Dopamine regulates how quickly and accurately decisions are made

 A recent study provides new insight into the relationship between the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine and decision-making processes. The scientists found that when dopamine is released, decisions are made faster, but tend to be more inaccurate. Researchers from the University of Cologne, the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, TUD Dresden University of Technology and the Integrated Psychiatry in Winterthur (Switzerland) contributed to the study. The study 'Dopamine regulates decision thresholds in human reinforcement learning in males' was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Dopamine is associated with a number of aspects of reward learning and action selection. The neurotransmitter also plays a role in various mental disorders and is important for one's own motivation. According to one theory, dopamine regulates how much effort is spent on actions, or how quickly they are performed.

Researchers investigated this in a new study using a learning task. They observed 31 male volunteers who learnt to associate abstract symbols with rewards. All participants performed different variants of the learning task under different drug conditions. In one condition, the release of dopamine was pharmacologically increased by L-dopa, a precursor of dopamine. In another condition, dopamine release was increased using a low dose of the medication Haloperidol. In the control condition, participants received a placebo.

Using novel computer models, the involved learning and decision-making processes were analysed based on the distributions of the participants' response times.

In addition to its well-known functions, dopamine also seems to regulate a speed-accuracy trade-off. This describes the complex relation between a person's willingness to react slowly and make relatively fewer mistakes, and their willingness to react quickly and make relatively more mistakes. The scientists were able to show that when dopamine release was elevated pharmacologically, the parameter that represents this speed-accuracy trade-off was reduced under both L-dopa and Haloperidol. This effect was stronger the faster the participants made decisions. The results therefore also show that computer models can provide improved insight into the function of certain neurotransmitter systems.

"These findings link two previously rather distinct theories on the role of dopamine," said Professor Dr Jan Peters, Professor of Biological Psychology of the University of Cologne, who contributed to the study. "Dopamine controls motor response, but it can also regulate effort. Our data show a mechanism that could link these two aspects by shifting the speed-accuracy trade-off in favour of speed."

However, it is still unclear to what extent this mechanism also plays a role in decisions that are not directly about rewards, and what role motor functions plays in this. This is to be investigated in further studies.

Breaking in the black box of pedagogical authority

 How does pedagogical authority operate in the classroom? A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the University of Teacher Education, State of Vaud (HEP Vaud) has produced one of the first in-depth field studies on this subject. By filming teachers in training over a period of several months, the researchers identified different ways of exercising teaching authority and assessed their effectiveness. They found that strategies based on double addressing -- i.e. addressing several students or groups of students simultaneously, using two different communication channels -- were particularly effective. These results have been published in the journal Teaching and Teacher Education.

In the classroom, teachers' authority is no longer readily accepted by students. In the face of changes in society, its traditional exercise -- based for instance on threats, coercion and habits -- has lost its legitimacy. To obtain the consent of their students, teachers have to adapt to this new context and build up their authority on a daily basis, depending on the class and the learning situation. New approaches need to be invented to enable both novice and more experienced teachers to gain the support of their students.

To date, few studies have documented the interactions between teachers and students in situations where authority is exercised. To address this, a team from UNIGE and HEP Vaud set up an innovative video system in twenty-four secondary-level classes in the state of Vaud (433 students in total, aged 12 to 15), which they coupled with interviews revealing the professional experience of the teachers (ten in all, in training). The survey lasted six months.

Innovative approach

''We put a stand-alone wide-angle camera in each classroom to get a view of the teacher and students. The teachers wore a tracer around their necks which enabled the camera to follow their movements within the classroom,'' explains Valérie Lussi Borer, associate professor, head of the AFORDENS group and member of the Video Learning Lab at the UNIGE's Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, who directed this work.

At the end of the lessons, the teachers were asked to identify the most significant authority situations of the day and their objectives during them. The relevant episodes were then viewed with them to ''confront'' them and measure the gap between their expectations and reality. This method made it possible to identify different ways of exercising authority and to measure their effectiveness.

The most effective strategy

''Among the different methods of student-teacher interaction we identified, the most effective was the 'double addressing' strategy, which accounted for a third of the interactions filmed,'' reveals Vanessa Joinel Alvarez, associate professor in the AGIRS teaching and research unit at HEP Vaud, and the study's first author.

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In these double addressing situations, teachers may combine direct and indirect communication, addressing one student to pass on a message to the rest of the group, or addressing the group to pass on a message to one student. In such a case, the apparent addressee is not the real addressee: the teacher is trying to pass on information indirectly to one or more other students.

Limiting power struggles

This is the case, for example, of teachers who, in order to prevent disruptive behaviour spreading to the rest of the group, will intervene ostensibly with the dissipated student in order to convey, indirectly, a message of dissuasion to the group. The researchers also highlighted situations where the teacher addresses the whole class directly and one or two students indirectly, the aim being to send them a message without naming them explicitly, so as not to stigmatise them or reinforce social comparisons between students.

''We have found that this strategy is very effective in preventing disruptive behaviour. It allows teachers to limit confrontation, which is not very effective with teenagers,'' explains Vanessa Joinel Alvarez. By not confronting the student directly, teachers avoid getting involved in a power struggle and also enable the student to save face with his or her peers.

The results have already been applied to new in-service training courses for teachers offered by the HEP Vaud and the University Institute of Teacher Education at the UNIGE. These courses provide teachers with the tools they need to better understand the way they interact with students in class and the impact of these interactions on the classroom climate.

Young children do better at school if their dads read and play with them

 Fathers can give their children an educational advantage at primary school by reading, drawing and playing with them, according to a newly published report.

Research led by the University of Leeds has found that children do better at primary school if their fathers regularly spend time with them on interactive engagement activities like reading, playing, telling stories, drawing and singing.

Analysing primary school test scores for five- and seven-year-olds, the researchers used a representative sample of nearly 5,000 mother-father households in England from the Millenium Cohort Study -- which collected data on children born 2000-02 as they grew up.

According to the research, dads who regularly drew, played and read with their three-year-olds helped their children do better at school by age five. Dads being involved at age five also helped improve scores in seven-year-olds' Key Stage Assessments.

Dr Helen Norman, Research Fellow at Leeds University Business School, who led the research, said: "Mothers still tend to assume the primary carer role and therefore tend to do the most childcare, but if fathers actively engage in childcare too, it significantly increases the likelihood of children getting better grades in primary school. This is why encouraging and supporting fathers to share childcare with the mother, from an early stage in the child's life, is critical."

