Precursor Skills Research Articles

Early executive function differences in infants born moderate-to-late preterm

Individuals who are born very preterm (<32weeks gestation) show differential development of prefrontal cortex structure, function, and dependent behaviors, including executive function (EF) skills, beginning during late infancy and extending into adulthood. Preschool-aged children born moderate-to-late preterm (PT; 32–36weeks gestation) show smaller discrepancies in EF development, but it is unclear whether these differences first emerge during the early childhood years, when EF is rapidly developing, or if they arise from alterations in complex cognitive skills measurable in late infancy. In the current study, we examined whether differences in complex attention, memory, and inhibition skills (precursor skills to EF) are altered in healthy infants born moderate-to-late PT at 9-months corrected age. Infants born PT demonstrated poorer memory at test following habituation than their full-term peers. Furthermore, lower gestational age at birth was associated with poorer performance on five of the six early EF tasks. Results indicate that even in the context of low medical and environmental risk, performance on the Bayley within the normal range, and no group-level differences in processing speed, infants born moderate-to-late PT show subtle alterations in cognitive skills presumed to be dependent on prefrontal cortex by 9-months of age, likely setting the stage for long-term differences in EF development.

Precursor skills to writing code

Practice in programming courses is most of the time equated with programming and more specifically with writing code. However, we believe that more emphasis needs to be put in the precursor skills ...

Autobiographical memory and precursor skills in the second phase of childhood amnesia

ABSTRACTThe construct autobiographical memory (AM) refers to the mnemonic skill that enables individuals to form personal memories about their lives and re-experience them. Its ontogeny can be understood from the dialectic construction of maturational processes and the cultural–historical context. This research sought to further the knowledge regarding the ontogeny of AM, especially its relationship with precursor cognitive functions – language level, theory of mind, executive functions, and the subsystems for semantic and episodic memory. The sample consisted of 25 preschoolers of both sexes. Correlation between the indexes analyses were performed. The difference between groups, and the effect of educational level on performance were verified using the Mann–Whitney test (U) and non-parametric analysis of variance factor (Kruskal–Wallis). Multidimensional ANOVA followed by post hoc Tukey Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) was used to verify the contrasts between instances of categorical variables. The results suggest that the developmental profile of AM for 4–6 years is complex, heterogeneous, associated with narrative skill and cognitive flexibility, as well as the quality of free recall in AM and autonomy in the recall process.

The Home Literacy Environment as a Predictor of the Early Literacy Development of Children at Family-Risk of Dyslexia

ABSTRACTThe home literacy environment (HLE) predicts language and reading development in typically developing children; relatively little is known about its association with literacy development in children at family-risk of dyslexia. We assessed the HLE at age 4 years, precursor literacy skills at age 5, and literacy outcomes at age 6, in a sample of children at family-risk of dyslexia (n = 116) and children with no known risk (n = 72). Developmental relationships between the HLE and literacy were comparable between the groups; an additional effect of storybook exposure on phoneme awareness was observed in the family-risk group only. The effects of socioeconomic status on literacy were partially mediated by variations in the HLE; in turn, effects of the HLE on literacy were mediated by precursor skills (oral language, phoneme awareness, and emergent decoding) in both groups. Findings are discussed in terms of possible gene–environment correlation mechanisms underpinning atypical literacy development.

Social communication in autism spectrum disorder not improved by Theory of Mind interventions.

Social communication in autism spectrum disorder not improved by Theory of Mind interventions.

Early childhood educators’ perceived and actual metalinguistic knowledge, beliefs and enacted practice about teaching early reading

Results of influential reports on early literacy have drawn attention to the need for early childhood educators to take up a more explicit, teacher-directed approach to beginning reading. Positive classroom results however are in part dependent upon teacher knowledge and this study investigated the relationship between early childhood educators’ linguistic knowledge, beliefs and enacted practice about teaching reading. Results indicate that while early childhood educators believe knowledge about teaching reading is ‘very important’ to their role, their understanding of literacy precursor skills was generally low. When observed teaching beginning reading, most participants demonstrated some capacity to plan and teach in an explicit way; however, their enacted practice was inconsistent with their teacher knowledge results. This suggests the ability to reflect on the sound structure of spoken words and apply this knowledge to learning to read is a different skill to planning instructional sequences to teach these literacy precursor skills explicitly.

