More on the effects of behavior on the brain, more specifically on the
'executive function' Mike recently mentioned:
TimesPeople
The New York Times
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September 15, 2008
Training Young Brains to Behave
By BENEDICT CAREY
AFTER inflicting months of sleep deprivation on their parents, young
children often switch course and begin what could be called a
thought-deprivation campaign.
This is the stage, around age 2 or 3, when their brains seem to send
multiple messages to the body at once — eat, scream, spill juice, throw
crayons — and good luck to anyone trying to form a complete sentence or
thought in their presence. Toddlers are interruption machines, all impulse
and little control.
One reason is that an area of the brain that is critical to inhibiting
urges, the prefrontal cortex, is still a work in progress. The density of
neural connections in the 2-year-old prefrontal cortex, for instance, is far
higher than in adults, and levels of neurotransmitters, the mind's chemical
messengers, are lower. Some children's brains adapt quickly, while others'
take time — and, as a result, classmates, friends and adults are interrupted
for years along the way.
But just as biology shapes behavior, so behavior can accelerate biology. And
a small group of educational and cognitive scientists now say that mental
exercises of a certain kind can teach children to become more self-possessed
at earlier ages, reducing stress levels at home and improving their
experience in school. Researchers can test this ability, which they call
executive function, and they say it is more strongly associated with school
success than I.Q.
"We know that the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until the 20s,
and some people will ask, 'Why are you trying to improve prefrontal
abilities when the biological substrate is not there yet?' " said Adele
Diamond, a professor of developmental cognitive science at the University of
British Columbia in Vancouver. "I tell them that 2-year-olds have legs, too,
which will not reach full length for 10 years or more — but they can still
walk and run and benefit from exercise."
Executive function involves three important skills. The first is the ability
to resist distractions or delay gratification to finish a job: to finish the
book report before turning on the television. The second is working memory,
the capacity to hold multiple numbers or ideas in the mind, — for example,
to do simple addition or subtraction without pencil and paper. The third is
cognitive flexibility, the presence of mind to adapt when demands change —
when recess is canceled, say, and there's a pop quiz in math.
Researchers can rate these abilities with some precision by giving young
children several straightforward mental tests. In one, youngsters sit in
front of a computer and when a red heart appears on the left side of the
screen, they strike a key on the left, and when it appears on the right
screen they strike a key on the right. Most of them do well on this.
But when scientists change the rules, and have the children strike a key on
the right when the symbol appears on the left, and vice versa, the test gets
harder. The number of errors they commit, and the time it takes the children
to answer, are considered measures of their ability to regulate themselves.
Other similar kinds of tests can track improvements in working memory and
intellectual flexibility. Researchers have designed school-based curriculums
intended to improve each of these abilities. In a study published in 2007,
Dr. Diamond led a team that compared one of these programs — called Tools of
the Mind — to a standard literacy curriculum, in several preschools in the
Northeast. The Tools program features a variety of exercises, including a
counting activity in which children pair off. One child counts a given
number of objects from a pile and separates them, and then the other child
checks the sum. The "checker" has a sheet of paper with a list of numbers,
each beside a corresponding number of dots: for example, four dots line up
beside the No. 4. By placing the objects on the dots, the child can see
whether the count was accurate. This double-checking is intended to force
the "counter" to be more careful and to stall the other child's impulse to
grab an object.
In another activity, also done in pairs, one child tells a partner a story
based on pictures in a book while the other child listens. The listener
holds a drawing of an ear — a visual reminder that his role is to listen and
not to interrupt. The child telling the story holds a drawing of a mouth — a
reminder of her role as the speaker. After about two months, children didn't
need the props anymore: they had internalized the rules, namely that the
listener listens until it's his or her turn to speak.
"The activities are specifically designed to promote self-regulation, and
they are embedded in the teaching," said Deborah J. Leong, an educational
psychologist and professor emerita at Metropolitan State College of Denver,
who designed the Tools program with Elena Bodrova, principal researcher at
McREL, an educational research group in Denver. The program also focuses on
pretend play with a purpose, namely dramatic role-playing in which children
decide beforehand what their roles are and must stay in character — an
exercise that draws on all aspects of self-regulation.
The 2007 preschool study tracked 85 preschoolers in the Tools program and 62
in the basic literacy curriculum. After one year, teachers in one school
judged that the children in the special program were doing so well that all
students were moved into it. After two years, and factoring out the effects
of gender and age, the researchers found that the students in the special
program scored about 20 percent higher on all of the demanding measures of
executive function. "Although play is often thought frivolous, it may be
essential," the study authors concluded.
Parents, too, can help their children become more self-possessed in this
way. Jessica Fanning and Helen J. Neville, who are neuroscientists at the
University of Oregon, are testing how parent training classes affect the
same kind of executive skills in youngsters. Their preliminary finding is
that the children of parents taking the training have developed
significantly better concentration and self-discipline than the others.
Researchers say that parents can use a variety of home activities to help
children sharpen executive skills. Some of these are obvious: reading to a
child while continually establishing eye contact. By tilting the book so
pictures are obscured, parents force youngsters to follow the words
carefully, holding more of them in mind at one time — a function of working
memory.
Singing a bedtime song or a cleanup song can keep children focused on the
chore at hand, resisting distractions. The familiar verses tell them how
much time they have to finish a chore.
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Received on Wed Sep 24 16:16 PDT 2008
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