Dads' involvement impacted positively on their children's school achievement regardless of the child's gender, ethnicity, age in the school year and household income, according to the report.

There were different effects when mums and dads took part in the same activities -- the data showed that mums had more of an impact on young children's emotional and social behaviours than educational achievement

The researchers recommend that dads carve out as much time as they can to engage in interactive activities with their children each week. For busy, working dads, even just ten minutes a day could potentially have educational benefits.

They also recommend that schools and early years education providers routinely take both parents' contact details (where possible) and develop strategies to engage fathers -- and that Ofsted take explicit account of father-engagement in inspections.

The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and led by Dr Helen Norman, Research Fellow at Leeds University Business School, in collaboration with co-author Dr Jeremy Davies, Head of Impact and Communications at the Fatherhood Institute, and co-investigators at the University of Manchester.

Dr Jeremy Davies, Head of Impact and Communications at the Fatherhood Institute, who co-authored the report, said: "Our analysis has shown that fathers have an important, direct impact on their children's learning. We should be recognising this and actively finding ways to support dads to play their part, rather than engaging only with mothers, or taking a gender-neutral approach."

Andrew Gwynne MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Fatherhood, said: "This study shows that even small changes in what fathers do, and in how schools and early years settings engage with parents, can have a lasting impact on children's learning. It's absolutely crucial that fathers aren't treated as an afterthought."

Ebb and flow' brain mechanism that drives learning identified

 Researchers have long thought that rewards like food or money encourage learning in the brain by causing the release of the "feel-good" hormone dopamine, known to reinforce storage of new information. Now, a new study in rodents describes how learning still occurs in the absence of an immediate incentive.

Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the study explored the relationship between dopamine and the brain chemical acetylcholine, also known to play a role in learning and memory. Past research had shown that these two hormones compete with one another, so that a boost in one causes a decline in the other. Rewards were thought to promote learning by simultaneously triggering an increase in dopamine and a decrease in acetylcholine.

This sudden hormone imbalance is believed to open a window of opportunity for brain cells to adjust to new circumstances and form memories for later use. Known as neuroplasticity, this process is a major feature of learning as well as recovery after injury. However, the question had remained whether food and other external rewards are the only drivers for this memory system, or whether our brains instead are able to create the same conditions that are favorable to learning without outside help.

To provide some clarity, the study authors focused on when and under what circumstances dopamine levels are high at the same time as acetylcholine levels are low. They found that this situation occurs frequently, even in the absence of rewards. In fact, it turns out that the hormones constantly ebb and flow in the brain, with dopamine levels regularly raised while acetylcholine levels are low, setting the stage for continual learning.

"Our findings challenge the current understanding of when and how dopamine and acetylcholine work together in the brain," said study lead author Anne Krok, PhD. "Rather than creating unique conditions for learning, rewards take advantage of a mechanism that is already in place and is constantly at work," added Krok, who is also a medical student at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

For the research, publishing online Aug. 9 in the journal Nature, the study team gave dozens of mice access to a wheel on which they could run or rest at will. On occasion, the researchers offered the animals a drink of water. Then they recorded rodent brain activity and measured the amount of dopamine and acetylcholine released at different moments.

As expected, the drink treats created the typical patterns of dopamine and acetylcholine release that are prompted by rewards. However, the team also observed that well before receiving water treats, dopamine and acetylcholine already followed "ebb and flow" cycles approximately twice every second, during which the levels of one hormone dipped while the other surged. Krok notes that this pattern continued regardless of whether the rodents were running or standing still. Similar brain waves have been observed in humans during periods of introspection and rest, she adds.

Brain mechanism that drives focus despite distractions

 Trying to finish your homework while the big game is on TV? "Visual-movement" neurons in the front of your brain can help you stay focused, according to a new study from neuroscientists in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

In the study, published recently in Neuron, the scientists sought to illuminate the neural mechanism that helps the brain decide whether to focus visual attention on a rewarding task or an alluring distraction. By analyzing neuron activity in animal models as they faced this kind of attentional conflict, the researchers discovered that a pattern of coordinated activity called "beta bursts" in a set of neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) -- a section in the front of the brain responsible for motivation and rewards -- appears to have a major role in keeping attention task-focused, essentially by suppressing the influence of the distracting stimulus.

"Our research suggests that while all brains have the ability to focus on a rewarding task and filter out distractions, some are better at it than others," said senior author Bijan Pesaran PhD, the Robert A Groff II Professor of Neurosurgery at Penn Medicine. "By understanding how our brains process rewarding stimuli, we hope to be able to also understand failures to do so in a variety of cognitive and psychiatric disorders, including attention deficit disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder."

Humans and other large mammals can tune out distractions to keep their attention focused on actions that further goals. This is called "top-down" control, in which attention is directed towards a task with the intention of accomplishing a rewarding goal. Large mammals like primates also have brain circuitry that automatically redirects their attention based on incoming sights and sounds and other "salient" sensory stimuli, otherwise known as "bottom-up" control. How the brain suppresses such distractions to keep attention focused on a goal-related task has never been fully clear, until now.

In the new study, the researchers sought to understand what directs attention to some stimuli, but suppresses others in more detail. Using animal models, researchers recorded how activity in the LPFC shifts while completing a task while being presented with visual distractions. The neuroscientists found strong evidence that one specific type of LPFC neurons, called visual-movement neurons, direct attention towards either the rewarding shape or the distracting one.

The researchers also observed that visual-movement neurons in the LPFC fired together at the same frequency, called "beta bursts" during periods of focus (when ignoring visual distractions and completing tasks). When these beta bursts occurred in the moments before the visual stimuli were presented, subjects were far more likely to ignore the visual stimuli and complete the task. In contrast, when the beta bursts were weak or absent before visual stimuli were presented, subjects were more likely to move their attention to the bright but unrewarding shapes.

"This suggests to us that the beta-bursts originate in a network of visual-movement neurons, and act as 'traffic directors' for the neurons that process different visual stimuli," said first author Agrita Dubey, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the Pesaran laboratory. "It also suggests that focusing on a rewarding task takes a great deal of energy, and that it may be something that can be improved, especially in individuals with attention deficits."

