When the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools nationwide, students of all ages — from high-schoolers in Advanced Placement classes to preschoolers getting the hang of the ABCs — shifted to remote learning on a screen.

And while learning to read in an online setting may seem a tall order, a new study by the 91̽��’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences finds that children can develop key reading skills in a virtual classroom with other students. Researchers say their “Reading Camp” program demonstrates not only the effectiveness of the approach, but also the potential to reach larger numbers of students remotely, by necessity or by choice.

“Children are ready to learn to read at the age of 5. But the pandemic robbed children of the opportunity for in-person reading instruction. What we’ve shown here is that an online Reading Camp designed to promote learning socially works phenomenally well. An online camp can be used all over the world by children anywhere, and that is truly exciting,” said faculty author , co-director of I-LABS and a 91̽��professor of speech and hearing sciences.

The , published online March 31 in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, details a two-week reading program, which teachers provided remotely to 83 5-year-olds beginning in fall 2020.

Learning to read involves a series of steps, from recognizing distinguished sounds in a language (phonological awareness), to identifying the names of individual letters and how they sound (letter-sound knowledge), to decoding words and their meanings.

The study finds that the participants demonstrated learning of specific reading skills, such as phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge, when compared to a control group of children who did not receive the instruction.

I-LABS researchers, including study co-author (now at Stanford University), in 2019 offered a two-week reading summer camp to teach early literacy skills to pre-kindergarteners and measure brain activity before and after instruction. With the onset of the pandemic in spring 2020, researchers decided to adapt the in-person Reading Camp into an online version over Zoom.

Ahead of the remote camp, researchers mailed parents a kit of materials, which included headphones, worksheets and books, as well as Play-Doh, toys and other fun items for use in the lessons. Children used colored plastic eggs from the kit, for example, to “vote” for the right answer in their virtual classroom, rather than raising a hand.

The Reading Camp grouped children into six-person classrooms, each with two instructors trained in the specific skills lessons. Sessions lasted three hours a day, with several breaks, short lessons broken up by activities, and ending with a story time. The classrooms were often broken into even smaller, three-student breakout rooms, each with a teacher to focus the lessons and games.

“This shows that we can actually teach kids online if we’re using the correct methodology, keeping them engaged, and they’re interacting socially with their peers and teachers,” said , a research scientist at I-LABS and the study’s first author. “Combining all of this made it successful.”

Children in both the Reading Camp and control groups took several standardized and non-standardized tests to assess knowledge of letters, sounds and words. The results showed that the Reading Camp participants improved in all of the reading skills measured, and their phonological awareness and knowledge of lowercase letters and sounds, in particular, more than the children in the control group.

“Frankly, I had my doubts about whether 5-year-olds could learn to read online without a live tutor. But when I saw these 5-year-olds on Zoom laughing and encouraging each other to listen and hold up the right color egg, I was amazed. Their social connections to each other were obvious, and their learning was incredible. They called each other by name and seemed very eager to see each other on the screen,” Kuhl said.

Researchers plan to hold additional online reading camps, and to add brain scans prior to and after the camps to evaluate how learning to read affects brain development.

The study was funded by the Bezos Family Foundation, the Overdeck Family Foundation, and the Petunia Charitable Fund.

Additional co-authors were Suzanne Ender, Liesbeth Gijbels, Hailley Loop, Julia Mizrahi and Bo Woo, all of I-LABS.

For more information, contact Weiss at ylweiss@uw.edu, Kuhl at pkkuhl@uw.edu or Yeatman at jyeatman@stanford.edu.

Children as young as age 6 develop ideas that girls are less interested than boys in computer science and engineering — stereotypes that can extend into the late teens and contribute to a gender gap in STEM college courses and related careers.

from the University of Houston and the 91̽��, published Nov. 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explores the gender-based beliefs young children and teens hold about interest in STEM fields. The majority of children believe girls are less interested than boys in computer science and engineering, the study shows.

