Children's Cognitive Skills Research Articles

Building Capacity to Improve Child Cognitive Skills: A Case Study

The term capacity building has been utilized as a part of strategies and process which can enhance cognitive skills. Apart from capacity building, this study investigated the role of cognitive technique to improve child outcomes through thinking strategies. The childhood years are critical for human development. It is the time when the brain develops most rapidly and a large number of children’s development take place and it is estimated that over 200 million children under 5 years of age are unable to attain their full developmental potential. Studies suggest that young children are quite limited in their knowledge about cognitive phenomena—or in their Meta cognition—and do relatively little monitoring of their own memory, comprehension, and other cognitive enterprises. The participant in the present study is from the nuclear family. As per the parents and teacher’s remark the child thinking process was below average. After doing the assessment the intervention was to develop standard procedure of thinking strategy areas that were assigned to 1 of 4 areas: Memory (e.g., measures associative memory through five item),Concept development (e.g., it included object concept and relational concepts), Reasoning (entail insight and using deductive and inductive logic), problem solving (it is related to arithmetic or quantitative situation). The treatment was evaluated by assessing the child again and qualitatively by means of interview with child, parents and teacher .The results shows that increase in the children’s cognitive skills through different thinking strategies.

The added impact of parenting education in early childhood education programs: A meta-analysis

Many early childhood education (ECE) programs seek to enhance parents' capacities to support their children's development. Using a meta-analytic database of 46 studies of ECE programs that served children age three to five-years-old, we examine the benefits to children's cognitive and pre-academic skills of adding parenting education to ECE programs for children and consider the differential impacts of: 1) parenting education programs of any type; 2) parenting education programs that provided parents with modeling of or opportunities to practice stimulating behaviors and 3) parenting education programs that were delivered through intensive home visiting. The results of the study call into question some general longstanding assertions regarding the benefits of including parenting education in early childhood programs. We find no differences in program impacts between ECE programs that did and did not provide some form of parenting education. We find some suggestive evidence that among ECE programs that provided parenting education, those that provided parents with opportunities to practice parenting skills were associated with greater short-term impacts on children's pre-academic skills. Among ECE programs that provided parenting education, those that did so through one or more home visits a month yielded effect sizes for cognitive outcomes that were significantly larger than programs that provided lower dosages of home visits.

Aptitud física y habilidades cognitivas

ObjectiveTo assess the correlation between physical fitness and cognitive skills in children's transition II level of the commune of Temuco, Chile. MethodThe sixminute Walk Test was used to determine the physical fitness and for the cognitive skills item from the Battery Evalúa-0. ResultsA positive correlation was found in children with suitable physical fitness and classification variables, series and letters and numbers from the cognitive skill item. In the perceptual organization variable, no statistically significant correlation was found. ConclusionPhysical fitness influences the development of cognitive skills that promote curricular learning in schools as reading and mathematics.

Beyond Boys' Bad Behavior: Paternal Incarceration and Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood.

A growing number of American school-aged children have incarcerated or formally incarcerated parents necessitating a more comprehensive understanding of the intergenerational effects of mass imprisonment. Using the Fragile Families Study, I assess whether having an incarcerated father impacts children's cognitive skill development into middle childhood. While previous studies have primarily found effects for boys' behavior problems, matching models and sensitivity analyses demonstrate that experiencing paternal incarceration by age 9 is associated with lower cognitive skills for both boys and girls and these negative effects hold net of a pre-paternal incarceration measure of child cognitive ability. Moreover, I estimate that paternal incarceration explains between 2 and 15 percent of the Black-White achievement gap at age 9. These findings represent new outcomes of importance and suggest that paternal incarceration may play an even larger role in the production of intergenerational inequalities for American children than previously documented.

The Effect of Bilingual Exposure on Executive Function Skills in Preterm and Full-Term Preschoolers.