Dissecting the anatomy of a 'superheroic' science class

 What do superheroes Deadpool and Elastigirl have in common? Each was used in a college anatomy class to add relevance to course discussions -- Deadpool to illustrate tissue repair and Elastigirl, aka Mrs. Incredible, as an example of hyperflexibility.

Instructors at The Ohio State University College of Medicine created a "SuperAnatomy" course in an attempt to improve the experience of undergraduate students learning the notoriously difficult -- and for some, scary or gross -- subject matter of human anatomy.

Surveys showed that most students who took the class found the use of superheroes increased their motivation to learn, fostered deeper understanding of the material, and made the content more approachable and enjoyable.

A few of the many content examples also included considering how Wolverine's claws would affect his musculoskeletal system and citing Groot in a discussion of skin disorders.

The effort was aimed at bringing creativity to the classroom -- in the form of outside-the-box instruction and as a way to inspire students' imagination and keep them engaged, said Melissa Quinn, associate professor of anatomy at Ohio State and senior author of a study on the course's effectiveness.

"In these introductory courses, it's a little tougher to talk about clinical relevance because students don't fully understand a lot of the mechanics," Quinn said. "But if you bring in pop culture, which everybody is inundated with in some way, shape or form, and tie it to the foundational sciences, then that becomes a way to apply it a little bit more."

The study was published recently in the journal Anatomical Sciences Education.

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First author Jeremy Grachan, the mastermind behind the course's creation, led design of the curriculum as an Ohio State PhD student and is now an assistant professor of anatomy at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

SuperAnatomy was created as a 1000-level three-credit-hour undergraduate course open to students of all majors. The class consisted of three 55-minute lectures each week and lab sessions offered twice in the semester. The course's curriculum borrowed heavily from Human Anatomy 2300, a four-credit-hour course taken primarily by pre-health profession majors, consisting of live and recorded lectures, review sessions and one lab per week.

Students from both classes were invited to join the study over three semesters in 2021 and 2022; 36 students in SuperAnatomy and 442 students in Human Anatomy participated. Researchers collected data from 50-question quizzes given during the first week of classes and at the end of the semester intended to gauge how well students learned and applied course content. The students also completed pre- and post-course surveys.

The quiz results showed that student learning and application of material in the two courses was essentially the same. And to be clear, the SuperAnatomy content was not all cartoons and comic books.

"We looked at courses already running in our anatomy curriculum and took the relevant parts of those courses and added in the superheroes," Quinn said. "So we actually elevated the curriculum."

The follow-up survey of SuperAnatomy participants suggested the inclusion of superheroes strengthened their class experience, with nearly all students reporting that pop culture and superhero references expanded their understanding of course material and boosted their motivation to do well in the class.

Learning from superheroes and AI: Researchers study how a chatbot can teach kids supportive self-talk

 At first, some parents were wary: An audio chatbot was supposed to teach their kids to speak positively to themselves through lessons about a superhero named Zip. In a world of Siri and Alexa, many people are skeptical that the makers of such technologies are putting children's welfare first.

Researchers at the University of Washington created a new web app aimed to help children develop skills like self-awareness and emotional management. In Self-Talk with Superhero Zip, a chatbot guided pairs of siblings through lessons. The UW team found that, after speaking with the app for a week, most children could explain the concept of supportive self-talk (the things people say to themselves either audibly or mentally) and apply it in their daily lives. And kids who'd engaged in negative self-talk before the study were able to turn that habit positive.

The UW team published its findings in June at the 2023 Interaction Design and Children conference. The app is still a prototype and is not yet publicly available.

The UW team saw a few reasons to develop an educational chatbot. Positive self-talk has shown a range of benefits for kids, from improved sport performance to increased self-esteem and lower risk of depression. And previous studies have shown children can learn various tasks and abilities from chatbots. Yet little research explores how chatbots can help kids effectively acquire socioemotional skills.

"There is room to design child-centric experiences with a chatbot that provide fun and educational practice opportunities without invasive data harvesting that compromises children's privacy," said senior author Alexis Hiniker, an associate professor in the UW Information School. "Over the last few decades, television programs like 'Sesame Street,' 'Mister Rogers,' and 'Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood' have shown that it is possible for TV to help kids cultivate socioemotional skills. We asked: Can we make a space where kids can practice these skills in an interactive app? We wanted to create something useful and fun -- a 'Sesame Street' experience for a smart speaker."

The UW researchers began with two prototype ideas with the goal to teach socioemotional skills broadly. After testing, they narrowed the scope, focusing on a superhero named Zip and the aim of teaching supportive self-talk. They decided to test the app on siblings, since research shows that children are more engaged when they use technology with another person.

Ten pairs of Seattle-area siblings participated in the study. For a week, they opened the app and met an interactive narrator who told them stories about Zip and asked them to reflect on Zip's encounters with other characters, including a supervillain. During and after the study, kids described applying positive self-talk; several mentioned using it when they were upset or angry.

By the end of the study, all five kids who said they used negative self-talk before had replaced it with positive self-talk. Having the children work with their siblings supported learning in some cases, but some parents found the kids struggling to take turns while using the app.

The length of these effects isn't clear, researchers note. The study just spanned one week and the tendency for survey participants to respond in ways that make them look good could lead kids to speak positively about the app's effects. Future research may include longer studies in more natural settings.

"Our goal is to make the app accessible to a wider audience in the future," said lead author Chris (Yue) Fu, a UW doctoral student in the iSchool. "We're exploring the integration of large language models -- the systems that power tech like ChatGPT -- into our prototype and we plan to work with content creators to adapt existing socioemotional learning materials into our system. The hope is that these will facilitate more prolonged and effective interventions."

Other authors are Mingrui Zhang, a research scientist at Meta Reality Labs who graduated from the UW iSchool; Lynn K Nguyen, a UW research assistant in the iSchool; Yifan Lin, a UW masters student and UW doctoral student Rebecca Michelson, both in the human centered design and engineering department; and Tala June Tayebi, a masters student at the University of Southern California who did undergraduate work at the UW iSchool. This research was funded by the Jacobs Foundation and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Researchers.

Bilingualism as a catalyst for social development in children

 As children learn more about the world through the people around them, the diversity in languages presents them with a unique opportunity for better social-cognitive learning.

Past research has shown that children who grew up bilingual have heightened sensitivities to communicative cues and are more adept at understanding a speaker's context and intent. An area that had yet to be explored was the role of bilingualism in a child's ability to assess communicative cues along with the speaker's context and intent.

