Child Development

Infants prefer live music over recorded version, study finds

lanthierj — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 19:22:00 +0000

Infants prefer live music over recorded version, study finds

lanthierj Mon, 07/17/2023 - 15:22

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Research found that babies' heart rates synchronized and they were more engaged when watching live music, compared to a recording of the same performance (photo by Envato Elements)

Alexa Battler

Topic

Breaking Research

Babies

Child Development

Connaught Fund

Music

NSERC

Psychology

Research & Innovation

University of Toronto Scarborough

Subheadline

New research from �鶹��Ƶ's TEMPO Lab suggests that even babies feel the impact of being at a live show, through both musicians’ interactions with an audience and the social experience of being in a crowd

You don't have to be an adult to feel the power of live opera – even babies prefer to attend in person, a new study suggests.

When infants watched a live performance of a baby opera, their heart rates synchronized and they were significantly more engaged than babies who watched an identical recording of the show, researchers say.

Laura Cirelli (supplied image)

“Their heart rates were speeding up and slowing down in a similar fashion to other babies watching the show,” says Laura Cirelli, assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Toronto Scarborough and co-author of a new study published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts.

“Those babies were dealing with all these distractions in the concert hall, but still had these uninterrupted bursts of attention.”

The findings suggest that even babies feel the impact of being at a live show, through both musicians’ interactions with an audience and the social experience of being in a crowd. Cirelli recalls moments during the performance when a calm would sweep over the babies, and other times when a change in pitch or vocal riff would excite them all.

She says this may offer insights into why humans are hardwired to consume music and attend live shows.

“If there’s something happening that we collectively are engaging with, we’re also connecting with each other. It speaks to the shared experience,” says Cirelli, director of the TEMPO Lab, which studies how infants and children respond to music.

“The implication is that this is not necessarily specific to this one performance. If there’s these moments that capture us, then we are being captured together.”

It’s well established that socialization is crucial during early childhood development – an infant’s brain is laying the groundwork for future life skills and abilities as it grows. Cirelli says music can play a powerful part in making those important bonds. She points to research finding infants are more likely to socialize with someone after hearing them sing a familiar song or dancing to music with them, and that infants have strong emotional reactions to music and song even before their first birthday.

“We consistently find that music can be a highly social and emotional context within which infants can foster connections to their caregivers, other family members and even new acquaintances,” she says. “This audience study shows that even in a community context, infants are engaging with the music and connecting to their fellow audience members.”

Babies watched a selection of songs from The Music Box, an operatic performance designed for infants
(submitted photo)

For the study, researchers examined 120 babies ages six to 14 months as they watched a children’s opera performed at a concert hall that doubles as a research facility at McMaster University (61 babies watched in person, while the other 59 watched a recorded version).

Researchers meticulously broadcast the recording so that the performers were at the same size, distance and volume as the live version. The babies’ responses were tracked through heart monitors and tablets mounted on the backs of concert seats. Later, student research assistants combed through the footage to note when babies looked at the stage and when they looked away.

The live performance captured the babies' attention for 72 per cent of the 12-minute show while the recording held their attention for 54 per cent of the time. The live show also had infants continuously watching for longer bouts of time.

“Even little babies who may or may not have experienced music in a community context before are already engaging more when it’s delivered this way,” Cirelli says.

“That’s one question we have as music cognition researchers: What is it about the live experience that's worth it? Why would people go if there’s not something fundamental about that live music experience that's above and beyond listening to music by yourself?”

That’s not to say babies find virtual performances boring. After the onset of the pandemic, the researchers virtually studied one group of babies as they watched the same recording in their homes over Zoom. Those babies paid about as much attention as the ones who attended the live show – watching about 64 per cent on average – but they were more likely to become distracted and have shorter bursts of attention.

“The babies watching at home didn’t have the distraction of being in a new place – they were in their comfort zone,” Cirelli says. "But even without distractions, the quality of their attention was still not nearly as strong as the audience in the live condition.”

