The role of daytime napping in sleepiness and cognitive function in 24-70 year olds /

Daytime napping improves well-being and performance for young adults. The benefits of napping in older adults should be investigated because they have fragmented nocturnal sleep, cognitive declines, and more opportunity to nap. In addition, experience with napping might influence the benefits of napping. Study 1 examined the role of experience with napping in young adults. Habitual (n = 23) and non-habitual nappers (n = 16) were randomly assigned to a 20-minute nap or a 20- minute reading condition. Both groups slept the same according to macro architecture. However, microarchitecture showed greater theta, alpha, and beta power during Stage 1, and greater delta, alpha, and sigma power during Stage 2 for habitual nappers, for the most part indicating better sleep. Both groups felt less sleepy after the nap. P2 latency, reflecting information processing, decreased after the nap for habitual nappers, and after the control condition for non-habitual nappers. In sum, both groups who slept felt better, but only the habitual nappers who napped gained a benefit in terms of information processing. Based on this outcome, experience with napping was investigated in Study 2. Study 2 examined the extent to which daytime napping enhanced cognition in older adults, especially frontal lobe function. Cognitive deficits in older adults may be due to sleep loss and age-related decline in brain functioning. Longer naps were expected to provide greater improvement, particularly for older adults, by reducing sleep pressure. Thirty-two adults, aged 24-70 years, participated in a repeated measures dose-response manipulation of sleep pressure. Twenty- and sixty-minute naps were compared to a no-nap condition in three age groups. Mood, subjective sleepiness, reaction time, working memory, 11 novelty detection, and waking electro physiological measures were taken before and after each condition. EEG was also recorded during each nap or rest condition. Napping reduced subjective sleepiness, improved working memory (serial addition / subtraction task), and improved attention (reduced P2 amplitude). Physiological sleepiness (i.e., waking theta power) increased following the control condition, and decreased after the longer nap. Increased beta power after the short nap, and seen with older adults overall, may have reflected increased mental effort. Older adults had longer latencies and smaller amplitudes for several event-related potential components, and higher beta and gamma power. Following the longer nap, gamma power decreased for older adults, but increased for young adults. Beta and gamma power may represent enhanced alertness or mental effort. In addition, Nl amplitude showed that benefits depend on the preceding nap length as well as age. Since the middle group had smaller Nl amplitudes following the short nap and rest condition, it is possible that they needed a longer nap to maintain alertness. Older adults did not show improvements to Nl amplitude following any condition; they may have needed a nap longer than 60 minutes to gain benefits to attention or early information processing. Sleep characteristics were not related to benefits of napping. Experience with napping was also investigated. Subjective data confirmed habitual nappers were happier to nap, while non-habitual nappers were happier to stay awake, reflecting self-identified napping habits. Non-habitual nappers were sleepier after a nap, and had faster brain activity (i.e., heightened vigilance) at sleep onset. These reasons may explain why non-habitual nappers choose not to nap.

Investigating opposing aftereffects in 8-year-olds and adults

Previous studies have shown that adults and 8-year-olds process faces using norm-based coding and that prolonged exposure to one kind of facial distortion (e.g., compressed features) temporarily shifts the prototype, a process called adaptation, making similarly distorted faces appear more attractive (Anzures et aI., 2009; Valentine, 1999; Webster & MacLin, 1999). Aftereffects provide evidence that our prototype is continually updated by experience. When adults are adapted to two face categories (e.g., Caucasian and Chinese; male and female) distorted in opposing directions (e.g., expanded vs. compressed), their attractiveness ratings shift in opposite directions (Bestelmeyer et aI., 2008; Jaquet et aI., 2007), indicating that adults have dissociable prototypes for some face categories. I created a novel meth04 to investigate whether children show opposing aftereffects. Children and adults were adapted to Caucasian and Chinese faces distorted in opposite directions in the context of a computerized storybook. When testing adults to validate my method, I discovered that opposing aftereffects are contingent on how participants categorize faces and that this categorization is dependent on the context in which adapting stimuli are presented. Opposing aftereffects for Caucasian and Chinese faces were evident when the salience of race was exaggerated by presenting faces in the context of racially segregated birthday parties; expanded faces selected as most normal more often for the race of face that was expanded during adaptation than for the race of face that was compressed. However, opposing aftereffects were not evident when members of the two groups were presented engaging in cooperative social interactions at a racially integrated birthday party. Using the storybook that emphasized face race I 11 provide the first evidence that 8-year-olds demonstrate opposing aftereffects for two face categories defined by race, both when judging face normality and when rating attractiveness.

