Family play, reading, and other stimulation and early childhood development in five low-and-middle-income countries.

This paper used longitudinal data from five studies conducted in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Rwanda to examine the links between family stimulation and early childhood development outcomes (N = 4904; Mage = 51.5; 49% girls). Results from random-effects and more conservative child-fixed effects models indicate that across these studies, family stimulation, measured by caregivers' engagement in nine activities (e.g., reading, playing, singing), predicted increments in children's early numeracy, literacy, social-emotional, motor, and executive function skills (standardized associations ranged from 0.05 to 0.11 SD). Study-specific models showed variability in the estimates, with null associations in two out of the five studies. These findings indicate the need for additional research on culturally specific ways in which caregivers may support early development and highlight the importance of promoting family stimulation to catalyze positive developmental trajectories in global contexts. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Research on the links between family stimulation and early childhood development in low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) is limited. We used longitudinal data from studies conducted in five LMICs to examine the links between family stimulation and early childhood development outcomes. Results suggest that family stimulation predicted increments in children's numeracy, literacy, social-emotional, motor, and executive function skills. We found variability in the observed estimates, with null associations in two out of the five studies, suggesting the need for additional research in LMICs.

Early-life stature, preschool cognitive development, schooling attainment, and cognitive functioning in adulthood: a prospective study in four birth cohorts.

BACKGROUND: Nutrition is important for growth and brain development and therefore cognitive ability. Growth faltering in early childhood, an important indicator of early adversity, is associated with poorer developmental outcomes, some into adulthood, but this association probably reflects early-life deprivation. We aimed to investigate the associations between early-life stature, child IQ, and adult IQ. METHODS: In this cohort study, we used prospective longitudinal data collected in four birth cohorts from Brazil (born in 1993), Guatemala (born in 1969-77), the Philippines (born in 1983-84), and South Africa (born in 1990). Using multivariable linear models, we estimated the relative contributions of early-life stature, child IQ, and schooling (highest school year completed) to adult IQ, including interaction effects among the early-childhood measures and schooling. FINDINGS: We included 2614 individuals in the analysis. Early-life stature was associated with adult IQ (range across eight site-by-sex groups -0·14 to 3·17 IQ points) and schooling (-0·05 to 0·77 years) per height-for-age Z-score. These associations were attenuated when controlling for child IQ (-0·86 to 1·72 for adult IQ and -0·5 to 0·60 for schooling). The association of early-life stature with adult IQ was further attenuated when controlling for schooling (-1·86 to 1·21). Child IQ was associated with adult IQ (range 3·91 to 10·02 points) and schooling (0·25 to 1·30 years) per SD of child IQ in all groups; these associations were unattenuated by the addition of early-life stature to the models. The interaction between schooling and child IQ, but not that between schooling and early-life stature, was positively associated with adult IQ across groups. INTERPRETATION: The observed associations of early-life stature with adult IQ and schooling varied across cohorts and sexes and explained little variance in adult IQ beyond that explained by child IQ. These findings suggest that interventions targeted at growth for health and early development are important. Our results are consistent with the inference that improving long-term cognitive outcomes might require interventions that more specifically target early cognitive ability. FUNDING: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Social gaze in preterm infants may act as an early indicator of atypical lateralization.

Visual field biases have been identified as markers of atypical lateralization in children with developmental conditions, but this is the first investigation to consider early lateralized gaze behaviors for social stimuli in preterm infants. Eye-tracking methods with 51 preterm (33 male, 92.1% White) and 61 term-born (31 male, 90.1% White) infants aged 8-10 months from Edinburgh, UK, captured the development of visual field biases, comparing gaze behavior to social and non-social stimuli on the left versus right of the screen. Preterm infants showed a significantly reduced interest to social stimuli on the left versus right compared to term children (d = .58). Preterm children exhibit early differential orienting preferences that may be an early indicator of atypical lateralized function.

Internalising and externalising in early adolescence predict later executive function, not the other way around: a cross-lagged panel analysis.