To evaluate the effects of bilingual exposure on executive function (EF) skills, measured by parent-rating and performance-based instruments, in preterm and full-term preschoolers. Children age 3 to 5 years (mean 4.4) born preterm (PT; n = 82) and full term (FT; n = 79) had monolingual (PT-M, n = 51; FT-M, n = 53) or bilingual (PT-B, n = 31; FT-B, n = 26) language exposure. Groups were similar in age, gender and race, but PT children had lower socioeconomic status (SES) than FT children. Parents completed a language questionnaire and diary and a standardized parent rating of EF skills. Children completed EF tasks that tap response inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. ANCOVA and logistic regression examined effects on EF of birth group (PT/FT), language status (M/B), and birth group by language status interaction, controlling for age and SES. Compared to children born FT, children born PT had significantly higher parent-rated EF scores and poorer performance on all but one EF task, both indicating more EF problems. No main effects of language status and no birth group by language status interactions were significant. PT status was clearly associated with poorer EF skills, similar to many other studies. In this sample, bilingual exposure conferred neither an advantage nor disadvantage in the FT and PT group. This information may prove useful in counseling families of both PT and FT children about the impact of bilingual exposure on their children's cognitive skills.

Reconfiguration of parietal circuits with cognitive tutoring in elementary school children

Cognitive development is shaped by brain plasticity during childhood, yet little is known about changes in large-scale functional circuits associated with learning in academically relevant cognitive domains such as mathematics. Here, we investigate plasticity of intrinsic brain circuits associated with one-on-one math tutoring and its relation to individual differences in children's learning. We focused on functional circuits associated with the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and angular gyrus (AG), cytoarchitectonically distinct subdivisions of the human parietal cortex with different roles in numerical cognition. Tutoring improved performance and strengthened IPS connectivity with the lateral prefrontal cortex, ventral temporal-occipital cortex, and hippocampus. Crucially, increased IPS connectivity was associated with individual performance gains, highlighting the behavioral significance of plasticity in IPS circuits. Tutoring-related changes in IPS connectivity were distinct from those of the adjacent AG, which did not predict performance gains. Our findings provide new insights into plasticity of functional brain circuits associated with the development of specialized cognitive skills in children.

Birth Weight and Early Cognitive Skills: Can Parenting Offset the Link?

Objectives There is an enduring negative association between low birth weight (<2500g) and early childhood cognitive skills. This study examines if parenting practices meaningfully contribute to or offset birth weight disparities in cognitive development prior to formal schooling. Methods This study uses the ECLS-B, a nationally representative sample of live births in the United States in 2001. Unlike studies focused on one or two measures of parenting and investment, this study considers a wide array parenting measures collected at multiple time points, tracked from before birth across 5years of development. Results Regression results show that nearly 50% of the low-birth-weight gap in early math and reading ability is associated with family socioeconomic status. Between-family OLS regressions show that parenting practices, including "parental interaction," "cognitive stimulation," and "parent quality", are negatively associated with low birth weight and positively associated with improved cognitive skill among all children. After adjustment for family socioeconomic status, parenting practices did little to offset (by mediation or moderation) remaining birth weight disparities in early cognitive development. Conclusions Effective parenting is positively associated with cognitive development, but parenting is not a panacea-the developmental disadvantages associated with poor child health are not linked to parenting practices. We argue that birth weight disparities are rooted in biology and cannot easily be offset by parenting practices.

Socio-economic status and early childhood cognitive skills

This article documents differences in cognitive development, as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), between children from households with high and low socioeconomic status (SES) in two different phases of early childhood in four developing countries. A large number of potential mediators, such as urban residence, preschool attendance, early nutrition, caregiver’s education, and primary school attendance are discussed. Overall, the SES gradient is reduced but persists in most countries even when controlling for all the mediators. The mediational analysis shows that, while urban residence, caregiver’s education and early nutrition appear as significant mediators of the SES-PPVT relation for all countries and most ages, the size of the effect varies widely. For instance, after adding all mediators, the magnitude of the SES-PPVT relation drops by almost half in Peru (mainly due to urban residence), India (mainly due to caregiver’s education at age 5 and urban residence at age 8) and Vietnam at age 5 (mainly due to caregiver’s education). However, it only drops by one third in Ethiopia (mainly due to caregiver’s education at age 5 and urban residence at age 8). The relative importance of each mediator also changes depending on children’s age. Preschool attendance only appears as a minor mediator in Ethiopia and Vietnam at age 5, while primary school attendance does not appear as a significant mediator in any country.

