Based on years of research, the framework – called the Intergenerational and Cumulative Adverse and Resilient Experiences (ICARE) model – identifies 10 types of ACEs, as well as 10 protective and compensatory experiences (PACEs) that build resilience.

The ICARE model also recommends a wide set of interventions that address the many ways ACEs can harm children’s development. At the heart of the approach is supporting the protective factors that are already in place in families and helping families become stronger.

The ICARE model shows the pathway by which ACEs can disadvantage children’s future and harm the next generation.

Neurobiological and epigenetic impacts of ACEs

Prolonged activation of stress responses that are typically used in brief crisis-response situations results in biological and neurobiological changes that can become embedded in a child. The body’s immune system can be harmed, as well as the development of brain structures and functions. Epigenetic changes to DNA as a result of adversity – the methylation of certain genes that change how they function – embed the impact of ACEs, influencing how the child responds to stress later in life. Epigenetic changes are heritable, passed from mothers and fathers to their biological children.

The ICARE model shows the pathway by which ACEs can disadvantage children’s future and harm the next generation.

Developmental impacts of ACEs

The most significant developmental system in early childhood is attachment. Secure attachment evolves when an infant’s needs are consistently met, creating a safe and predictable place where caregivers can be trusted. Attachment also has a biological/neurobiological dimension, for example, with the action of the hormones dopamine and oxytocin. ACEs can disrupt attachment, which is associated with a wide range of behavioral, social, and emotional problems later in life.

ACEs can also damage cognitive development. Skills associated with executive function, such as working memory, inhibitory control, and focused attention, can be harmed in children who have experienced adversity. This can lead to problems with learning during education and training.

Intergenerational transmission

ACEs can disadvantage the next generation in two ways: Parents who have been adversely affected by ACEs in their own lives are more likely to struggle with parenting. And parents may pass to their children epigenetic changes that affect the child’s biological response to stress.

Strategies to mitigate the negative impacts of ACEs

The foundation of the strategic approach proposed by the ICARE model starts with assessing and mobilizing protective factors that already exist or could exist around the child. Researchers point to successful support programs in five categories:

1. Supporting parents and caregivers with their own psychological and emotional well-being
2. Supporting parents and caregivers with attachment and parenting skills
3. Supporting children directly, for example, by encouraging their participation in sports, hobbies, and friendships
4. Psychological therapies for children that address the past traumas
5. Play-based therapeutic activities for children and parents together

The authors of the framework explain that the ICARE model “suggests new opportunities to design and implement multilevel prevention and intervention programs across the various pathways by which adverse and protective experiences influence outcomes.”

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During the current pandemic, many new parents have found themselves with little support, but there are simple things parents can do at home to nurture essential interactions with their baby.

Around this time last year, an inexorable force swept into people’s lives. It upended everything — relationships, friendships, routines, work life, independence, and sense of control. In this respect, the COVID-19 pandemic has similarities to another dramatic event — becoming a parent. And just like the pandemic, nothing quite prepares you for it.

For all those who became parents in the last year, these two realties have collided. New parents have been left without many of the usual support networks that help support them through the early days. Those networks include their own parents, parent-baby groups, informal social networks, and in-person postnatal and breastfeeding support groups. Added to all this is the constant threat from a life-threatening virus.

“We hope it is a comfort to know that there is something simple and easy to do together, safely and in the comfort of home, that lays positive foundations for the developing brain.”

It is too soon to say what effect these extraordinary circumstances will have on babies born during the pandemic, but the effect on parents is already being felt. Numerous studies show that parents have found lockdowns extremely hard emotionally, and that the strain they are under has affected their ability to parent, which has consequences for children. The lockdowns have been linked to an increase in parental anxiety, depression, and hostility. And the pandemic has put women at increased risk of anxiety and depression in the perinatal period. At the same time, increased parental support has been shown to help decrease stress associated with the pandemic. The brunt of this burden has fallen on certain groups, including single parents and low-income families.

Because of this, it is vital that new parents receive additional support at this difficult time, especially in terms of their mental health.

There are some very simple, intuitive ways parents can work on laying the foundations for their children’s development from the very early days. One of the simplest of these is to pick up a book and read together.

Plenty of evidence shows how important it is to read with children, not least for their cognitive development and vocabulary. In one study, both the quality of the books and the amount of reading time starting at six months were important predictors of literacy and vocabulary four years later. New parents might be surprised to learn that a shared activity like reading promotes a kind of back-and-forth interaction between child and caregiver that can trigger a chain reaction of long-lasting beneficial effects, and that these interactions might also help reduce the stress parents are feeling.

Adults who interact sensitively with a child — for instance, reading or singing, looking at the same things, and copying sounds and faces — help children feel safe and secure. In turn, these feelings can help children cope better in challenging situations later on — something we know is important during the pandemic. These interactions also encourage children to explore more, which helps them develop problem-solving skills. All this builds to the kind of learning and development that prepares children for big steps in life, like starting school.

This cascade of development is supported by the science of early learning, which shows that parents and caregivers lay the foundation for secure caregiver-child attachment relationships, which help children develop the ability to focus and pay attention, remember instructions, and demonstrate self-control (also called executive function). Positive caregiver-child interactions also help children develop social-emotional skills, such as cooperating and playing well with others, and managing feelings appropriately. Together, secure relationships and strong social-emotional and executive function skills in children are related to resilience and school readiness.