The influence of emotional body posture on adults' and 8-year-olds' perception facial expressions

The present set of experiments was designed to investigate the development of children's sensitivity of facial expressions observed within emotional contexts. Past research investigating both adults' and children's perception of facial expressions has been limited primarily to the presentation of isolated faces. During daily social interactions, however, facial expressions are encountered within contexts conveying emotions (e.g., background scenes, body postures, gestures). Recently, research has shown that adults' perception of facial expressions is influenced by these contexts. When emotional faces are shown in incongruent contexts (e.g., when an angry face is presented in a context depicting fear) adults' accuracy decreases and their reaction times increase (e.g., Meeren et a1. 2005). To examine the influence of emotional body postures on children's perception of facial expressions, in each of the experiments in the current study adults and 8-year-old children made two-alternative forced choice decisions about facial expressions presented in congruent (e.g., a face displayed sadness on a body displaying sadness) and incongruent (e.g., a face displaying fear on a body displaying sadness) contexts. Consistent with previous studies, a congruency effect (better performance on congruent than incongruent trials) was found for both adults and 8-year-olds when the emotions displayed by the face and body were similar to each other (e.g., fear and sad, Experiment l a ) ; the influence of context was greater for 8-year-olds than adults for these similar expressions. To further investigate why the congruency effect was larger for children than adults in Experiment 1 a, Experiment 1 b was conducted to examine if increased task difficulty would increase the magnitude of adults' congruency effects. Adults were presented with subtle facial and despite successfully increasing task difficulty the magnitude of the. congruency effect did not increase suggesting that the difference between children's and adults' congruency effects in Experiment l a cannot be explained by 8-year-olds finding the task difficult. In contrast, congruency effects were not found when the expressions displayed by the face and body were dissimilar (e.g., sad and happy, see Experiment 2). The results of the current set of studies are examined with respect to the Dimensional theory and the Emotional Seed model and the developmental timeline of children's sensitivity to facial expressions. A secondary aim of the series of studies was to examine one possible mechanism underlying congruency effe cts-holistic processing. To examine the influence of holistic processing, participants completed both aligned trials and misaligned trials in which the faces were detached from the body (designed to disrupt holistic processing). Based on the principles of holistic face processing we predicted that participants would benefit from misalignment of the face and body stimuli on incongruent trials but not on congruent trials. Collectively, our results provide some evidence that both adults and children may process emotional faces and bodies holistically. Consistent with the pattern of results for congruency effects, the magnitude of the effect of misalignment varied with the similarity between emotions. Future research is required to further investigate whether or not facial expressions and emotions conveyed by the body are perceived holistically.

Developing science language for materials and their properties with 6-7 year olds.

El objeto de esta serie es familiarizar a los niños de seis y siete años con el vocabulario de la ciencia, entendida ésta como los materiales y sus propiedades.El uso correcto del vocabulario científico es esencial para alcanzar altos logros en las pruebas nacionales de evaluación en el Reino Unido, y para conseguir este objetivo se utilizan tanto las actividades de la ciencia como su contexto en la vida cotidiana.

Developing science language for living things with 8-9 year olds.

El objeto de esta serie es familiarizar a los niños de ocho y nueve años con el vocabulario de la ciencia, entendida ésta como los procesos de la vida, de los seres humanos y de los demás animales, y de las plantas.El uso correcto del vocabulario científico es esencial para alcanzar altos logros en las pruebas nacionales de evaluación en el Reino Unido; para conseguir este objetivo se utilizan tanto las actividades de la ciencia como su contexto en la vida cotidiana.

Education for all : the future of education and training for 14-19 year olds.

Aborda varias cuestiones a la luz de las pruebas recogidas durante cinco años por el Informe Nuffield sobre la educación y formación entre los 14 y los 19 años, al plantear dos preguntas clave que están en el centro del debate actual sobre educación y formación de los jóvenes, con independencia de su origen, capacidades u objetivos: ¿Qué se considera una persona educada de 19 años, hoy en día? ¿Son los modelos de educación que hemos heredado del pasado suficientes para satisfacer las necesidades de todos los jóvenes, así como las necesidades sociales y económicas de la comunidad en general? Escrito por los co-directores del Informe Nuffield, sus autores abogan por una radical remodelación y una visión más amplia de la educación con vistas al futuro.

Developing formal mathematical assessment for 4-to-8-year-olds

The assessment of children in their years before school and their first years of school has been, traditionally, informal. Further, assessment of children's mathematical skills at this level has been infrequent compared to social, emotional and physical assessments. However, there are contexts where reliable, valid, standardised data from assessment in mathematics are required. This paper outlines the development of two assessment tools for mathematics that were originally developed for such contexts. Item Response Theory (IRT) analyses enabled the construction of assessment forms that address the range of abilities of 4- to 8-year-old children, and provided the scales used for constructing formative and summative reports of achievement. A description of the development of the assessment tools and the IRT analysis that provides the reporting formats are presented together with some research uses of the tools.

