Child behaviour 'linked to sleep'

The study looked at children aged seven or eight

A good night's sleep could reduce hyperactivity and bad behaviour among children, a Finnish study reports.

It has been suggested that some children who lack sleep do not appear tired, but instead behave badly.

Of the 280 examined in the Pediatrics study, those who slept for fewer than eight hours were the most hyperactive.

Experts said adequate sleep could improve behaviour in healthy children and reduce symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

It is recognised that chronic sleep deprivation is a problem for many adults in Western countries and that it can have consequences for their health and daily life.

The team behind this research said not enough was understood about the role of sleep in children's lives but it has been estimated that a third of US children do not get enough sleep.

Monitoring

In this research, the team from the University of Helsinki and Finland's National Institute of Health and Welfare studied 280 healthy children aged seven or eight.

They wanted to see if those healthy children who slept the least were the most likely to display the kind of symptoms associated with ADHD.

None of the children studied had the attention disorder.

There is a lot of commonality between the symptoms of a tired child and the symptoms of a child with ADHD Neil Stanley, Sleep expert

Parents filled in questionnaires about their children's usual sleeping habits and then noted how long their children slept for over seven nights.

The children also wore devices called actigraphs, which measure movement, to monitor how long they actually rested for.

Parents' estimates of sleep duration were longer than the actigraph measurements, which the researchers say could be because they measured from bedtime or because they assumed their children were asleep when they were simply lying awake in bed or reading.

The parents were also asked about their children's behaviour, using measures normally used to diagnose ADHD.

The children whose average sleep duration as measured by actigraphs was shorter than 7.7 hours had a higher hyperactivity and impulsive behaviour score.

They also had a higher ADHD symptom score overall.

'Sleep needs differ'

Dr Juulia Paavonen, who led the study, said: "We were able to show that short sleep duration and sleeping difficulties are related to behavioural symptoms of ADHD.

"The findings suggest that maintaining adequate sleep schedules among children is likely to be important in preventing behavioural symptoms.

Even 30 minutes per night has been shown to give a major improvement Dr Juulia Paavonen, Finnish National Institute of Health and Welfare

"It may well be that inadequate sleep is increasing some of the behavioural problems that have been seen in children with attention deficit disorders."

Dr Paavonen said further studies were needed to confirm the link.

And she advised parents that, even though the study suggested fewer than eight hours sleep could be problematic, it was not a figure everyone should aim for.

"Sleep needs differ between individuals. The only way is to take care that a particular child has enough sleep is to see if they seem to have a problem with short sleep.

"But even [an extra] 30 minutes per night has been shown to give a major improvement in objective cognitive tests, improving reaction times, impulsivity and attention spans."

Sleep expert Neil Stanley, of the University of East Anglia, said: "It has been acknowledged for a while now that there is a lot of commonality between the symptoms of a tired child and the symptoms of a child with ADHD."

He said parents needed to recognise that sleep was important for children.

"These things have been lost at a time when ADHD is increasing.

"How much of what is diagnosed as ADHD is something that can be modified or improved, or even totally cured by a more rigid sleep pattern?

"Maybe parents should try and get sleep sorted out if the child is still showing symptoms, then that's probably the time to look at pharmacological interventions."

Milk protein clue to big babies

Breast milk has less protein than formula, which could be why bottle-fed babies grow faster, a study suggests.

There has been concern that formula-fed babies, who tend to be bigger, are "programmed" to store fat and so have a higher risk of childhood obesity.

The international study of 1,000 babies, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggests protein levels in formula should fall.

But UK manufacturers said action had already been taken to cut levels.

Measures

The study was carried out in Belgium, Italy, Germany, Poland and Spain on babies born between 2002 and 2004.

Parents were recruited to take part in the first few weeks of their babies' lives.

A third were given a low protein content formula milk (around 2g per 100kcal), a third had a formula with a higher level of protein (3-4g per 10kcal), while the rest were breast-fed during their first year.

