A randomized controlled trial to examine the effect of two teaching methods on preschool children's language and communication, executive functions, socioemotional comprehension, and early math skills

Preschool-based mother-child emotional preparation program improves emotional connection, behavior regulation in the home and classroom: a randomized controlled trial

Introduction

Based on the theory that increasing emotional connection and reducing emotional stress between mother and child at home will reduce dysregulated behavior in the classroom, we tested a novel family-based school intervention aimed at facilitating mother-child emotional connection. This question has gained great importance following the COVID-19 pandemic, as child mental health has been declared a national emergency.

Methods

Subjects were randomized into two groups; one (Control: n = 32) receiving the standard curriculum in a large community-based preschool education program, and another (MCEP) receiving the standard curriculum plus the Mother Child Emotional Preparation Program (MCEP: n = 30). Two to eight MCEP mother-child pairs participated in eight elective weekly 2-h group sessions over a 16-week period. During the 2-h sessions, the pairs were engaged in face to face calming sessions. At 6 months post-enrollment, we assessed mother-child emotional connection on the Welch Emotional Connection Screen (WECS). In addition, mothers and teachers completed validated questionnaires and instruments.

Results

We found that the percentage of MCEP mother-child pairs who became emotionally connected at 6 months was five-fold higher than Control pairs (47.4%, vs. 8.3% p = 0.004, effect size = 0.44). Also at six months, MCEP children had fewer behavioral symptoms (p = 0.024)) (effect size >0.5); fewer autism symptoms (p = 0.048) (effect size = 0.53); fewer emotional symptoms (p = 0.01) (effect size >0.76); better personal, social skills (p = 0.045) (effect size = 0.51); better executive function (p = 0.032) (effect size = 0.59). Importantly, teachers reported MCEP children showed more improved behavior in the classroom, compared to controls.

Discussion

This trial was retrospectively registered in the clinicaltrial.gov registry (NCT02970565) on April 9, 2019.

Interventions and Approaches Targeting Early Self-Regulation or Executive Functioning in Preschools: A Systematic Review

This systematic literature review sought to reconcile the evidence of efficacy for interventions and approaches to enhancing self-regulation and/or executive function in preschool settings. Following PRISMA methodology, a comprehensive search of 20 years of intervention research identified 85 studies that met inclusion criteria. Interventions were categorised by intervention approach and coded for their characteristics (e.g. sample size, dose, duration, interventionist, intervention activities), outcomes (e.g. significance, size of effects) and study quality (i.e. risk of bias). Reconciliation of intervention results indicated (1) within intervention approaches, some approaches had more consistent and robust evidence of efficacy (e.g. mindfulness, mediated play, physical activity) and (2) across intervention approaches, characteristics that had greater (or exclusive) presence amongst the higher efficacy interventions (e.g. cognitive challenge, movement, as well as interventionist, fidelity and dose considerations). Implications for future intervention (re)design, and for theorising about mechanisms of self-regulation and executive function change, are discussed.

Measuring Parent Rated Interest and Deprivation type Curiosity in Swedish Young Children - are they meaningfully distinct?

Background

Proxy ratings of young children’s curiosity has the potential to be useful for research in Sweden. One such proxy rating is the parent-rating Interest/Deprivation Young Children scale. This scale has previously only been validated in Dutch samples, where it differentiated curiosity dimensions of interest (joyful exploration) and deprivation (reduction of aversive feelings of not knowing).

Objective

The objective of this study was to investigate internal and construct validity of the Swedish version of the Interest/Deprivation Young Children scale.

Method

A translation of the Interest/Deprivation Young Children scale was conducted and then administered to 266 parents in Sweden, who rated their children (4-6-years old) on 10 items, with 5 items each for subscales of interest and deprivation dimensions of epistemic curiosity. Responses were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis.

Results

Results indicate acceptable internal reliability for deprivation-curiosity items (α = 0.78) and for interest-curiosity items (α = 0.79). For the combined scale score alpha was found good (α = 0.84). However, confirmatory factor analysis failed to differentiate interest and deprivation dimensions of curiosity.

Conclusions

Item revisions are suggested which could be implemented for further investigations. Also, the possibility of using the I/D-YC total score as a more general measure of child curiosity is argued for. An open question is how other dimensions of curiosity might be more viable for proxy ratings of child curiosity.

Grassroots and Youth-Led Climate Solutions From The Gambia

Climate change and environmental degradation are among the greatest threats to human health. Youth campaigners have very effectively focused global attention on the crisis, however children from the Global South are often under-represented (sometimes deliberately) in the dialogue. In The Gambia, West Africa, the impacts of climate change are already being directly experienced by the population, and this will worsen in coming years. There is strong government and community commitment to adapt to these challenges, as evidenced by The Gambia currently being the only country on target to meet the Paris agreement according to the Nationally Determined Contributions, but again children's voices are often missing-while their views could yield valuable additional insights. Here, we describe a "Climate Change Solutions Festival" that targeted and engaged school children from 13 to 18 years, and is to our knowledge, the first peer-to-peer (and student-to-professional) learning festival on climate change solutions for students in The Gambia. The event gave a unique insight into perceived climate change problems and scalable, affordable and sometimes very creative solutions that could be implemented in the local area. Logistical and practical methods for running the festival are shared, as well as details on all solutions demonstrated in enough detail to be duplicated. We also performed a narrative review of the most popular stalls to explore the scientific basis of these solutions and discuss these in a global context. Overall, we find extremely strong, grass-roots and student engagement in the Gambia and clear evidence of learning about climate change and the impacts of environmental degradation more broadly. Nevertheless, we reflect that in order to enact these proposed local solutions further steps to evaluate acceptability of adoption, feasibility within the communities, cost-benefit analyses and ability to scale solutions are needed. This could be the focus of future experiential learning activities with students and partnering stakeholders.

Selective Auditory Attention Associated With Language Skills but Not With Executive Functions in Swedish Preschoolers

Associations between language and executive functions (EFs) are well-established but previous work has often focused more on EFs than on language. To further clarify the language-EF relationship, we assessed several aspects of language and EFs in 431 Swedish children aged 4-6, including selective auditory attention which was measured in an event-related potential paradigm. We also investigated potential associations to age, socioeconomic status (SES), bi-/multilingualism, sex and aspects of preschool attendance and quality. Language and EFs correlated weakly to moderately, indicating that relying on measures of vocabulary alone may overestimate the strength of the language-EF relationship. Contrary to predictions, we found no correlations between selective attention and EFs. There were however correlations between morphosyntactic accuracy and selective auditory attention which is in line with previous work and suggests a specific link between morphosyntax and the ability to suppress irrelevant stimuli. In Sweden, socioeconomic differences are rather small and preschool is universally available, but nevertheless, aspects of parental SES predicted children's performance on all measures. Bi-/multilingual children performed lower on language also when controlling for SES, highlighting the need for interventions to reduce inequalities in educational outcomes already in preschool. A female advantage was found for both language and EFs, whereas preschool attendance and quality were not significantly related to outcome measures. Future work should include longitudinal studies of language and EF development, include children from diverse SES backgrounds and contribute toward a theoretical framework that further clarifies the language-EF relationship.