“Gender-interest stereotypes that STEM is for boys begins in grade school, and by the time they reach high school, many girls have made their decision not to pursue degrees in computer science and engineering because they feel they don’t belong,” said , an assistant professor of Psychological, Health and Learning Sciences at the University of Houston and the study’s lead author.

The PNAS study involved four different studies — a mix of surveys and designed experiments to capture the beliefs of a racially diverse sample of children and teens in grades 1 through 12. Researchers wanted to focus on interest, building on , to learn how gender-based stereotypes about who likes — not just who is “good” at — computer science and engineering can affect a child’s sense of belonging and willingness to participate. Such information can influence a young person’s motivation over the long term, researchers point out, and may deter them from trying an activity or taking a class.

As recently as 2019, national statistics reveal that women are underrepresented in some popular and lucrative STEM careers: statistics show that only about 25% of computer scientists and 15% of engineers were women.

In the first two studies, researchers surveyed more than 2,200 children and teens to gauge beliefs about computer science and engineering. The surveys used terms and phrases with which the students were familiar at school, such as “computer coding” for computer science or, for engineering, “designing and creating large structures such as roads and bridges.”

Researchers found that just over half (51%) of children believed girls are less interested than boys in computer science, and nearly two-thirds (63%) said girls are less interested in engineering. In comparison, 14% of children said girls are more interested than boys in computer science, and 9% said girls are more interested in engineering.

Subsequent lab studies provided a smaller sample of children two different activities from which to choose. The results demonstrated that girls were significantly less interested in a computer science activity when they were told boys were more interested in it than girls (35% of girls chose the activity), compared to one they were told boys and girls were equally interested in (65% of girls chose that activity).

While the surveys showed the pervasiveness of gender-based stereotypes around interest in computer science and engineering, the designed experiments demonstrated how stereotypes can affect a sense of belonging, which can influence motivation, co-author said.

“The large surveys told us that the kids had absorbed the cultural stereotype that girls are less interested in computer science and engineering. In the experiments we zeroed in on causal mechanisms and consequences of stereotypes,” said Meltzoff, a professor of psychology at the 91̽��and co-director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. “We discovered that labeling an activity in a stereotyped way influenced children’s interest in it and their willingness to take it home—the mere presence of the stereotype influenced kids in dramatic ways. This brought home to us the pernicious effect of stereotypes on children and teens”

And that’s important, added co-author , a 91̽��professor of psychology, because if fewer girls feel they belong, then fewer might pursue computer science or engineering through school and beyond. That can lead to gender disparities in STEM fields and even worsen the wage gap.

”Current gender disparities in computer science and engineering careers are troubling because these careers are lucrative, high status, and influence so many aspects of our daily lives.

The dearth of gender and racial diversity in these fields may be one of the reasons why many products and services have had negative consequences for women and people of color,” Cheryan said.

Teachers and parents can help counteract stereotypes by offering high-quality computer science and engineering activities early in elementary school — and encouraging girls’ participation, the authors note.

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education, and the Bezos Family Foundation.

For more information, contact Meltzoff at meltzoff@uw.edu, Cheryan at scheryan@uw.edu, or Master at amaster@central.uh.edu.

This release includes material from S. Sara Tubbs at the University of Houston.

A daily routine, adequate sleep and limited screen time were associated with better mental health of young people during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard University and the 91̽��.

The , published Aug. 11 in the journal PLOS ONE, surveyed more than 200 Seattle-area children and teens before the onset of the pandemic, during the initial lockdown phase in spring 2020, and six months later, when schools in the area were still operating remotely.

The spread of COVID-19, economic hardships and social isolation, especially during the first several months of the pandemic, fomented stress, anxiety and depression among children and teens alike, the study found. Now, even as school is expected to resume in person this fall, the study’s findings highlight the stressors of pandemic life, within or outside of a remote learning environment. Top stressors for kids were exposure to seemingly frightening media coverage of the coronavirus; the extensive, and passive, use of screens – whether on phones, TVs or computers; and disrupted routines and sleep patterns.