Associate Professor Yow Wei Quin from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) addressed this gap in literature by investigating how children with varying linguistic backgrounds consider context when evaluating a speaker's reliability in communicative cues.

Together with SUTD researcher Li Xiaoqian, Assoc Prof Yow published a paper titled, 'Role of bilingual experience in children's context-sensitive selective trust strategies' in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. The research provided novel insights into how the bilingual experience influences the ability of children to discern and trust reliable speakers.

The participating children, aged between three and five, were tasked with finding a sticker hidden in one of two boxes, which were either transparent or partially covered. An informant was present to aid their search by giving accurate or inaccurate cues to the whereabouts of the sticker. Based on the boxes used, the children knew if the informant could see the location of the sticker (visual access to information). The setup was repeated in several phases prior to the actual experiment to help the children determine if the informant was reliable in giving correct cues (accurate informant versus inaccurate informant).

What Assoc Prof Yow found was that children with greater language diversity were more sensitive to contextual factors when assessing the informant's reliability than those with less language diversity. When the informant had visual access to information, these children would selectively trust the informant if he or she had previously provided accurate cues, but not when he or she provided inaccurate cues in the past.

On the other hand, if the children attributed the informant's prior inaccuracy to the lack of visual access to information, they showed comparable trust towards both accurate and inaccurate informants. This result demonstrates bilingual children's deeper understanding of contexts and communication nuances.

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"The advantages of bilingualism in children's social-cognitive development likely stem from a greater communicative flexibility that the children has acquired in order to interact socially with people from different language and cultural backgrounds," Assoc Prof Yow explained. Regularly adapting to changing communicative contexts, when switching between speakers of different languages or cultures for example, challenges and fine-tunes the children's skilful management of their daily interactions.

Through this research, Assoc Prof Yow aims to develop ideas on ways to embrace language diversity, with the ultimate goal of harnessing the advantages of bilingualism to improve the developmental and educational outcomes for children from all walks of life. For example, encouraging dual language exposure can boost opportunities for children to develop effective communicative skills and social-cognitive abilities. In the bigger picture, Assoc Prof Yow hopes to inspire a positive shift in attitudes towards language diversity.

"By embracing bilingualism, parents and educators can provide their children with a rich social and cognitive foundation for the development of important social-communication skills," she opined.

Assoc Prof Yow's next step is to extend her research to the role of multilingualism in children's development and the impact of language diversity in adulthood. Supported by the Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund, her team at SUTD, has embarked on a project that investigates how lifelong bilingual experiences and picking up different languages early in life can shape social understanding in young and older adults. Together with a team of researchers led by Assoc Prof Helen Zhou from NUS, they are also evaluating how such experiences promote cognitive and brain plasticity, believing that these new insights can help humans leverage the advantages of language diversity for personal growth and social cohesion.

Physical activity can promote learning and wellbeing at secondary school

 A study led by the University of Eastern Finland suggests that adolescents who engage in active school transport and leisure-time physical activity perform better at secondary school than their inactive peers. Regular leisure-time physical activity, even in moderate doses, was also associated with lower odds of school burnout. The findings were published in the  European Journal of Public Health.

The relationship of physical activity with learning and academic achievement is complex. However, prior studies have found that especially school-based physical activity, such as physical education, can improve classroom performance -- particularly in mathematics. Despite this, few studies have examined the association between active school transport and educational outcomes. Regarding physical activity and school wellbeing, most of the previous evidence is focused on university-level students.

In the recently published study of over 34,000 adolescents, researchers observed that active school transport was associated with higher odds of high perceived academic performance and self-reported competency in academic skills. The association was even stronger for leisure-time moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Similar to prior studies, the relationship between leisure-time physical activity and mathematical skills stood out.

"The results regarding active school transport were particularly intriguing as researchers are increasingly interested in the health benefits of travel-related walking and cycling. Being physically active before school could, for example, enhance concentration in classroom, explaining our observations. However, due to the cross-sectional design, our study cannot establish causality," says Juuso Jussila, a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Eastern Finland.

"There were no surprises regarding the strong association between leisure-time physical activity and perceived academic achievement due to support from prospective and intervention studies. Although we do not know all the explanatory mechanisms, improved coordination and perceptual-motor skills, required in various team sports, for example, can at least partially explain these observations. Leisure-time physical activity is also typically more intense than active school transport, leading to increases in brain-derived neurotrophic factor in our circulation and, thus, improvements in cognitive performance."

Leisure-time physical activity was also inversely associated with school burnout. As little as 30 minutes of weekly moderate-to-vigorous activity was associated with 24% lower odds of school burnout. Adolescents who engaged in leisure-time physical activity for 4 to 6 hours a week had 46% lower odds of school burnout compared to their physically inactive peers. Both leisure-time physical activity and active school transport were also positively associated with school enjoyment.

"To the best of my knowledge, this was the first large-scale study to examine the association between physical activity and school burnout among adolescents. Leisure-time physical activity can be an effective way to disconnect from schoolwork and the potential stress related to it. If we can increase the amount leisure-time physical activity among youth, both learning and wellbeing benefits can be significant," Jussila summarises.

The study was conducted in collaboration with the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare and the nationwide School Health Promotion study. Jussila works as a researcher in the Climate Nudge project, which is funded by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland.

Researchers find little evidence of cheating with online, unsupervised exams

 When Iowa State University switched from in-person to remote learning halfway through the spring semester of 2020, psychology professor Jason Chan was worried. Would unsupervised, online exams unleash rampant cheating?

His initial reaction flipped to surprise as test results rolled in. Individual student scores were slightly higher but consistent with their results from in-person, proctored exams. Those receiving B's before the COVID-19 lockdown were still pulling in B's when the tests were online and unsupervised. This pattern held true for students up and down the grading scale.

"The fact that the student rankings stayed mostly the same regardless of whether they were taking in-person or online exams indicated that cheating was either not prevalent or that it was ineffective at significantly boosting scores," says Chan.

To know if this was happening at a broader level, Chan and Dahwi Ahn, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology, analyzed test score data from nearly 2,000 students across 18 classes during the spring 2020 semester. Their sample ranged from large, lecture-style courses with high enrollment, like introduction to statistics, to advanced courses in engineering and veterinary medicine.

