the gaze of a woman sitting at a table and looking at various objects.

The babies also played with unfamiliar adults in a test that checked for autistic traits, such as the inability to maintain eye contact, not smiling in response to the adult’s smile, and being unable to switch attention from one toy to a new one. At each age, the researchers assessed the children’s visual, motor, and language skills.

When the results were compared to scores of children of “sighted” parents, the five children of blind mothers did just as well on the tests, the researchers report today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Learning to communicate with their blind mothers also seemed to give the babies some advantages. For example, even at the youngest age tested, the babies directed fewer gazes toward their mothers than to adults with normal vision, suggesting that they were already learning that strangers would communicate differently than would their mothers. When they were between 12 and 15 months old, the babies of blind mothers were also more verbal than were other children of the same age. And the youngest babies of blind mothers outscored their peers in developmental tests—especially visual tasks such as remembering the location of a hidden toy or switching their attention from one toy to a new one presented by the experimenter.

Senju likens their skills to those of children who grow up bilingual; the need to shift between modes of communication may boost the development of their social skills, he says. “Our results suggest that the babies aren’t passively copying the expressions of adults, but that they are actively learning and changing the way to best communicate with others.”

"The use of sighted babies of blind mothers is a clever and important idea," says developmental scientist Andrew Meltzoff of the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences in Seattle. "The mother’s blindness may teach a child at an early age that certain people turn to look at things and others don’t. Apparently these little babies can learn that not everyone reacts the same way."

Meltzoff adds that there are many ways to pay attention to a child. “Doubtless, the blind mothers use touch, sounds, tugs on the arm, and tender pats on the back. Our babies want communication, love, and attention. The fact that these can come through any route is a remarkable demonstration of the adaptability of the human child.”

Child development varies and is hard to predict

On average, children take the first steps on their own at the age of 12 months. Many parents perceive this event as a decisive turning point. However, the timing is really of no consequence. Children who start walking early turn out later to be neither more intelligent nor more well-coordinated. This is the conclusion reached by a study supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Because parents pay great attention to their offspring, they often compare them with the other children in the sandpit or playground. Many of them worry that their child is lagging behind in terms of mental development if it sits up or starts to walk a bit later than other children. Now, however, in a statistical analysis of the developmental data of 222 children born healthy, researchers headed by Oskar Jenni of the Zurich Children’s Hospital and Valentin Rousson of Lausanne University have come to the conclusion that most of these fears are groundless.

Considerable variance
Within the framework of the Zurich longitudinal study, the paediatricians conducted a detailed study of the development of 119 boys and 103 girls. The researchers examined the children seven times during the first two years of their life and subsequently carried out motor and intelligence tests with them every two to three years after they reached school age. The results show that children sit up for the first time at an age of between slightly less than four months and thirteen months (average 6.5 months). They begin to walk at an age of between 8.5 months and 20 months (average 12 months). In other words, there is considerable variance.

The researchers found no correlation between the age at which the children reached these motor milestones and their performance in the intelligence and motor tests between the age of seven and eighteen. In short, by the time they reach school age, children who start walking later than others are just as well-coordinated and intelligent as those who were up on their feet early.

More relaxed
Although the first steps that a child takes on its own represent a decisive turning point for most parents, the precise timing of this event is manifestly of no consequence. “That’s why I advise parents to be more relaxed if their child only starts walking at 16 or 18 months,” says Jenni. If a child still can’t walk unaided after 20 months, then further medical investigations are indicated.

(Image: Getty Images)

Infants learn to look and look to learn

Researchers at the University of Iowa have documented an activity by infants that begins nearly from birth: They learn by taking inventory of the things they see.

In a new paper, the psychologists contend that infants create knowledge by looking at and learning about their surroundings. The activities should be viewed as intertwined, rather than considered separately, to fully appreciate how infants gain knowledge and how that knowledge is seared into memory.

“The link between looking and learning is much more intricate than what people have assumed,” says John Spencer, a psychology professor at the UI and a co-author on the paper published in the journal Cognitive Science.

The researchers created a mathematical model that mimics, in real time and through months of child development, how infants use looking to understand their environment. Such a model is important because it validates the importance of looking to learning and to forming memories. It also can be adapted by child development specialists to help special-needs children and infants born prematurely to combine looking and learning more effectively.

“The model can look, like infants, at a world that includes dynamic, stimulating events that influence where it looks. We contend (the model) provides a critical link to studying how social partners influence how infants distribute their looks, learn, and develop,” the authors write.

Preschoolers’ Counting Abilities Relate to Future Math Performance

Along with reciting the days of the week and the alphabet, adults often practice reciting numbers with young children. Now, new research from the University of Missouri suggests reciting numbers is not enough to prepare children for math success in elementary school. The research indicates that counting, which requires assigning numerical values to objects in chronological order, is more important for helping preschoolers acquire math skills.

“Reciting means saying the numbers from memory in chronological order, whereas counting involves understanding that each item in the set is counted once and that the last number stated is the amount for the entire set,” said Louis Manfra, an assistant professor in MU’s Department of Human Development and Family Studies. “When children are just reciting, they’re basically repeating what seems like a memorized sentence. When they’re counting, they’re performing a more cognitive activity in which they’re associating a one-to-one correspondence with the object and the number to represent a quantity.”

“Counting gives children stronger foundations when they start school,” Manfra said. “The skills children have when they start kindergarten affect their trajectories through early elementary school; therefore, it’s important that children start with as many skills as possible.”

The study, “Associations between Counting Ability in Preschool and Mathematic Performance in First Grade among a Sample of Ethnically Diverse, Low-Income Children,” will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Research in Childhood Education.

Brain Power: From Neurons to Networks is a 10-minute film and an accompanying TED Book. Based on new research on how to best nurture children’s brains from Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child and University of Washington’s I-LABS, the film explores the parallels between a child’s brain development and the development of the global brain of Internet, offering insights into the best ways to shape both. The film and TEDBook launched at the California Academy of Sciences on November 8, 2012.

Scripps Florida Scientists Uncover Secrets of How Intellect and Behavior Emerge During Childhood

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have shown that a single protein plays an oversized role in intellectual and behavioral development. The scientists found that mutations in a single gene, which is known to cause intellectual disability and increase the risk of developing autism spectrum disorder, severely disrupts the organization of developing brain circuits during early childhood. This study helps explain how genetic mutations can cause profound cognitive and behavioral problems.

The study was published in the November 9, 2012, issue of the journal Cell.

The genetic mutations that cause developmental disorders, such as intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder, commonly affect synapses, the junctions between two nerve cells that are part of the brain’s complex electro-chemical signaling system. A substantial percentage of children with severe intellectual and behavioral impairments are believed to harbor single mutations in critical neurodevelopmental genes. Until this study, however, it was unclear precisely how pathogenic genetic mutations and synapse function were related to the failure to develop normal intellect.

“In this study, we did something no one else had done before,” said Gavin Rumbaugh, a TSRI associate professor who led the new research. “Using an animal model, we looked at a mutation known to cause intellectual disability and showed for the first time a causative link between abnormal synapse maturation during brain development and life-long cognitive disruptions commonly seen in adults with a neurodevelopmental disorder.”