Conceptualizing a Public Health Prevention Intervention for Bridging the 30 Million Word Gap

Early childhood experience is a social determinant of children’s health and well-being. The well-being of young children is founded on their relationships and interactions with parents and family members in the home, caregivers, and teachers in early education, and friends and families in the greater community. Unfortunately, the early language experience of infants and toddlers from low-income families is typically vastly different than children from middle- and higher-income families. Hart and Risley (Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Brookes, Baltimore, 1995) described a “30 Million Word Gap” experienced by age four for children from poor families compared to economically advantaged families as measured by the number of words delivered by adults in the home to their children. This discrepancy between groups is associated with a deficit in vocabulary growth over time (Hart and Risley in Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Brookes, Baltimore, 1995; in The social world of children learning to talk. Brookes, Baltimore, MD, 1999; in Am Educ (Spring), 1–9. http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1317532.files/09-10/Hart-Risley-2003.pdf, 2003), and readiness when they enter preschool and kindergarten compared to their more advantaged classmates. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize a population-level public health prevention approach to research addressing the harmful impacts of the Word Gap. The approach includes use of evidence-based practices to improve children’s language environments to foster their early language and literacy learning in early childhood. After a brief review of the Word Gap, we discuss four aspects: a conceptual framework, a community leadership team as driver of the local intervention, evidence-based language interventions for reducing the gap and promoting child language, and the measurements needed. Implications are discussed.     

Stress, Positive Emotion, and Coping

There is growing interest in positive aspects of the stress process, including positive outcomes of stress and antecedents that dispose individuals to appraise stressful situations more as a challenge than as a threat. Less attention has been given to the adaptational significance of positive emotions during stress or to the coping processes that sustain positive emotions. We review evidence for the occurrence of positive emotions under conditions of stress, discuss the functional role that positive emotions play under such conditions, and present three types of coping that are associated with positive emotion during chronic stress. These findings point to new research questions about the role of positive emotions during stress and the nature of the coping processes that generate these positive emotions.     

The Contribution of Maternal ADHD Symptomatology,Maternal DAT1, and Home Atmosphere to Child ADHD Symptomatology at 7 Years of Age

Children of mothers with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have an increased genetic and environmental risk for ADHD. The unique and interactive contributions of a maternal dopamine receptor gene (DAT1), maternal ADHD symptoms (hyperactive- impulsive, inattentive), and home atmosphere to the prediction of ADHD symptoms (hyperactive- impulsive, inattentive) in 7- year-old boys (N = 96) were examined using data from a longitudinal study of familial risk for ADHD. During the first 6 months of the study, mothers and their spouses completed a questionnaire about the mother’s ADHD symptoms. Home atmosphere questionnaire data were collected 4 years later. At the 7-year assessment, mothers reported on their child’s ADHD symptoms. Negative home atmosphere was significantly associated with child hyperactive-impulsive and inattentive symptoms. Maternal inattentive symptoms were significantly correlated with both child symptom dimensions. Regression models, with child genotype and maternal education controlled, showed main effects for maternal inattentive symptoms, maternal DAT1 10/10 genotype, and home atmosphere in the prediction of child inattentive symptoms. Only home atmosphere predicted child hyperactive-impulsive symptoms. There was a significant home atmosphere x maternal hyperactive-impulsive symptoms interaction in the prediction of child hyperactive-impulsive symptoms. Boys with higher levels of symptoms came from homes characterized by higher levels of negative atmosphere and had mothers with higher levels of hyperactive-impulsive symptoms. There was also a trend (p = 0.075) for a maternal DAT1 x home atmosphere interaction. Boys with higher levels of inattentive symptoms came from homes with higher levels of negative atmosphere and had mothers with the homozygous 10/10 genotype. The maternal heterozygous 9/10 genotype did not predict child symptoms.     

Teaching by Examples: Implications for the Process of Category Acquisition

A new paradigm, the 'teaching-by-examples' paradigm, was used to shed new light on the process of category acquisition. In four experiments ( n = 90, 90, 115, 117), manipulating the variables of category structure, status of non-target category, learning mode, and teaching mode, participants first learned a category and then taught it to someone else. High agreement between participants on the teaching sequences was found across conditions, and a typical sequence was identified for each category structure. The typical participant-produced sequences startedwith several ideal positive cases, followed by anideal negative case and then borderline cases. The efficiency of such sequences for teaching was tested in another experiment ( n = 60), in which they were compared with sequences emphasizing category borders and sequences emphasizing each dimension separately. The typical participant-produced sequences induced the most efficient learning. It is proposed that the pattern of performance may provide a rich source of data for testing and fine-tuning models of category acquisition.