Mitigating those stressors, researchers found, generally involved targeted strategies: establishing structured routines for daily life, including sleep; limiting news consumption and passive screen time; and simply getting out in nature.

“The biggest thing that we hope parents take from the study is that while youth mental health has been negatively impacted by the pandemic, there are some simple steps that families can take that may have a positive impact,” said first author , a research associate at Harvard who previously was a postdoctoral researcher at the UW.

The study involved two groups of Seattle-area children ages 7 to 10 and teens ages 13 to 15, who were already participating in research on youth mental health and behavior prior to the pandemic. That ongoing research, for which 91̽��co-author started following families when the children were 3 years old, provided the team with a baseline with which to evaluate the effects of different phases of the pandemic. About half of participants were female, and about one-third were youth of color.

For this study, both young people and their parents were surveyed through web-based questionnaires, responding to questions that researchers developed specifically for the pandemic – a unique event that carried its own stressors. For example, researchers asked about issues related to the young person’s physical environment, burdens on family health and finances, and social and academic stresses. The answers also helped researchers learn whether and how young people were internalizing stress – developing anxiety or depression – or externalizing it, which would manifest in changes in behavior.

The COVID-19 pandemic presented some unique experiences for youth and their families, said Lengua, a 91̽��professor of psychology and director of the Center for Child and Family Well-Being.

“Research from past disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, and also from studying stressful things that happen for families, such as divorce, have highlighted the factors that contribute to youth mental health in these contexts,” she said.  For example, unstable housing and economic situations, stressful life events, increases in family conflict or in parental mental health problems, contribute to children’s responses to major stress. Those were also true during the pandemic.

“But the pandemic included unique experiences, as well,” said Lengua. “Stay-home orders resulted in families having a lot of time at home without opportunities for youth to connect with peers and other adults for social support. While families reported appreciating the additional time together, for youth, this also meant feeling isolated and lonely. Having healthy daily routines and adequate sleep were particularly important in this context.”

Among the findings:

• The pandemic aggravated feelings of anxiety and depression in young people who had already experienced either or both
• Young people who had elevated stress levels during stay-at-home orders were also more likely to continue to experience stress six months later
• Teens were more likely to internalize their stresses than younger children
• “Passive” screen time, which researchers defined as scrolling or watching videos or shows, compared with the potentially more interactive screen use during remote instruction or chatting with friends, was associated with higher stress

Researchers also surveyed participants about inexpensive and easy methods of alleviating anxiety. Not all of the potential stress buffers, such as physical activity and volunteering in the community, showed demonstrable effects, but others, such as sleep, structured routines and time in nature, were related to better mental health.

Exposure to news of the pandemic affected young people differently. Researchers noted, however, the importance of having honest, age-appropriate conversations with children and teens about crisis events such as the pandemic, answering their questions, and limiting exposure to sensationalized coverage.

“There was striking individual variation in how children and teens responded to the pandemic. We wanted to get under the hood of this variation to try to understand the vulnerabilities and resilience of different children. We also wanted to provide helpful tips to parents and teens,” said co-author , a professor of psychology and co-director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) at the UW.

“There may be other pandemics in the future, and we think that some of the discoveries we made this time around can help parents and teens,” Meltzoff said. “There is no book about ‘how to cope with a worldwide pandemic,’ but science can provide helpful information that people can use now, even while we continue to gather more data.”

The study was funded by the Bezos Family Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute of Mental Health.

Senior author on the study was Katie McLaughlin of Harvard and formerly of the UW. Additional co-authors were Makeda Mayes of I-LABS and Alexandra Rodman, Steven Kasparek and Malila Freeman of Harvard.

For more information, contact Lengua at liliana@uw.edu or Meltzoff at meltzoff@uw.edu.

This post contains material from Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite at Harvard University.

Meanwhile, you’ve read news stories highlighting the urgent PPE needs of your local hospital.