“New parents might be surprised to learn that a shared activity like reading or singing together promotes a kind of back-and-forth interaction between child and caregiver that can trigger a chain reaction of long-lasting beneficial effects.”

The children are not the only ones who benefit. Positive and engaging interactions between children and the adults in their lives are also good for the adults, helping them become more confident caregivers. Reading to children may also help with parental stress and even depression.

It can feel strange to read books to very young babies. Even without a pandemic, the early days of parenthood can be overwhelming and it can be hard for parents to know what they should be doing, especially given the deluge of parenting advice. Parents also underestimate just how early the care they provide has long-term impacts on their children’s development. For instance, in one survey, parents said they believed what they did started to make a difference at six months, but we know that the impact starts from birth. At a time when uncertainty abounds, especially for new parents, we hope it is a comfort to know that there is something simple and easy to do together, safely and in the comfort of home. And that the simple back and forth that reading and rhyming creates can extend beyond the pages of the book and lay positive foundations for the developing brain that last for many years.

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Disentangling the neurological impacts of different adversities, such as child neglect and child abuse, shows biological pathways that underpin child development challenges.

Picture children who are having a hard time paying attention and are disrupting a classroom. What’s the best way to address their behavior and help them to concentrate? Is it mindfulness training, to help them calm them down and react less to everything going on around them? Or is it cognitive training to improve their capacity to problem solve, making it easier for them to stick with the learning process, rather than giving up and disrupting their peers? The choice may depend on whether they’ve experienced child neglect or abuse and the impact on their brain development.

Victims of child neglect, or children with few invested caregivers who talk to them and engage them in learning-oriented play, may have a brain that is underdeveloped in areas that support complex thinking. On the other hand, a child who has experienced abuse or violence could have very different biological issues. He or she has a brain that’s been shaped by threat—its biology has been primed to be hypervigilant and overreactive.

These very different biological histories may manifest as what can seem to be the identical problem—disruptive behavior. But if we understand the very different neurological pathways forged variously by child neglect or abuse, we can explain why the same behaviors need different approaches that are tailored to each child’s experiences and neurobiology.

Different treatments for abuse and child neglect

Mindfulness and emotional regulation training could help abused children reduce their emotional reactivity and function better. In contrast, for neglected or deprived children, the answer might be developmentally appropriate, scaffolded learning experiences designed to challenge them. This could even involve, for example, computerised training of their attention skills. Exercises could gradually provide more complex tasks and develop their capacity to think in increasingly difficult ways.

Understanding the neurological impacts of child neglect and abuse 

These scenarios show how neuroscience is providing vital insights into the biological mechanisms, shaped by early experiences, that set in place the pathways to psychological and processing problems. Research is demonstrating how different types of adversity impact brain development in distinct ways. We need to understand these neural mechanisms to develop better targeted, more discriminating and more successful interventions, each designed to address particular brain impacts caused by different kinds of early adversity.

“At least two types of childhood adversity – deprivation (child neglect) and child abuse (threat) – are distinctive in terms of their biological impacts on the human brain.”

Identifying these mechanisms can be challenging, because some children have experienced multiple adversities. However, it is important to disentangle discreet impacts on brain development so that we can design appropriate ways to address them.

Research is making clear that there are at least two types of childhood adversity – child neglect (deprivation) and child abuse (threat) – which have distinctive impacts on the human brain.

Evidence about brain impact of child neglect and deprivation

Deprivation involves an absence of expected inputs from a child’s environment, such as cognitive and social stimulation. It’s a core feature of child neglect and institutionalisation. It can also be found in children with constrained learning opportunities, such as those reared by parents with few opportunities to invest in their children’s development.

We know that animals raised with a lack of environmental stimulation typically experience dramatic increases in synaptic pruning, resulting in reduced cortical volume and thickness in their brains. These changes are accompanied by deficits in learning and memory. The same picture can be found when cognitive enrichment and social stimulation is low during early human development.

Photo: David Goehring. Creative Commons.

For example, our studies of children raised in Romanian orphanages, an extreme example of child neglect with severe deprivation of caregiver contact, found that they often had reduced volume and thickness throughout the brain’s cortex. In these orphanages, children were deprived of stimulation, and their young brains developed to become as efficient as possible for the environment they faced. Their brains were learning that they would not need rich synaptic connections for sensory experiences. Our hypothesis is that these synapses would have been “over-pruned”. In brain development, this is a tragic example of the “use it or lose it” principle.

Recent evidence has found similar patterns of brain development, albeit more circumscribed, in children raised in poor households. In such cases, because of a limited social safety net, parents may be working multiple jobs, so they can’t be present with their children and can’t afford high quality care. Thus, their children may also experience some form of child neglect. Other research has identified increased cortical thinning in children from poorer families.

These disruptions to healthy brain development, caused by a lack of cognitive stimulation, underpin reduced capacities to think and learn in such children.