The study – which was co-authored by former TEMPO Lab postdoctoral researcher Haley Kragness, now an assistant professor at Bucknell University – will also feed into some of Cirelli’s other work.

In a different study, she and a team of researchers are exploring whether a live performance over Zoom has the same impact on engagement as a live performance in person, and whether musicians’ interactions with an audience can play a similarly powerful role in capturing attention.

Yet another study will investigate whether live performances affect their memory of the event and how watching a live performance versus a recorded version affects how they feel about the performer.

“If a baby is frequently brought to these kinds of events, will that shape their foundation for engaging in music and the community later in childhood?” Cirelli asks.

“It speaks to why we even engage with music at all.”

The study was funded by the �鶹��Ƶ Connaught New Researcher Award and by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

A bitter truth: 30 years of child welfare data reveals systemic inequities, racism and harm

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 15:00:03 +0000

A bitter truth: 30 years of child welfare data reveals systemic inequities, racism and harm

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 03/20/2023 - 11:00

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Participants hold a banner at Dundas Square in Toronto during a National Day of Truth and Reconciliation event on Sept. 30, 2021 (Photo by Shawn Goldberg/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images)

Topic

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Indigenous

Research & Innovation

When the first Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (OIS) was published in 1993, province-wide knowledge of child welfare investigation rates and outcomes was scarce.

“Whenever I tried to go get data, I couldn’t. It literally did not exist,” said Nico Trocmé, a professor at McGill University who led the first OIS study after spending several years on the frontline at a child welfare agency.

Barbara Fallon

Researchers have since produced a new Ontario study every five years, with the seventh iteration – led by Barbara Fallon, a professor in the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work – launching later this year.

The remarkable 30-year research undertaking, which includes four Canada-wide studies and two studies specific to First Nations, has revealed hard truths related to racism and deep inequalities for First Nations as well as Black, Latin American and other racialized communities.

“These data aren’t everything, but they’re certainly foundational to understanding how we can serve children and families in a more responsive way,” says Fallon, who stepped into the role of principal investigator of OIS after serving as project manager on the 1998 study. Fallon is also �鶹��Ƶ’s associate vice-president, research and Canada Research Chair in Child Welfare.

Working in collaboration with community partners, the studies’ researchers have shown that not only are families in racialized communities much more likely to be investigated by child welfare agencies, but their children are also removed at disproportionately higher rates than in investigations involving white families.

By compiling and analyzing hundreds of thousands of child maltreatment investigations across the province and country, the studies also show how these disparities are getting worse.

Across Canada in 2008, First Nations families were four times more likely to be investigated and almost 12 times more likely to have their children removed from the home at the conclusion of a child maltreatment-related investigation than non-Indigenous families in sampled agencies. In 2019, a First Nations child was a staggering 17 times more likely to be placed in care.

The wide-angle view of these studies has enabled researchers, community leaders and policy makers to recognize problems and needs at a societal level.

“So often in child welfare, we codify the wrongdoing at the level of the parent,” says Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the Caring Society and a professor at McGill University’s School of Social Work. Blackstock earned a PhD in social work from �鶹��Ƶ in 2009 and received an honorary degree from the university in 2018. “And I will hold parents’ feet to the fire for things they can change. But in so many of these cases, it’s actually things beyond their control.

“This type of data allows us to push for change at those systemic levels often held within government policies and legislation.”

Read the full story at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

How effective are school food programs? �鶹��Ƶ researchers launch nationwide study

lanthierj — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 11:50:38 +0000

How effective are school food programs? �鶹��Ƶ researchers launch nationwide study

lanthierj Fri, 12/10/2021 - 06:50

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(Photo by Siarhei Shuntsikau/Dreamstime)

Jim Oldfield

Topic

Breaking Research

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Joannah & Brian Lawson Centre for Child Nutrition

Child Development

Child Health

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Research & Innovation

St. Michael's Hospital

Researchers at the University of Toronto have begun studying school-based meal programs across Canada to better understand which programs work well, how they have functioned during the COVID-19 pandemic – and whether a long-discussed national program could improve child nutrition in this country.