Limiting the protein content of infant and follow-on formula can normalise early growth and might contribute greatly to reducing the long-term risk of childhood overweight and obesity Professor Berthold Koletzko, Study author

To qualify as breast-fed, babies had to be either exclusively given breast milk, or have a maximum of three bottles per week.

The infants were all then followed up to the age of two with regular weight, height and body mass index measurements taken.

At the age of two, there was no difference in height between the groups, but the high protein group were the heaviest.

The researchers suggest lower protein intakes in infancy might protect against later obesity.

The children are being followed up further to see whether those given the lower protein formulas have a reduced risk of obesity later on.

Changes needed?

Professor Berthold Koletzko, from the University of Munich, Germany, and who led the study, said: "These results from the EU Childhood Obesity Programme underline the importance of promoting and supporting breastfeeding because of the long-term benefits it brings.

"They also highlight the importance of the continual development and improvement in the composition of infant formula.

"Limiting the protein content of infant and follow-on formula can normalise early growth and might contribute greatly to reducing the long-term risk of childhood overweight and obesity."

But writing in the American Journal of Nutrition, Dr Satish Kalhan of the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, US, said: "On the basis of these data, should we consider prescribing low protein formula to infants?

"The answer most likely is a categorical no."

A spokesman for the UK's Infant and Dietetic Food Association said companies had already reduced protein levels to well below those mentioned in the study.

She added: "The scientific evidence reviewing the role of infant formula in the development of obesity in later life is unclear.

"Most studies in this area are short-term and very few look at the long-term effect into adulthood."

But she added: "Clearly further research is required and this is an area we follow closely to ensure that the product we represent are based on generally accepted scientific evidence."

New infant growth charts, to be introduced in the UK this summer, have been changed so they relate more closely to the growth patterns of breast-fed babies.

Existing charts are based on a 1970s study into the growth patterns of formula-fed babies, and many breast-fed babies fall short - often causing concern to their parents and to health visitors.

Sugary drinks 'worsen vomit bug'

Parents are making children suffering from vomiting and diarrhea more sick by giving them flat coke and lemonade, experts say.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said it was a myth that sugary drinks could help ease bouts of gastroenteritis. 

Instead, NICE said bad cases of stomach bugs in children under five needed to be treated with rehydration drinks.

The NHS advisers said prompt action was needed to avoid hospital admission.

NICE made the warning as part of guidance it has produced on the treatment of gastroenteritis in children in England and Wales.

The idea that flat coke and lemonade helps is just a myth. In fact, it can make it worse, but unfortunately people are still using them Dr Stephen Murphy, of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence

Half of all children under five will develop vomiting and diarrhoea over the course of the year.

Up to a fifth will end up seeing a health professional about the illness with nearly 40,0000 children a year ending up in hospital because of problems related to dehydration.

NICE believes some of the most serious cases could be avoided if parents and GPs followed the best advice.

Consultant paediatric gastronenterologist Dr Stephen Murphy, who chaired the panel drawing up the guidance, said: "The idea that flat coke and lemonade - or fruit juices for that matter - helps is just a myth. In fact, it can make it worse, but unfortunately people are still using them.

"Severe cases of diarrhoea and vomiting leading to dehydration need treating with oral rehydration solution immediately."

He said the combination of sugar and salt in rehydration drinks was the key to helping the body absorb fluids, whereas the likes of coke and lemonade had too much sugar.

NICE has produced a checklist for parents to assess whether their children are dehydrated.

Signs

The key signs are altered responsiveness, sunken eyes, pale or mottled skin and cold extremities.

If they are, set amounts of oral rehydration solution should be given over the course of four hours.

The amount of solution to be given varies depending on the child, but for the average one-year-old it would be half-a-litre, the guidance said.

After that, it is important that children are encouraged to eat food again, NICE said.

The guidance is also aimed at doctors and gives advice on when to carry out further tests and when and how to administer intravenous rehydration fluid.