Understanding impact of abuse, living under threat

In contrast, abuse encompasses experiences involving harm or threat of harm. Living with threat is a core feature of sexual abuse, physical abuse and exposure to community violence or war. The biological impact of being raised amid chronic threat is increasingly being documented. It biases the development of cortical and subcortical circuits towards early detection of other threats, and it can create hypervigilance. These biological changes alter emotional development in ways that facilitate the rapid identification of potential threats to the environment, a heightened emotional response to those threats, and a reduced ability to control this response.

“A focus on ‘cumulative risk’ from multiple adversities can fail to distinguish the type, timing or severity of different experiences.”

As a result, children who have experienced physical or sexual abuse are more alert to threatening stimuli. They are more likely to perceive neutral facial expressions as threatening. They also find it difficult to discriminate between threat and safety cues in learning situations. These differences in emotional reactivity and regulation lead to psychological problems such as depression, anxiety and anger-related disorders.

Danger of focus on ‘cumulative’ adversity 

These distinctions between child neglect/deprivation and child abuse/threat have been ignored in recent research focused on “cumulative risk”. Cumulative risk focuses on children experiencing multiple adversities. This approach rightly recognises a key reality—children exposed, for example, to poverty, deprivation and child neglect are also more likely to experience violence and abuse. The multiplicity of adversity is, in itself, dangerous to children. However, this cumulative approach, which is dominant in the field, can fail to distinguish the type, timing or severity of different experiences. It also throws little light on the different mechanisms by which children’s psychopathology is impacted and makes it harder to design interventions to address the psychological problems which result from adversity exposure.

Neglect in Romanian orphanages

Our research into the children raised in Romanian orphanages is pertinent. They suffered severe child neglect, deprived of both attachment and stimulation. We were able to show that exposure to institutionalization early in life caused clear reductions in IQ and cognitive function, and changed their neural structure.

Our work – comparing the brains of infants rescued early with those who remained institutionalised for longer – has also helped us understand how these losses may be recoverable. Children who moved into families before they were two years old were able to recover in some ways with regards to their stress responses and IQ. This was less true for their executive functioning and attention – recovering this capacity seems to require even earlier intervention. Some research suggests that children who were rescued before they were six months old were doing a lot better in terms of executive function.

Adolescence is an important intervention opportunity

Neuroscience is helping practitioners understand when—and in response to which experiences—the brain is more plastic, making it responsive to certain interventions. We know that the brain remains plastic throughout life, but much less so after infancy, and plasticity apparently declines with age. But current research suggests that there may be another opportunity for plasticity during adolescence.

Linda Wilbrecht at the University of California, Berkeley has shown that hormonal changes at this age increase brain plasticity. This finding offers the intriguing and hopeful possibility that interventions around adolescence – ensuring that children experience positive relationships with trusted caregivers – may offer a second major opportunity, beyond infancy, to recover from child neglect or abuse, making a great difference in children’s brain development and their lifetime prospects.

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The key predictor of antisocial behavior and violent crime (as opposed to nonviolent crime) is poor emotion regulation in early childhood.

A very small group of boys grow up to become involved in persistent antisocial behavior and violent offending. Research has confirmed that there are reliable predictors of antisocial behavior in boys as early as the age of two or three.

A key predictor of violent crime (as opposed to nonviolent crime) is poor emotion regulation in early childhood. Where this is linked to persistent conduct problems through childhood, particularly when combined with hyperactivity/attention problems, there is a correlation with male violence and antisocial behavior in adolescence and early adulthood.

The problem mainly relates to boys. Research has suggested that the male brain is more vulnerable to adverse influences in early childhood. See Male violence: Early childhood development predictors.

The research suggests that violence prevention programs should prioritise the development of self-regulation skills in boys living in urban poverty, through working directly with them and through parenting programs. Some programs have already been successful in this regard. The High-Scope Perry Preschool Study reduced early violent antisocial behavior by targeting self-regulation skills in early childhood. Other programs, such as the Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) curriculum and Family Check-Up, have improved children’s emotion regulation and reduced conduct problems. Positive parenting is often associated with the improvement in child conduct in these programs.

Stephanie Sitnick and colleagues have carried out research into early childhood precursors of male violence and antisocial behavior in young adulthood. They studied data from the Pitt Mother & Child Project, a study that followed low-income high-risk youth from the age of one until they were 20 years old; 310 families participated at the start, and 256 were still going at the end. The researchers measured child oppositional behavior, child emotion regulation and quality of the home environment. They also measured conduct problems throughout the period (physical aggression, oppositional behavior, temper tantrums) and hyperactivity/impulsivity/low attention. At 20 years, they measured violence and antisocial behavior both through court records and by interviewing the young adults. Their key finding was the link between poor early emotion regulation and adult antisocial behavior and violence.

A considerable amount of other research has linked early childhood development problems with later male violence and antisocial behavior, particularly impulsive, reactive crimes. Correlates include:

• impairments in early executive function
• poorer recognition of facial emotions linked to antisocial behavior
• poor early attachment and rejecting parenting
• oppositional behavior in early childhood
• poor self-control, particularly for those living in poverty.

Other factors linked to violence and antisocial behavior, reviewed by Adrian Raine, include the following.