Circadian Sleep Patterns in Toddlers Born Preterm: Longitudinal Associations with Developmental and Health Concerns.

Children born preterm are at elevated risk for several developmental and health concerns. Early sleep patterns may be associated with these concerns. The current study assesses the associations between toddler circadian sleep/activity patterns and later developmental, behavioral, attentional, and health concerns in this at-risk population. We examined circadian sleep/activity patterns at 2 years of age in 99 children born preterm. Child cognitive skills were tested at 3 years of age, and behavior, attention, and health concerns were reported at 3 and 6 years of age. First, sleep/activity data collected via actigraphy were assessed using time series analysis (TSA). For this, we assessed how each child's sleep/activity pattern compared to a specified 24-hour circadian cycle (SCC) with an adjustment for daytime napping. Second, in a series of regression models child sleep/activity parameters from the TSA were assessed with child gender, prematurity, and family sociodemographic assets as covariates. Toddlers with patterns that closely aligned with the SCC had higher abbreviated intelligence quotient scores at 3 years of age. Additionally, at 6 years these children had a lower risk for illness-related medical visits. Higher toddler average activity level was associated with fewer teacher-reported attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms and a lower risk for illness-related medical visits. The novel approach used in this study to index child circadian patterns provides a pattern-based analysis of sleep/activity, which may prove to be developmentally consequential. With replication, these findings may help practitioners promote optimal cognitive and health development via circadian sleep supports in infants born preterm.

Cumulative, Timing-Specific, and Interactive Models of Residential Mobility and Children's Cognitive and Psychosocial Skills.

Residential mobility has received notable attention in the literature, yet there remains limited consensus on how and when mobility is associated with detriments to children's development. Drawing on a nationally representative sample of 19,162 children in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study followed from kindergarten through eighth grade, this study compared cumulative, timing-specific, and interactive models of mobility. Results found that mobility during middle childhood and early adolescence was negatively associated with children's cognitive skills, with short-term effects that dissipated over time. In contrast, associations with psychosocial functioning emerged in relation to early and middle childhood mobility. Effects of residential mobility were robust to more conservative modeling techniques and adjustments for school mobility.

Family Income and Child Cognitive and Noncognitive Development in Australia: Does Money Matter?

This article investigates whether family income affects children's cognitive and noncognitive development by exploiting comprehensive information from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. We include variables that represent parental investment, parental stress, and neighborhood characteristics to examine if these factors mediate the effects of income. Using dynamic panel data, we find that family income is significantly associated with children's cognitive skills but not with noncognitive skills. Mother's education, parent's physical and mental health, parenting styles, child's own health, and presence of both biological parents are the most important factors for children's noncognitive development. For cognitive development, income as well as parents' education, child's birth weight, and number of books that children have at home are highly significant factors. We also find strong evidence to support the skill formation theory that children's previous cognitive and noncognitive outcomes are significantly related to their current outcomes.

Computer games that exercise cognitive skills: What makes them engaging for children?

This paper stems from a mixed-methods study in which we scientifically tested 15 computer games to investigate their suitability for cognitive training. After determining which cognitive functions are utilized while playing these games, we were able to relate schoolchildren's game performance to their cognitive abilities (e.g., executive functioning, perception, memory). As a continuation, we sought to identify the factors that lead to greater engagement in games, such as children's age, gender, and cognitive skills, as well as game genres and features. Forty-one children played 15 computer games, each three times, under the scrutiny of two raters who completed an observational scale for each game. This scale was constructed as a reliable measure of engagement, comprising factors such as enjoyment, frustration, and effort. The data were analyzed using correlations and content analyses. The results indicated that game performance increased with greater levels of engagement and that games involving planning and problem solving tended to be too difficult for younger children. The findings of this study are informative for psychologists, educators, as well as game designers, and can be used to recommend engaging and beneficial games for children.

