Creating An Ideal Learning Environment

New research uses computer games and wearables to assess the physical and mental states that correspond to optimal attention and self-control among children and adults.

In a new study, investigators observed participants play computer games while simultaneously analyzing heart-rate and skin activity to detect bio-conditions that maximized learning potential.

“We know attention and self-regulation are critical for things like academic success, financial success, and general health and well-being,” said Dr. Catherine Spann, a researcher at the University of Texas at Arlington and principal investigator of the study.

“We think that if we understand the different physical and emotional states related to attention and self-regulation, we could develop targeted interventions for children and adults to achieve greater well-being,” she added.

Spann is currently conducting her Psychophysiology of Self-Regulation Study with volunteers age seven and up, in collaboration with the Research and Learning Center at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.

Participants complete a questionnaire about general levels of attention and self-regulation in everyday life, report how they are feeling, and then complete an attention and self-regulation task on an iPad. They wear a wristband to track their heart rate and skin activity, which indicate how calm and engaged they are.

“The wearable technology that we are using gives us information about their specific state and could tell us that they might not be ready to sit still and listen to a lecture or engage in certain learning activities,” Spann said.

Scores on the task are based on a combination of accuracy and reaction time. Spann is also examining how certain aspects of individuals such as gender, age and general self-regulation in daily life, impact how the body responds during a specific task requiring attention and self-regulation, especially when it comes to learning.

George Siemens, Ph.D., executive director of the research lab, underlined the importance of this research in the context of ongoing changes in education models.

“In order to make wise investments in our school systems, we need to better understand the core of learning,” Siemens said.

“We need to understand the conditions under which people optimally learn and the ways that educators can best support students.”

“The work that Dr. Spann is doing at the museum gives us important insight into how the mindsets and self-regulation of students impacts their ability to learn,” he added.

Source: University of Texas at Arlington

Smartphone App Shows Promise for Early Autism Detection

Emerging research suggests an app that tracks eye movements could determine, in less than a minute, if a child is showing signs of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

The study, co-authored by a University at Buffalo undergraduate and presented at the IEEE Wireless Health conference in October, provides hope that the app for cell phones, tablets or computers will lead to early detection of ASD and therefore better treatment.

Clinicians explain that early detection of autism can dramatically improve the benefits of treatment, but often the disability is not suspected until a child enters school.

“The brain continues to grow and develop after birth. The earlier the diagnosis, the better. Then we can inform families and begin therapies which will improve symptoms and outcome,” said Michelle Hartley-McAndrew, M.D., a co-author of the study.

“Although it’s never too late to start therapy, research demonstrates the earlier we diagnose, the better our outcomes,” said Kathy Ralabate Doody, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Exceptional Education at SUNY Buffalo State College and a co-author as well.

“We offer many educational interventions to help children with autism reach the same developmental milestones met by children with typical development.”

The principal author is Kun Woo Cho, an undergraduate majoring in computer science and engineering. She worked with her research advisor Wenyao Xu, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in University at Buffalo’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

The app tracks eye movements of a child looking at pictures of social scenes; for example, those with multiple people. The eye movements of someone with ASD are often different from those of a person without autism. In the study, the app had an accuracy rating of 93.96 percent.

“Right now it is a prototype. We have to consider if other neurological conditions are included, like ADD, how that will affect the outcome,” Cho said.

Autism spectrum disorder affects one to two people per 1,000 worldwide. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that about one in 68 children in the U.S. has been diagnosed with ASD.

“The beauty of the mobile app is that it can be used by parents at home to assess the risk of whether a child may have ASD,” Xu said. “This can allow families to seek therapy sooner, and improve the benefits of treatment,” he said.

The study found that photos of social scenes evoke the most dramatic differences in eye movement between children with and without ASD. The eye tracking patterns of children with ASD looking at the photos are scattered, versus a more focused pattern of children without ASD.

“We speculate that it is due to their lack of ability to interpret and understand the relationship depicted in the social scene,” Cho said.

Use of the app takes up to 54 seconds, which makes it less intrusive than other tests and valuable with children with short attention spans, Cho said.

The study included 32 children ranging in age from two to 10. Half of the children had been previously diagnosed with autism in accordance with DSM-V diagnostic criteria. The other half did not have ASD.