Do you donate some of your masks to the hospital? All of them? None?

Such is a moral dilemma under COVID-19, and one posed by a new international study led by the 91̽��. The five- to seven-minute, anonymous is designed to gauge the perception of ethical situations as the pandemic evolves around the world. Respondents take the survey, add basic demographic details, as well as information about current restrictions in place in their community, and learn at the end how their answers compare to others.

“People are making important decisions, big and small, in this time of COVID-19. Many find themselves facing moral dilemmas about ‘what’s the right thing to do’ in this situation,” said , a 91̽��psychology professor and co-director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. “This helps us learn about similarities and differences in the opinions and feelings among people as we all cope with this unique event.”

There are no right or wrong answers, researchers say, because the way each person responds may reflect the norms of where they live.

Ultimately, the research aims to help inform the ways artificial intelligence can become more attuned to cultural variations in how people think about decisions in health care settings, said , a professor in the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and a co-director of the ,

“There is an urgent need to answer this question given the growing use of AI in medical contexts,” Rao said. Human moral values likely vary from one culture to another, so “AI systems need to ‘learn’ culture-specific moral values by interacting with humans, similar to how children learn their moral values.”

The scenarios in the survey are based on classic dilemmas posed in ethics, social psychology and game theory, Rao said. In two situations, the respondent is asked to imagine themselves as a doctor and to make a potentially life-altering choice. In other scenarios, the respondent is a passer-by or a neighbor presented with a not-so-simple opportunity to help.

The survey is available on the virtual lab , which , an associate professor in the Allen School and co-leader of the study with Meltzoff and Rao, created for conducting behavioral studies with people around the world. So far the moral dilemmas survey has been translated into five languages, including Spanish, German and Farsi (with more to come), and participants have come from about 70 countries. Researchers expect trends in responses to reflect geography and culture, Reinecke said.

Researchers expect some differences among age groups, as well: The survey is aimed at people across a wide range of ages. LabintheWild doesn’t usually exclude anyone, Reinecke added, but the difficult nature of the pandemic, and the scenarios presented in the survey, prompted researchers to design it to be of interest to participants from 14 years of age to adults well past retirement. The researchers wanted to design the questions to be interesting to a broad set of participants, because the pandemic affects everyone in society.

“We hope to look at responses according to the country of the participant and their age in order to learn how people are thinking about this once-in-a-lifetime event,” said Reinecke. “This will help us be better prepared if this comes around again. And one feature of the work that people find fun is that we have a chart at the end where people can compare their answers to those given by others around the world. Most people find this fascinating and informative.”

The study is funded by the UW, the Templeton World Charity Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Reinecke at reinecke@cs.washington.edu, Rao at rao@cs.washington.edu or Meltzoff at meltzoff@uw.edu.

Want to learn to code? Put down the math book. Practice those communication skills instead.

New research from the 91̽�� finds that a natural aptitude for learning languages is a stronger predictor of learning to program than basic math knowledge, or numeracy. That’s because writing code also involves learning a second language, an ability to learn that language’s vocabulary and grammar, and how they work together to communicate ideas and intentions. Other cognitive functions tied to both areas, such as problem solving and the use of working memory, also play key roles.

“Many barriers to programming, from prerequisite courses to stereotypes of what a good programmer looks like, are centered around the idea that programming relies heavily on math abilities, and that idea is not born out in our data,” said lead author , an associate professor of psychology at the 91̽��and at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. “Learning to program is hard, but is increasingly important for obtaining skilled positions in the workforce. Information about what it takes to be good at programming is critically missing in a field that has been notoriously slow in closing the gender gap.”

Published online March 2 in Scientific Reports, an open-access journal from the Nature Publishing Group, examined the neurocognitive abilities of more than three dozen adults as they learned , a common programming language. Following a battery of tests to assess their executive function, language and math skills, participants completed a series of online lessons and quizzes in Python. Those who learned Python faster, and with greater accuracy, tended to have a mix of strong problem-solving and language abilities.