Mother-of-three Narynder Johal, who acted as a patient representative for NICE, said the guidance was much needed as parents were often left frustrated by the advice given to them.

"I have often been very concerned when my children have had diarrhoea and vomiting and have not always received consistent advice on how to best manage the condition."

Rapid Infant Weight Gain Linked to Childhood Obesity

By Tate Gunnerson

Babies who gain weight quickly during the first six months of life may be more prone to obesity as toddlers, Harvard researchers report.

"We need to start our preventive methods when children are much younger," said study author Dr. Elsie M. Taveras. "Even in the first couple of weeks of life, we can start guiding parents about how to prevent rapid weight gain in their infants."

While past research has established a link between birth weight and obesity, the impact of factors such as length of gestation, height and lifestyle of the mother were often not considered.

The researchers tracked 559 children who were part of Project Viva, an ongoing study of pregnant women and their children. The babies were measured for weight and height at birth, at 6 months and again at the age of 3.

After adjusting for factors such as the babies' length, researchers found that those who increased their body-mass index (BMI) during their first six months were more likely to be classified as obese at age 3.

"At present, most guidelines around obesity management recommend that we start assessment and treatment of children after the age of 2," Taveras said.

According to the National Institutes of Health, nearly a third of adults in the United States are obese. Obese people are 10 percent to 50 percent more likely to die of all causes. In 2000, the obesity epidemic cost the U.S. health system $117 billion.

"The key indication for this study is the importance of better education about feeding infants," said Connie Diekman, director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis. "Since the study did not look at what children were fed after weaning, it is hard to know if overfeeding then is a contributor."

Addressing this issue may involve simply making minor changes. In Germany, water fountains were installed in 32 schools located in poor areas of two German cities. Teachers then presented four lesson plans to second- and third-grade students about the benefits of water consumption.

The study found that the students who attended these schools were 31 percent less likely to become overweight than those who attended other schools not involved in the study.

Both studies are to be published in the April issue of Pediatrics.

"The researchers themselves identified that we need to study caregiver and infant relationships, since other studies have shown when there is a lack of a bonding during feeding, infants will change what they eat," says Diekman. "In addition, other potential confounders need to be removed, and then the study repeated, to see if weight gain during pregnancy is a factor."

"Our study raises a lot of questions about the reason rapid infant weight gain results in obesity later on," Taveras said. "We need more research to identify the factors that explain this relationship."

More information

Visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health for more information about childhood obesity.

A Child's Sweet Tooth May Be All in the Bones

By Jennifer Thomas
HealthDay Reporter by Jennifer Thomas

Ever wonder why your children will eat only a few bites of dinner but have no problem scarfing down a big bowl of ice cream?

Blame it on their growing bones.

New research suggests that children who are growing rapidly have a higher preference for sweets than children growing at a slower rate.

Researchers gave 143 children ages 11 to 15 sugar-water and orange Kool-Aid with increasing levels of sweetness. Then they classified the children into two groups: high preference or low preference for sweetness.

They found that children who had the highest levels of a biomarker for bone growth (type I collagen cross-linked N-telopeptides) in their urine were most likely to be in the group that liked the sweetest drinks.

"It's been known for a long time that children have an incredible sweet tooth -- 'Give me Cocoa Puffs and add more sugar,' " said Susan Coldwell, an associate professor of dental public health sciences at the University of Washington and lead author of the new study. "They are using a lot of calories during growth, and the body is responding to that by an increased sweet preference."

Children across cultures have shown a preference for higher levels of sweetness in their foods than have adults. And researchers have wondered whether the preference could be explained by biological or social factors, such as children not having been exposed to as many foods as adults or not yet feeling the pressure to avoid junk food to stay thin.

While there could be multiple reasons children choose cupcakes over spinach, they might be driven to consume sugar because their young bodies can efficiently convert it into energy to fuel growth, Coldwell said.

Yet some researchers said the study does not prove that rapid growth is the cause of the sweet preference.