School food programs in Canada number in the thousands, reaching an estimated one-fifth of the country's five million students. Researchers will identify and evaluate the programs and explore opportunities to pilot improvements, with a focus on vulnerable groups in urban and rural schools and underserved communities.

Daniel Sellen

“Many people and organizations put huge effort into feeding children in schools every day across this country,” says Daniel Sellen, the study lead and director of the Joannah & Brian Lawson Centre for Child Nutrition in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at �鶹��Ƶ. “We need a much fuller picture of this work to guide policy and program development, and to improve delivery at the community level.”

School-based food programs in Canada vary greatly in design and are delivered by many organizations including charities, school boards, governments, churches and corporations. Despite these efforts, Canada ranked 37^th of 41 wealthy countries in a recent UNICEF report on children’s access to healthy food.

The �鶹��Ƶ study, called Feeding Kids, Nourishing Minds, will inform discussion of a more cohesive, national program – an approach endorsed by more than 180 organizations through the Coalition for Health School Food, and an idea to which the federal Liberal government committed $1 billion in its election platform this year.

Katerina Maximova

“Canada is the only G7 nation without a national school food program,” says Katerina Maximova, a member of the study’s steering committee and an associate professor at �鶹��Ƶ’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. “The timing is right for policy development on a national program, and this study will provide a strong evidence base for those efforts.”

Policymakers are now working to develop a framework for a National School Food Policy, laying the groundwork to establish a national program, says Maximova, who holds a Chair in Early Life Interventions at MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions with St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto.

But the many groups involved with design and delivery of a national program will need finer detail in the coming years.

“What should a national program look like, and how best to implement it while building on existing capacity? We need to answer these questions,” Maximova says.

Further concerns include which foods should be on the menu and how to source them, and how best to monitor and regulate a program to national standards.

The new study will address these and other issues over a four-year span, and will include researchers from medicine, public health, social work, engineering, humanities and early child development.

The researchers will begin to share findings in 2022, including a planned review of all Canadian programs with information on school meal program format and nutritional quality, and the ages, socioeconomic and health status of children served.

Later phases of the study will employ workshops and consultations with local educators, school nutritionists and public health units, followed by trials, cohort studies and a national knowledge-sharing campaign.

The need for better data and a more effective approach to school food programs across Canada is pressing.

Pre-pandemic studies showed that fewer than one-third of Canadian children consumed enough fruits and vegetables, and that almost one-third were overweight or obese. Global research has long linked child diets to academic performance and health, and shown that school food programs such as breakfasts, lunches and snacks can be effective interventions.

In the first few months of the pandemic, Statistics Canada reported a jump in food insecurity, or the inadequate access to affordable and nutritious food, from 12.7 to 14.6 per cent of households. Global studies have also shown weight gain among children of all ages during the pandemic – a trend some experts have noticed in Canada.

Sloane Freeman

“Anecdotally, I’ve seen both worsening nutrition and growing weight gain,” says research team member Sloane Freeman, an assistant professor of paediatrics at �鶹��Ƶ and a clinician-scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto. “More children have missed meals they would have had at school. Many were home all day and snacked on less nutritious food.”

The new study will help quantify those impacts on child nutrition, and on school-based food programs – many of which responded to the pandemic with new food safety measures and creative delivery options such as food boxes and cards.

This new data should inform COVID recovery planning in 2022, and the broader goal of better child nutrition through more effective school-based programs in the long-term, says Freeman, who is also the founder of the Model Schools Pediatric Health Initiative.

The scope of the project is unprecedented. Some Canadian research groups have detailed the need for a more integrated approach to school-based nutrition, including the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph. But Feeding Kids, Nourishing Minds will be the largest and most comprehensive study of the topic to date.