Genetics: Studies of aggression in identical versus nonidentical twins show 65% heritability for aggression. Heritability for domestic violence is over 50%. Heritability relates more to impulsive/reactive violence. The genetics are complex and the only single gene found to occur more in violent offenders is MAOA (Monoamine Oxidase-A).

Brain impairments: Neurological impairments can be seen in several parts of violent offenders’ brains relating to emotion regulation, moral decision-making and impulse control. In particular, reduced structure and reduced glucose metabolism is often observed in the prefrontal cortex. The striatum is also more likely to be enlarged. The striatum is associated with the reward system and may suggest an oversensitivity to rewards in violent offenders.

Physical influences: The research suggests a variety of physical predictors of antisocial behavior and violence.

• Poor prenatal nutrition is associated with increased risk of antisocial personality disorder in adulthood. Child malnutrition is linked to aggression in childhood. One fatty acid critical for brain development, omega-3, is not produced by the body but is present in some foods, such as fish—and countries with diets high in fish have lower murder rates.
• Maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy is linked to persistent offending. These links are stronger when other sources of stress exist, such as single-parent family status or an unwanted pregnancy.
• Alcohol consumption during pregnancy has been shown in many studies to be a risk factor for adult antisocial behavior and violence. Paternal alcohol consumption is also linked, possibly through epigenetic inheritance.
• Some birth complications, such as hypoxia, are linked to adult impulsive violent
• Lead exposure has been linked to adult antisocial behavior and violence. Lead is neurotoxic and affects boys more than girls, another indication of boys’ increased vulnerability to adverse influences in early childhood.
• Some traumatic brain injuries are linked to later violent behaviors.

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Male violence exceeds female violence by a very significant margin. The origins of this lie in early childhood development, with the first differences appearing in preschool.

Two researchers in the USA, Paul Golding and Hiram E Fitzgerald, have identified three areas that influence male violence during early childhood development: (1) early relationships with caregivers, (2) biological differences between boys and girls, and (3) growing economic and social inequalities among families in the USA, particularly the growing number of single-parent families.

Male violence exceeds female violence by a large margin. Starting in preschool, boys in the USA are more likely to be disciplined and suspended for behavior problems. By adolescence, boys are four times more likely than girls to be arrested for violent crime. In adulthood, male violent crime is four times more common than female violent crime. And men are seven times more likely to commit serious violent crimes, such as murder, rape and robbery. Among major ethnic groups in the USA, only Asian Americans display little difference between male violence and female violence.

Early caregiving and the emergence of male violence

Research has shown that certain deficits in early caregiving are linked to worse outcomes for boys than for girls. For example, sons of depressed mothers score lower than daughters on measures of attachment at 18 months of age. Similarly, sons who experience maternal insensitivity are more likely to display poorer executive function and more behavioral problems in primary school than girls who experience the same deficit at home.

Similar differences appear in measures of fathers’ sensitivity. For example, when fathers fail to exercise dominance during rough-and-tumble play (that is, establishing limits so that the child feels safe), boys are more likely than girls to show aggression and poor control of emotions five years later.

But the question remains: Why are boys more affected by these caregiving deficits than girls are? The authors propose that the slower maturation of boys during infancy expands the scope for stress in the social environment to have a negative impact on their development. Girls are protected to an extent by their more rapid development in early childhood.

Biological and neurobiological factors

In addition to slower development, other biological differences between boys and girls could be linked to differences in the development of male and female violence.

• Boys are more likely to have lower resting heart rates than girls, on average. Lower resting heart rates in children are associated with uncomfortable mood states, seeking stimulation, and antisocial behavior.
• Boys are more likely to have the MAOA-L gene. This gene, when combined with abusive or neglectful caregiving in early childhood, is associated with impulsive physical aggression later in life.
• Boys are exposed to higher levels of testosterone in the prenatal and perinatal periods of development and also starting in adolescence. Children’s exposure to testosterone is associated with less empathy and more aggression.
• Differences in the neurobiology of boys and girls at birth are now being studied to see whether they may point to differential vulnerability to problems in early childhood development.

Social and cultural environment

Golding and Fitzgerald consider the expanding social, economic and racial inequalities in the USA to be a critical factor in increasing the risk of male violence.

The rise of single motherhood (4% of births in the 1950s, 35% 60 years later) is one factor. Single parenthood is associated with a wide range of pressures, for example, fewer economic resources, exposure to discrimination, more likelihood of exposure to conflict, and more mental health problems. All these incur risks for a mother’s ability to care for her children, to which, as described above, boys are more susceptible.

The absence of fathers in children’s lives is linked to developmental problems in both boys and girls, but the nature of the problems are different: boys are more likely to show behavior and social problems (externalising), while girls are more likely to show anxiety and depressive problems (internalising). This differential response manifests as more aggression among boys.

Studies have shown that growing up in poor, single-parent families has differential impacts on boys and girls . Boys from such families are less likely to be employed in their 20s than are girls from the same families. Boys from these families are more likely than girls to exhibit antisocial behavior such as low self-control and delinquency.

In the coming months, the Child & Family Blog will run a series of research updates that expand on the emergence of male violence, based on a collection of research articles published this year in the Infant Mental Health Journal.

