A Preliminary Study of Executive Functioning in Preterm-Born Children: A Bilingual Advantage.

BACKGROUND: Preterm-born children are at increased risk for deficits in executive function (EF). EF is a set of cognitive processes including inhibition, attention, memory, and decision-making, among others. Bilingualism, operationalized as productive capacity in 2 languages (ie, English and Spanish), may enhance EF in children born preterm and in term-born children. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of bilingualism on executive functioning in bilingual and monolingual preterm and term-born children using a robust measure of bilingualism. METHODS: This study examined the impact of bilingualism on EF in 17 monolingual or bilingual preterm-born children, aged 6 to 7. The preterm-born sample was also compared with a normed, term-born sample of 38 monolingual, typically developing 6- to 7-year-olds. RESULTS: On the Creature Counting task of EF, bilingual preterm-born children performed with more accuracy and total switches than monolingual preterm-born children. There was no difference in accuracy between the term-born and entire preterm-born samples. The bilingual, preterm-born children performed more accurately than the term-born sample. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE AND RESEARCH: This preliminarily suggests bilingualism confers an advantage to preterm-born children's EF. Further research is needed on bilingual advantage of preterm-born children.

Habla conmigo, daddy! Fathers' language input in North American bilingual Latinx families.

This study examines the language environments of bilingually raised Latinx infants (n = 37) in mother-father families of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, with a focus on paternal parentese, a speaking style distinguished by higher pitch, slower tempo, and exaggerated intonation. Two daylong audio recordings were collected on weekends, when both parents were at home. Paternal, maternal, and infant speech variables were quantified through automatic and manual analyses. Most infants experienced Spanish and English within child-directed speech, and language mixing was common in mothers and fathers. Adjusting for demographic variables, infants heard 50.4% less talk from men compared to women, and 43.4% less parentese from fathers compared to mothers. However, when controlling for overall speech amount, the rate of parentese use did not differ between mothers and fathers, demonstrating that, contrary to the stereotype, fathers in Latinx families adjust their speech in verbal interactions with their infants. An asymmetry emerged, where paternal parentese was associated with paternal knowledge of language development but not with paternal involvement in childcare responsibilities; the opposite was true for paternal speech amount. Controlling for maternal contributions, paternal parentese was predictive of concurrent parent-infant turn-taking and infant language vocalizations, demonstrating its important role in infant language development.

Innovating Maternal and Child Health: Incentive Prizes to Improve Early Childhood Development.

PURPOSE: Protecting and advancing maternal and child health is a critical goal to both society and to the economy, given that their health is a predictor of the next generation's health. Yet despite this recognition, many of the communities aiming to improve maternal and child health still problem-solve in silos: age silos, disease silos, organizational silos, disciplinary silos, data silos, and communication silos, often created or exacerbated by the disconnected approaches to research, funding, and reporting. These silos limit discovery and spread of new solutions to important maternal and child health problems. DESCRIPTION: In this paper, we will discuss federal incentive prizes as a tool to break down silos and to engineer cognitive diversity and transdisciplinary collaboration. ASSESSMENT: In 2018, the United States Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau (HRSA MCHB) launched the "Maternal and Child Health Bureau Grand Challenges," a suite of four prize competitions totaling $1.5 million addressing critical issues in maternal and child health. These included federal challenges designed to (1) prevent childhood obesity in low-income communities, (2) improve the remote monitoring of pregnancy, (3) improve care coordination and planning for children with special health care needs, and (4) prevent opioid misuse among pregnant women and new mothers. CONCLUSION: The ability to incentivize innovation to address critical public health issues cannot rest in the private sector alone. Complementing other investments, the Challenge mechanism's power to catalyze the rapid development of innovative solutions can improve how we address barriers to achieve optimal maternal and child health for the families that we serve.

Háblame Bebé: A phone application intervention to support Hispanic children's early language environments and bilingualism.

The early language environments of low-income Hispanic children can be negatively affected when their Spanish-speaking caregivers face racism, assimilation pressure, and/or misinformed advice based on English-only ideologies. This article reports on the design and efficacy of Háblame Bebé, a language-promoting phone application that encourages low-income Hispanic mothers to talk more to their children in their native Spanish with the goals of (1) improving their children's early language environment, (2) promoting bilingualism, and (3) monitoring developmental milestones. The app was designed and tested across three phases as mandated by the US HRSA Bridging the Word Gap Challenge. In Phase I, we developed a curriculum that promotes high-quality language interactions in Spanish and designed the app components. In Phase II, we tested the app with 20 Hispanic mothers (half high school-educated, half college-educated) in a pretest-posttest design in which we examined their language interactions before and after two months of using the app. Preliminary results indicated that mother-child verbal interactions increased, but not always in their native Spanish, and the difference was not statistically significant. Focus group data revealed that many of the mothers had experienced linguistic racism and that tropes surrounding Spanish-speaking identity in the USA needed to be explicitly addressed within the intervention. In Phase III, a sociolinguistic pride component was added and the app was again tested with 12 additional Hispanic mothers (all high school-educated only). This time, a statistically significant increase in mother-child verbal interactions was found. Mothers also reported feeling prouder to use Spanish with their children. These results suggest that Háblame Bebé may be a viable means to reach low-income Hispanic caregivers who face obstacles in accessing health information and/or home-visiting programs for their children.