In today’s STEM-focused world, learning to code opens up a variety of possibilities for jobs and extended education. Coding is associated with math and engineering; college-level programming courses tend to require advanced math to enroll and they tend to be taught in computer science and engineering departments. Other research, namely from 91̽��psychology professor , has shown that such requirements and perceptions of coding reinforce stereotypes about programming as a masculine field, potentially discouraging women from pursuing it.

But coding also has a foundation in human language: Programming involves creating meaning by stringing symbols together in rule-based ways.

Though a few studies have touched on the cognitive links between language learning and computer programming, some of the data , that are now out of date, and none of them used natural language aptitude measures to predict individual differences in learning to program.

So Prat, who specializes in the neural and cognitive predictors of learning human languages, set out to explore the individual differences in how people learn Python. Python was a natural choice, Prat explained, because it resembles English structures such as paragraph indentation and uses many real words rather than symbols for functions.

To evaluate the neural and cognitive characteristics of “programming aptitude,” Prat studied a group of native English speakers between the ages of 18 and 35 who had never learned to code.

Before learning to code, participants took two completely different types of assessments. First, participants underwent a five-minute electroencephalography scan, which recorded the electrical activity of their brains as they relaxed with their eyes closed. In previous research, Prat showed that patterns of neural activity while the brain is at rest can predict up to 60% of the variability in the speed with which someone can learn a second language (in that case, French).

“Ultimately, these resting-state brain metrics might be used as culture-free measures of how someone learns,” Prat said.

Then the participants took eight different tests: one that specifically covered numeracy; one that measured language aptitude; and others that assessed attention, problem-solving and memory.

To learn Python, the participants were assigned 10 45-minute online instruction sessions using the Codeacademy educational tool. Each session focused on a coding concept, such as lists or if/then conditions, and concluded with a quiz that a user needed to pass in order to progress to the next session. For help, users could turn to a “hint” button, an informational blog from past users and a “solution” button, in that order.

From a shared mirror screen, a researcher followed along with each participant and was able to calculate their “learning rate,” or speed with which they mastered each lesson, as well as their quiz accuracy and the number of times they asked for help.

After completing the sessions, participants took a multiple-choice test on the purpose of functions (the vocabulary of Python) and the structure of coding (the grammar of Python). For their final task, they programmed a game — Rock, Paper, Scissors — considered an introductory project for a new Python coder. This helped assess their ability to write code using the information they had learned.

Ultimately, researchers found that scores from the language aptitude test were the strongest predictors of participants’ learning rate in Python. Scores from tests in numeracy and fluid reasoning were also associated with Python learning rate, but each of these factors explained less variance than language aptitude did.

Presented another way, across learning outcomes, participants’ language aptitude, fluid reasoning and working memory, and resting-state brain activity were all greater predictors of Python learning than was numeracy, which explained an average of 2% of the differences between people. Importantly, Prat also found that the same characteristics of resting-state brain data that previously explained how quickly someone would learn to speak French, also explained how quickly they would learn to code in Python.

”This is the first study to link both the neural and cognitive predictors of natural language aptitude to individual differences in learning programming languages. We were able to explain over 70% of the variability in how quickly different people learn to program in Python, and only a small fraction of that amount was related to numeracy,” Prat said. Further research could examine the connections between language aptitude and programming instruction in a classroom setting, or with more complex languages such as Java, or with more complicated tasks to demonstrate coding proficiency, Prat said.

The study was funded by the Office of Naval Research. Additional co-authors were , a computer scientist and former research assistant professor in the 91̽��Department of Radiology; and Chu-Hsuan Kuo and Malayka Mottarella, graduate students in the 91̽��Department of Psychology and at I-LABS.

For more information, contact Prat at csprat@uw.edu.