Across different academic disciplines, class sizes, course levels and test styles (i.e., predominantly multiple choice or short answer), the researchers found the same results. Unsupervised, online exams produced scores very similar to in-person, proctored exams, indicating they can provide a valid and reliable assessment of student learning.

The research findings were recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Before conducting this research, I had doubts about online and unproctored exams, and I was quite hesitant to use them if there was an option to have them in-person. But after seeing the data, I feel more confident and hope other instructors will, as well," says Ahn.

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Both researchers say they've continued to give exams online, even for in-person classes. Chan says this format provides more flexibility for students who have part-time jobs or travel for sports and extra-curriculars. It also expands options for teaching remote classes. Ahn led her first online course over the summer.

Why might cheating have had a minimal effect on test scores?

The researchers say students more likely to cheat might be underperforming in the class and anxious about failing. Perhaps they've skipped lectures, fallen behind with studying or feel uncomfortable asking for help. Even with the option of searching Google during an unmonitored exam, students may struggle to find the correct answer if they don't understand the content. In their paper, the researchers point to evidence from previous studies comparing test scores from open-book and close-book exams.

Another factor that may deter cheating is academic integrity or a sense of fairness, something many students value, says Chan. Those who have studied hard and take pride in their grades may be more inclined to protect their exam answers from students they view as freeloaders.

Still, the researchers say instructors should be aware of potential weak spots with unsupervised, online exams. For example, some platforms have the option of showing students the correct answer immediately after they select a multiple-choice option. This makes it much easier for students to share answers in a group text.

To counter this and other forms of cheating, instructors can:

• Wait to release exam answers until the test window closes.
• Use larger, randomized question banks.
• Add more options in multiple-choice questions and making the right choice less obvious.
• Adjust grade cutoffs.

COVID-19 and ChatGPT

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Chan and Ahn say the spring 2020 semester provided a unique opportunity to research the validity of online exams for student evaluations. However, there were some limitations. For example, it wasn't clear what role stress and other COVID-19-related impacts may have played on students, faculty and teaching assistants. Perhaps instructors were more lenient with grading or gave longer windows of time to complete exams.

The researchers said another limitation was not knowing if the 18 classes in the sample normally get easier or harder as the semester progresses. In an ideal experiment, half of the students would have taken online exams for the first half of the semester and in-person exams for the second half.

They attempted to account for these two concerns by looking at older test score data from a subset of the 18 classes during semesters when they were fully in-person. The researchers found the distribution of grades in each class was consistent with the spring 2020 semester and concluded that the materials covered in the first and second halves of the semester did not differ in their difficulty.

At the time of data collection for this study, ChatGPT wasn't available to students. But the researchers acknowledge AI writing tools are a gamechanger in education and could make it much harder for instructors to evaluate their students. Understanding how instructors should approach online exams with the advent of ChatGPT is something Ahn intends to research.

The study was supported by a National Science Foundation Science of Learning and Augmented Intelligence Grant.

Learning from superheroes and AI: Researchers study how a chatbot can teach kids supportive self-talk

 At first, some parents were wary: An audio chatbot was supposed to teach their kids to speak positively to themselves through lessons about a superhero named Zip. In a world of Siri and Alexa, many people are skeptical that the makers of such technologies are putting children's welfare first.

Researchers at the University of Washington created a new web app aimed to help children develop skills like self-awareness and emotional management. In Self-Talk with Superhero Zip, a chatbot guided pairs of siblings through lessons. The UW team found that, after speaking with the app for a week, most children could explain the concept of supportive self-talk (the things people say to themselves either audibly or mentally) and apply it in their daily lives. And kids who'd engaged in negative self-talk before the study were able to turn that habit positive.

The UW team published its findings in June at the 2023 Interaction Design and Children conference. The app is still a prototype and is not yet publicly available.

The UW team saw a few reasons to develop an educational chatbot. Positive self-talk has shown a range of benefits for kids, from improved sport performance to increased self-esteem and lower risk of depression. And previous studies have shown children can learn various tasks and abilities from chatbots. Yet little research explores how chatbots can help kids effectively acquire socioemotional skills.

"There is room to design child-centric experiences with a chatbot that provide fun and educational practice opportunities without invasive data harvesting that compromises children's privacy," said senior author Alexis Hiniker, an associate professor in the UW Information School. "Over the last few decades, television programs like 'Sesame Street,' 'Mister Rogers,' and 'Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood' have shown that it is possible for TV to help kids cultivate socioemotional skills. We asked: Can we make a space where kids can practice these skills in an interactive app? We wanted to create something useful and fun -- a 'Sesame Street' experience for a smart speaker."

The UW researchers began with two prototype ideas with the goal to teach socioemotional skills broadly. After testing, they narrowed the scope, focusing on a superhero named Zip and the aim of teaching supportive self-talk. They decided to test the app on siblings, since research shows that children are more engaged when they use technology with another person.

Ten pairs of Seattle-area siblings participated in the study. For a week, they opened the app and met an interactive narrator who told them stories about Zip and asked them to reflect on Zip's encounters with other characters, including a supervillain. During and after the study, kids described applying positive self-talk; several mentioned using it when they were upset or angry.

By the end of the study, all five kids who said they used negative self-talk before had replaced it with positive self-talk. Having the children work with their siblings supported learning in some cases, but some parents found the kids struggling to take turns while using the app.

The length of these effects isn't clear, researchers note. The study just spanned one week and the tendency for survey participants to respond in ways that make them look good could lead kids to speak positively about the app's effects. Future research may include longer studies in more natural settings.

"Our goal is to make the app accessible to a wider audience in the future," said lead author Chris (Yue) Fu, a UW doctoral student in the iSchool. "We're exploring the integration of large language models -- the systems that power tech like ChatGPT -- into our prototype and we plan to work with content creators to adapt existing socioemotional learning materials into our system. The hope is that these will facilitate more prolonged and effective interventions."

Other authors are Mingrui Zhang, a research scientist at Meta Reality Labs who graduated from the UW iSchool; Lynn K Nguyen, a UW research assistant in the iSchool; Yifan Lin, a UW masters student and UW doctoral student Rebecca Michelson, both in the human centered design and engineering department; and Tala June Tayebi, a masters student at the University of Southern California who did undergraduate work at the UW iSchool. This research was funded by the Jacobs Foundation and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Researchers.