Over and undernutrition in the children of Australian immigrants : assessing the influence of birthplace of primary carer and english language use at home on the nutritional status of 4-5-year-olds

Objective. To document the relationship between childhood nutrition status and ethnicity (defined as the birthplace of primary carer and English language use at home) using a nationally representative sample of 4- to 5-year-old children. Design and participants. Cross-sectional population survey of 4 983 4- to 5-year-old children (2 537 boys and 2 446 girls) as part of Wave 1 (2004) of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. Main outcome measures. Overweight/obesity and thinness using the newly published body mass index cut-off points of Cole (2007). Results. In total, 20.6% (95%CI 19.5, 21.7) of children aged 4 to 5 years were estimated to be overweight or obese, while 1.0% (95%CI 0.8, 1.3) was thin. Unadjusted analyses showed a significant relationship between childhood overweight/obesity and primary carer's country of birth (χ2=15.9, p<0.01), but the significance became minimal after adjusting for socio-economic and demographic factors. The adjusted model suggests that boys of primary carer's born in Europe (excluding UK and Ireland) were less likely to be overweight/obese than boys whose primary carers were born in Australia, but the overall effect size was negligible. No difference was found for girls. In addition, boys who mainly spoke English at home were less likely to be overweight/obese (OR=0.49; 95%CI 0.27, 0.88; p=0.017) and thin (OR=0.27; 95%CI 0.12, 0.62; p=0.002) than boys who spoke a language other than English at home. No difference was found for girls. Conclusions. There is a relationship between main language spoken at home and nutritional status in 4-5-year-old boys but not girls. The use of English language at home may be a protective factor for normal weight in young boys. After adjustment for socio-economic and demographics characteristics, there was a negligible relationship between overweight/obesity in children and their primary carer's country of birth.

The PTT-20 : UK normative data for 5-11 year olds on a 20 item past tnese taskThe PTT-20: UK normative data for 5- to 11-year-olds on a 20-item past-tense task

Background: Grammatical morphology, particularly the use of the past tense in English, has been identified as a behavioural marker for specific language impairment. However, there is a dearth of instruments that assess key verb features, are short and easy to administer for clinical use, and have normative data for the UK population.

Aims: The present study aimed to develop a short version of a past-tense task (named the PTT-20) and to provide UK normative data for a large control sample of primary school-age children.

Methods & Procedures: The task consisted of 20 items taken from a well-known 52-item task developed by Marchman, Wulfeck, and Ellis Weismer in 1999, retaining the key features and variety of verbs of the original design. It was administered to 424 typically developing children aged 5;0 to 11;6 years.

Outcomes & Results: The short version reduced administration time by two-thirds to around 5–8 minutes. Normative data revealed developmental progression in performance throughout the primary school years, with the task exhibiting ceiling effects in 29% of children by age 11 years. Expected and impaired performance indicators are presented by age band, that is, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 years. Comparisons between identified children with specific language impairment and typically developing children revealed significant differences in performance. The PTT-20 correlated highly with the full 52-item task and had good internal consistency.

Conclusions & Implications: The PTT-20 can be a useful tool in the identification and assessment of young school-age children with suspected language difficulties. It can also be used in research and practice as a benchmark against which to compare the ability of children with identified language impairments.

A cluster-randomized controlled trial to reduce sedentary behavior and promote physical activity and health of 8-9 year olds : the transform-us! study

Background: Physical activity (PA) is associated with positive cardio-metabolic health and emerging evidence suggests sedentary behavior (SB) may be detrimental to children’s health independent of PA. The primary aim of the Transform-Us! study is to determine whether an 18-month, behavioral and environmental intervention in the school and family settings results in higher levels of PA and lower rates of SB among 8-9 year old children compared with usual practice (post-intervention and 12-months follow-up). The secondary aims are to determine the independent and combined effects of PA and SB on children’s cardio-metabolic health risk factors; identify the factors that mediate the success of the intervention; and determine whether the intervention is cost-effective.
Methods/design: A four-arm cluster-randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a 2 × 2 factorial design, with schools as the unit of randomization. Twenty schools will be allocated to one of four intervention groups, sedentary behavior (SB-I), physical activity (PA-I), combined SB and PA (SB+PA-I) or current practice control (C), which will be evaluated among approximately 600 children aged 8-9 years in school year 3 living in Melbourne, Australia. All children in year 3 at intervention schools in 2010 (8-9 years) will receive the intervention over an 18-month period with a maintenance ‘booster’ delivered in 2012 and children at all schools will be invited to participate in the evaluation assessments. To maximize the sample and to capture new students arriving at intervention and control schools, recruitment will be on-going up to the post-intervention time point. Primary outcomes are time spent sitting and in PA assessed via accelerometers and inclinometers and survey.
Discussion: To our knowledge, Transform-Us! is the first RCT to examine the effectiveness of intervention strategies for reducing children’s overall sedentary time, promoting PA and optimizing health outcomes. The integration of consistent strategies and messages to children from teachers and parents in both school and family settings is a critical component of this study, and if shown to be effective, may have a significant impact on educational policies as well as on pedagogical and parenting practices.