New research by the 91̽��’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, or I-LABS, finds that altruism may begin in infancy. In a study of nearly 100 19-month-olds, researchers found that children, even when hungry, gave a tasty snack to a stranger in need. The findings not only show that infants engage in altruistic behavior, but also suggest that early social experiences can shape altruism.

Read the full story here.

For more information, contact barragan@uw.edu���ǰ���meltzoff@uw.edu.

Used in virtually all of the world’s languages, parentese is a speaking style that draws baby’s attention. Parents adopt its simple grammar and words, plus its exaggerated sounds, almost without thinking about it.

But if parents knew the way they speak could help baby learn, would they alter their speech?

A new study from the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, or I-LABS, at the 91̽�� suggests they would, to baby’s benefit. Researchers examined how parent coaching about the value of parentese affected adults’ use of it with their own infants, and demonstrated that increases in the use of parentese enhanced children’s later language skills.

The , published online Feb. 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that parents who participated in individual coaching sessions used parentese more often than control-group parents who were not coached, and that coaching produced more parent-child “conversational turns” and increased the child’s language skills months later.

“We’ve known for some time that the use of parentese is associated with improved language outcomes,” said , I-LABS co-director and professor of speech and hearing sciences at the UW. “But we didn’t know why. We believe parentese makes language learning easier because of its simpler linguistic structure and exaggerated sounds. But this new work suggests a more fundamental reason.

“We now think parentese works because it’s a social hook for the baby brain — its high pitch and slower tempo are socially engaging and invite the baby to respond.”

Parentese is not what is often called “baby talk,” which is generally a mash-up of silly sounds and nonsense words. Instead, it is fully grammatical speech that involves real words, elongated vowels and exaggerated tones of voice. Spoken directly to the child, it sounds happy and engaged, and helps infants tune in socially to their parents and respond, even if only through babbling.

In a 2018 study, I-LABS researchers tracked use of parentese among adults and their 6-month-old infants, and found that babies whose parents participated in parentese coaching sessions babbled more and produced more words by age 14 months than infants whose parents were not directed in the technique.

The new study focuses on the long-term outcomes of parent coaching and how it led to changes in the parents’ language, in parent-child conversation, and eventually, in the child’s speech at 18 months.

“We had no idea that parents would respond so positively to information about how their own speech to the child affects the child’s language development. Parent coaching gave parents a measurement tool, almost like a Fitbit for parentese, and it worked,” said lead author , a 91̽��assistant professor of linguistics.

To assess child language output, all families in the study were given a lightweight recorder, which the child wore in a specially designed vest during four separate weekends at ages 6, 10, 14 and 18 months. The recorded both parent and infant speech over the entirety of two consecutive days, so that researchers could measure parents’ use of parentese, parent-child conversational turns, as well as infant language production — either babbling or actual words. Parent coaching sessions occurred at 6, 10 and 14 months.

For the 48 families randomly assigned to receive coaching, the sessions provided guidance and feedback on specific communication strategies, such as using parentese, speaking directly to the child and engaging the child in back-and-forth exchanges known as conversational turns. In reviewing recordings with parents, researchers played back recordings of parents’ language behaviors and measured them against research-based targets for child language development. Parents were encouraged to include language as part of daily routines and were given language-interaction tips in the form of cards with “brain building” tips from Vroom, a program of the Bezos Family Foundation.

All parents in the study already used parentese at the beginning of the project, but their use varied greatly, the researchers said. Those in the coaching group learned more about the cognitive and social benefits of parentese, when and how to use it to promote interaction with their child, and the positive effects that parentese could have on their child’s language development.

The results show that parent coaching resulted in an increased use of parentese and infant vocalizations that continued to grow after the end of the parent coaching sessions. Between 14- and 18-months, coached families showed a drastic jump in conversational turn-taking and child vocalizations. Children of coached parents produced real words — such as “banana” or “milk” — at almost twice the frequency of children whose parents were in the control group. Parent surveys estimated that the children’s 18-month vocabulary averaged around 100 words among children of coached families, compared to 60 words among children in the control group.