A little kindness goes a long way for worker performance and health

Small gestures of kindness by employers can have big impacts on employees' health and work performance, according to an international team of researchers. The team specifically examined the effects of employers enhancing the lunches of bus drivers in China with fresh fruit and found that it reduced depression among the drivers and increased their confidence in their own work performance.

"An ultimate solution to improve worker performance and health could be big pay raises or reduced workloads, but when those solutions aren't feasible, we found that even small offerings can make a big difference," said Bu Zhong, associate professor of journalism at Penn State.

According to Zhong, bus drivers are vulnerable to specific health problems due in large part to their stressful working environment, which often includes irregular shift schedules, unpredictable traffic conditions and random meal times. In addition, the sedentary nature of driving and continuous whole-body vibration contributes to fatigue, musculoskeletal problems such as lower-back pain, cardiovascular diseases and gastrointestinal issues.

Zhong and his colleagues conducted an experiment with 86 Shenzen bus drivers. During the experiment, on-duty bus drivers were given, in addition to their typical box lunch which includes no fruit, a serving of fresh fruit -- either an apple or a banana -- for three weeks. The cost of the fruit was 73 cents per meal.

The team distributed surveys to the bus drivers at three time intervals -- one week before the experiment began, once in the middle of the three-week-long experiment and one week following the end of the experiment. The findings appear today in the International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics.

The researchers assessed depression with a personal health questionnaire that is recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The scale consisted of eight items, asking the participants to rate, for example, how often during the past two weeks they felt down, depressed or hopeless, and had trouble falling or staying asleep.

"Bus drivers reported significantly decreased depression levels one week after the experiments ended compared to one week before it began," said Zhong.

The team measured self-efficacy -- perceived confidence and ability to implement the necessary actions and tasks so as to achieve specific goals -- using the 10-item General Self-Efficacy Scale. Items on this scale included, "I can always manage to solve difficult problems if I try hard enough" and "I can usually handle whatever comes my way."

"We found that self-efficacy was significantly higher in the middle of the experiment week than in the week after the experiment ended," said Zhong.

Zhong concluded that while eating an extra apple at lunchtime may seem trivial, its impact can be large.

"This research suggests that employees can be sensitive to any improvement at the workplace," he said. "Before an ultimate solution is possible, some small steps can make a difference -- one apple at a time."

Virtual reality training could improve employee safety

A new study suggests employee safety could be improved through use of Virtual Reality (VR) in Health and Safety training, such as fire evacuation drills.

The Human Factors Research Group at the University of Nottingham, developed an immersive VR system to stimulate participants' perception of temperature, and senses of smell, sight and hearing to explore how they behaved during two health and safety training scenarios: an emergency evacuation in the event of a fire and a fuel leak.

In one scenario, participants had to evacuate from a virtual fire in an office, seeing and hearing using a VR headset but could also feel heat from three 2kW heaters, and could smell smoke from a scent diffuser, creating a multisensory virtual environment. This group was compared against another group who were observed in this scenario using only audio-visual elements of VR.

Observing real life behaviours

Previous research on human behaviour during real-world fire incidents has shown that a lack of understanding of the spread and movement of fire often means that occupants are unprepared and misjudge appropriate actions. Immersive health and safety training enables employers to train people about hazards and hazardous environments without putting anyone at risk.

The Nottingham research, funded by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), found contrasts between the groups in the way participants reacted to the scenario. Those in the multi-sensory group had a greater sense of urgency, reflecting a real-life scenario, and were more likely to avoid the virtual fires. Evidence from the audio-visual participants suggested that they were treating the experience more like a game and behaviours were less consistent with those expected in a real world situation.

Dr Glyn Lawson, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham, said: "Health and safety training can fail to motivate and engage employees and can lack relevance to real-life contexts. Our research, which has been funded by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, suggests that virtual environments can help address these issues, by increasing trainees' engagement and willingness to participate in further training. There are also business benefits associated with the use of virtual environment training, such as the ability to deliver training at or near the workplace and at a time that is convenient to the employee."

Virtual Reality vs. PowerPoint

A further test was done, as part of the study, to measure the effectiveness of VR training versus traditional PowerPoint training. Participants took questionnaires, testing their knowledge on either fire safety or safe vehicle disassembly procedure, before and after training as well as one week later.

While those trained via PowerPoint appeared to have gained more knowledge when tested directly after training, there was a significantly larger decrease in knowledge scores when participants were retested one week later. In comparison, the VR group's long term retention was better and reported higher levels of engagement; attitude to occupational safety and health; and willingness to undertake training in the future.

The research suggests that the increased cognitive engagement of learning in the virtual environment creates more established and comprehensive mental models which can improve recall, and implies that testing an employee's knowledge immediately following health and safety training may not be an effective means of gaging long-term knowledge of health and safety.

Applications to the work place

Mary Ogungbeje, Research Manager at IOSH, said: "The wheels are turning so that virtual and smart learning is increasingly engrained in the workplace and everyday life.

"Technology is continuously advancing and in many cases becoming more affordable, so this study gives us a taste of what's to come. By improving training strategies with the use of technology and stimulated sensory experiences, we are heading in a direction where the workforce will not just enjoy a more immersive and interesting training course but participate in an effective learning experience, so they are better prepared and equipped to stay safe, healthy and well at work."

The researchers conducted meetings, discussions, and visits with partners including Rolls-Royce, for expert advice around fire safety and safe handling of hazardous chemicals. The University of Nottingham's Health and Safety advisors also contributed to help the researchers better understand how the training may be implemented in industry.

The study aims to produce evidence-based guidance for the development and use of virtual environments in engaging and effective training using cost-effective and accessible solutions. The full study features in a report, titled 'Immersive virtual worlds: Multisensory virtual environments for health and safety training', to be released at the IOSH's annual conference on Tuesday 17 September.

Nonverbal signals can create bias against larger groups

If children are exposed to bias against one person, will they develop a bias against that person's entire group? The answer is yes, according to new research from University of Georgia social psychologist Allison Skinner. The study's results are the first to demonstrate that nonverbal signals can produce new biases that generalize to entire groups and classes of people.

"Our findings indicate that the process of acquiring bias based on nonverbal signals -- and extending that bias to a larger group -- is already in operation in early childhood, prior to the start of first grade," said Skinner, first author and assistant professor of psychology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. "Exposure to biased nonverbal signals may be an important process through which group biases are rapidly and unintentionally transmitted within our culture."

