Parent Cortical Mass

PCM's Top Articles of the Week

This week news about Plan B contraception turned parenting media to topics of sex, sex education, and sexting. Get informed. ● A new survey shows parents are quite positive toward the use of mobile technology for learning in school. Yet, recent research on multitasking shows shallower learning when students shift focus from schoolwork to "blinking inboxes" on their mobile devices. Would students have the discipline to resist? ● Recently, we’ve featured articles on government funding of brain research, but who can actually understand these projects? Tim Verstynen’s amusing article explains it to us like we were two year olds. ● Find articles about poverty, wealth and the achievement gap, extending learning time, the global achievement gap, language dancing, and out-of-school learning. ● PCM's Top 10 Influencers Arne Duncan and Geoffrey Canada were conspicuous in this week’s news. ● Don’t miss the PBS News segment about a science program at a middle school in Maine. Wow.

Parenting

Parents See Benefit of Mobile Tech, Want Schools To Take Advantage - J. Bolkan, The Journal

Parents May Devote More Teaching Time to Girls Than to Boys - Shankar Vedantam, MindShift

At What Age Should Sex Education Begin? - Room For Debate - NYTimes

Is There Emergency Contraception in Your Medicine Cabinet? - KJ Dell'Antonia, NYTimes

Understanding the Spectrum of Motivations in Sexting - Anne Collier, NetFamilyNews

Real Reason Your Kid Won’t Listen To You? Your Western Parenting Style - Nicholas Day, Slate

“Life is Good”: 4 Ways to Nurture Optimism In Your Kids - Richard Rende, RedHotParenting

The Mark of an Educated Mind - Jessica Lahey, Coming of Age in the Middle

Learning

Why Learning and Multitasking Don’t Mix - Annie Murphy Paul, The Creativity Post

The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper vs Screens - Ferris Jabr, Sci Am

Lack of Sleep Blights Pupils' Education - Sean Coughlan, BBC News

Have Standardized Tests Really Helped Kids Learn More? - Carol Burris, Washington Post

Explained: the BRAIN Initiative vs. the Human Connectome Project - Tim Verstynen, Psyc Today

Early Math and Reading Ability Linked to Job and Income in Adulthood - Science Daily

Critical Thinking Is Best Taught Outside the Classroom - Dennis M. Bartels, Scientific American

Education

Louisiana Supreme Court Rules School Vouchers Unconstitutional - Valerie Strauss, Wash Post

Are ‘No Excuses’ Reformers & Their Critics Finding Common Ground? - S. Garland, Hechinger

You'll Be Shocked by How Many of World's Top Students Are American - J. Weissmann, Atlantic

No Rich Child Left Behind - Sean F. Reardon, New York Times

To Close the 'Opportunity Gap,' We Need to Close the Vocabulary Gap - M. Petrilli, Ed Week

Growing Movement Seeks to Expand Length of School Day - Celia Baker, Deseret News

Arne Duncan’s Moment of Truth - John Merrow, Taking Note

Geoffrey Canada: Our failing schools. Enough is enough! [Video] - TED Talk

Resources

PBS News Segment: Problem Solvers - Produced by John Tulenko & David Wald, Learning Matters

TED Teams Up With PBS for Education Program - Elizabeth Jensen, New York Times

Can These iPad Apps Teach Your Kid to Code? - Lauren Goode, AllThingsD

Life Doesn’t Frighten Me: Maya Angelou’s Children's Book - Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

Picture Book about Mouse in Space, Written by a Shuttle Pilot - Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

PCM's Top Articles of the Week

This week the bombings in Boston occupy our attention. Articles here provide useful advice on how to talk to your children about these events. ● Other topics explored this week are girls and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math,) coding in schools, and the two parent education movements of ‘opting-out’ of and the ‘parent trigger.’ ● Dana Goldstein’s article on the history of philanthropy in education will increase your cortical mass about philanthrocapital. ● Washington Post’s education reporter, John Morrow, wrote an unexpected and sticky article, "Michelle Rhee's Reign of Error," about the investigations about possible cheating on high-stakes tests. ● Find articles on the importance of talking to your child, the interplay between IQ and the hours invested to gain expertise. ● Data on college acceptance rates this year will surprise you.

