UU DoY symposium ‘Social inequality: effects on cognition and language in the first 1001 days’

The group of Johan Bolhuis, part of work package 4, are involved in organising a symposium on ‘Social inequality: effects on cognition and language in the first 1001 days‘. Social inequality has a major impact on the chances children have in society. During this symposium, three internationally renowned speakers (prof. Erika Hoff, prof. James Law en dr. Natasha Kirkham) will talk about the influence of social inequality on the cognitive and linguistic development of children.

All those interested are welcome (free of charge), but please register here.

More information

Flyer or visit the website of team ‘1001 Critical Days’ of the strategic theme Dynamics of Youth, Utrecht University www.uu.nl/1001days

For more information about the contribution to ‘1001 Criticial Days’ by Johan Bolhuis his research group, read the interview with Dr. Sita ter Haar:  “Songbirds learn a language the same way as humans: from their parents“

PROGRAM

13.00 Doors open
13.15 Opening by prof. Catrin Finkenauer & prof. Frank Wijnen
13.30 prof. Erika Hoff – ‘Language skills at 1001 Days: Antecedents and Long-Term Outcomes in Immigrant Children’
14.15 Q&A
14.30 prof. James Law – ‘Interventions to promote early language development – the pros and cons of a public health approach’
15.15 Q&A
15.30 Break – coffee/tea
16.00 dr. Natasha Kirkham – ‘Neuro-Adversity: The Developmental Neuroscience of Poverty Outcomes on Child Development’
16.45 Q&A
17.00 Drinks at Lodewijk

Language skills at 1001 Days: Antecedents and Long-Term Outcomes in Immigrant Children

Prof. Erika Hoff, Florida Atlantic University
Differences in early experience are known to create differences among children in their language skills at the age of 2 years. These differences at 2 years predict longer-term language and academic outcomes. The question I ask in this talk is how these findings do and do not apply to children in immigrant families. Data from a longitudinal study of U.S.-born children from Spanish-speaking homes suggest the story is a little different for children acquiring two languages from an early age. Dual language development, when one language is the language of the host country and the other a minority, heritage language, has a different typical course and early skills bear a different relation to later outcomes than they do in monolingual children.

Interventions to promote early language development – the pros and cons of a public health approach

Prof. James Law, Newcastle University
Over the last year Public Health England and the Department of Education have come together to develop the government’s social mobility strategy. Key to this is closing the “word gap”, a term developed from the seminal work of US psychologists Hart and Risley in the mid nineties. In this presentation we consider the work that has been commissioned – training for health visitors, a measure for 2 years olds and a “pathway” for practitioners – in the light of population data about language trajectories and what we understand about the effectiveness of intervention for young children. Finally, we ask whether the metaphor of the first 1000 days really starts too late and ends too early as Shonkoff and others have suggested.

Neuro-Adversity: The Developmental Neuroscience of Poverty Outcomes on Child Development

Dr. Natasha Kirkham, Birkbeck – University of London
Globally, almost 385 million children are currently living in extreme poverty. In Europe, figures show that a quarter of households right now are experiencing at least one form of poverty (e.g., income poverty, severe material deprivation, low work intensity, social exclusion). In addition, 23.5% of the EU-28 population are currently at risk of poverty or social exclusion, with 43 million of those suffering from severe material deprivation (i.e., unable to afford a quality meal every second day). The latest figures from British housing charity Shelter show that at least 320,000 people are homeless in Britain. This amounts to a year-on-year increase of 13,000, a 4% rise, with one in 200 people homeless. This is a crisis that is both acute and chronic, producing generation after generation of children born in disadvantaged environments, with depressed developmental outcomes. At the Centre for Brain and Cognitive  Development we are currently focussed on creating a consortium of private and public sector sites that will join together on technologically advanced and neurologically-informed explorations into how poverty affects infant and child development, across a range of contexts. In this talk, I will discuss some work by myself on the relation between SES and chaos in the home, specifically looking at attention, and some work by colleagues discussing the idea of how the deficit model of poverty needs to be reframed.