Gesture screening in young infants: Highly sensitive to risk factors for communication delay.

Introduction: Children's early language and communication skills are efficiently measured using parent report, for example, communicative development inventories (CDIs). These have scalable potential to determine risk of later language delay, and associations between delay and risk factors such as prematurity and poverty. However, there may be measurement difficulties in parent reports, including anomalous directions of association between child age/socioeconomic status and reported language.

Bilingual children reach early language milestones at the same age as monolingual peers.

In this longitudinal study, we compare the age of reaching early developmental milestones in bilingual and monolingual children and between the bilinguals' two languages. We present data from 302 Polish bilinguals (living outside of Poland with various majority languages) and 302 Polish monolinguals, aged = 12.78 months on study entry (range: 024 months), matched on sex, age at study entry, duration of parental reporting, and parental education.

The Ninhydrin Reaction Revisited: Optimisation and Application for Quantification of Free Amino Acids.

The ninhydrin reaction is commonly used for the detection of amino acids. However, in the literature, different conditions with respect to the buffer system, its pH and concentration, type of organic solvent, incubation time, and temperature, as well as the concentrations of the reagents, are described. To identify the most suitable conditions, colour development with reagents of varying compositions and different reaction temperatures and times were investigated using asparagine as a model amino acid.

Statistical learning ability at 17 months relates to early reading skills via oral language.

Statistical learning ability has been found to relate to children's reading skills. Yet, statistical learning is also known to be vital for developing oral language skills, and oral language and reading skills relate strongly. These connections raise the question of whether statistical learning ability affects reading via oral language or directly.

Do school and equality education characteristics influence young children's understanding of sex/gender constancy?

In many cognitive developmental studies, young children ( < 6 years) fail to understand that changing the appearance of a person, object, or animal does not change its underlying reality. They appear to believe that a cat wearing a dog mask is genuinely a dog (appearance/reality distinction) and that a boy wearing a dress is genuinely a girl (sex/gender constancy). These skills may be affected by various influences: testing methods, training on the constancy of biological traits, child's or sibling's diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and child's diagnosis of autism.

Paper Supercapacitor Developed Using a Manganese Dioxide/Carbon Black Composite and a Water Hyacinth Cellulose Nanofiber-Based Bilayer Separator.

Flexible and green energy storage devices have a wide range of applications in prospective electronics and connected devices. In this study, a new eco-friendly bilayer separator and primary and secondary paper supercapacitors based on manganese dioxide (MnO)/carbon black (CB) are developed. The bilayer separator is prepared via a two-step fabrication process involving freeze-thawing and nonsolvent-induced phase separation.

Learning to generalise but not segment an artificial language at 17 months predicts children's language skills 3 years later.

We investigated whether learning an artificial language at 17 months was predictive of children's natural language vocabulary and grammar skills at 54 months. Children at 17 months listened to an artificial language containing non-adjacent dependencies, and were then tested on their learning to segment and to generalise the structure of the language. At 54 months, children were then tested on a range of standardised natural language tasks that assessed receptive and expressive vocabulary and grammar.

Endings and the end of treatment bell in paediatric cancer treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of children's perspectives.

Unlabelled: Advancements in paediatric oncology have made quality of life after cancer increasingly clinically important. Little is currently known about children's experiences of treatment completion and its management.

Aim: The current study explores children's experience of ending treatment for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL), and the meaning it is given, particularly how endings are signified and marked.

Language outcomes from the UK-CDI Project: can risk factors, vocabulary skills and gesture scores in infancy predict later language disorders or concern for language development?

At the group level, children exposed to certain health and demographic risk factors, and who have delayed language in early childhood are, more likely to have language problems later in childhood. However, it is unclear whether we can use these risk factors to predict whether an individual child is likely to develop problems with language (e.g.

Individual Cell-Level Temperature Monitoring of a Lithium-Ion Battery Pack.

The work described herein details the deployment of an optical fibre strand with five fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensors for individual cell-level temperature monitoring of a three-cell lithium-ion battery pack. A polymer guide tube with 3D printed plinths is employed, resulting in high precision temperature readings with an average error of 0.97 °C, 1.

Parental Report via a Mobile App in the Context of Early Language Trajectories: StarWords Study Protocol.

Social sciences researchers emphasize that new technologies can overcome the limitations of small and homogenous samples. In research on early language development, which often uses parental reports, taking the testing online might be particularly compelling. Due to logistical limitations, previous studies on bilingual children have explored the language development trajectories in general (e.

Maternal depression is the predominant persistent risk for child cognitive and social-emotional problems from early childhood to pre-adolescence: A longitudinal cohort study.

Rationale: Brain development occurs rapidly during early childhood and continues throughout middle childhood. Early and later windows of opportunity exist to alter developmental trajectories. Few studies in low- and middle-income countries have examined the importance of the timing of exposure to risks for poor pre-adolescent cognitive and social-emotional outcomes.

Sociocultural Factors Affecting Vocabulary Development in Young South African Children.

Sociocultural influences on the development of child language skills have been widely studied, but the majority of the research findings were generated in Northern contexts. The current crosslinguistic, multisite study is the first of its kind in South Africa, considering the influence of a range of individual and sociocultural factors on expressive vocabulary size of young children. Caregivers of toddlers aged 16 to 32 months acquiring Afrikaans ( = 110), isiXhosa ( = 115), South African English ( = 105), or Xitsonga ( = 98) as home language completed a family background questionnaire and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) about their children.

