Category: Child Psychology

Large new study reveals just how harmful psychological abuse in childhood can be.

Children who are neglected and emotionally abused experience similar, if not worse, psychological problems than those who are sexually or physically abused.

Despite this, childhood victims of psychological mistreatment rarely receive treatment and their suffering frequently goes unidentified.

Those are the conclusions of a new study of 5,616 youths who had faced different types of childhood abuse (Spinazzola et al., 2014).

The study is published in the journal Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.

The study looked at three different types of maltreatment:

• Psychological maltreatment: this includes both emotional abuse or emotional neglect.
• Physical abuse.
• Sexual abuse.

Of the youths in the study, 62% had experienced psychological maltreatment, along with other types, while 24% of the children had suffered purely psychological abuse.

Psychological maltreatment included things like using threats, debasing children, ignoring them or bullying and terrorising them.

Children were between 10 and 12-years-old at the start of the study and were followed for around six years.

The results showed that psychological abuse led to similar rates of suicidality, stress, depression, anxiety and low self-esteem as did sexual and physical abuse — in some cases more.

The links found were strongest between psychological abuse and depression, social and general anxiety disorder and substance abuse.

Children who suffered both psychological and physical/sexual abuse had the worst outcomes.

Dr. Joseph Spinazzola, the Executive Director of the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute, and the study’s lead author, said:

“Child protective service case workers may have a harder time recognizing and substantiating emotional neglect and abuse because there are no physical wounds.

Also, psychological abuse isn’t considered a serious social taboo like physical and sexual child abuse.

We need public awareness initiatives to help people understand just how harmful psychological maltreatment is for children and adolescents.”

Almost 3 million children in the US experience some kind of maltreatment each year.

Usually it is from a parent, family member or primary caregiver.

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Why children grow at the pace of reptiles rather than mammals.

In comparison to many other closely-related species, the human child takes a long time to grow up and requires a correspondingly high degree of parental investment.

Human infants are more like reptiles than mammals in the amount of time it takes for them to reach maturity.

A new study finds that one reason is the enormous amount of energy that the brain requires as it grows.

Christopher Kuzawa, first author of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explained:

“Our findings suggest that our bodies can’t afford to grow faster during the toddler and childhood years because a huge quantity of resources is required to fuel the developing human brain.

As humans we have so much to learn, and that learning requires a complex and energy-hungry brain.”

The study reached this conclusion by pooling data from MRI and PET studies which measure both the brain’s volume and its glucose uptake (Kuzawa et al., 2014).

These show that at the moment when children’s bodies grow the least — on average, at four-years-old — their brains are eating up the highest percentage of glucose.

At four-years-old, that means 40% of the child’s total energy expenditure is being used by its brain.

The findings support the theory that children take so long to mature because of the energy-intensive task of growing a massively over-sized brain.

Over-sized, that is, in comparison to the brain-to-body weight ratio of other species (ants, for example, also have massive brains in comparison to their body-weight).

Kuzawa continued:

“After a certain age it becomes difficult to guess a toddler or young child’s age by their size.

Instead you have to listen to their speech and watch their behavior. Our study suggests that this is no accident.

Body growth grinds nearly to a halt at the ages when brain development is happening at a lightning pace, because the brain is sapping up the available resources.”

“The mid-childhood peak in brain costs has to do with the fact that synapses, connections in the brain, max out at this age, when we learn so many of the things we need to know to be successful humans.”

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Why some children find it hard to read and deal with complicated classroom instructions.

Working memory is a crucial factor in children’s academic achievement, including their reading ability.

Working memory is the ability to hold pieces of information in the mind and manipulate them, as well as the ability to stay on-task and ignore distractions.

The study, which was conducted in Brazil, included 106 children, half of whom were living under the poverty line (Abreu et al., 2014).

The children took a battery of cognitive tests — including one assessing their working memory — and these were matched up with their attainment in mathematics, spelling, reading, language and science.