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When a father supports a toddler’s autonomy, the child is likely to show better executive function at the age of five and so be readier for school.

How a father interacts with his toddler is important for the child’s executive function—a key component of early childhood cognitive development and a good indicator of school readiness at the age of five. When fathers support three-year-olds’ autonomy rather than controlling their activity, a new study finds, children are likely to show better executive function at the age of five and so be readier for school.

The researchers recommend more attention to fathers’ early parenting skills as a means to improve outcomes for children at school.

Though previous research has also shown a link between executive function and parenting that supports children’s autonomy, those studies have focused almost exclusively on mothers. In recent years, the types of parenting typically associated with fathers have attracted more research interest. For example, how does autonomy support work during play – teaching the child to manage states of high excitement, for example – and what are the links between children’s play and their executive function?

Executive function—a set of mental skills that helps people gain control over their actions and thoughts—fundamentally influences a child’s ability to learn. Because executive function helps children sit still, focus on the teacher and persist in difficult tasks, it is more important for success in preschool than early language and math skills. Executive function in early childhood also predicts later educational achievement, wealth, health and low criminality, and it explains part of the different in early achievement between children from lower- and higher-income families.

Support for autonomy, according to the researchers, means, “Guidance that supports children’s sense of competence and lets children use their own skills, as opposed to taking over the task or letting them struggle.” An autonomy-supportive adult, they write, “needs to respect the child’s pace, organize the task so that the child can be successful, and give help contingent on the child’s current ability.”

In this study, 89 father-child pairs were assessed twice, when the child was three and when the child was five. The key measure at three years was the child’s executive function. At five years, this measure was extended to cover literacy and numeracy, creating a composite measure termed “school readiness”. So at five, the researchers measured how children managed picture arithmetic and word problems and an increasingly complicated card sorting exercise, how they performed the “Simon says” game, and how well they were able to resist opening a present for them which was left in the room alone with them for an unreasonably long time.

Father-child interaction was measured in two ways. The first was a puzzle just a bit too difficult for the child to do alone. This is a traditional measure of whether a parent supports autonomy or controls the child and was designed in studies with mothers.

For this study of executive function, the researchers invented another measurement, looking at how father and child played together in a gym. They were presented with four pieces of playground equipment and asked to play for 10 minutes. Videos of the activity were then carefully assessed – how fathers made suggestions to the child to enhance play, the father’s responsiveness to the child’s ideas, how much stimulation the father provided if the child got bored, the degree of sharing and having fun together, the extent to which the father provoked risk and excitement (e.g., by throwing, lifting, or tickling), and how engaged the father himself was in the play.

Three notable results emerged.

First, as stated above, autonomy support by the father when the child was three correlated with the school readiness measure when the child was five. This shows the significance of early parenting by fathers for school readiness.

Second, when children’s executive function was lower at three, fathers were more likely to be controlling at three and more prone to overstimulation during play at five. This suggests a two-way influence – a child’s executive function may influence the father’s parenting.

Third, the researchers found a stronger link between children’s executive function at five and measures from the gym exercise than they did between executive function and measures from the puzzle exercise, suggesting that the role of how parents play has been underestimated.

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Children guide their own early learning. They look elsewhere when learning slows, either because they’ve mastered the material or it’s become too difficult. Inattention can aid child development.

Research shows that children capably guide their own early learning, concentrating on learning experiences that are useful and avoiding those that are not. Their choices are not rooted in novelty alone. They are strategic agents of child development, seeking opportunities likely to fit their cognitive capacities. Children don’t waste time on what they already know, or what is unknowable. They are experts in early learning and what they need for their own development.

Clinical problems such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder can cause disengagement that hinders rather than helps learning. However, most inattention is good, reflecting efficient learning strategies.

Good inattention shouldn’t be corrected or pathologized. It can guide those who support children’s early learning. Educators should recognize that it casts a light on what children may or may not be ready to learn. They should take cues from the children themselves on, as children alone have full access to what they already know.

Infants are agents in their early learning

Our research shows that the link between children’s interest and their readiness to learn applies even in infancy. We’ve demonstrated that children look elsewhere in search of something different when they know enough about a toy, subject, or activity. They also disengage when a task is overly complex given their current knowledge, limited cognitive skills, and working memory.

“Most inattention in children is good, reflecting efficient early learning strategies.”

This is rational behavior. If you don’t expect you can learn, it’s smart to shift your gaze and seek enlightenment elsewhere.

Early years’ practice aims to develop children’s ‘school-readiness’, for which concentration is a valued skill. In this context, children’s inattention may be seen as a problem, indicating compromised executive function. Inattention alone, however, is insufficient evidence of an executive function deficit. Instead, children’s inattention may also indicate sound judgments about the suitability of the learning in context. Inattention can indicate that children’s surroundings don’t match what they need to make early learning progress.

Choice in early learning aids child development

It’s challenging to design a single educational environment for a group of children who enter a classroom with vastly different previous experience and knowledge about the world. If educators design environments for the children with the least knowledge, they can expect widespread disengagement among those who know the most, as their attentional systems are designed to disengage when they encounter redundant information.

