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.

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.

Williams syndrome: a surprising deficit in oromotor praxis in a population with proficient language production.

Williams Syndrome (WS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder of known genetic origin, characterized by serious delays in language onset yet relatively verbose, intelligible and fluent speech in late childhood and adulthood. How do motor abilities relate to language in this group? We investigated planning and co-ordination of the movement of the speech articulators (oromotor praxis) in 28 fluent-speaking individuals with WS, aged between 12 and 30 years. Results indicate that, despite their fluent language, oromotor praxis was impaired in WS relative to two groups of typically-developing children, matched on either vocabulary or visuospatial ability.

Articulating novel words: children's oromotor skills predict nonword repetition abilities.

Purpose: Pronouncing a novel word for the first time requires the transformation of a newly encoded speech signal into a series of coordinated, exquisitely timed oromotor movements. Individual differences in children's ability to repeat novel nonwords are associated with vocabulary development and later literacy. Nonword repetition (NWR) is often used to test clinical populations.

Early production of the passive in two Eastern Bantu languages.

The passive construction is acquired relatively late by children learning to speak many languages, with verbal passives not fully acquired until age 6 in English. In other languages it appears earlier, around age 3 or before. Use of passive construction in young children was examined in two Eastern Bantu languages spoken in Kenya (Kiswahili and Kigiriama), both with frequent use of passive.

A parentally administered cognitive development assessment for children from 10 to 24 months.

The Cognitive Development Questionnaire (CDQ) allows accurate assessment of cognitive development of children from 10 to 24 months by parents and caregivers in the home. It takes between 1 and 2h to complete over about a week. Three phases of work are described, in which the instrument is progressively refined to improve its validity and reliability.

Impact of anthelminthic treatment in pregnancy and childhood on immunisations, infections and eczema in childhood: a randomised controlled trial.

Background: Helminth infections may modulate immune responses to unrelated pathogens and allergens; these effects may commence prenatally. We addressed the hypothesis that anthelminthic treatment in pregnancy and early childhood would improve responses to immunisation and modulate disease incidence in early childhood with both beneficial and detrimental effects.

Methods And Findings: A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was conducted in Entebbe, Uganda [ISRCTN32849447].

Maternal multiple micronutrient supplements and child cognition: a randomized trial in Indonesia.

Objectives: We investigated the relative benefit of maternal multiple micronutrient (MMN) supplementation during pregnancy and until 3 months postpartum compared with iron/folic acid supplementation on child development at preschool age (42 months).

Methods: We assessed 487 children of mothers who participated in the Supplementation with Multiple Micronutrients Intervention Trial, a cluster-randomized trial in Indonesia, on tests adapted and validated in the local context measuring motor, language, visual attention/spatial, executive, and socioemotional abilities. Analysis was according to intention to treat.

The effect of maternal multiple micronutrient supplementation on cognition and mood during pregnancy and postpartum in Indonesia: a randomized trial.

Maternal caregiving capacity, which is affected in part by cognition and mood, is crucial for the health of mothers and infants. Few interventions aim to improve maternal and infant health through improving such capacity. Multiple micronutrient (MMN) supplementation may improve maternal cognition and mood, since micronutrients are essential for brain function.

Individual differences in language development: relationship with motor skill at 21 months.

Language development has long been associated with motor development, particularly manual gesture. We examined a variety of motor abilities - manual gesture including symbolic, meaningless and sequential memory, oral motor control, gross and fine motor control - in 129 children aged 21 months. Language abilities were assessed and cognitive and socio-economic measures controlled for.

Test selection, adaptation, and evaluation: a systematic approach to assess nutritional influences on child development in developing countries.

Background: Evaluating the impact of nutrition interventions on developmental outcomes in developing countries can be challenging since most assessment tests have been produced in and for developed country settings. Such tests may not be valid measures of children's abilities when used in a new context.

Aims: We present several principles for the selection, adaptation, and evaluation of tests assessing the developmental outcomes of nutrition interventions in developing countries where standard assessment tests do not exist.

Physiological observations of patients admitted from A&E.

Background: A&E department records were collected over a four-week period for all patients admitted to hospital via A&E. Timing and values of recorded observations were collected, as was the length of time spent in the department. During the study period, 739 patients were admitted.