The results showed that the children with the best working memories consistently had the highest performance across all the different areas of learning.

The children who struggled, especially with reading, were those with the poorest working memory.

The project’s leader, Dr. Pascale Engel de Abreu, said:

“Our findings suggest the importance of early screening and intervention, especially in the context of poverty.

At present, poor working memory is rarely identified by teachers.

Poor literacy, low academic achievement and living in poverty create a mutually reinforcing cycle.

There is a chance to break this by early identification of children with working memory problems and by helping them to acquire the mental tools which will enable them to learn.”

This study backs up a consistent finding from the English-speaking world that a strong working memory is important for academic achievement.

The authors conclude:

“…many classroom situations place heavy demands on the working memory system because children are required frequently to hold information in mind while engaging in effortful activities.

Lengthy and complex classroom instructions or difficult task structures can lead to working memory overload in children with poor working memory function.

This can result in task failure or abandonment, in other words, missed learning opportunities that negatively affect normal rates of learning.” (Abreu et al., 2014).

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Data from one million students in over 30 countries reveals whether or not there is a ‘boy-crisis’ in schools.

Girls get better grades in all subjects, including math and science, and have done for almost a century, according to research from 30 different countries, including the US.

Recent reports of a so-called ‘boy-crisis’ — reports that boy’s performance is dropping further behind girls — are not supported by the wide-ranging data.

There has been no change in the difference between girls and boys across all subjects: girls have always done better.

The findings come from a new analysis of data collected between 1914 and 2011 in over 30 countries around the world (Voyer & Voyer, 2014).

Rather than aptitude tests, the study’s results are based on school grades. The study’s lead author, Daniel Voyer, explained the reasoning:

“School marks reflect learning in the larger social context of the classroom and require effort and persistence over long periods of time, whereas standardized tests assess basic or specialized academic abilities and aptitudes at one point in time without social influences.”

Girls had better grades, on average, in all subjects, than boys, but the gap was largest in the languages and smallest in math and science.

The study’s co-author, Susan Voyer, said:

“The fact that females generally perform better than their male counterparts throughout what is essentially mandatory schooling in most countries seems to be a well-kept secret, considering how little attention it has received as a global phenomenon.”

The study, published in the journal Psychological Bulletin, gathered together data from 308 studies into children’s mandatory schooling.

The authors speculate on a few reasons for the gap between girls and boys:

• Girls pushed harder in science: Since boys are assumed to do better at science and maths, girls may be pushed harder by their parents in these subjects.
• Different learning styles: Boys tend to focus more on the grade they get and girls more on understanding the materials. Since mastering the subject-matter actually produces better marks, this may partly explain the difference.

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Simple test of logic produces surprising win for 4 and 5-year-olds over college students.

Preschoolers can outsmart college students because they are less biased and more flexible than adults, a new study finds.

The conclusion comes from research published in the journal, Cognition, which put 170 college undergrads up against 106 four and five-year-olds in a test of learning and reasoning (Lucas et al., 2014).

Both groups had to try and figure out a game called ‘Blickets’, which was invented for the study.

The game was simple enough for the preschoolers to understand and only involved watching researchers put simple clay objects, like cylinders, pyramids and cubes, onto a box.

Then the box either lit up and played some music or didn’t.

From the object, or combination of objects, that were put on the box, participants had to work out which objects were ‘blickets’: in other words which objects or combinations had the power to make the box light up.

Open to new ideas

The difference between the young adults and the preschoolers was that young children were quicker to pick up on changing evidence.

Preschoolers were much more likely to notice that sometimes unusual combinations of objects would make the box light up.

One of the study’s authors, Alison Gopnik writes:

“The kids got it. They figured out that the machine might work in this unusual way and so that you should put both blocks on together. But the best and brightest students acted as if the machine would always follow the common and obvious rule, even when we showed them that it might work differently.”

Unlike preschoolers, even the smartest young adults were less likely to entertain new theories, even in the face of new evidence.