Further research will include expanding the study to another 300 to 400 children, which is about the annual enrollment for new evaluations at Children’s Guild Foundation Autism Spectrum Disorder Center at Women & Children’s Hospital of Buffalo.

Xu called the research “highly interdisciplinary” because of the need for computer technology, psychology for stimuli selection and medical expertise for the application of autism screening.

“This technology fills the gap between someone suffering from autism to diagnosis and treatment,” Xu said.

Source: University of Buffalo

Traumatic Stress May Alter Boys’ and Girls’ Brains Differently

A new brain-scanning study has found that traumatic stress affects the brains of adolescent boys and girls differently.

Among youth with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the study found structural differences between the sexes in one part of the insula, a brain region that detects cues from the body and processes emotions and empathy. The insula helps to integrate one’s feelings, actions and several other brain functions, said researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

“The insula appears to play a key role in the development of PTSD,” said the study’s senior author, Victor Carrion, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford. “The difference we saw between the brains of boys and girls who have experienced psychological trauma is important because it may help explain differences in trauma symptoms between sexes.”

People with PTSD may experience flashbacks of traumatic events; may avoid places, people, and things that remind them of the trauma; and may suffer a variety of other problems, including social withdrawal and difficulty sleeping or concentrating.

Prior research has shown that girls who experienced trauma are more likely to develop PTSD than boys who experience trauma, but scientists have been unable to determine why.

For the new study, researchers conducted MRI scans of the brains of 59 children between the ages of nine and 17.  According to the researchers, 30 of the study participants — 14 girls and 16 boys — had trauma symptoms, while the remaining 29 — a control group of 15 girls and 14 boys — did not.

Of the traumatized participants, five had experienced one episode of trauma, while the remaining 25 had experienced two or more episodes or had been exposed to chronic trauma.

The researchers report they saw no differences in brain structure between boys and girls in the control group.

However, among the traumatized boys and girls, they saw differences in a portion of the insula called the anterior circular sulcus. This brain region had larger volume and surface area in traumatized boys than in boys in the control group.

In addition, the region’s volume and surface area were smaller in girls with trauma than among girls in the control group.

“It is important that people who work with traumatized youth consider the sex differences,” said Megan Klabunde, Ph.D., the study’s lead author and an instructor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. “Our findings suggest it is possible that boys and girls could exhibit different trauma symptoms and that they might benefit from different approaches to treatment.”

The insula normally changes during childhood and adolescence, with smaller insula volume typically seen as children and teenagers grow older. The findings imply that traumatic stress could contribute to accelerated cortical aging of the insula in girls who develop PTSD, according to Klabunde.

“There are some studies suggesting that high levels of stress could contribute to early puberty in girls,” she said.

The researchers also noted that their work may help scientists understand how experiencing trauma could play into differences between the sexes in regulating emotions.

“By better understanding sex differences in a region of the brain involved in emotion processing, clinicians and scientists may be able to develop sex-specific trauma and emotion dysregulation treatments,” the researchers said in the study, which was published in Depression and Anxiety.

To better understand the findings, the researchers said what’s needed next are longitudinal studies following traumatized young people of both sexes over time.

Source: Stanford University Medical Center

Bullied Kids May Have Double the Risk of Being Overweight at 18

Childhood victims of bullying have nearly double the risk of being overweight at 18 years of age compared to non-bullied children, according to a new study by researchers at King’s College London.

“Bullying is commonly associated with mental health problems, but there is little research examining the physical health of bullied children,” said Dr. Andrea Danese at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London.

“Our study shows that bullied children are more likely to be overweight as young adults, and that they become overweight independent of their genetic liability and after experiencing victimisation.”

Earlier research by King’s College revealed that children who had been bullied while growing up in the 1960s were more likely to be obese at the age of 45, yet it remained unclear whether these long-term effects were present earlier in life.

For the new study, the researchers investigated whether bullying in a modern context would have similar effects on weight, particularly since bullying takes on different forms today (e.g. cyberbullying) than it did in the 1960s.

The environment children grow up in today has also changed, with unhealthy food more readily available and sedentary lifestyles more common.