Early cognitive skills of Mexican-origin children: The roles of parental nativity and legal status

Although one-third of children of immigrants have undocumented parents, little is known about their early development. Using data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey and decennial census, we assessed how children's cognitive skills at ages 3 to 5 vary by ethnicity, maternal nativity, and maternal legal status. Specifically, Mexican children of undocumented mothers were contrasted with Mexican children of documented mothers and Mexican, white, and black children with U.S.-born mothers. Mexican children of undocumented mothers had lower emergent reading skills than all other groups and lower emergent mathematics skills than all groups with U.S.-born mothers. Multilevel regression models showed that differences in reading skills are explained by aspects of the home environment, but the neighborhood context also matters. Cross-level interactions suggest that immigrant concentration boosts emergent reading and mathematics skills for children with undocumented parents, but does not similarly benefit children whose parents are native born.

Relations among motor, social, and cognitive skills in pre-kindergarten children with developmental disabilities

Despite the comorbidity between motor difficulties and certain disabilities, limited research has examined links between early motor, cognitive, and social skills in preschool-aged children with developmental disabilities. The present study examined the relative contributions of gross motor and fine motor skills to the prediction of improvements in children's cognitive and social skills among 2,027 pre-kindergarten children with developmental disabilities, including specific learning disorder, speech/language impairment, intellectual disability, and autism spectrum disorder. Results indicated that for pre-kindergarten children with developmental disabilities, fine motor skills, but not gross motor skills, were predictive of improvements in cognitive and social skills, even after controlling for demographic information and initial skill levels. Moreover, depending on the type of developmental disability, the pattern of prediction of gross motor and fine motor skills to improvements in children's cognitive and social skills differed. Implications are discussed.

Introducing a forced-choice recognition task to the California Verbal Learning Test – Children’s Version

ABSTRACTThe importance of performance validity tests (PVTs) is increasingly recognized in pediatric neuropsychology. To date, research has focused on investigating whether PVTs designed for adults function similarly in children. The downward extension of adult cutoffs is counter-intuitive considering the robust effect of age-related changes in basic cognitive skills in children and adolescents. The purpose of this study was to examine the signal detection properties of a forced-choice recognition trial (FCR-C) for the California Verbal Learning Test – Children’s Version. A total of 72 children aged 6–15 years (M = 11.1 , SD = 2.6) completed the FCR-C as part of a larger neuropsychological assessment battery. Cross-validation analyses revealed that the FCR-C had good signal detection performance against reference PVTs. The first level of failure (≤14/15) produced the best combination of overall sensitivity (.31) and specificity (.87). A more conservative FCR-C cutoff (≤13) resulted in a predictable trade-off between sensitivity (.15) and specificity (.94), but also a net loss in discriminant power. Lowering the cutoff to ≤12 resulted in a slight improvement in specificity (.97) but further deterioration in sensitivity (.14). These preliminary findings suggest that the FCR-C has the potential to become the newest addition to a growing arsenal of pediatric PVTs.

Cognitive Skills, Non-Cognitive Skills, and Family Background: Evidence from Sibling Correlations

This paper estimates sibling correlations in cognitive and non-cognitive skills to evaluate the importance of family background for skill formation. Based on a large representative German dataset including IQ test scores and measures of non-cognitive skills, a restricted maximum likelihood model indicates a strong relationship between family background and skill formation. Sibling correlations in non-cognitive skills range from 0.22 to 0.46; therefore, at least one-fifth of the variance in these skills results from shared sibling-related factors. Sibling correlations in cognitive skills are higher than 0.50; therefore, more than half of the inequality in cognition can be explained by shared family background. Comparing these findings with those in the intergenerational skill transmission literature suggests that intergenerational correlations capture only part of the influence of family on children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills, as confirmed by decomposition analyses and in line with previous findings on educational and income mobility.