“It’s a really big project, that’s one reason it hasn’t been done before,” says Freeman. “It requires a Herculean effort from a multidisciplinary, dedicated team with robust funding. We are that team, and I’m excited to see what we can do.”

Feeding Kids, Nourishing Minds is funded by a $2-million investment from President’s Choice Children’s Charity, and by the Joannah & Brian Lawson Centre for Child Nutrition at the University of Toronto.

'An experience I wouldn't want to encourage': �鶹��Ƶ's Tina Malti on separating refugee children from families

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 28 Jan 2020 22:20:28 +0000

'An experience I wouldn't want to encourage': �鶹��Ƶ's Tina Malti on separating refugee children from families

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 01/28/2020 - 17:20

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In a photo that went viral, two-year-old Honduran asylum-seeker Yanela cries as her mother, Sandra Sanchez, is searched and detained near the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018 (photo by John Moore via Getty Images)

Topic

A two-year-old girl in a red shirt stands next to a white border patrol truck at night, crying. Her mother stands with her hands against the truck as a border official wearing latex gloves searches and detains her. In that moment, the child looks very alone.

The photo by Getty Images photographer John Moore went viral, becoming a representation of the pain and anguish brought about by family separation at the United States border with Mexico, and went on to win the 2019 World Press Photo of the Year. While the Honduran asylum seeker and her daughter were not ultimately separated, the image served as a powerful reminder of the trauma migrant children face.

“From a child development perspective, separation is an experience I wouldn’t want to encourage,” says Tina Malti, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga, noting separation at the border has a negative effect on child development.

Malti, who won the 2019 Desmond Morton Research Excellence Award, made the comment during the annual Desmond Morton Research Excellence Lecture after she was asked about the impact of the family separation policy on children. The question arose after Malti presented her research, which strives to understand how children become kinder, less aggressive and overcome traumatic stress.

With tens of thousands of refugee children around the world unaccompanied or separated from their families, the question of what impact these experiences will have on their behaviour looms large.

Malti’s recent research focuses on kindness in children, which she notes is an important virtue that is recognized as a value. “Kindness is one way to become humane,” she explains, adding it leads to more inclusive societies as it builds tolerance and peace.

“Children are not born good or bad,” Malti adds. “All children have the potential to become kind.”

Tina Malti, a professor of psychology at �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga, won the 2019 Desmond Morton Research Excellence Award, which recognizes outstanding career achievement in research and scholarly activity (photo by Drew Lesiuczok)

The capacity for kindness evolves over time, but for Malti the question is when this “remarkable capacity” for kindness emerges in children and how war-related trauma experienced by refugee children affects kindness.

Malti and her team are currently studying prosocial development and the mental health of refugee children resettling in Canada. The study focuses on newcomer families with children ages five to 12 who were displaced for an average of three-and-a-half years.

Kent Moore, �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga’s vice-principal, research, says Malti’s research is a topical subject as society begins to grasp the issues around mental health.

Witnessing violence and experiencing family separation has a negative effect on prosocial development, Malti says, explaining refugee children score lower on emotional regulation. They do, however, score similar to the average using other metrics, including sympathy.

“When it comes to kindness, I think it’s important to see the complexity of the phenomenon,” Malti says, noting it’s important to understand the foundations of kindness, and how, when and why it emerges in and across populations. She adds that her goal is to “nurture the potential for kindness in every child.”

�鶹��Ƶ-led study finds link between 'ADHD-like symptoms' and high fluoride levels during pregnancy

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 15:37:56 +0000

�鶹��Ƶ-led study finds link between 'ADHD-like symptoms' and high fluoride levels during pregnancy

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 10/10/2018 - 11:37

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The study analyzed data from 213 mother-child pairs in Mexico City (Photo by Lino Mirgeler/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Topic

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Fluoride

Higher levels of urinary fluoride during pregnancy are associated with more ADHD-like symptoms in school-age children as reported by parents, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Toronto and other universities.