Developmental changes in the brain networks involved in emotion regulation are thought to contribute to vulnerability to mental health problems during adolescence. Executive control is often viewed as allowing top-down regulation of emotional responses. However, while associations between executive control and mental health are commonly observed in both clinical and non-clinical populations, the direction of these associations remains unclear. Low, or immature, cognitive control could limit emotion regulation. Reversely, high emotionality could impede cognitive functioning. The scarcity of longitudinal studies testing for bi-directional effects, particularly in adolescence, has made it difficult to draw conclusions. This study analysed data from 1,445 participants of a longitudinal cohort in a cross-lagged panel design to understand bi-directional longitudinal associations between executive function and emotional behaviours across adolescence. Executive function was assessed using experimental working memory and inhibitory control tasks, emotional behaviours through parental report of internalising and externalising behaviours. Cross-sectional associations were replicated. Controlling for cross-sectional associations, early executive functions were not found to predict later emotional behaviours. Instead, early emotional behaviours predicted later executive function, with the strongest link observed between early externalising and later working memory. These results suggest that emotional well-being may affect the maturation of executive function during adolescence.

Evidence for specificity of polygenic contributions to attainment in English, maths and science during adolescence.

How well one does at school is predictive of a wide range of important cognitive, socioeconomic, and health outcomes. The last few years have shown marked advancement in our understanding of the genetic contributions to, and correlations with, academic attainment. However, there exists a gap in our understanding of the specificity of genetic associations with performance in academic subjects during adolescence, a critical developmental period. To address this, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children was used to conduct genome-wide association studies of standardised national English (N = 5983), maths (N = 6017) and science (N = 6089) tests. High SNP-based heritabilities (h2SNP) for all subjects were found (41-53%). Further, h2SNP for maths and science remained after removing shared variance between subjects or IQ (N = 3197-5895). One genome-wide significant single nucleotide polymorphism (rs952964, p = 4.86 × 10-8) and four gene-level associations with science attainment (MEF2C, BRINP1, S100A1 and S100A13) were identified. Rs952964 remained significant after removing the variance shared between academic subjects. The findings highlight the benefits of using environmentally homogeneous samples for genetic analyses and indicate that finer-grained phenotyping will help build more specific biological models of variance in learning processes and abilities.

Hindsight 20/20: The future of laterality research.

The last decade of laterality research has been bolstered by a significant broadening in theoretical framing and investigative approaches. Comparative research contributions continue to strengthen the position that ancient functional and anatomical brain biases are preserved in modern humans. However, how they unfold over developmental time and contribute to cognitive abilities is still unclear. To make further advances, we must position human brains and behaviors within an evolutionary framework. This includes viewing motor-sensory behavior as an integral part of a developing cognitive system.

Author Correction: Gaze behaviour to lateral face stimuli in infants who do and do not receive an ASD diagnosis.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Gaze behaviour to lateral face stimuli in infants who do and do not gain an ASD diagnosis.

Cerebral lateralisation of function is common characteristic across vertebrate species and is positively associated with fitness of the organism, in humans we hypothesise that it is associated with cognitive fitness. This investigation evaluated the early development of lateralised gaze behaviour for face stimuli in infants at high and low risk for autism from the British Autism Sibling Infant Study (BASIS). The BASIS cohort includes a low risk group and three high-risk groups who at age 3 were developing (i) typically, (ii) atypically or (iii) had received a diagnosis for ASD. Using eye-tracking data derived from a face pop-out task at 6 and 14 months of age, all non-ASD groups showed a bias for stimuli on the left at both timepoints. At 6 months the ASD group demonstrated a preference for stimuli on the right and were slower than their neurotypical counterparts to look at faces on the left. However, by 14 months these differences disappear. Longitudinal associations between lateral looking behaviour at 6 months and language and motor ability at 14 months were also found. Results suggest that infants who go on to be diagnosed with autism exhibit early differences in gaze behaviour that may be associated with subsequent cognitive outcomes.

Genome-Wide Association Study of Latent Cognitive Measures in Adolescence: Genetic Overlap With Intelligence and Education.

Individual differences in executive functions (EF) are heritable and predictive of academic attainment (AA). However, little is known about genetic contributions to EFs or their genetic relationship with AA and intelligence. We conducted genome-wide association analyses for processing speed (PS) and the latent EF measures of working memory (WM) and inhibitory control (IC) in 4,611 adolescents from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. While no loci reached genome-wide significance, common genetic variants explained 30% of the variance in WM and 19% in PS. In contrast, we failed to find common genetic contributions to IC. Finally, we examined shared genetic effects between EFs and general intelligence, AA and ADHD. We identified significant genetic correlations between WM, intelligence, and AA. A more specific pattern was observed for PS, with modest genetic overlap with intelligence. Together these findings highlight diversity in the genetic contributions to specific cognitive functions and their genetic relationship with educational and psychiatric outcomes.