“We know that language skills in infancy predict subsequent stages in language development, so enhancements in language behaviors in infancy could therefore have cascading effects on speech development over time,” said Ferjan Ramírez.

Kuhl added, “Language evolved to facilitate the social communication skills that are essential for survival of the species. In this study, we observe firsthand how parents’ language and social engagement can promote baby’s initial responsive coos, which become words, and then sentences — educating infants in the art of human communication.”

The study was funded by the Overdeck Family Foundation and 91̽��I-LABS Ready Mind Project. , outreach and education director at I-LABS, was a co-author.

For more information, contact Ferjan Ramírez at naja@uw.edu or 206-543-4503, or Kuhl at pkkuhl@uw.edu or 206-685-1921.

Knowledge of multiple languages has long been shown to have lifelong benefits, from enhancing communication skills to boosting professional opportunities to staving off the cognitive effects of aging.

When researchers at the 91̽�� found that even babies whose parents are monolingual could rapidly learn a second language in a small classroom environment, a new challenge was born:

How could they expand their program?

One answer, the 91̽��team found, was to create software that would train language tutors online — allowing the researchers’ curriculum and method to be replicated anywhere in the world.

A new study by UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, or I-LABS, part of researchers’ ongoing work with infant education centers in Spain, not only found that bilingual teaching led to sustained English-language comprehension and vocabulary-building, but also that the method could be scaled up to serve more, and more economically diverse, children.

“We knew our research-based method worked to boost second language skills rapidly in infants, without negatively affecting their first language, but the question was, how can we train people worldwide to use it? Here, we show that online training works,” said , the lead author of both studies who is a new assistant professor of linguistics at the 91̽��and a former I-LABS research scientist.

The , published online Jan. 22 in Mind, Brain, and Education, extends previous research that examined whether and how infants can learn a second language in the context of an early education center, if they don’t get that exposure at home. That 2017 study involved 280 children at four infant education centers in Madrid, Spain, and showed the effects of an interactive, play-based English-language program, compared to the standard bilingual program already available in Madrid schools.

The new study used the same curriculum but trained tutors differently, using an online program called SparkLing developed by I-LABS researchers. By testing a remote form of teacher training and providing lessons to larger groups of children, researchers explored how to spread the benefits of bilingual education across a wider population.

The I-LABS bilingual curriculum emphasizes social interaction, play and quality and quantity of language from teachers. The approach uses parentese, a slow, clear speaking style that often involves exaggerated vowels and intonation. Researchers created the SparkLing software in order to reach language tutors wherever they live. In the 2017 study, for example, tutors were trained at I-LABS. But to bring this method to entire schools or communities online training was essential, researchers said.

In the new study, over 800 children in 13 infant education centers participated. The team grouped children, from ages 9 months to 33 months, into age-specific classes and focused on schools with much lower socioeconomic populations than were tested in the previous study.

“One of the most exciting aspects of the study is that we did our work in some of the very poorest neighborhood schools in Madrid, and we’re thrilled to show that these children learn as impressively as those from more affluent neighborhoods. All children, given the right stimulation at the right time, can learn,” said , co-director of I-LABS and co-author of the paper.

Children’s Spanish and English skills were assessed at the beginning of the study, midway through the school year and at the end of the year. Older children used a touch-screen based word-comprehension assessment tool in Spanish and English, matching words and pictures, and answering questions. All of the children also wore special vests outfitted with lightweight recorders to record any English words uttered by the infants during the 45-minute, daily language sessions.

At the midpoint of the school year, children who received the I-LABS method scored significantly higher in comprehension and word production than their control group peers: an average of nearly 50 words per child, per hour, compared to an average of about 14 words per child, per hour, in the control group.

About half of the children continued their lessons for an additional 18 weeks. At the end of that period, assessments showed that children who continued the lessons also continued to rapidly advance their second-language comprehension and production skills, while the group that returned to the original classroom maintained the English skills acquired after the first 18 weeks.