"It is a provocative theory that the body in some way craves sweets in order to get adequate calories for growth," said Lona Sandon, a registered dietician and an American Dietetic Association spokeswoman. "But the study does not prove cause and effect, and the mechanism of this theory is unknown."

In the study, the researchers also tested for biological factors associated with puberty, including sex hormones, and found that they were not associated with sweet preferences. The findings were published in the March issue of Physiology & Behavior.

What does all of this mean for parents who are trying to combat their child's inner Cookie Monster?

Childhood obesity is a growing problem in the United States, and the wide availability of high-calorie, processed snack foods isn't helping. In the study, 40 percent of the participating children were overweight or at risk of being overweight.

About 33 percent of U.S. children ages 6 to 11 are overweight, as are 34 percent of teens, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency defines overweight as having a body mass index (BMI, a ratio of weight to height) in the 85th percentile or above for a child's height and age.

Parents can try offering fruit, which can be sugary but also nutritious and low in calories. With vegetables, Coldwell suggested, offer sweet teriyaki sauce or raspberry salad dressing for dipping.

And, if children still refuse to eat a particular vegetable, continue to offer it, said Jennifer Williams, associate director of the Center for Childhood Obesity Research at Penn State University.

Research has shown that children may need to be exposed to a food 15 times before they're willing to accept it, she said.

Parents should also remember that a time will probably come when a child can pass the candy aisle without hounding you.

"People worry a lot about their kids having this big sweet tooth," Coldwell said. "One thing we can reassure parents is that kids do have a natural developmental downward shift in preference for sweets. Tastes do change in puberty."

Math Made Easy: Study Reveals 5-year-olds' Innate Ability

By Ker Than, LiveScience Staff Writer

Schematic depictions of the children's computer tasks: (a) comparison of visual quantities; (b) addition of visual quantities; (c) comparison of visual and auditory quantities; (d) addition of visual and auditory quantities.



Schematic depictions of the children's computer tasks: (a) comparison of visual quantities; (b) addition of visual quantities; (c) comparison of visual and auditory quantities; (d) addition of visual and auditory quantities.

Young children can perform certain kinds of math operations before ever receiving any kind formal math training, a new study reports.

The finding suggests children have an inborn intuition about math that could be used to make learning the real thing in school less painful.

Ask a 5-year old child whether the sum of 13 and 17 is greater or less than 50 and chances are you'll just get a funny look. But the same problem could be presented another way, as a visual problem, and this is what the researchers did.

In one experiment, the children saw 13 blue dots on a computer screen; those were covered, and then they saw 17 blue dots and were forced to keep the running tally in their heads. Then they were shown 50 red dots and asked whether there were more blue dots or red dots.
Presented this way, the children answered correctly about two-thirds of the time that there were more red dots than blue dots.

Sight and sound
In another experiment, the children were asked to compare the number of blue dots on the screen with audible beeps that represented red dots. [See a graphic of experiments.]
Again they were generally able to determine which was more, suggesting they have an abstract notion of numbers that spans multiple sensory modalities, just like adults.
"What's central about numbers for us as adults is that we can apply a number like 7 to a diverse number of things," said Elizabeth Spelke, a psychologist at Harvard University and the principal investigator of the study. "We can say that there are seven dots but also that a horn honks seven times. Although these are different in their sensory qualities, the numbers are the same."

Past studies performed on infants and non-human primates suggests that these abilities are present even before the age of 5.

"The experiments of the infants and the monkeys, I think, make it extremely likely that these abilities are inborn," Spelke said.

While mathematical intuitions have been demonstrated before, the surprising result of this study is that the children could tap into these abilities to solve the types of arithmetic problems they might encounter in school.

Avoiding torture
In the United States, a child's first encounter with math is often in elementary school, and for some, perfecting the ability to add and subtract, multiply and divide will be a long and torturous process.

"A lot of children find symbolic arithmetic quite difficult and tedious, yet the children loved our tasks," Spelke told LiveScience. "They were games, the children were very happy to play them, and they were also they were good at them."
The children did math without even realizing it.