The researchers evaluated data from the Environment Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, which has followed more than 2,000 children in England and Wales in 1994-1995 from birth to age 18. They assessed bullying victimization in primary school and early secondary school by interviewing mothers and children three different times as the children turned seven, 10 and 12 years of age.

When the children were 18 years old, the researchers measured their body mass index (BMI) and waist-hip ratio, an indicator of abdominal fat.

The findings showed that 28 percent of children in the study had been bullied in either primary school or secondary school (defined as transitory bullying), and 13 percent had been bullied at both primary and secondary school (defined as chronic bullying).

Victims of chronic bullying were 1.7 times more likely to be overweight as young adults than non-bullied children (29 percent prevalence compared to 20 percent). Bullied children also had a higher BMI and waist-hip ratio at the age of 18.

These associations were independent of other environmental risk factors (including socioeconomic status, food insecurity in the home, child maltreatment, low IQ and poor mental health). Also, for the first time, the study showed that children who were chronically bullied became overweight independent of their genetic risk of being overweight.

Finally, at the time of victimization, bullied children were not more likely to be overweight than non-bullied children, indicating that overweight children were not simply more likely to fall victim to bullying.

“Although we cannot definitively say that bullying victimization causes individuals to become overweight, ruling out alternative explanations, such as genetic liability, strengthens the likelihood that this is the case,” said researcher Jessie Baldwin, also from the IoPPN at King’s. “If the association is causal, preventing bullying could help to reduce the prevalence of overweight in the population.

“As well as preventing bullying, our findings emphasize the importance of supporting bullied children to prevent them from becoming overweight, which could include interventions aimed at promoting exercise and healthy eating. Our data suggest that such interventions should start early in life.”

The findings are published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

Source: King’s College London

Making Exercise Fun for Kids with Autism, ADHD

The most effective way to help children with autism, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and Tourette syndrome get more exercise is to make it fun, according to a small international study that surveyed 132 adult caretakers of children with neurodevelopmental disorders.

Focusing on an activity or sport that comes easily to the children is another top motivator for staying physically active. In fact, lack of skill was found to be a much larger deterrent than more concrete barriers such as financial and transportation limitations.

“We found that a child having fun was a much greater indicator of how likely he or she was to continue exercising,” said first author Matthew Lustig, senior medical student at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

“In targeting interventions that increase exercise, creating more cost-effective options may not be as necessary as creating more fun options.”

The information from his survey was presented on a poster at the American Medical Association Research Symposium in Orlando, Florida.

Participant recruitment was enabled by an Internet questionnaire distributed via Facebook to a wide range of groups associated with neurodevelopmental disorders. This approach allowed for national and international participation from adults living with individuals with a broad spectrum of neurodevelopmental disorders.

The most prevalent disorders included autism, intellectual disability, ADHD, and Tourette syndrome. The young people in their homes were a median age of 17 years of age; 57 percent were male; and the vast majority were white.

The caretakers reported that their go-to sources for exercise information were the Internet, family, and friends. However, they did say that they would like their child’s physician to answer their exercise-related questions.

The survey left Lustig with several questions he plans to pursue, including why pediatricians weren’t considered the caretakers’ first go-to source.

There was a strong belief in the neurological benefits of exercise. In fact, a large majority of the respondents said they believed that regular exercise would help prevent or delay complications of neurodevelopmental disorders and provide short- and long-term benefits for their child’s physical, emotional, and social well-being.

The survey respondents reported plenty of exercise among their children with neurodevelopmental disorders.

According to the survey, the young people generally exercised five days per week for about 100 minutes daily, with cardiovascular activities like basketball, cycling and running as the primary focus. Individuals responding to the survey generally reported being physically active as well.

Source: Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University

Parent-Child Relationship May Influence Risk-Taking as Kids become Adults

New research explores the factors that lead young adults to take significant risks, risks that have the potential to harm themselves or those around them.

Many studies have examined the complex psychology of financial risk-taking. In the new study, researchers determined financial risk-taking in young adults, including going into debt or breaking the law, could be rooted in their childhood relationships with parents.

This study, which appears in the journal Cogent Economics & Finance, was led by researchers at Oklahoma State University.