A Randomized Controlled Trial Assessing the Effectiveness of the Háblame Bebé Mobile Application With Spanish-Speaking Mothers Experiencing Economic Hardship.

PURPOSE: This study examined the effectiveness of a standalone mobile application (app), Háblame Bebé, for use in real-world settings without supplemental human interaction to promote Spanish-speaking mothers' language interactions with their young children and associated child bilingual (Spanish-English) language development. METHOD: Thirty-seven Spanish-speaking Latina mothers with lower incomes and their children were randomly assigned to experimental and wait-list control groups for 12 weeks. The experimental group was introduced to the app to learn how to provide language-promoting strategies in the home language and encouraged to use the app to track child vocabulary growth and overall development. Mother and child outcomes were measured before and after intervention via standardized assessments, direct observations, and parent report. Engagement and social validity data were also gathered. RESULTS: No statistically significant differences were identified between experimental and control groups. However, looking at the magnitude of the difference between groups, child outcomes consistently favored the experimental group (d = 0.2-0.4). Mothers reported high levels of acceptance of the intervention. CONCLUSIONS: Culturally and linguistically responsive app-based interventions have the potential to serve as a unique delivery model for speech-language pathologists and other professionals to share critical information on bilingual language development with parents of young children who are learning in a bilingual context. Clinical and research implications are discussed, including the consideration that low-intensity interventions may need to be paired with ongoing parent coaching. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.18461585.

Infant-directed language following a brief behavioral parenting intervention: The importance of language quality.

Behavioral parenting interventions decrease early childhood behavior problems and increase positive parenting skills. However, few studies have examined the impact of low intensity interventions for infants at risk for behavior problems on changes in parent language. This study examined the effect of a brief parenting intervention, the Infant Behavior Program, on changes in parent linguistic input and its influence on infant language. Participants were 58 mothers and their12- to 15-month-olds, with elevated levels of behavioral problems. Mothers and their infants were from primarily Hispanic and low-income backgrounds. Mother-infant dyads were randomly assigned to receive the Infant Behavior Program or standard pediatric primary care. Mothers receiving the Infant Behavior Program provided more linguistic input, which indirectly influenced infant language, and suggest targeting infants at risk for behavior problems can have a broader impact on language development.

The SH3 domain of alphaII spectrin is a target for the Fanconi anemia protein, FANCG.

The structural protein nonerythroid alpha spectrin (alphaIISp) plays a role in the repair of DNA interstrand cross-links and is deficient in cells from patients with Fanconi anemia (FA), in which there is a defect in ability to repair such cross-links. We have proposed a model in which alphaIISp, whose stability is dependent on FA proteins, acts as a scaffold to aid in recruitment of repair proteins to sites of damage. In order to get a clearer understanding of the proposed role of FA proteins in maintaining stability of alphaIISp, yeast two-hybrid analysis was carried out to determine whether FA proteins directly interact with alphaIISp and, if so, to map the sites of interaction. Four overlapping regions of alphaIISp were constructed. FANCG interacted with one of these regions and specifically with the SH3 domain in this region of alphaIISp. The site of interaction in FANCG was mapped to a motif that binds to SH3 domains and contains a consensus sequence with preference for the SH3 domain of alphaIISp. This site of interaction was confirmed using site-directed mutagenesis. Two FA proteins that did not contain motifs that bind to SH3 domains, FANCC and FANCF, did not interact with the SH3 domain of alphaIISp. These results demonstrate that one of the FA proteins, FANCG, contains a motif that interacts directly with the SH3 domain of alphaIISp. We propose that this binding of FANCG to alphaIISp may be important for the stability of alphaIISp in cells and the role alphaIISp plays in the DNA repair process.

Bilingualism as a potential strategy to improve executive function in preterm infants: a review.

Preterm birth is associated with long-term deficits in executive functioning and cognitive performance. Using the model of brain plasticity as a theoretical framework, it is possible that preterm infants' neurodevelopmental sequelae can be altered. Evidence suggests that bilingualism confers cognitive advantages on executive functioning, so it is possible that bilingualism may improve preterm infants' neurodevelopment. However, bilingualism has only been studied in term children. This review examined literature that compared the performance of preterm-born children to term children and bilingual children to monolingual children on executive function tasks. To address cognitive disparities in preterm-born children, studies investigating the effect of bilingualism on preterm infants' executive functioning is warranted.