Promoting Critical-Analytic Thinking in Children and Adolescents at Home and in School

Engaging in critical-analytic thinking is essential for knowledge construction and school success. However, little is known about how best to promote such thinking in children and adolescents. Since the research base on promoting critical-analytic thinking is nascent, considering research on fostering skills that could be considered its precursors, as well as emerging research on supporting critical-analytic skills per se, is warranted. Indeed, critical-analytic thinking develops over time, and these skills are built on numerous other precursor skills including language skills and social-emotional skills. Thus, it is necessary to consider how to support precursors to these skills and how interventions could promote critical-analytic thinking as it develops in children and adolescents. This review of evidence and interventions, albeit brief, will provide support for how critical-analytic thinking can be fostered via home and school experiences for all learners. Finally, we will conclude by discussing the implications of the evidence reviewed and suggest ways to construct learning environments that nurture critical-analytic thinking in both the home and school contexts.

Can babies learn to read? A randomized trial of baby media.

Targeted to children as young as 3 months old, there is a growing number of baby media products that claim to teach babies to read. This randomized controlled trial was designed to examine this claim by investigating the effects of a best-selling baby media product on reading development. One hundred and seventeen infants, ages 9 to 18 months, were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. Children in the treatment condition received the baby media product, which included DVDs, word and picture flashcards, and word books to be used daily over a 7-month period; children in the control condition, business as usual. Examining a 4-phase developmental model of reading, we examined both precursor skills (such as letter name, letter sound knowledge, print awareness, and decoding) and conventional reading (vocabulary and comprehension) using a series of eye-tracking tasks and standardized measures. Results indicated that babies did not learn to read using baby media, despite some parents displaying great confidence in the program’s effectiveness.

Fostering Early Numerical Skills at School Start in Children at Risk for Mathematical Achievement Problems: A Small Sample Size Training Study

Eight six-year old German children with development disabilities regarding such number competencies as have been demonstrated to be among the most relevant precursor skills for the acquisition of elementary mathematics received intensive training with the program

Working memory capacity in preschool children contributes to the acquisition of school relevant precursor skills

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether preschool children with limitations in the visual or phonological working memory are disadvantaged in the acquisition of school relevant precursor skills at school entry. A sample of 92 children was divided into three subgroups depending on their performance in visual and phonological working memory tasks in their last year before school entry (T1). At T1 the children were tested on cognitive measures as well as quantity–number competencies and phonological awareness tasks. Shortly after school entry (T2), the precursor skills were assessed again. The findings indicate that preschool children with reduced phonological working memory capacity show weaker numerical competencies before school entry and weaker phonological awareness skills at the beginning of school compared to an unimpaired control group. On the other hand, visual working memory limitations in preschool only affect numerical competencies before and particularly after school entry.

Irish psychiatric nurses' self-reported barriers, facilitators and skills for developing evidence-based practice

Evidence-based practice places an emphasis on integration of clinical expertise with available best evidence, patient's clinical information and preferences, and with local health resources. This paper reports the findings of a study that investigated the barriers, facilitators and skills in developing evidence-based practice among psychiatric nurses in Ireland. A postal survey was conducted among a random sample of Irish psychiatric nurses and survey data were collected using the Development of Evidence-Based Practice Questionnaire. Respondents reported that insufficient time to find and read research reports and insufficient resources to change practice were the greatest barriers to the development of evidence-based practice. Practice development coordinators were perceived as the most supportive resource for changing practice. Using the Internet to search for information was the highest-rated skill and using research evidence to change practice was the lowest-rated skill for developing evidence-based practice. Nurses' precursor skills for developing evidence-based practice, such as database searching and information retrieval, may be insufficient in themselves for promoting evidence-based practice if they cannot find evidence relating to their particular field of practice or if they do not have the time, resources and supports to develop their practice in response to evidence.

Domain-specific Rapid Automatized Naming deficits in children at risk for learning disabilities

Performance in Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) tasks with different materials (dice, digits, letters, objects) and key precursor skills of reading and arithmetic were assessed in kindergarten children ( n = 541) in their last year before entering elementary school. Based on their precursor skills, three groups of children were identified, i.e. children at risk for reading problems ( n = 31), children at risk for arithmetic problems ( n = 39), and children at risk for problems in both domains ( n = 34). These at-risk children were compared to a control group ( n = 343) regarding their performance in the different RAN tasks. Results revealed domain-specific deficits in both groups of children with a single risk: While children at risk for problems in reading exhibited deficits in the RAN of letters and objects, children at risk for problems in arithmetic showed deficits in the RAN of dice and digits. The group of children at risk for problems in both domains displayed additive, domain-general deficits. Findings are discussed in the context of behavioral and neurocognitive research on reading and mathematical disabilities.