Spelke stresses that more studies will be needed, but she believes teachers could use this knowledge to increase children's confidence in their own math abilities and to make math more fun and engaging.

Abstract ways of teaching math could also be used to ease children into the more difficult symbolic forms of math they will encounter and which they will have to eventually master.
"What our study shows is that children have a fundamental understanding of addition and of numbers and we hope to harness that ability to enhance mathematic instruction," Spelke said.
The finding is detailed in the Sept. 12 issue of the journal for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Children Beat Adults in Memory Contest

By Bjorn Carey, LiveScience Staff Writer

When you need to remember specific details, try thinking like a child.

A new study pitted college-aged adults against 5- to 11 year-old kids in a memory contest. The younger contestants won by paying better attention to the details. Adults, it seems, get lazy.
In the experiment, both test groups were shown a picture of a cat and told that it had "beta cells inside its body." Researchers then flashed 30 more pictures of cats, bears, and birds, and asked the subjects if these animals had beta cells.

Then, in a twist that was the real thrust of the study, the subjects were shown 28 more images - some of which they had seen in the first stage - and asked if they had seen the image before or not.
The children did very well on this second test, and the results showed that the younger the child, the more accurate the memory. The adults, however, flunked.

Older participants lumped animals into categories, and only paid attention to the details that helped them differentiate between species. When it came time to recognize specific differences in the pictures, they didn't have the information to do so.

Most of the children, on the other hand, hadn't yet learned to categorize, the researchers conclude, so they had to pay close attention to each picture to decide if it was a cat or not.
"As people become smarter, they start to put things into categories, and one of the costs they pay is lower memory accuracy for individual differences," said Vladimir Sloutsky of Ohio State University and co-author of a paper on the study published in the May/June issue of the journal Child Development.

This doesn't mean that adults can't remember fine details. Later in the study, adults were shown pictures of imaginary insects and were able to pick them out of a lineup later on.
"They remembered them because they had to pay close attention," said Sloutsky, who added that the adult memory is flexible and can do a fine job remembering details when asked.

Babies Know Math

By Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Managing Editor

After long suspecting we're born with some math sense, researchers have shown infants indeed have some ability to count long before they can demonstrate it to Mom and Dad.
It turns out they're not unlike grown monkeys.

In the study, seven-month-old babies were presented with the voices of two or three women saying "look." The infants could choose between looking at a video image of two or women saying the word or an image of three women saying it. The babies spent significantly more time looking at the image that matched the number of women talking.

"We conclude that the babies are showing an internal representation of 'two-ness' or 'three-ness' that is separate from sensory modalities and, thus, reflects an abstract internal process," said Elizabeth Brannon of Duke University.

Previous work with monkeys yielded similar findings.

"These results support the idea that there is a shared system between preverbal infants and nonverbal animals for representing numbers," Brannon said.
Previous studies searching for this ability in human infants had failed, say Brannon and colleague Kerry Jordan, because the methods were inadequate.

The study, announced today, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research is pursued in an effort to better understand the evolutionary origins of numerical ability and how that ability has developed in humans.

Their First Words: How Babies Learn

By Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Managing Editor
Like teenagers, babies don't much care what their parents say.

Though they are learning words at 10 months old, infants tend to grasp the names of objects that interest them rather than whatever the speaker thinks is important, a new study finds.
And they do it quickly.

The infants were able to learn two new words in five minutes with just five presentations for each word and object, said study leader Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University. Importantly, the babies paired a new word to the object they liked best, regardless of what object the speaker referred to.

"The baby naturally assumes that the word you're speaking goes with the object that they think is interesting, not the object that you show an interest in," Hirsh-Pasek said.
The result is not too surprising, Hirsh-Pasek said in a telephone interview. She says interest drives learning for older children, too, and even adults.

She cites six-year-olds she's heard talking knowledgably about baseball players' batting averages. "How in the world do they get it? They're not going to do decimals until 7th or 8th grade."