Effects of Early-Life Exposure to Sanitation on Childhood Cognitive Skills: Evidence from India’s Total Sanitation Campaign

Early life health and net nutrition shape childhood and adult cognitive skills and human capital. In poor countries -- and especially in South Asia -- widespread open defecation without making use of a toilet or latrine is an important source of childhood disease. This paper studies the effects on childhood cognitive achievement of early life exposure to India's Total Sanitation Campaign, a large government program that encouraged local governments to build and promote use of inexpensive pit latrines. In the early years of the program studied here, the TSC caused six-year-olds exposed to it in their first year of life to be more likely to recognize letters and simple numbers. The results suggest both that open defecation is an important threat to the human capital of the Indian labor force, and that a program feasible to low capacity governments in developing countries could improve average cognitive skills.

Πιλοτική διερεύνηση των ψυχομετρικών χαρακτηριστικών μιας κλίμακας για την εκτίμηση γλωσσικών και γνωστικών λειτουργιών από γονείς παιδιών προσχολικής ηλικίας

This pilot study examined the psychometric characteristics of a scale to be used by parents of young children for rating cognitive skills and literacy development. The scale was roughly based on the parent form of “Ratings of Everyday Academic &amp;amp; Cognitive Skills” (REACS) (Lamb, 2008) in an effort to develop a cost-effective tool that could potentially increase the predictive validity of early screening assessments. The original scale had been developed to contain three indexes (academic skills, cognitive skills, self-regulation) related to school functioning subscales (Math, Reading, Writing, Language, Learning, Memory, Problem Solving, Attention, Hyperactivity Control, Impulse Control, and Organization). Raters respond to each item on a 6-point scale: 1 = Never, 2 = Rarely, 3 = Sometimes, 4 = Usually, and 5 = Always and 6= Unknown. For this study we collected 243 forms from parents while individualized testing was conducted with 22 Kindergarten children. A subsample of parents (N=44) completed the scale a second time to investigate reliability of their ratings. Test-retest reliability of the raters' estimations and the internal consistency of the scale were examined, while the validity of the Greek scale was established by inspecting the factor structure through exploratory factor analyses. Associations with child achievement measures (letter names and sounds, phonological awareness, vocabulary, invented spelling, word reading, etc.) were also examined. Study's initial findings regarding the psychometric properties of the scale support our claim that it should be used by parents of young children for rating child's cognitive, language and academic skills. They are also discussed within the context of early identification of at-risk children within the school for providing early intervention programs.

Early physical health conditions and school readiness skills in a prospective birth cohort of U.S. children

RationaleExtant research identifies associations between early physical health disparities and impaired functioning in adulthood, but limited research examines the emergence of these associations in the early years of children's lives. ObjectiveThis study draws on data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort (ECLS-B; N = 5900) to assess whether a host of early health indicators measured from birth to age five are associated with children's cognitive and behavioral skills at age five. ResultsAfter adjusting for child and family characteristics, results revealed that children's neonatal risks (prematurity or low birth weight) and reports of poor health and hospitalizations were associated with lower cognitive skills, and neonatal risks and poor health predicted lower behavioral functioning at age five. Some of the association between neonatal risks and school readiness skills were indirect, functioning through children's poor health and hospitalization. Analyses further found that associations between early physical health and children's school readiness skills were consistent across subgroups defined by family income and child race/ethnicity, suggesting generalizability of results. ConclusionsFindings emphasize the need for more interdisciplinary research, practice, and policy related to optimizing child well-being across domains of physical health and development in the early years of life.

Do Children's Executive Functions Account for Associations Between Early Autonomy-Supportive Parenting and Achievement Through High School?

This study evaluated whether the positive association between early autonomy-supportive parenting and children's subsequent achievement is mediated by children's executive functions. Using observations of mothers' parenting from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 1,306), analyses revealed that mothers' autonomy support over the first 3 years of life predicted enhanced executive functions (i.e., inhibition, delay of gratification, and sustained attention) during the year prior to kindergarten and academic achievement in elementary and high school even when mothers' warmth and cognitive stimulation, as well as other factors (e.g., children's early general cognitive skills and mothers' educational attainment) were covaried. Mediation analyses demonstrated that over and above other attributes (e.g., temperament), children's executive functions partially accounted for the association between early autonomy-supportive parenting and children's subsequent achievement.