The findings, published today in Environment International, stem from the researchers’ analysis of data from 213 mother-child pairs in Mexico City that were part of the Early Life Exposures in Mexico to Environmental Toxicants project. The project recruited pregnant women from 1994 to 2005 and has continued to follow the women and their children ever since.

“Our findings are consistent with a growing body of evidence suggesting that the growing fetal nervous system may be negatively affected by higher levels of fluoride exposure,” said Morteza Bashash, the study’s lead author and a researcher at �鶹��Ƶ’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

Tap water and dental products have been fluoridated in communities in Canada and the United States (as well as milk and table salt in some other countries) by varying amounts for more than 60 years to prevent cavities. In recent years, however, fierce debate over the safety of water fluoridation — particularly for children’s developing brains — has prompted researchers to explore the issue and provide evidence to inform national drinking water standards.

The study's research team — including experts from the University of Toronto, York University, the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico, University of Michigan, Indiana University, the University of Washington and Harvard University — analyzed urine samples that had been obtained from mothers during pregnancy and from their children between six and 12 years of age to reconstruct personal measures of fluoride exposure for both mother and child.

The researchers then analyzed how levels of fluoride in urine related to the child’s performance on a variety of tests and questionnaires that measure inattention and hyperactivity, and provided overall scores related to ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Analyses were adjusted for other factors known to impact neurodevelopment, such as gestational age at birth, birthweight, birth order, sex, maternal marital status, smoking history, age at delivery, education, socioeconomic status and lead exposure.

“Our findings show that children with elevated prenatal exposure to fluoride were more likely to show symptoms of ADHD as reported by parents,” said Bashash. “Prenatal fluoride exposure was more strongly associated with inattentive behaviours and cognitive problems, but not with hyperactivity,”

This work builds off of previous research the team published on this population demonstrating that higher levels of urine fluoride during pregnancy are associated with lower scores on tests of IQ and cognition in the school-age children.

ADHD is the most common psychiatric disorder diagnosed in childhood, affecting between five and nine per cent of all school-aged children.

“The symptoms of ADHD often persist into adulthood and can be impairing in daily life,” said Christine Till, an associate professor of psychology at York University and co-author on the study.

“If we can understand the reasons behind this association, we can then begin to develop preventive strategies to mitigate the risk,” said Till, who is also the principal investigator of another National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded grant examining fluoride exposure in a large Canadian sample of pregnant women.

The study was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the NIH.

Children busy with active sports schedules still find time to play: �鶹��Ƶ study

ullahnor — Thu, 12 Jul 2018 15:46:00 +0000

Children busy with active sports schedules still find time to play: �鶹��Ƶ study

ullahnor Thu, 07/12/2018 - 11:46

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�鶹��Ƶ researchers find children with higher participation in organized sport and physical activity are still active in free play (photo by NeONBRAND via Unsplash)

Jelena Damjanovic

Topic

Breaking Research

Child Development

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Are children’s busy schedules depriving them of their childhood and the ability to play freely? Not really, says a �鶹��Ƶ study.

Researchers at �鶹��Ƶ's Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE) worked with colleagues at McMaster University on a study, published in the Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise journal, that found children with higher participation in organized sport and physical activity were engaging in greater free play, over time.

“Given the importance of free active play to development, it is reassuring to see that participation in organized sport and physical activity does not negatively affect discretionary active play,” says John Cairney, a professor at KPE. “Our results show that although participation in active free play peaks at approximately age 12 and then declines to age 14, children who participate in organized sport and physical activity maintain a higher level of active free play relative to their peers who are not involved in these organized activities.”

Over a five-year period, the researchers followed 2278 children moving through Grades 5 to 8 using a self-reported sport and physical activity questionnaire. They also looked at whether age, sex and socioeconomic status played a role.