Conversely, if educators appeal to the most knowledgeable, they risk widespread disengagement among those who know the least. These children’s attentional systems are designed to disengage from material that they’re not yet well situated to learn. Educators want to avoid such lost opportunities. But how?

A solution is to give children choices in their early learning. Choice lets children learn when they are ready and able. Exploring allows them to get the best out of themselves and their situations.

This doesn’t mean that every moment in an early childhood classroom must be free-play based. And children don’t require choice about every activity. It can be good for children to focus on activities together and to engage with each other. Taking turns and collaborating have benefits. Nevertheless, it’s important to give children considerable individualized early learning opportunities, especially in their first few years in school.

It’s also vital to recognise that a child’s inattention in a group-based activity may reflect a mismatch between that child’s current knowledge and the material. Don’t assume a child’s inattention is a mark of willful disobedience or a clinical problem.

Three additional aspects of children’s cognitive systems for acquiring new knowledge may also be useful for educators.

Photo: provided by author.

Even infants seek out material that is useful for early learning

Some of the most compelling evidence we have from my lab on children engaged in active early learning comes from eye-tracking studies with babies. We’ve shown that infants typically divert their gaze when viewing sequences that are either very expected or very surprising. The babies are most engaged by events that are a little bit, but not overly, surprising. We call this the “Goldilocks effect” in infant attention.

“Young children can and will take an active role in their own early learning. You can support them as they do so by recognizing that kind of “baby genius” and enabling it by providing them with choices in learning.”

These findings demonstrate that even infants’ attention is driven by their existing knowledge and their expectations. Specifically, they show that infants prefer absorbing information at an intermediate rate. This strategy prevents them from wasting time on material that offers them less early learning value.

The best attentional strategy depends upon a child’s working memory

Basic cognitive abilities, like working memory, shape exploration, learning, and play. The optimal exploration strategy shifts depending upon how much working memory a learner has available. The more working memory you have, the more objects of learning you can manage at one time. The less working memory you have, the more you must return to previously attended material to maintain your understanding.

Children have far less working memory than adults. There are also substantial individual differences in early learning across learners in general, even in the same age category. Thus we see big differences across age and individuals in how often learners need to return to material.

Children’s play patterns demonstrate these individual differences in working memory. The more working memory children have, the more complex their sequences of actions during play tend be.

Early learning through play aims to understand causal relationships

Children’s play is often motivated by discovery. Developmental scientists such as Elizabeth Bonawitz (Rutgers Newark), Hyo Gweon (Stanford), Alison Gopnik (Berkeley), and Laura Schulz (MIT) have demonstrated that children are intrigued by uncertainty, and they structure their play in ways that reduce it.

Children play longer with toys that violate their expectations, trying to understand the toys’ underlying causal mechanisms. This is true even in infancy. Young children play to figure out how things in the world work.

What is the takeaway from all of this? Infants and young children are more capable in guiding their own early learning than you might initially expect. So parents and educators, you can relax a little. Your children are not passive sponges, dependent entirely on you to put exactly the right things in front of them. Young children can and will take an active role in their own early learning. You can support them as they do so by recognizing that kind of ‘baby genius’ and helping it along by giving them choices in learning.

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To take a modern approach to cognitive development theory it is important to emphasise relationships, and view social interaction as the crucible in which children’s cognitive development takes place. In other words, the mind forms through being part of and contributing to social interaction, a process charged by emotion. Growing up within families provides for a long period of intense social interaction.

(Other cognitive development theories include “nativist” approaches that regard the mind as having innate abilities, growing rather like a tree does from a seed, and “empiricist” approaches that focus only on the factors that act on the mind to form it, rather than also on how the mind influences those factors.)

A relational approach can be illustrated with Donald Winnicott’s memorable quotation from 1964: “there is no such thing as a baby”. What he meant was that a baby is embedded in a complex web of interactions with others, to the extent that the boundary between the baby and parent is no longer distinct.

This theory of cognitive development sees the baby and parent shaping each other’s neurological development. Babies don’t just engage with their surroundings; they influence and shape the environment in which they learn skills. Even basic gestures such as smiling emerge through a process of development.

The relational theory of cognitive development encompasses the wider societal level: the person and culture are co-created like parent and child. A person becomes a member of society by engaging in routines, traditions, rituals, and the use of objects and symbols, including language. The person both grows as part of the culture and forms the culture with others.

Nowadays, the dominant theory of cognitive development is termed “process-relational”.

Where does the biology stop and the social start? The nature/nurture argument does not apply in this worldview. For example, social experience has now been shown to influence the way genes are expressed, through epigenetic changes.

DNA is the source material and is fixed, but how it is expressed can be changed by experience. This has generated a whole new branch of research, social genomics: the study of how social experience shapes gene expression.

The father of cognitive development theory: Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) has had a monumental impact on cognitive development theory. Piaget proposed a developmental theory based on the view of development known as “constructivism.” That is, we come to know the world through acting on it. He wrote that, “In order to know objects, the subject must act upon them and, therefore, transform them.”

Piaget argued that babies and children learn about the world through their action on the world. In this process they develop patterns of interaction involving emotions, sensations, motor movements, and perception, known as “schemes”.