In contrast, the young children unconsciously followed a model of statistical reasoning called Bayesian logic, which is all about updating predictions on the basis of new data.

Flexible learners

The question now is: how come children are such flexible learners and how can we learn from how they learn?

The researchers conclude that:

“The very fact that children know less to begin with may, paradoxically, make them better, or at least more open-minded, learners. The plasticity of early beliefs may help to explain the bold exploration and breathtaking innovation that characterizes children’s learning.” (Lucas et al., 2014).

The following video from UC Berkeley shows the study in action and Alison Gopnik explaining the results:

Image credit: Monica H.

Study finds children play more intensely and vigorously with crates, pipes and buckets than with monkey bars and slides.

A new long-term study has found that traditional playgrounds may be stifling children’s play.

The researchers found that relatively cheap items such as buckets and crates were more effective at encouraging children’s play than expensive equipment.

The two-year study, published in BMC Public Health, followed 120 students at a newly built Australian primary school (Hyndman et al., 2014).

In their playground there were exercise mats, hay bales, pipes and buckets, along with other cheap, everyday items.

The behaviour of these children was compared with another local school which had a more traditional playground, containing slides and monkey bars.

The results of the study were striking: the cheaper items reduced sedentary behaviour by a half from 61.5% down to 30.5%.

Children played more vigorously and intensively with the everyday objects in comparison to the other school.

This was perhaps a result of them enjoying the everyday items more:

“Movable/recycled materials are suggested to stimulate creativity and diversity to children’s play and provide active play experiences by facilitating pushing, pulling and lifting and the construction of structures (e.g. cubby houses, rockets, ships) whilst engaging in social interaction and problem-solving.” (Hyndman et al., 2014).

The study’s lead author, Dr Brendon Hyndman, said:

“Conventional playgrounds are designed by adults — they don’t actually take into consideration how the children want to play. At a time when childhood obesity is growing and playgrounds are shrinking, we need a creative approach to stimulate physical activity among schoolchildren.”

The study’s authors continue:

“Unstructured, active play allows children to understand their world and develop skills, therefore school playground environments should be developed in a manner that enhances development and physical functioning of children.”  (Hyndman et al., 2014).

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Study of 7,500 babies finds two parenting skills that are crucial to IQ boosts at four years of age.

Many studies over the years have shown that children who are breastfed score higher on IQ tests, but until now the exact cause has been a mystery.

Some scientists said it was something in the milk, others that it’s about the bonding between mother and baby and others still that these and other factors all contributed.

A new study, though, suggests that it’s the parenting behaviours that make the difference (Gibbs & Forste, 2014).

Researchers at Brigham Young University examined data from 7,500 mothers and children collected from birth to four years of age.

They found that two crucial parenting skills were responsible for the boost to cognition. Mothers who breastfed were more likely to:

• respond to children’s emotional cues,
• and read to children at 9 months of age.

Together these factors were enough to put children two or three months ahead when they reached four-years-old.

Lead author Ben Gibbs explained:

“Because these are four-year-olds, a month or two represents a non-trivial chunk of time. And if a child is on the edge of needing special education, even a small boost across some eligibility line could shape a child’s educational trajectory.”

The results came from a group of children followed from birth through to five-years-old.

Researchers included all kinds of data about the home environment including:

• how early and often parents read to children.
• how supportive and sensitive mothers were to their child’s emotional cues.

It was better educated mothers who were more likely to breastfeed and at the same time also more likely to read to their children and be emotionally responsive.

School readiness

None of this means that breastfeeding doesn’t confer other advantages, it does: for example, breast milk has considerable health benefits.

The suggestion is that breastfeeding doesn’t directly affect IQ, rather it is reading to their children and the high emotional responsiveness of mothers which boosts intellectual development.

The authors conclude:

“Although breastfeeding has important benefits in other settings, the encouragement of breastfeeding to promote school readiness does not appear to be a key intervention point. Promoting parenting behaviors that improve child cognitive development may be a more effective and direct strategy for practitioners to adopt, especially for disadvantaged children.”