They believe a possible explanation for this association may be related to the role sport plays in supporting physical literacy and the development of fundamental movement skills, allowing children to participate in more active play pursuits in their free time.

“The relationship between organized sport participation and positive youth development is well established,” says Cairney, the lead author of the study. “In addition to the psychosocial benefits, organized sports participation is linked to health-related outcomes such as improved metabolic health and bone mineral density, and improved nutritional habits, including increased fruit and vegetable consumption.”

Children and youth participating in free, active play are also given opportunities to be creative, learn to organize games in the absence of adults or specific rules, and develop or alter physical activity experiences in a variety of ways and settings, researchers say.

“Organized sport and physical activity often involve a skill development component, where fundamental motor skills are practiced and reinforced,” says Cairney. “Because children do not naturally acquire many of these skills, the acquisition and reinforcement of a range of these skills through structured experiences may provide the foundational skills necessary to facilitate participation in a broader range of discretionary activities in children.”

Kelly Arbour-Nicitopoulos, assistant professor at KPE and co-author of the study, says another explanation could be that children who are naturally inclined to be active “simply participate in a wide variety of activities, some organized and others discretionary.”

The researchers found the positive effect of sport participation on free play to benefit both sexes, although the effect is marginally better for boys than for girls. On the other hand, sex and socioeconomic status are among the most important barriers to children’s participation in organized sport.

“Removing structural and social/cultural barriers to organized physical activity participation is important for participation in sport and may also help to support active free play,” says Arbour-Nicitopoulos. “This should be a priority for policy-makers, communities and parents.”

Researchers also found indirect evidence against early specialization in a single sport or physical activity. Cairney says the study shows that the pursuit of multiple sports and physical activities, rather than a single activity, encourages active play in children.

The study was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Lost in translation: �鶹��Ƶ study listens in on speech development in early childhood

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 21:22:06 +0000

Lost in translation: �鶹��Ƶ study listens in on speech development in early childhood

noreen.rasbach Fri, 01/12/2018 - 16:22

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(photo by SupportPDX via Flickr)

Blake Eligh

Topic

Our Community

Child Development

Research & Innovation

University of Toronto Mississauga

If you’ve ever listened in on two toddlers at play, you might have wondered how much of their babbling might get lost in translation. A new study from the University of Toronto provides surprising insights into how much children and adults understand when they speak to each other.

The study by Elizabeth Johnson, associate professor of psychology at �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga, and post-doctoral researchers Angela Cooper and Natalie Fecher investigated how well toddlers understand words spoken by themselves, adults and other children.

“Children have to know so much before they can actually produce a word. it’s incredibly complicated,” says Johnson, who runs �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga's Child Language and Speech Studies Lab. “We were interested in how well toddlers could understand themselves.”

Working with 54 pairs of mothers and children aged 30 to 36 months, the team recorded participants saying 32 words of varying difficulty – such as dog, cup, stroller and strawberry – that were commonly understood by toddlers. On a return visit, participants were shown two unrelated images as they listened to the recorded words. Eye-tracking technology recorded whether they looked to the correct image when hearing words spoken by themselves, another toddler, their own mother, or another child’s mother.

Interested in publicly funded research in Canada? Learn more at �鶹��Ƶ’s #supportthereport advocacy campaign

The researchers discovered that children could readily identify words spoken by adults, but faced more difficulty identifying words spoken by other children or themselves.

“We found that two-and-a-half-year-olds can understand their own mother just as well as an unfamiliar mother,” Johnson says. “Crucially, they understand adult voices better than either their own voice or the voice of another child.”

Johnson says she knows of no study that has looked at children at this age and their perception of other children’s voices.

“These findings have important theoretical implications for how children mentally represent words," she says. "The way they pronounce a word isn’t the way it’s represented in their mind.”

“This is an age where kids are producing substantial vocabulary, but their pronunciations are quite distinct from the adult form,” she adds. “Their perception and comprehension far exceeds their production of speech.”