Her study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, explores bias generalization in preschoolers aged 4 and 5.

With co-authors Kristina R. Olson and Andrew N. Meltzoff (both University of Washington), Skinner tested whether preschool children seeing one individual receive more positive nonverbal signals than another would lead them to develop bias in favor of that individual's group -- and whether such biases would be generalized to large classes of people, for example, those of the same nationality.

In the experiments, children watched video in which an adult actor displayed positive nonverbal signals -- appearing warm and friendlier -- toward an unknown adult from one fictitious place and negative nonverbal signals toward an unknown adult from another place. The preschoolers were then asked questions to assess their biases toward the adults in the videos and toward other people of their "nationality."

"Children's biases went beyond simply preferring people from one place relative to another," Skinner said. "They were more likely to imitate the words and actions demonstrated by the target of positive nonverbal signals, and they preferred to interact with members of that individual's group."

This study follows on the heels of her previously published work on the role of nonverbal signals in spreading attitudes and biases among adults. In a study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Skinner found that adults formed conscious attitudes toward an individual based on witnessing positive or negative nonverbal signals displayed toward that person. They also formed unconscious attitudes, but they were likely to misattribute the cause, according to Skinner.

"People were more likely to attribute their attitude to how the individual behaved, rather than how the individual was treated by others," she said. "It didn't matter if the individual responded neutrally. If people treated him as if he was behaving like a jerk, then that was their inference."

Impostor syndrome is more common than you think; Study finds best way to cope with it

The impostor syndrome, a phenomenon that manifests when people feel like frauds even if they are actually capable and well-qualified, affects people both in the workplace and in the classroom. A new study reveals that perceptions of impostorism are quite common and uncovers one of the best -- and worst -- ways to cope with such feelings.

Findings of the study, co-authored by Brigham Young University professors Jeff Bednar, Bryan Stewart, and James Oldroyd, revealed that 20 percent of the college students in their sample suffered from very strong feelings of impostorism. The researchers conducted interviews with students in an elite academic program to understand the various coping mechanisms students used to escape these feelings, but one particular method stood out above the rest: seeking social support from those outside their academic program.

The findings of their interview study suggest that if students "reached in" to other students within their major, they felt worse more often than they felt better. However, if the student "reached out" to family, friends outside their major, or even professors, perceptions of impostorism were reduced.

"Those outside the social group seem to be able to help students see the big picture and recalibrate their reference groups," said Bednar, a BYU management professor and co-author on the study. "After reaching outside their social group for support, students are able to understand themselves more holistically rather than being so focused on what they felt they lacked in just one area."

Along with seeking social support, the study also uncovered negative ways students coped with impostorism. Some students tried to get their mind off schoolwork through escapes such as video games but ended up spending more time gaming than studying. Other students tried to hide how they really felt around their classmates, pretending they were confident and excited about their performance when deep down they questioned if they actually belonged.

In a second study, the researchers surveyed 213 students to confirm what was revealed in their interview study about seeking social support: reaching out to individuals outside the major proved to be more effective than reaching in to individuals within the major.

Surprisingly, the study also reveals that perceptions of impostorism lack a significant relationship with performance. This means that individuals who suffer with the impostor syndrome are still capable of doing their jobs well, they just don't believe in themselves. Researchers also explain that social-related factors impact impostorism more than an individual's actual ability or competence.

"The root of impostorism is thinking that people don't see you as you really are," said Stewart, an accounting professor at BYU and co-author on the study. "We think people like us for something that isn't real and that they won't like us if they find out who we really are."

Outside the classroom, researchers believe that implications from this study can and should be applied in the workplace as well. "It's important to create cultures where people talk about failure and mistakes," Bednar said. "When we create those cultures, someone who is feeling strong feelings of impostorism will be more likely to get the help they need within the organization."

Brain anatomy changes with maturation to adolescence

In a first-of-its-kind study, Children's Hospital Los Angeles researchers piece together a road map of typical brain development in children during a critical window of maturation. The study shows how a "wave of brain maturation" directly underlies important social and behavioral changes children develop during the transition from childhood to adolescence.

As children mature, many aspects of their lives shift in preparation for adulthood. Academic and social environments intensify during this time, requiring increasing mastery of thoughts, emotions, and behavioral control. Very little is known about what is going on neurologically during this important transition. A group of researchers at CHLA examined anatomical and behavioral changes during the finite window of neurological development in a group of 9-12 year old children. A more detailed understanding of typical brain development could give scientists and clinicians a better framework to help care for children who may be developing atypically or facing developmental challenges.

"We know that children are growing substantially in their ability to self-regulate during this time," says Mary Baron Nelson, PhD, RN, the first author on this publication. "Among many other changes, their attention spans are expanding and they are learning social norms such as gauging appropriate responses or behaviors." Because these are cognitive processes, the research group hypothesized that measurable changes could be occurring in brain structure and function. This is precisely what they found.

The team of scientists, led by Bradley Peterson, MD, of the Institute for the Developing Mind at CHLA, examined anatomical, chemical, and neuropsychological measures to determine what changes could be occurring in a group of 234 healthy children, aged 9-12 years. "We used brain imaging, measured multiple chemicals and metabolites, and took cognitive and neuropsychological scores," says Dr. Baron Nelson.

Using imaging and measuring brain metabolites, the group observed what Dr. Baron Nelson refers to as a "wave of maturation" sweeping through the brain. White matter tracts -- the pathways in the brain that transmit information -- showed increasing maturation with age from the back to the front of the brain. This is expected, as the frontal lobes are not fully formed until an individual is in his or her late twenties. The frontal lobes mediate executive function -- major planning of complex decisions and actions. But perhaps less expected is that so many of these changes begin to occur so early on. The findings in the study show that this maturation is largely beginning during years 9-12. This brain maturity correlates with a critical and formative period of time: children are undergoing rapid, neurological maturity at the same time that they are facing difficult social and academic decisions.

As a child grows, he or she becomes more able to control impulses and process complex concepts. In support of this observation the group discovered increasing scores on tasks that measured these skills. But how were these children able to have more impulse control and make more complex decisions? The group analyzed the data and were able to determine that anatomical and metabolic changes occurring during this window of development are responsible for this increase in abilities.

