Progress 10/01/15 to 09/30/18
Outputs
Target Audience:The principal target audience is intended to be parents and educators of preschool children. We are particularly interested in reaching at-risk families, such as low-income, immigrant, or teen mothers. We have recruited a portion of our sample from the Audrey Johnson Day School in Brooklyn, that serve low-income families, many of whom are also immigrant families. Prior to recruiting the sample, we conduct a workshop on play and learning and have also offered monthly parent training workshops. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project has provided training for the research team. One graduate student and one undergraduate student have taken the lead in recruiting and testing. The graduate student, Ana Canas, was responsible for recruitment and testing of the families in Brooklyn, NY. She worked with Weill Center for Translational research to train a team of researchers on the study. The PI also traveled to NYC to work with this team, outlining the study goals and providing training on the procedures. The PI also created tutorials and the research team in NYC created a research protocol that documented the procedure for the study. In Ithaca, Christina Hogan, an undergraduate student, took the lead on participant recruitment and testing. She worked with a team of other students who provided support during the testing sessions. Christina also trained the other students on the procedure. She also organized all of the data from the project and ensured that each session was transcribed and coded. The project provided each research assistant experience in managing a large project. The project also provided the other students who assisted with the project extensive experience with participant recruitment and testing as well as learning to code behavior and transcribe language from video records. In addition, the results can be used for parent trainings. The caregivers who participated in the study varied significantly in the amount of language and scaffolding provided and the video records provide useful examples of the diverse ways in which caregivers interact with their preschool children. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We recruited and tested approximately 50 families with preschool-aged children with 43 families in the Ithaca area agreeing to participate and 10 families in NYC agreeing to participate. Nearly all of these participants completed all phases of the study. Children were randomly assigned to one of two play conditions, a spatial play and a non-spatial play condition. All children were first assessed on their spatial skills and vocabulary at baseline. They also created a pattern with a caregiver. Children randomly assigned to the spatial play condition were given four spatial toys to take home. Caregivers were asked to have their child play each of the four toysonce per week for 15 minutes. Caregivers maintained a play log of their child's play with the toys. Spatial toys included two jigsaw puzzles, a spatial board game, such as Rush Hour Jr., and a constructive toy, such as magnatiles, patterns, or blocks. Children randomly assigned to the non-spatial play condition were instead given four toys that were selected to be matched in enjoyment and caregiver interaction. These children also had a board game to play with a caregiver, manipulatives (e.g., a cash register), and toys designed to promote imaginary play (e.g., doll set, doctor's kit). Children's responses on each task were scored and checked by a second observer. Caregiver speech during the interactive task was transcribed. Preliminary results did not, much to our surprise, yield significant effects of condition on children's spatial skills. However, there was a significant effect of child sex. Girls demonstrated significant gains in their spatial skill than boys. We are increasing our sample to be sure that this result replicates. In addition, despite our best efforts, we do not have an equivalent number of boys and girls in each condition and are increasing our sample to equate the number of boys and girls in each condition. We have completed transcribing the 100 videos of parent-child play (50 participants and play at baseline versus posttest) and will examine if caregiver speech during this play session is related to children's spatial skills.
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Progress 10/01/16 to 09/30/17
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience are caregivers and teachers of preschool children as well as individuals who work with families with young children. At a broader level, the target audience will be researchers in the field. The findings will be disseminated to Head Start staff as well as to the staff of other preschool and daycare centers in addition to parent groups. The results will also be presented at academic conferences and disseminated through publication in peer-reviewed journals to reach researchers in the field of cognitive development. Changes/Problems:There have been no major problems. We have however added a measure of gender schemas toask parents about their views on the degree to which they endorse traditional gender schemas. We also have reached out to families to ask if the toys provided for the study are similar to those they have in their home. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We have many undergraduate students and one graduate student working on the project. Students assist with participant recruitment. One student has been managing the project and has taken primary responsibility for testing the children and caregivers in the study. Many students in our lab assist with transcribing the parent-childinteractions and coding children's performance on the spatial tasks. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have worked with the Audrey Johnson School in Brooklyn, NY to provide parent-training workshops designed to promote caregiver and child interaction and language. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We expect to complete data collection for the study in the next months. We are collecting data from a separate sample of caregivers who are invited to play with their child in order to have a comparison group to our sample in our study.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We have recruited and tested 55 preschool children and their caregivers. Data collection is ongoing. All participants have completed the baseline measures and all children have been given a set of toys to take home for four weeks. We have about six more participants to complete the study. All participants except one have been scheduled for the final visit and we expect to have completed data collection by the end of this month. During the time of the study, we piloted the tasks. We explored options for assessing child vocabulary and decided to use the NIH Toolbox to assess child vocabulary. This measure is normed and can be administered in about 4 minutes. We also piloted using a working memory task, however, this task was too lengthy and children did not perform well on it. In addition, we recruited a sample of families from diverse backgrounds, including families who are Spanish-speaking. We developed our materials to be in Spanish in order to include these families in our study.