Her conclusion: “Children understand so much more than you think they do, and they know so much more about the sound structure of words than they let on by the way they speak. They understand you better than they understand themselves.”

The study, “Toddlers’ comprehension of adult and child talkers: Adult targets versus vocal tract similarity,” will appear in the April 2018 edition of Cognition. The research was supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Canada Research Chairs program.

Why children exclude each other; helping kids open up about being left out

sgupta — Wed, 02 Dec 2015 11:57:47 +0000

Why children exclude each other; helping kids open up about being left out sgupta Wed, 12/02/2015 - 06:57

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(photo "left Out" by Charamelody via Flickr)

Blake Eligh

Author legacy

Blake Eligh

Topic

It can be heartbreaking to feel like an outsider – particularly when you're a kid.

But University of Toronto researchers are developing a tool they hope will provide new insights into why children exclude each other, and what they think about life both inside and outside of the circle of inclusion.

“Children and adults face exclusion and inclusion every day," says associate psychology professor Tina Malti. “Children might exclude one another for a variety of reasons, such as gender, ethnicity or a developmental issue.”

It can be used as a bullying technique, or for practical reasons, such as a limited birthday party guest list.

“It can begin as early as the preschool years, and it continues and changes as we grow,” the �鶹��Ƶ Mississagua researcher says. “It’s important that we understand how children are understanding and dealing with this issue.”

Previously, researchers studied exclusionary behaviour by presenting hypothetical situations to children who were questioned about how they might respond to the situation, and asked to guess how their peers might feel and act. According to Malti, this technique presents some challenges.

“The hypothetical scenarios are removed from the children’s everyday experiences, so they can’t always easily relate to them,” she says. Researchers must also tread lightly with the feelings of their young subjects. “Many children experience exclusion on an everyday basis, and don’t want to revisit extremely negative memories of past experiences,” she says.

Malti was recently awarded funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to create a new tool for studying children’s experiences with peer inclusion and exclusion.

Her team at UTM’s Laboratory for Social-Emotional Development and Intervention will interview 60 children, aged five to 15, about their experiences with peer exclusion. The interviews will be catalogued in a library of video clips and stories to be used in place of the hypothetical situations previously presented in research interviews.

“We will let the children tell us what they experience on an everyday basis, about times they were excluded and times they excluded others,” Malti says. “The children will be the story tellers.”

Researchers will be able to use the new catalogue of stories when investigating children’s experiences with exclusion. It is hoped that using real stories, instead of hypothetical situations, will make the content more relatable to children and encourage more accurate responses from subjects about their own experiences.

Malti says that understanding how children use and react to exclusion will help educators and parents find better ways encourage inclusivity.

“There’s clear evidence that inclusion of children who are different promotes tolerance and pro-social attitudes, and an openness to experience with people who are different from us,” Malti says. “The more diverse our societies become, the more important it becomes to include those who are very different from us.”

(See the original of the photo used above at Flickr)

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sites/default/files/2015-12-02-feeling-alone.jpg

Dr. Mike Evans releases new video: tackling childhood obesity and nutrition

sgupta — Mon, 11 May 2015 11:53:45 +0000

Dr. Mike Evans releases new video: tackling childhood obesity and nutrition sgupta Mon, 05/11/2015 - 07:53

Vitaly Kazakov

Author legacy

Vitaly Kazakov

He’s the University of Toronto professor whose face is best known as a comic-style image on a whiteboard.

His short videos on everything from flatulence to palliative care have captured more than 10 million views and his work has been discussed everywhere from network news broadcasts to the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. (See the video 23 1/2 Hours.)

Now, Dr. Mike Evans is taking on healthy eating – unveiling his latest video at the official campaign launch for the �鶹��Ƶ Centre for Child Nutrition, Health and Development.