They used the domain-specific risk-taking scale (DOSPERT) to assess five areas of risk-taking, namely ethical, social, financial, recreational, and health.

The investigators also measured a personality trait known as “sensation-seeking”, which has previously been shown to predict risk-taking and family dynamics, quantifying positive and negative child-parent relationships.

The study found that negative childhood interactions with their mother predicted financial risk-taking among men.

Ethical risk-taking among men was predicted by negative childhood interactions with their father, and with disinhibition (enjoying the feeling of not being in control).

For women, ethical risk-taking was linked to negative childhood interactions with their father, low positive interactions with their mother and their overall susceptibility to boredom.

Interestingly, results suggested that parent-child relationships did not predict the other three types of risk-taking (health, social, and recreational).

The researchers suggest that these kinds of risk-taking may be linked more with the influence of peers, and they argue that further studies are needed establish the extent to which parent and peer relationships affect risk-taking.

It had previously been shown that risk-taking among young children is linked to their interactions with their parents, but this new article shows that family relationships in childhood continue to have an impact in adulthood.

Given the potentially life-changing consequences arising from such risk-taking, understanding what causes it could ultimately result in better outcomes for those most likely to be susceptible to it, conclude the researchers.

Source: Cogenta/AlphaGalileo

Early Planned Birth Tied to Greater Risk for Developmental Problems

Babies delivered by planned birth before the optimal gestational period of 39-40 weeks are more likely to have developmental problems, according to a new study of 153,000 Australian children. The findings are published in the journal Pediatrics.

In recent years there have been significant changes in clinical practice resulting in an increase in planned births before the ideal time at 39-40 weeks’ gestation, particularly through the use of elective caesarean section and induction of labor.

“While the association between being born earlier — lower gestational age — and poorer developmental outcomes is well established, our results revealed that poor development is further exacerbated in the case of planned birth, where a considered decision made to deliver an infant determines gestational age,” said senior author Associate Professor Natasha Nassar at the University of Sydney Menzies Centre for Health Policy.

“Significant changes in clinical practice have seen an increase in planned births before 39-40 completed weeks’ gestation from an increased use of primary and repeat cesarean section and a greater use of labor induction.”

“At a population level this has resulted in a decrease in modal gestational age with planned birth accounting for almost half of births before 39-40 weeks. It is of paramount importance to ensure there are no unintended harms from such a significant shift in clinical practice.”

Using the Australian Early Development Census instrument, children in the study were evaluated in five areas: physical health and wellbeing, language and cognition, social competence, emotional maturity, and general knowledge and communication.

Children scoring in the bottom 10 percent of these domains were considered “developmentally vulnerable,” and children who were “developmentally vulnerable” on two or more domains were classified as “developmentally high risk.”

Compared to children born vaginally following spontaneous labor, the combined adjusted relative risk of being developmentally high risk was 26 percent higher for a planned birth at 37 weeks and 13 percent higher at 38 weeks.

The findings remained after taking into account other important factors linked to poor child development such as socioeconomic disadvantage, lower maternal age, maternal smoking in pregnancy, and fetal growth restriction.

“The timing of planned birth is potentially modifiable, and the benefits of waiting should be communicated to clinicians, mothers, and families,” says study co-author, Dr. Jonathan Morris of the Kolling Institute and the University of Sydney.

The study also reports that the risk of being “developmentally vulnerable” increased with decreasing gestational age.

Compared to children with a gestational age of 40 weeks, the adjusted relative risk of being developmentally high risk was 25 percent higher at 32-33 weeks, 26 percent higher at 34-36 weeks, 17 percent higher at 37 weeks, and six percent higher at 38 weeks.

Compared to children born vaginally following spontaneous labor, the adjusted relative risk of being “developmentally high risk” was seven percent higher for labor induction or pre-labor cesarean section.

“There is an urgent need for strategies to inform more judicious clinical decision making about the timing of planned birth, said lead author Jason Bentley from the Menzies Centre for Health Policy.

“In cases where labor occurs naturally before 39 weeks or planned birth is unavoidable, it is important that there are appropriate interventions and support in early childhood for these potentially vulnerable children.”

Source: University of Sydney