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Progress 10/01/15 to 09/30/16
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience are parents of preschool children from middle- and low-income families. Several of our participants attended Head Start centers, such as the ABC Graham school in NYC or the Audrey Johnson Day School in Brooklyn, NY. We have also worked with families from middle-income backgrounds, recruited from the Science Center in Ithaca. Our target audience has included families from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, including Caucasian, Latino and African-American. Changes/Problems:Several of our families are bilingual or speak predominantly Spanish. The inclusion of these families is important for our study. Not only do these families help to ensure a diverse sample, but they represent an important segment of the low-income families, many of whom are immigrants. Many preschool children are instructed in English at school but then hear Spanish (or another language) in the home. The opportunity to work with these families is an important one and allows us to explore how children's learning may transfer when instruction is provided in one language and assessed in a second language. We have had to revise our materials and assessment to fit with our bilingual and Spanish-speaking families. Materials have been developed that include both English and Spanish. We have also had to adapt our assessment of the young children. In particular, we added a testing session designed to identify the language that the child best comprehends. We want to be sure that our child participants understand the task. We thus include a play session with the experimenter who can evaluate the child's comprehension and production of English and decide if English or Spanish is the most appropriate language for the assessments. We also developed simplified versions of our tasks because we noticed, during piloting, that many of the children could not remain sufficiently engaged with the tasks. We thus had to revise our existing tasks and then pilot these tasks with toddlers from different income- and language groups to be certain that they would be appropriate measures of children's language development and their spatial skills. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Undergraduate and graduate students have been trained on the protocols and these students were given the opportunity to pilot the procedure with a pilot sample of families during this last year.The graduate student,Ana Maria Cañas, who also works at the Cornell Clinical and Translational Science Center and has reached out to two other staff at this center who are being trained on conducting the child assessments. I gave presentations about the study, and outlined the theoretical and empirical rationale for the study, to preschool teachers who work with young children from low-income families. I also gave a presentation to a group of 20 caregivers about the purpose of the study and used the presentation to only explain the goals of the study but also to recruit families for the study. In addition, I gave a presentation to parent-educators who work with families with young children, outlining recent findings in early language and cognitive development that can be used to help inform their work with families. Thus, there were multiple opportunities for training students, staff, preschool teachers, parent-educators and families. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We have our sample of participants recruited and have trained a team of research assistants to assist with assessing our child participants, filming parent-child play, and helping to explain to parents the goals of the study and how we would like for them to use the toys that we will provide. All materials have been purchased and developed, including handouts for parents to use at home,and we have a date set for the first parent workshop that will provide guidance to families on how use the toys that we provide.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We have piloted the constructive toys, the spatial and language assessments tasks, and worked with families from diverse backgrounds during this last year to ensure that our materials and assessments are well suited for our participants. We adapted the tasks to better suit preschool children from low-income families, who had difficulty with the tasks that had previously been used withpreschool children from middle-income backgrounds. In addition, we developed a collaboration with the Audrey Johnson School in Brooklyn who helped to recruit the families in their center to participate in the study. We have visited the school, met with the staff, met with the parents, and will begin to assess the children and film parent-child play interactions in January of 2017. We have also developed training videos, parent-training workshop, and handouts to provide guidance to families.
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