Parenting

How Parents Are Explaining The Boston Tragedy To Children - Joy Resmovits, Huff Post Parents

Cooperation After a Tragedy - Melanie Tannenbaum, Scientific American

How Teenagers Spend Money - Derek Thompson, The Atlantic

How Parents Around the World Describe Their Children, in Charts - Olga Khazan, The Atlantic

Four Myths About the Millennial Generation - Chelsea Clinton, TIME

Can Building Toys for Girls Improve Math and Tech Skills? - Diana Kapp, Wall Street Journal

Why Your 8-Year-Old Should Be Coding - Jolie O'Dell, VentureBeat

Learning

The Power of Talking to Your Baby - Tina Rosenberg, New York Times

What Are The Habits Of Mind? - TeachThought

The 'Reading Brain' Science of Paper versus Screens - Ferris Jabr, Scientific American

How to Stimulate Curiosity - Annie Murphy Paul, The Creativity Post

Power Can Overcome Negative Stereotypes - Rick Nauert, PsychCentral

Learning Strategies Beat IQ in Predicting Achievement - Scott Barry Kaufman, Scientific American

Education

From Carnegie to Gates - Dana Goldstein, Smithsonian Magazine

Your College Major Is a Minor Issue, Employers Say - Melissa Korn, WSJ

Michelle Rhee’s Reign of Error - John Merrow, Washington Post

To Attract More Girls to STEM, Bring Storytelling to Science - A. Kuchment, Scientific American

At Last! A Computer Science Course for All Kids - Julia Steiny, Education News

Policy Focus on Standardized Tests Leads to Opt-Out Parent Movement - Lyndsey Layton, WP

Parents Choose Unique School Takeover Model in ‘Trigger’ Vote - N. Lindstrom, Hechinger Rpt

Education Leaders Weigh In On Parent Engagement, Privacy Issues - Michele Molnar, Ed Week

With Police in Schools, More Children in Court - Erik Eckholm, New York Times

Resources

Spring 2013 Parents' Choice Awards: Audio, TV, Apps, Small Screen - Parents' Choice Awards

Colleges Report 2013 Acceptance Rates - Tanya Abrams, New York Times

8 Great Twitter Accounts for Students to Follow - Laura Bates, Fractus Learning

A New Way To Find The Best Educational Apps For Kids - Sarah Perez, TechCrunch

10 Must-Have Photo-Editing Apps for Smartphones and Tablets - The Online Mom

PCM's Top Articles of the Week

An article about Carol Dweck's mindset theory, applied to talent, asks how a growth mindset can impact creative achievements. ● Does sharing family meals together have a positive effect on children? Two studies draw different conclusions. ● There's surprising news on language dancing, and the “30 million word gap” discovered by Hart and Risley more than a decade ago. In “unprecedented scope and audacity” Providence, RI plans to use the entire city to test the theory. Read how. ● A joint statement, made by Randi Weingarten and Vicki Phillips, Ed Director at Bill Gates’ Foundation, on teacher evaluations, caught eduwonks off guard. Diane Ravitch responds. ● Get informed on ability grouping, school report cards, vouchers, and the unlikely political alliances against the common core. ● Don’t miss the giant Mindcraft map, the size of Los Angeles!

Parenting

A Parent Guide to Teachers’ Unions - Paula Bolyard, PJ Media

Families May Want to Create a Mission Statement - Bruce Feiler, New York Times

Is the American "Boy Crisis" Fictional? - Judith Warner, Time

The Many Myths About Mothers Who 'Opt Out' - Nanette Fondas, The Atlantic

Myth of Family Meals in Parent-Child Bonding Gets Debunked - Carrie Arnold, Scientific American

Family Dinners Boost Teens’ Mental Health - Cynthia Lee-McGill, Futurity.org

The Touch-Screen Generation - Hanna Rosin, The Atlantic

Learning

What Research on Babies and Pointing Reveals - Nicholas Day, Slate

Children Should Be Allowed To Get Bored, Expert Says - Hannah Richardson, BBC News

Scientists Unravel How Kids Learn Math, 1st Grade Is Key - Lauran Neergaard, Washington Post

Mindfulness Improves Reading Ability, Working Memory, and Task-Focus - Science Daily

Talent Isn’t Fixed and Other Mindsets That Lead to Greatness - Jocelyn K. Glei, 99u.com

How to Increase Our Stamina to Learn - Annie Murphy Paul, Time

Education

Providence, RI Plans to Shrink 'Word Gap' with $5M Grant - Ben Zimmer, Boston Globe

Left, Right Unite Against Common Core - Andrea Neal, Indianapolis Star

Let's Go Back to Grouping Students By Ability - Barry Garelick, The Atlantic

Parents Relying on School Report Cards Can Be Confused - Michele Molnar, Education Week

BYOT: Some Schools Urge Students to Bring Their Own Tech - Matt Richtel, New York Times

6 Steps to Effective Teacher Evaluations - Vicki Phillips & Randi Weingarten, New Republic

Weighing in on the Weingarten-Gates Article - Diane Ravitch, Diane Ravitch's Blog