In the video, Evans highlights the challenges children and their families face in finding ways to eat healthily, as well as Canada’s growing childhood overweight and obesity problem.

“The centre is being built to rethink this cascade and build innovative solutions to help kids and their families eat better,” says Evans. As the centre’s chair in patient engagement in child nutrition, Evans is using his large online following and well-honed patient engagement skills to help the centre improve the health of children and families in Canada and around the world.

The video was presented during a meeting of the centre’s advisory council, attended by federal and provincial government officials including Ontario Deputy Minister of Health and Long-Term Care Dr. Bob Bell, senior leaders from the food industry, health-focused NGOs and academic institutions. Their discussion focused on exploring opportunities for the centre to have a national and international impact in child health.

“The researchers in our centre, together with our partners across disciplines and sectors, are working hard to answer key questions in child nutrition and health that continue to elude us,” said Dr. Harvey Anderson, the centre’s executive director and professor in the department of nutritional sciences. “These answers will help educate our health professionals, inform public policy, support better food production and processing and improve public awareness and engagement.”

For his part, Evans says he will continue to translate new discoveries made by his colleagues at the centre into engaging educational materials for kids and their families. The centre will share these resources through online channels, including its website.

“Food has a ripple effect in our society,” he says. “On the one hand, eating habits can lean towards too much, and too unhealthy. But on the other hand, food brings together families, builds communities and gives us health. The CCNHD wants to build a new platform that explores this balance, especially with respect to our kids, and tips it towards health.”

Vitaly Kazakov is a writer with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

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Pregnant women, nursing mothers and fish consumption

sgupta — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 11:24:52 +0000

Pregnant women, nursing mothers and fish consumption sgupta Thu, 04/17/2014 - 07:24

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Despite the limitations of the advisories “substituting fish with beef may actually result in higher exposure to other contaminants,” says researcher (all photos by Ken Jones)

Don Campbell

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Don Campbell

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Advisories reduce exposure to mercury, not so effective against persistent organic pollutants

A new modeling study suggests that fish consumption advisories for expecting mothers are ineffective in reducing infant exposure to long-lived contaminants like persistent organic pollutants (POPs).

The study, performed by a team of researchers including University of Toronto Scarborough PhD student Matt Binnington and Professor Frank Wania, looks at how different levels of environmental contamination, a mother’s compliance with advisories, and the behavior of chemicals in the body influenced exposure in her children.

Their model estimates that women who stop eating fish shortly before or during their pregnancy may only lower their child’s exposure to POPs by 10 to 15 per cent.

“We have to be careful in saying fish advisories don’t work at all because they can work very well for reducing exposure to quickly eliminated contaminants, such as mercury,” says Binnington. “But for POPs we found that they are not very effective.”

POPs are compounds that take a long time to break down and as a result can persist in the environment and begin to accumulate in humans by way of the food chain. While many POPs such as DDT and PCBs have long been banned from production, they still exist in the environment. Fish advisories have been developed for these chemicals because they are easily passed from mothers to their children during pregnancy and nursing, potentially affecting healthy infant neurodevelopment.

Binnington (pictured right) says consumption advisories for many POPs are ineffective because they can remain in the body for years or even decades due to properties that make it difficult for the human body to eliminate them. The same is not true for mercury-based advisories, as the time it remains in the body is much shorter compared to POPs.

“Something like mercury stays in the body for only a few months and by temporarily adjusting your diet you can reduce exposure,” says Binnington.

The limitation with consumption advisories is that while they inform people what not to eat, they do not offer much in the way of healthy alternatives, says Wania. In fact, substituting fish with meat such as beef may even end up doing more harm.

“Substituting fish with beef may actually result in higher exposure to other contaminants,” he says, adding there is also a loss of nutritional benefits by not eating fish.

The research, which received funding through NSERC and the Northern Contaminants Program (NCP) of the Canadian Department for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development (AANDC), is published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Don Campbell is a writer with the University of Toronto Scarborough.

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