"We've learned that this is not a wait-and-see period of time," says Dr. Baron Nelson. "Dynamic changes are happening here and this gives us a real opportunity for intervention. We can help shape these kids as they grow."

Better way to teach physics to university students

Courses in introductory physics are required for nearly all university STEM degree programs not only because physics is considered foundational to those disciplines, but also because it provides students practical experience in applied mathematics. The latter is especially true for calculus-based physics courses, which typically provide students their first exposure to using calculus outside of their math classes.

Now, a team of physicists and educators at the University of Kansas has developed a curriculum for college-level students that shows promise in helping students in introductory physics classes further practice and develop their calculus skills, especially those who test lower in core math abilities. They term the approach "energy-first."

Their findings appear in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review Physics Education Research.

"It's almost always the case that in introductory physics courses students are first taught mechanics in the context of forces. Later in the course, they are shown that they can also apply the concept of energy to solve most of the problems they already learned to solve with forces," said co-author Christopher Fischer, engineering physics director and associate chair of physics & astronomy at KU. "We decided instead we want to teach energy first -- because, number one, we think it's a more generally applicable way of thinking about physics. Number two, it also allows us to achieve our secondary goal of providing the students with more opportunities to use and practice their calculus skills."

From fall 2015 to spring of this year, Fischer and his KU colleagues monitored students and performed testing in two introductory physics classes at KU taken mostly by students pursuing degrees in the physical sciences and engineering. For one, they devised an "energy-first" curriculum. For the other, they kept to a more traditional approach that taught students about forces before teaching them about energy.

The presence of two different physics courses using different curricula naturally provided an opportunity for the researchers to compare the outcomes of students in the two courses.

"We sought to compare, as best we could, apples to apples," Fischer said. "In other words, we compared students who had the same ACT math scores but who took different physics courses to determine what effect our new physics curriculum had on student outcomes."

The researchers worked with the KU Center for Teaching Excellence and the KU Office of Institutional Research & Planning to obtain the students' ACT math scores.

Fischer and his colleagues found engineering students taking the new "energy-first" physics curriculum tended to earn higher grades in subsequent engineering classes (for instance, in a mechanical engineering class for which either of the two introductory physics classes was a prerequisite).

"What we saw was the engineering students who were taking our new physics curriculum did better in their engineering classes," he said.

Furthermore, the biggest benefits to student performance in downstream engineering classes were seen in students who had lower math ACT scores but took the "energy-first" physics class.

"The benefits were even larger the lower your initial math abilities were," Fischer said. "So, engineering students who had lower ACT math scores had larger benefits from taking this new curriculum, which got us thinking maybe tasking students with solving more problems using calculus in this physics class is helping them with their applied math skills in general, as well as their physics skills."

Fischer's KU colleagues on the project from the KU physics & astronomy department were lead author Sarah LeGresley, assistant teaching professor of physics & astronomy; Jennifer Delgado, associate teaching professor; Christopher Bruner, a doctoral student; and Michael Murray, professor of physics & astronomy.

The KU researchers examined how well students had picked up on the physics content by performing more assessments, again finding those in the "energy-first" cohort had the edge over those in the old-style introductory physics class.

"Separately, we did a side-by-side comparison of student performance on a standardized physics conceptual test that many different universities use," Fischer said. "And we saw that all the students in the new physics curriculum are doing better than the students from the traditional physics curriculum."

While these results certainly argue for the adoption of an "energy-first" approach, Fischer stressed because of the small sample size and limited demographics of students at only a single, large Midwestern university, the "energy-first" curriculum would need to be tried out on a broader level before concluding it was a superior method for teaching introductory physics to college-age students.

"We didn't have tens of thousands of students in our study," Fischer said. "We looked at only a few thousand. Thus, it's important that other universities try this new curriculum to see if our results can be replicated. Indeed, we would happily welcome other institutions to collaborate with us to test if our results are robust -- that's essential."

Additionally, the KU researchers hope to develop and implement an assessment to use in physics classes to understand math transference better.

"Is this new way of teaching physics helping students improve their applied calculus skills?" Fischer said. "To our knowledge, no one has built an assessment targeting that specific question. So, we're trying to figure out how to design such an instrument."

Finally, Fischer said the team would like to build off the lessons learned from the implementation of the "energy-first" physics approach to modify the curriculum of other classes in the department.

"Is there a way we could design something similar, or at least take advantage of this sort of design methodology for our department's algebra-based physics classes?" he said. "This naturally also motivates us to reach out to high schools to find collaborators to help us develop new and improved ways of teaching physics in a way that would be more useful for high school students."

Good home learning in early years boosts your secondary school achievements

The positive effects of a rich home learning environment during a child's early years continue into adolescence and help improve test scores later in life, according to a new study published in School Effectiveness and School Improvement.

This research shows pre-schoolers whose parents regularly read and talked about books with them scored better on math tests at age 12. The study, lead by Dr Simone Lehrl of the University of Bamberg, is one of the first to provide detail on the importance of early years home learning on children's development up to early adolescence.

Researchers studied 229 German children from age three until secondary school and participants' literacy and numeracy skills were tested annually in their three years of preschool (ages 3-5), and again when they were 12 or 13 years old.

They found that children gained from home stimulation in their preschool years in literacy, language and arithmetic skills which, in turn, led to higher outcomes in reading and mathematical skills in secondary school, regardless of the home learning environment then.

Dr Lehrl said: "Our results underline the great importance of exposing children to books for development not just in literacy but numeracy too: early language skills not only improve a child's reading but also boost mathematical ability.

"Encouraging caregivers to engage with their children in direct literacy activities, shared book reading and advanced verbal interactions during reading, and to include language and mathematical content during these activities, should promote children's reading and mathematical abilities in secondary school. Such experiences lay a strong foundation for later school success."

Formal literacy activities not only boosted language skills and reading comprehension but also improved numerical skills. Book exposure and the quality of verbal interactions regarding mathematical content during shared book reading (for example, talking about numbers and counting) when children were of preschool age were also associated with better math outcomes at age 12. The effect also worked the other way with the quality of parent-child interaction regarding mathematics also improving children's language skills.

Aspects of the children's home learning environment -- formal literacy and numeracy activities, book exposure (parents owning books and reading to the child), and the quality of verbal parent-child interactions regarding language and mathematics -- were also assessed and researchers ensured they accounted for background variables, such as gender, maternal education and socio-economic status, which affect the home learning environment in the results.