"Ten-month-olds simply 'glue' a label onto the most interesting object they see," said Shannon Pruden, a Temple doctoral student in psychology and lead author of a report on the findings in the March/April issue of the journal Child Development.

Later, around 18 months, children learn to use the speaker's interest—such as where the eyes gaze—as a guide to learning, the researchers say.

Still, Hirsh-Pasek thinks there is a lesson for parents and educators of children at all ages: "Sometimes we fail to take notice of what our learners are doing and what they're interested in," she said. "We all learn best when things are meaningful."

Secret to Toddler Vocabulary Explosion Revealed

By Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Staff Writer

Learning 10 new words a day may seem daunting, but it's actually fairly simple for toddlers, who must tackle this vocabulary milestone to eventually talk like the rest of us, a new study suggests.

At about the age of 18 months, children experience a "vocabulary explosion" that suddenly involves learning new words, left and right. Many parents likely remember being amazed by how smart their child seemed during this stretch.

Researchers have previously thought complex mechanisms must govern this voracious rate of word-learning.

"The field of developmental psychology and language development has always assumed that something happens at that point to account for this word spurt: kids discover things have names, they switch to using more efficient mechanisms and they use their first words to help discover new ones," said study author Bob McMurray of the University of Iowa. "Many such mechanisms have been proposed."

But these mechanisms aren’t necessary, according to McMurray, whose study of a mathematical model to describe the vocabulary explosion is detailed in the Aug. 3 issue of the journal Science.

While children may engage those types of specialized mechanisms to help them learn new words, McMurray says, computational simulations he conducted suggest that simpler mechanisms—such as word repetition and learning multiple words at once—can explain the vocabulary explosion.
"Children are going to get that word spurt guaranteed, mathematically, as long as a couple of conditions hold," McMurray said. "They have to be learning more than one word at a time, and they must be learning a greater number of difficult or moderate words than easy words. Using computer simulations and mathematical analysis, I found that if these two conditions are true, you always get a vocabulary explosion."

McMurray likens the word-learning process to filling up jars, with jar size increasing with the difficulty of the word.

Experts previously suggested that when a child learned a word, it was easier for him or her to learn more words, analogous to shrinking the jar size. But McMurray's model found that even if jar size is increased, the vocabulary explosion still occurs.

The key is the relative number of small jars to big jars (or easy words to difficult words)—as long as there are more difficult words than easy words, which is generally the case with languages, the vocabulary explosion will happen.

"Clearly, the specialized mechanisms aren't necessary," McMurray said. "Our general abilities can take us a lot farther than we thought."

Think Like a Neanderthal: Solving Toddler Tantrums

By Meredith F. Small
You're in a store, little kid in hand, and then suddenly she tries to pull away. You bend down and whisper quietly in her ear, "Stay with Mommy, honey," knowing full well that this reasonable request is a foolish attempt to dampen the temper tantrum that is rising like a tsunami inside your kid. With a pounding heart, you scoop her up and run from the store before someone shouts, "Bad parent. Dreadful child. Get out!"

No one knows why 2-year-olds have temper tantrums, but most of them do. It starts with mild anger over something simple but then quickly escalates into full blown fury dramatized by screaming, fist pounding, foot-stomping, and screaming. The child also descends psychologically into a place where they can't be reached by words or physical comfort, and parents stand by helpless and confused.

Clearly, the child is distressed, but to the parent, the distress seems way out of proportion to the situation. And it is physically stressful for the child, which suggests that there must be some evolutionary reason why temper tantrums are so universal for little kids.

Pediatrician Harvey Karp, author of "The Happiest Toddler on the Block," and an expert in getting babies and toddlers to quiet down, claims that tantrums are an expected product of human development. He sees our little darlings as less-evolved savages driven by instinct and emotion, not thoughtful reasoning, and he suggests it's our job as parents to civilize them into Homo sapiens.