Once a scheme begins to develop through particular interactions, it will be extended in slightly different situations. That is, the child assimilates new experiences to what she has previously learned, but since the experience will be different, the scheme will be modified or accommodated. Repeated many times, this process results in cognitive development.

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Piaget said children learn through interaction with the world, developing patterns called “schemes”.

Piaget was interested in the stage-by-stage sequence of development that all children go through, each stage providing the foundation for the next. Through extraordinarily detailed observations of children, including his own three, he proposed four stages:

• Sensorimotor stage (during the first two years): a stage in which babies develop action schemes like sucking, pushing, hitting and grasping.
• Pre-operational stage (between two and seven years): the child develops the ability to think, but has limited ability to apply logic to a situation to deduce something by thought alone.
• Concrete operational stage (between seven and 11 years): the child starts working things out through logical thought, rather than just action.
• Formal operational stage (12-15 years): the child engages in systematic experimentation, forming hypotheses, testing them out and trying alternatives.

Sociogenesis theory of cognitive development: Lev Vygotsky

Another 20th-century giant of child development theory, Lev Vygotsky, is commonly regarded as the originator of the idea that the mind forms through social processes.

In fact, the idea predates him considerably, but he articulated it and developed it into a major influence on the modern science of child development, a remarkable feat since he only spent 11 years working on it, moving from work on art and literature when he was 27 and tragically dying when he was only 38.

According to Vygotsky, all higher mental functions occur twice, first between people in social interaction, then within the person’s mind. In this way, he said, social interactions form the mind, they don’t just influence a process already in motion like watering a seed to grow into a plant.

A key tenet of cognitive development theory is Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development”. This follows from his idea that thinking is first social before becoming mastered by an individual.

In the process of developing a new way of thinking there is a gap between what children can achieve alone and what they can achieve with the assistance of others. Two children may appear to be at the same level of development, but with help, one may be capable of more than the other. They differ in their ability to master a new way of thinking.

The key to cognitive development, according to Vygotsky, is the help that the more experienced adult gives the child to grow within this zone.

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Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” highlights how children learn best with guidance, bridging the gap between what they can do alone and with help.

Vygotsky introduced the idea of “elementary” and “higher” mental functions. Elementary functions are products of evolution and biologically explained. They include involuntary attention and the ability to make simple connections between events.

In contrast, higher mental functions emerge through social interactions and culture. These include language, systems of counting, memorising techniques, art, literature, maps, and so on.

Vygotsky paid much attention to how language develops and considered how children talk to themselves. According to his theory of cognitive development, children learn to talk through relationships and conversations and then use speech as a tool for their own thinking, by talking to themselves.

This applies equally to hearing children, and sign language used by children who cannot hear. Research has indeed shown that children who interact more with others talk to themselves more when they are alone, and that children who are not allowed to talk to themselves perform less well in cognitive tests.

Later, speech goes “underground” to become inner speech or verbal thought, though it sometimes comes back out during adulthood. For example, when we are working out particularly difficult problems. Vygotsky theorised that children (and adults) use speech when operating in their zone of proximal development, just beyond their level of competence.

How parents can support cognitive development: scaffolding

Cognitive development theory uses a metaphor from the construction industry: scaffolding, a temporary structure around the growing building to assist its construction.

In cognitive development theory, scaffolding gives children a structure to master a skill, after which it becomes redundant. In this context, scaffolding is about supporting children within their zone of proximal development: setting goals, regulating their actions and inhibiting unhelpful responses, organising their actions and selecting strategies. It can be as simple as a series of hints and prompts that are appropriate for the child’s developmental level.

Recently, many researchers have studied scaffolding and its impact on cognitive development when variously applied. Cognitive development advances when scaffolding is applied well and constantly adjusted to the child’s progress.

Piaget versus Vygotsky

Psychologists have long sought to discuss the theory of cognitive development by comparing the work of Piaget and Vygotsky, both of whom emphasised the role of social interaction, though in different ways.

In reality, both of them emphasised social interaction to such a degree that even leading experts often can’t read statements from one or the other and be certain of whether it was written by Piaget or Vygotsky.

One way to see a difference is through a thought experiment: What would happen to child development if there were no adults?

For Vygotsky, there would be no development, because children cannot move forward out of their zone of proximal development without more expert help.

For Piaget, there could be development, albeit not a type to be recommended. Two children interacting with each other could learn more than one child alone.

Executive function: a core concept in cognitive development theory

Put very simply, executive function is a set of mental skills that helps a person gain control over their actions and thoughts. Scientists have identified four components:

1. Working memory – the ability to hold information and recall it when carrying out a task.
2. Inhibitory control – suppressing initial impulses in favour of more rational action.
3. Attentional flexibility – changing from one way of solving a problem to another.
4. Planning – using all the skills above, creating a strategy to get a task done.

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Executive function emerges through social interactions, particularly parental scaffolding that helps children operate in their zone of proximal development.

These skills develop in a sequence. Working memory typically develops in early childhood and improves during preschool and beyond. Inhibitory control and attentional flexibility develop in preschool. Planning skills develop during childhood and adolescence.

Like other cognitive development skills, executive function emerges through social interactions, particularly parental scaffolding that helps children operate effectively in their zone of proximal development. If children are specifically taught executive function skills at an appropriate level relative to their development, their skills improve.

