It takes a village: Caregiver diversity and language contingency in the UK and rural Gambia.

INTRODUCTION: There is substantial diversity within and between contexts globally in caregiving practices and family composition, which may have implications for the early interaction's infants engage in. We draw on data from the Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT, www.globalfnirs.org/the-bright-project) project, which longitudinally examined infants in the UK and in rural Gambia, West Africa. In The Gambia, households are commonly characterized by multigenerational, frequently polygamous family structures, which, in part, is reflected in the diversity of caregivers a child spends time with. In this paper, we aim to 1) evaluate and validate the Language Environment Analysis (LENA) for use in the Mandinka speaking families in The Gambia, 2) examine the nature (i.e., prevalence of turn taking) and amount (i.e., adult and child vocalizations) of conversation that infants are exposed to from 12 to 24 months of age and 3) investigate the link between caregiver diversity and child language outcomes, examining the mediating role of contingent turn taking. METHOD: We obtained naturalistic seven-hour-long LENA recordings at 12, 18 and 24 months of age from a cohort of N = 204 infants from Mandinka speaking households in The Gambia and N = 61 infants in the UK. We examined developmental changes and site differences in LENA counts of adult word counts (AWC), contingent turn taking (CTT) and child vocalizations (CVC). In the larger and more heterogenous Gambian sample, we also investigated caregiver predictors of turn taking frequency. We hereby examined the number of caregivers present over the recording day and the consistency of caregivers across two subsequent days per age point. We controlled for children's cognitive development via the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL). RESULTS: Our LENA validation showed high internal consistency between the human coders and automated LENA outputs (Cronbach's alpha's all >.8). All LENA counts were higher in the UK compared to the Gambian cohort. In The Gambia, controlling for overall neurodevelopment via the MSEL, CTT at 12 and 18 months predicted CVC at 18 and 24 months. Caregiver consistency was associated with CTT counts at 18 and 24 months. The number of caregivers and CTT counts showed an inverted u-shape relationship at 18 and 24 months, with an intermediate number of caregivers being associated with the highest CTT frequencies. Mediation analyses showed a partial mediation by number of caregivers and CTT and 24-month CVC. DISCUSSION: The LENA provided reliable estimates for the Mandinka language in the home recording context. We showed that turn taking is associated with subsequent child vocalizations and explored contextual caregiving factors contributing to turn taking in the Gambian cohort.

Scalable Transdiagnostic Early Assessment of Mental Health (STREAM): a study protocol.

INTRODUCTION: Early childhood development forms the foundations for functioning later in life. Thus, accurate monitoring of developmental trajectories is critical. However, such monitoring often relies on time-intensive assessments which necessitate administration by skilled professionals. This difficulty is exacerbated in low-resource settings where such professionals are predominantly concentrated in urban and often private clinics, making them inaccessible to many. This geographic and economic inaccessibility contributes to a significant 'detection gap' where many children who might benefit from support remain undetected. The Scalable Transdiagnostic Early Assessment of Mental Health (STREAM) project aims to bridge this gap by developing an open-source, scalable, tablet-based platform administered by non-specialist workers to assess motor, social and cognitive developmental status. The goal is to deploy STREAM through public health initiatives, maximising opportunities for effective early interventions. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The STREAM project will enrol and assess 4000 children aged 0-6 years from Malawi (n=2000) and India (n=2000). It integrates three established developmental assessment tools measuring motor, social and cognitive functioning using gamified tasks, observation checklists, parent-report and audio-video recordings. Domain scores for motor, social and cognitive functioning will be developed and assessed for their validity and reliability. These domain scores will then be used to construct age-adjusted developmental reference curves. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethical approval has been obtained from local review boards at each site (India: Sangath Institutional Review Board; All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) Ethics Committee; Indian Council of Medical Research-Health Ministry Screening Committee; Malawi: College of Medicine Research and Ethics Committee; Malawi Ministry of Health-Blantyre District Health Office). The study adheres to Good Clinical Practice standards and the ethical guidelines of the 6th (2008) Declaration of Helsinki. Findings from STREAM will be disseminated to participating families, healthcare professionals, policymakers, educators and researchers, at local, national and international levels through meetings, academic journals and conferences.

The current landscape and future of tablet-based cognitive assessments for children in low-resourced settings.

Interest in measuring cognition in children in low-resourced settings has increased in recent years, but options for cognitive assessments are limited. Researchers are faced with challenges when using existing assessments in these settings, such as trained workforce shortages, less relevant testing stimuli, limitations of proprietary assessments, and inadequate parental knowledge of cognitive milestones. Tablet-based direct child assessments are emerging as a practical solution to these challenges, but evidence of their validity and utility in cross-cultural settings is limited. In this overview, we introduce key concepts of this field while exploring the current landscape of tablet-based assessments for low-resourced settings. We also make recommendations for future directions of this relatively novel field. We conclude that tablet-based assessments are an emerging and promising method of assessing cognition in young children. Further awareness and dissemination of validated tablet-based assessments may increase capacity for child development research and clinical practice in low-resourced settings.

Contextual support for children's recall within working memory.

Measures of working memory capacity (WMC) are extremely popular, yet we know relatively little about the specific processes that support recall. We focused on children's and adults' ability to use contextual support to access working memory representations that might otherwise not be reported. Children ( N = 186, 5-10 years) and adults ( N = 64) completed a listening span task and a delayed recall task with semantic probes or cues. Clear age-related increases in listening span were evident. All age groups benefitted from contextual support to retrieve degraded target memoranda, particularly on listening span tasks when the cues provided semantic support for processing events, in comparison to cues associated specifically with memoranda. Response latencies suggested a developing efficiency in children's use of contextual support for delayed recall correlated with listening span performance. These probe tasks support accounts of working memory that recognise reconstructive and cued search processes.

Eight-month-old infants' behavioral responses to peers' emotions as related to the asymmetric frontal cortex activity.

Infants are sensitive to and converge emotionally with peers' distress. It is unclear whether these responses extend to positive affect and whether observing peer emotions motivates infants' behaviors. This study investigates 8-month-olds' asymmetric frontal EEG during peers' cry and laughter, and its relation to approach and withdrawal behaviors. Participants observed videos of infant crying or laughing during two separate sessions. Frontal EEG alpha power was recorded during the first, while infants' behaviors and emotional expressions were recorded during the second session. Facial and vocal expressions of affect suggest that infants converge emotionally with their peers' distress, and, to a certain extent, with their happiness. At group level, the crying peer elicited right lateralized frontal activity. However, those infants with reduced right and increased left frontal activity in this situation, were more likely to approach their peer. Overall, 8-month-olds did not show asymmetric frontal activity in response to peer laughter. But, those infants who tended to look longer at their happy peer were more likely to respond with left lateralized frontal activity. The link between variations in left frontal activity and simple approach behaviors indicates the presence of a motivational dimension to infants' responses to distressed peers.