Image credit: Harald Groven

Are exceptionally gifted children being failed by the education system?

The authors of the largest ever study of the profoundly gifted question whether the education system is providing enough support for highly talented young people.

The US study, published in the journal Psychological Science, identified gifted children by their SAT scores, which placed them in the top 0.01% of the population, either in maths or verbal scores (Hill et al., 2013).

The 320 children were tracked from the age of 13, until they were 38, to see how they did in their chosen professions.

Notable careers

As you might expect, the exceptionally gifted children were more likely to gain Master’s degrees and PhDs, compared with less gifted children.

Many also went on to have notable careers: they wrote books, composed music, started companies, conducted scientific research, became senior business leaders, and excelled in other worthy occupations.

Even at age 13 it was possible to see in which direction exceptionally children might head:

“…mathematically more able individuals tended to focus on achievement in inorganic fields [e.g. computer science, engineering], whereas verbally more able individuals tended to invest their talent in organic fields [e.g. the arts, social sciences, education]; incorporating motivational dimensions, such as interests in people versus things…” (Hill et al., 2013)

Nurturing talent

However, the thing which stood out for the authors, based on previous research, is the roadblocks which gifted students often face in the education system.

Instead of flourishing, they argue, extra skills are often wasted as educators automatically move their focus to other less talented pupils.

The study’s lead author, Harrison Kell, explained:

“There’s this idea that gifted students don’t really need any help. This study shows that’s not the case. These people with very high IQs–what some have called the ‘scary smart’–will do well in regular classrooms, but they still won’t meet their full potential unless they’re given access to accelerated coursework, AP classes and educational programs that place talented students with their intellectual peers…”

They argue that talented children need to be placed in environments that challenge them, so that they can fulfil their true potential:

“…adolescents with extraordinary talent in mathematical and verbal reasoning profit from learning environments that present abstract-symbolic material at a level and pace commensurate with the atypical rates at which these students learn.” (Hill et al., 2013).

These types of environments are much more likely to increase the psychological well-being of exceptional students and help them achieve more in the future.

If exceptional students are our future, why do many societies automatically provide extra help for those with learning difficulties, but not for those with exceptional learning facilities?

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Youngest children appear three inches smaller to their mothers than they really are.

A new study published in Current Biology finds that mothers underestimate the height of their youngest child; no matter how many children they have (Kaufman et al., 2013).

The study found that mothers underestimated their youngest child’s height by an average of 3 inches (7.5cm). This finding held even for only children.

This is set against the fact that mothers were pretty accurate when asked to indicate the height of their other children, and of everyday objects.

The lead author Jordy Kaufman, explained:

“Contrary to what many may think, this isn’t happening just because the older child just looks so big compared to a baby. It actually happens because all along the parents were under an illusion that their first child was smaller than he or she really was. When the new baby is born, the spell is broken and parents now see their older child as he or she really is.”

To reach this conclusion, 70 mothers were asked to place a mark on the wall estimating the height of each child.  Across the mothers, the youngest child’s height was consistently underestimated.

The authors argue that this is an evolutionary adaptive mechanism that encourages mothers to nurture the youngest child.

Growth spurt

The researcher’s interest was piqued when they surveyed 747 mothers, asking if they had noticed a spurt in the height of their ‘erstwhile-youngest’ child, when their next was born.

More than 70% of mothers said they had noticed this growth spurt and many agreed that it seemed to happen overnight.

Whether or not an evolutionary explanation is valid, this study certainly shows the effect of our knowledge and feelings on our perceptions. Kaufman continued:

“The key implication is that we may treat our youngest children as if they are actually younger than they really are. In other words, our research potentially explains why the ‘baby of the family’ never outgrows that label. To the parents, the baby of the family may always be ‘the baby.'”

Image credit: Sergiu Bacioiu