Progress in Precursor Skills and Front Crawl Swimming in Children With and Without Developmental Coordination Disorder

This study investigated swimming performance and the influence of task complexity among children with and without Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). Two groups of children were matched by age - 11 controls without DCD and 11 children with DCD. Repeated measures ANOVA showed that children with DCD performed significantly lower level than age-matched controls for all the water competency tasks and front crawl. Both groups improved significantly in water competency and front crawl over 10 lessons. Significant interactions suggested that children with DCD showed different rates of change during the acquisition of the glide and front crawl. Both groups regressed with increased task complexity. Awareness of motor learning difficulties experienced by children enables teachers, parents, and children to have realistic expectations. A supportive environments for children with DCD will enable them to achieve the important swimming skill competencies and reduce drop-out rates in learn-to-swim programs.

Successful phonological awareness instruction with preschool children: Lessons from the classroom.

Phonological awareness is one of several key precursor skills to conventional literacy that develop during the preschool period. Significant amounts of research support the causal and predictive relation between phonological awareness and children's ease of learning to decode and spell. However, many preschool curricula and early childhood educational and caregiving settings are still lacking in robust instruction in this area, and many preschool instructors do not yet have a strong grasp of the developmental trajectory of phonological awareness nor of how to incorporate effective support and instruction into a developmentally appropriate teaching plan. This article summarizes what is known from high-quality research about the development of phonological awareness and about how this informs effective pedagogical strategies for its instruction. Numerous examples are given of effective instructional strategies derived from randomized trials of preschool curricula and interventions.

Assessing Joint Attention and Symbolic Play in Children With Cochlear Implants and Multiple Disabilities

Objective: The presence of disabilities in addition to deafness poses unique challenges for evaluating outcomes in young children who receive cochlear implants. We describe two cases in which measures of joint attention and symbolic play contributed to our understanding of progress in language acquisition following implantation for children with additional developmental disabilities. Study Design: Prospective case study. Setting: Tertiary referral center. Patients: Case 1, identified with global developmental delays and implanted at age of 2 years 8 months; Case 2, diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and implanted at age of 4 years 4 months. Intervention: Cochlear implant. Main Outcome Measure(s): Communication assessments were conducted using the Reynell Developmental Language Scales and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories before implantation (baseline) and at 12 months postimplant. Children were also videotaped during a 10-minute free play with their mothers (Joint Attention task) and 5-minute solitary play (Symbolic Play task) at baseline, 6 months, and 12 months postimplant. Videotapes were coded for child attention and play states. Results: The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories provided important information regarding both children's emerging joint attention and symbolic play skills that are typically not assessed by direct measures of early child language. Videotaped parent-child interaction revealed qualitative differences in the nature of these children's attention and play, which has important implications for intervention. Conclusion: For these two children, obtaining developmental information from various sources, including precursor skills to the development of oral language, provided a more complete picture of each child than conventional clinician-elicited language assessments alone.

Apes Save Tools for Future Use

Planning for future needs, not just current ones, is one of the most formidable human cognitive achievements. Whether this skill is a uniquely human adaptation is a controversial issue. In a study we conducted, bonobos and orangutans selected, transported, and saved appropriate tools above baseline levels to use them 1 hour later (experiment 1). Experiment 2 extended these results to a 14-hour delay between collecting and using the tools. Experiment 3 showed that seeing the apparatus during tool selection was not necessary to succeed. These findings suggest that the precursor skills for planning for the future evolved in great apes before 14 million years ago, when all extant great ape species shared a common ancestor.

The Foundations of Spelling Ability: Evidence from a 3-Year Longitudinal Study

The development of spelling skills was investigated at four points over the first 3 years of schooling in 153 British children. In order to uncover the developmental relationship between spelling and reading ability and to identify the component skills of spelling, children were assessed with a large battery of tests, including reading, phoneme awareness, letter-sound and letter-name knowledge, memory, and verbal and nonverbal IQ. Spelling productions were assessed both for phonological plausibility and for conventional accuracy. A path analysis revealed that phoneme segmentation and letter-sound knowledge were the precursor skills of early phonological spelling ability; in turn phonological spelling combined with reading to promote conventional spelling skill. Although initial phonological spelling ability predicted later reading, early reading ability did not influence later phonological spelling ability. These results indicate that skilled spelling requires a foundation in phonological transcoding ability which in turn enables the formation of orthographic representations. Our data also suggest that the increasingly complex and specific orthographic patterns demonstrated in children's spelling are learned through experience and instruction in both reading and spelling.