“Parents worldwide have a common problem: They want their children to speak a second language, but many don’t speak that language themselves. We know that zero to 5 is a critical age, a window of opportunity for second language learning, and our newest study shows that when teachers in early education classrooms are trained online to use our method and curriculum, children’s learning seems almost magical,” said Kuhl, who is also a 91̽��professor or speech and hearing sciences.

The researchers now hope to begin using this method in the United States, where about are raised in homes where a language other than English is spoken.

The study was supported by the Madrid Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports; the 91̽��I-LABS Ready Mind Project; and the Bezos Family Foundation.

For more information, contact Ferjan Ramírez at naja@uw.edu or 206-543-4503, or Kuhl at pkkuhl@uw.edu or 206-685-1921.

Eye gaze helps infants communicate. Through everyday interactions, eye gaze establishes a social connection between parent and child and is linked to early word learning.

But can learning experiences before a baby’s first birthday prompt babies to pay more attention to their parent’s eye gaze?

To test this, a research team led by the 91̽��’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) sought out Deaf infants raised by Deaf parents — families who primarily use visual language and visual cues.

The result – early experiences do matter: Deaf infants exposed to American Sign Language demonstrated strong gaze-following behavior — and at a more advanced level than hearing infants. The , published Oct. 15 in the journal Developmental Science, stems from broader research into early learning and finds that Deaf infants of Deaf parents may be more attuned than hearing infants to the social and visual signals of others.

“Children adapt to the people who communicate with them,” said , a research scientist at I-LABS and lead author of the study. “Whatever your social context is, you’re learning from the people around you. Children thrive through interactions with other people. This work shows that children tune into social cues in their environment starting from early infancy.”

While gaze following in hearing infants has been studied, the behavior hasn’t been formally examined in Deaf infants.

“Informal observations of Deaf infants interacting with their Deaf parents have suggested that these infants possess keen control over their eye-gaze behavior. To evaluate this, we set up a controlled experiment and tracked the gaze behavior of multiple infants,” said Jenny Singleton, a linguistics professor at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of the study. of Deaf infants have Deaf parents, thus the research team needed to recruit Deaf infants from across the country.

For this study, 12 Deaf infants participated, along with 60 hearing infants of the same age. Both groups had natural experience with language from birth with their families – the Deaf infants with visual language (American Sign Language) and the hearing infants with spoken language.

During the study, each infant sat with a parent, facing a researcher across a table. The researcher set up the room with two objects, one on either side of the infant. Silently, the researcher then looked to one of the two objects, and a camera recorded the infant’s response. Each trial was objectively “scored” based on where the infant directed their gaze.

Scores showed that the Deaf infants were nearly twice as likely as hearing infants to accurately follow the gaze of an adult. Younger Deaf infants (those between 7 and 14 months old) were even more likely to do so than hearing peers.

The accelerated gaze following among Deaf infants could be related to their exposure to sign language. “A signed language environment creates a natural demand on young infants to shift their eye gaze between their parent (who is signing) and the world of interesting objects. Deaf infants may also have enhanced visual control as a result of their sole reliance on visual cues, and not auditory cues,” said Singleton.

In the experiment, Deaf infants were also more apt to look back at the adult after following the adult’s gaze. This “checking back” behavior is a form of communication, which can indicate that the infant is seeking more information from the adult. Hearing infants can learn from both what an adult looks at and what the adult verbally says about it; Deaf infants must rely on visual cues.

, co-director of I-LABS and a co-author of the study, added, “Deaf infants, like hearing infants, strive to communicate with others. They are raised with a visual language and become exquisitely attuned to the visual signals from adults.”

There is a more general lesson about human nature, too, Meltzoff said: “The human mind and brain flexibly adapt to achieve our fundamental birthright — connections to others.”

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Virginia Merrill Bloedel Hearing Research Center and the I-LABS Innovative Research Fund.

For more information, contact Brooks at recheleb@uw.edu.