Promoting social, emotional, and cognitive development in early childhood: A protocol for early valuation of a culturally adapted digital tool for supporting optimal childrearing practices.

Objective: The Thrive by Five app promotes positive interactions between children and parents, extended family, and trusted community members that support optimal socio-emotional and cognitive development in the early years. This article aims to describe the protocol for a prospective mixed-methods multi-site study evaluating Thrive by Five using surveys, interviews, workshops, audio diaries from citizen ethnographers and app usage data. Methods: The study activities and timelines differ by site, with an extensive longitudinal evaluation being conducted at two sites and a basic evaluation being conducted at five sites. The learnings from the more comprehensive evaluations inform the iterative research and development processes while also ensuring ongoing evaluation of usability, acceptability and effectiveness of the app and its content across varying contexts. The study evaluates: (1) the impact of the Thrive by Five content on caregiver knowledge, behaviours, attitudes and confidence; (2) how the content changes relationships at the familial, community and system level; (3) how cultural and contextual factors influence content engagement and effectiveness and (4) the processes that facilitate or disrupt the success of the implementation and dissemination. Results: All in-country partners have been identified and data collection has been completed in Indonesia, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Namibia and Cameroon. Conclusions: Very few digital health solutions have been trialled for usability and effectiveness in diverse cultural contexts. By combining quantitative, qualitative, process and ethnographic methodologies, this innovative study informs the iterative and ongoing optimisation of the cultural and contextual sensitivity of the Thrive by Five content and the processes supporting implementation and dissemination.

Globally, songs and instrumental melodies are slower and higher and use more stable pitches than speech: A Registered Report.

Both music and language are found in all known human societies, yet no studies have compared similarities and differences between song, speech, and instrumental music on a global scale. In this Registered Report, we analyzed two global datasets: (i) 300 annotated audio recordings representing matched sets of traditional songs, recited lyrics, conversational speech, and instrumental melodies from our 75 coauthors speaking 55 languages; and (ii) 418 previously published adult-directed song and speech recordings from 209 individuals speaking 16 languages. Of our six preregistered predictions, five were strongly supported: Relative to speech, songs use (i) higher pitch, (ii) slower temporal rate, and (iii) more stable pitches, while both songs and speech used similar (iv) pitch interval size and (v) timbral brightness. Exploratory analyses suggest that features vary along a "musi-linguistic" continuum when including instrumental melodies and recited lyrics. Our study provides strong empirical evidence of cross-cultural regularities in music and speech.