Poverty is a key inhibitor of developing executive function skills. But its negative impacts can be mitigated if the parent-child attachment is secure and if the child has more social interaction, for example, at a daycare facility. Sadly, poverty reduces parental resources and is frequently associated with poorer relationships and more chaos.

Cognitive development theory: the importance of social interaction in language development

Unsurprisingly, language ability is critical to the cognitive development that takes place within relationships. The importance of social interaction in language development is one of the most consistent findings across cognitive development research.

Language develops in a critical early period of a child’s life. Research on feral children and on deaf children raised without sign language shows that they cannot learn normal syntax and morphology.

The first language abilities emerge shortly after birth. Babies will respond more to familiar voices, the language of their families, and books that were read aloud while they were in the womb. One-year-olds can distinguish among speech sounds that adults who have learned particular languages can no longer distinguish.

Babies understand words before speaking them. When they learn to speak in their second year, there is an explosion of understanding and speaking words.

So great is the richness and complexity of what children learn so quickly that some have proposed particular innate skills, beyond just the ability to use language that humans have, but other animals don’t.

Noam Chomsky has proposed an innate propensity to grasp syntax and proposed a “universal grammar” for human beings. As children develop, he argues, pre-existing on/off switches are triggered, leading the child from the universal grammar to the actual languages they learn.

Proponents of a social cognitive development theory find many problems with this version of nativism. The developmental view, based on Piaget and Vygotsky, is that children learn language through interaction with their parents and others and through learning social routines on which communication is based.

Parents typically modify language for babies and toddlers – a high intonation often called child-directed speech. This is often called motherese, though fathers do it too. Parents speak more slowly and more simply (though perhaps not in all cultures). Interestingly, in some contexts, fathers tend to use more complex speech, stretching children more within their zone of proximal development. This might be why a father talking with his child correlates better with later language skills than a mother talking with her child.

Researchers have also found that simply hearing words in their environment makes no difference to their language ability. Instead, children learn words in interactions with parents and carers. Time and again, the importance of social interaction in language development is reinforced, lying at the heart of cognitive development.

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The researchers recommend that structured language immersion and bilingual education become an important part of work with disadvantaged families.

The science: bilingualism, executive function and cognitive development

Executive function, a foundation for strong cognitive development, is a set of mental skills that help us get things done. Scientists have identified four components:

1. Working memory – the ability to hold information and recall it when carrying out a task.
2. Inhibitory control – suppressing initial impulses in favour of more rational action.
3. Attentional flexibility – changing from one way of solving a problem to another.
4. Planning – using all the skills above and creating a strategy to get a task done.

Children who score highly on measures of these components are likely to be more ready for school, to achieve more in education, and to have better physical health and social skills.

Poverty has been shown to inhibit the development of executive function skills. Children from well-off families have more and better material resources and more social connections and they experience more positive parenting. All these things boost their social and cognitive development.

Research has also shown a positive correlation between bilingualism and cognitive development, especially executive function. Bilingualism supports skills that are specific to executive function: careful attention to the target language, suppressing the non-target language and effectively switching between languages.

In this study, four aspects of executive function were measured four times in children in kindergarten and first grade, that is, five- to seven-year-olds.

• Inhibition and shifting. Children were given 22 cards of red and blue boats and rabbits, some with a border around the edge. They were asked to sort the cards in three different ways – by colour, object and by border.
• Working memory. Children were asked to repeat backwards a series of numbers spoken to them.
• Inhibitory control. Teachers were asked to rate the children’s behavior, for example, by answering prompts such as “The child can wait before entering into new activities if he/she is asked to.”
• Attentional focusing. Teachers were asked to rate the children’s behavior, for example, by answering prompts such as “When building or putting something together, the child becomes very involved in what he/she is doing, and works for long periods.”

A measure for socioeconomic status covered household income and the education and occupation of the mother and father.

Findings: bilingualism mitigates the negative impact of low socioeconomic status

Earlier studies with smaller samples have shown that bilingualism does not reliably influence cognitive development via executive function. This study, with a much larger sample, found the opposite.

In line with earlier research, lower socioeconomic status was found to inhibit cognitive development. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds performed less well on all the measures. Meanwhile, being bilingual improved performance on all four tests. (Though, in the test of reciting numbers backwards, it did so only for the older children. This might be because the task required specific linguistic skills which develop a bit more slowly in bilingual children.)

The study’s core finding was that poverty’s negative influence on cognitive development was smaller for bilingual children. Similarly, bilingualism made a bigger positive difference on measures of executive function among children from more disadvantaged families.

The findings held true irrespective of gender, culture and language proficiency.

Implications for child cognitive development policy

This research suggests that bilingualism contributes specifically to cognitive development in young children who are starting out in school, as measured by executive function skills. Meanwhile, executive function skills are associated with better school readiness, higher achievement in education, better physical health and better social skills. This suggests a link between early bilingualism, strong cognitive development and later life achievement.

Moreover, the research shows that bilingualism’s benefit to cognitive development is particularly apparent in children with fewer resources at home. Thus the researchers recommend structured language immersion and bilingual education for children of disadvantaged families.

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