A mixed methods exploration of "Creativity in Mind", an online creativity-based intervention for low mood and anxiety.

Background: Within the current context of a global pandemic, the value of the Internet has been greatly elevated for many people. This study is an investigation into a 30-day online intervention called Creativity in Mind (CIM).

Aims: To provide a preliminary indication of the relationship between participation in CIM and change in mood symptoms and wellbeing.

Oral Motor and Gesture Abilities Independently Associated With Preschool Language Skill: Longitudinal and Concurrent Relationships at 21 Months and 3-4 Years.

Purpose Early motor abilities (gesture, oral motor, and gross/fine skills) are related to language abilities, and this is not due to an association with cognitive or symbolic abilities: Oral motor skills are uniquely associated with language abilities at 21 months of age. It is important to determine whether this motor-language relationship continues beyond the earliest stage of language development to understand language acquisition better and better predict which children may have lasting language difficulties. Method In this longitudinal study, we assessed language comprehension and production, oral motor skill, gross/fine motor skill, and meaningless manual gesture at ages 3 years ( = 89) and 4 years ( = 71), comparing the contribution of motor skill and earlier (at 21 months of age) language ability.

What am I supposed to be looking at? Controls and measures in inter-modal preferential looking.

Intermodal preferential looking (IMPL) is widely used in experimental studies of infant development, especially language development. Control measures vary, and it is not clear how these affect findings. We examined effects of parental awareness of stimuli.

The role of the home environment in neurocognitive development of children living in extreme poverty and with frequent illnesses: a cross-sectional study.

The home environment is reported to contribute significantly to children's developing cognitive skills. However, it is not yet evident whether this role prevails in the context of extreme poverty and frequent ill-health. We therefore investigated the role of the home environment in Ugandan children taking into account the frequent infections and extreme poverty in which they lived.

Mental health disclosure amongst clinical psychologists in training: Perfectionism and pragmatism.

Objectives: This study investigated the incidence of lived experience of mental health problems amongst UK-based trainee clinical psychologists and factors associated with anticipated disclosure for trainees both with and without lived experience.

Methods: A web-based survey comprising the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, an adapted version of the Perceived Devaluation and Discrimination Scale, and questions about lived experience and anticipated likelihood of disclosure.

Results: The survey was completed by 348 trainees across 19 UK training institutions.

Mental health problems among clinical psychologists: Stigma and its impact on disclosure and help-seeking.

Objective(s): To assess the prevalence of personal experiences of mental health problems among clinical psychologists, external, perceived, and self-stigma among them, and stigma-related concerns relating to disclosure and help-seeking.

Method: Responses were collected from 678 UK-based clinical psychologists through an anonymous web survey consisting of the Social Distance Scale, Stig-9, Military Stigma Scale, Secrecy Scale, Attitudes towards Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale-Short Form, alongside personal experience and socio-demographic questions.

Results: Two-thirds of participants had experienced mental health problems themselves.

Production Is Only Half the Story - First Words in Two East African Languages.

Theories of early learning of nouns in children's vocabularies divide into those that emphasize input (language and non-linguistic aspects) and those that emphasize child conceptualisation. Most data though come from production alone, assuming that learning a word equals speaking it. Methodological issues can mean production and comprehension data within or across input languages are not comparable.

Measurement of expressive vocabulary in school-age children: Development and application of the Kilifi Naming Test (KNT).

The dearth of locally developed measures of language makes it difficult to detect language and communication problems among school-age children in sub-Saharan African settings. We sought to describe variability in vocabulary acquisition as an important element of global cognitive functioning. Our primary aims were to establish the psychometric properties of an expressive vocabulary measure, examine sources of variability, and investigate the measure's associations with non-verbal reasoning and educational achievement.

Reading and Phonological Awareness in Africa.

Literacy levels in Africa are low, and school instruction outcomes are not promising. Africa also has a disproportionate number of unschooled children. Phonological awareness (PA), especially phoneme awareness, is critically associated with literacy, but there is little evidence about whether PA is gained through literacy, schooling, or both, because most children studied are in education and can read at least letters.

Fractionating nonword repetition: The contributions of short-term memory and oromotor praxis are different.

The ability to reproduce novel words is a sensitive marker of language impairment across a variety of developmental disorders. Nonword repetition tasks are thought to reflect phonological short-term memory skills. Yet, when children hear and then utter a word for the first time, they must transform a novel speech signal into a series of coordinated, precisely timed oral movements.

Maternal multiple micronutrient supplementation and other biomedical and socioenvironmental influences on children's cognition at age 9-12 years in Indonesia: follow-up of the SUMMIT randomised trial.

Background: Brain and cognitive development during the first 1000 days from conception are affected by multiple biomedical and socioenvironmental determinants including nutrition, health, nurturing, and stimulation. An improved understanding of the long-term influence of these factors is needed to prioritise public health investments to optimise human development.

Methods: We did a follow-up study of the Supplementation with Multiple Micronutrients Intervention Trial (SUMMIT), a double-blind, cluster-randomised trial of maternal supplementation with multiple micronutrients (MMN) or iron and folic acid (IFA) in Indonesia.