And so, Dr. Karp suggests, in the midst of a tantrum a parent should reach way back to our ancient ancestors and think like a Neanderthal and become one with the child and figure out how to stop the screaming.

His method is to speak in short phrases that reflect the primitive emotions of the child ("You are angry") rather than addressing the adult modern Homo sapiens situation of the moment ("Please stop. Big girls don't scream in stores.")

Apparently, nothing infuriates these little Neanderthals more than Homo sapiens logic. They just want to be heard and their emotions acknowledged and a tantrum is best controlled by the simple, "I hear you. I feel you."

Of course, Dr. Karp maligns Neanderthals by suggesting there were instinctual creatures swayed by emotions rather than thought. Neanderthals didn’t have language, but they had bigger brains than modern humans and could probably do logic problems with the best of us.

His advice is better couched in the notion that Homo sapiens, and presumably our ancestors, were designed to feel very deeply, and little kids simply want their emotions acknowledged, just like adults.

In fact, adults spend millions of dollars each year to talk to counselors and get their feelings heard. And relationships work best when people are able to see and hear each other's pain, misery, happiness and joy.

And so parents need not read the history of human evolution to know how to deal with their unruly kids.

All we have to do, even in the middle of the most embarrassing public tantrum, is to reach inside and feel that same frustration and anger with the world, and then bend down and say, as Dr Karp would, "I know just how you feel."

Meredith F. Small is an anthropologist at Cornell University. She is also the author of "Our Babies, Ourselves; How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent" (link) and "The Culture of Our Discontent; Beyond the Medical Model of Mental Illness" (link).

Why Toddlers Don't Do What They're Told

Are you listening to me? Didn't I just tell you to get your coat? Helloooo! It's cold out there...

So goes many a conversation between parent and toddler. It seems everything you tell them either falls on deaf ears or goes in one ear and out the other. But that's not how it works.
Toddlers listen, they just store the information for later use, a new study finds.
"I went into this study expecting a completely different set of findings," said psychology professor Yuko Munakata at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "There is a lot of work in the field of cognitive development that focuses on how kids are basically little versions of adults trying to do the same things adults do, but they're just not as good at it yet. What we show here is they are doing something completely different."

Munakata and colleagues used a computer game and a setup that measures the diameter of the pupil of the eye to determine the mental effort of the child to study the cognitive abilities of 3-and-a-half-year-olds and 8-year-olds.

The game involved teaching children simple rules about two cartoon characters — Blue from Blue's Clues and SpongeBob SquarePants — and their preferences for different objects. The children were told that Blue likes watermelon, so they were to press the happy face on the computer screen only when they saw Blue followed by a watermelon. When SpongeBob appeared, they were to press the sad face on the screen.

"The older kids found this sequence easy, because they can anticipate the answer before the object appears," said doctoral student Christopher Chatham, who participated in the study. "But preschoolers fail to anticipate in this way. Instead, they slow down and exert mental effort after being presented with the watermelon, as if they're thinking back to the character they had seen only after the fact."

The pupil measurements showed that 3-year-olds neither plan for the future nor live completely in the present. Instead, they call up the past as they need it.

"For example, let's say it's cold outside and you tell your 3-year-old to go get his jacket out of his bedroom and get ready to go outside," Chatham explained. "You might expect the child to plan for the future, think 'OK it's cold outside so the jacket will keep me warm.' But what we suggest is that this isn't what goes on in a 3-year-old's brain. Rather, they run outside, discover that it is cold, and then retrieve the memory of where their jacket is, and then they go get it."

The findings are detailed this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Munakata figures the results might help with real situations.

"If you just repeat something again and again that requires your young child to prepare for something in advance, that is not likely to be effective," Munakata said. "What would be more effective would be to somehow try to trigger this reactive function. So don't do something that requires them to plan ahead in their mind, but rather try to highlight the conflict that they are going to face. Perhaps you could say something like 'I know you don't want to take your coat now, but when you're standing in the yard shivering later, remember that you can get your coat from your bedroom."