With Vouchers, States Shift Aid for Schools to Families - Fernanda Santos & Motoko Rich, NYT

Good News about Low-Income Students - Caroline M. Hoxby, Brookings Institution

Resources

Here Comes Peter Cottontail, Like You've Never Heard It (Free Music Download) - coolmomtech

How Fans Recreated Game of Thrones in a Minecraft Map the Size of LA - Laura Hudson, Wired

How Do I Get My Kids Started on Minecraft? A Parents' Primer. - coolmomtech

Sylvia Plath's Little-Known Vintage Children's Book - Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

Ten Tips for Selecting Great Games - Stevanne Auerbach, Huff Post Parents

What is 'Language Dancing' and Why is it Important to Parents?

There’s a certain way parents talk to their babies that has a profound effect on how children acquire intellectual skills.  This talk is called Language Dancing.  Its cognitive effects are so far-reaching that parents, future parents, grandparents and policy makers need to know about it. This talk is also known to as “the 30 Million Word Gap.”

The Groundbreaking Discovery of the 30 Million Word Gap

In the 1980’s, two research psychologists, Betty Hart and Todd Risley, asked why kids from low income families, despite the gains they made in Head Start, were unable to close the achievement gap with children from more advantageous backgrounds? To find out, they decided to investigate what happened in families before preschool.

They studied 42 families divided into three groups--professional, working-class and low-income. Over a two and a half year period of monthly one hour observations, they meticulously recorded all “utterances” and interactions of parents and their young children, starting at age 7 months and ending at age 3.  They gave the Stanford Binet IQ test at age 3, and achievement tests at age 9. They made 3 startling discoveries and the results, they said, were “astonishing.”

First, Hart and Risley discovered a huge range in the amount of parent talk between the families.   Children of “talkative” parents heard almost 45 million words spoken during their first three years, while children of “taciturn” parents heard about 13 million words—a gap of over 30 million words. The chart below shows the word exposure in each group.

Though there were talkative and taciturn parents in all three groups, overall, professional families were much more talkative than the other two groups, and working class families were more talkative than low income families. 

The 2 Types of Parent Talk: Business Talk and Extra Talk 

Second, Hart and Risley discovered in the parent-child interaction two kinds of talk with significant effects--"business talk" and "extra talk."  Business talk referred to ordinary instructions to children, like "Eat your dinner," "Brush your teeth," or "Time for bed." 

Extra talk referred to conversations between parent and child that were face-to-face, engaged, and chatty, as if the child was listening and participating like an adult.  These chats start with phrases like, "What if..." "Do you remember...?” "Wouldn't it be better if…?” 

Hart and Risley named this extra talk language dancing.

Their research showed that in the three family groups business talk took the same number of words, about 600 per hour.  So, for children to hear more words than that, parents needed to engage in language dancing.  This was the difference. The additional 30 million words spoken in professional families were the chatty, language-rich kind.   

The Ratio of Encouraging Words to Discouraging Words

Third, Hart and Risley discovered something startling in the measurements on “Feedback Tone,” a count of encouragements and discouragements heard in parent-child interactions. Children in professional families heard 500,000 encouragements compared to 80,000 discouragements. Children in low-income families heard 80,000 encouragements compared to 200,000 discouragements.  

The data showed that business talk naturally included more prohibitions and extra talk more encouragements. So the extra talk provided not just exposure to more words, but also to more encouragements.  

The extra talk of low-income parents had just as many encouragements as professional families. But because they didn’t engage in much extra talk, their ratios of encouragements to discouragements were meaningfully different from working class and professional families.

What Were the Results?

The data, published in their book Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, showed a surprisingly high correlation between the amount of “extra talk” children heard, their IQ scores (.78) at age 3 and their standardized tests scores (.77) at age 9.  

Even more surprising was that the most powerful of extra words were the ones spoken in the first year, before the children could even speak.

When you hear these results now, you think, didn’t we know this? That’s what makes the study so remarkable.  Until these results came out in 1995, no one really understood the cognitive advantages imparted by the sheer quantity of words children heard in their first three years of life. 

Reading to Children, Television, Education Policy

Most parents know that reading to kids is essential preparation for Kindergarten.  Hart and Risley’s research helps explain why that’s true.  Reading is a kind of language dancing. 

What about television?  Unfortunately, words spoken in the background don’t wire-in the same effects as language dancing.  So televisions can't be a source of extra talk. 

As you can imagine, this research has great relevance to social policy and educational interventions.  Since this study, neuroscientists have discovered more about critical language learning periods in early childhood.  Hart and Risley believe their research makes a compelling argument to policymakers to invest in programs that inform parents about language dancing.

Additional Information:

The Early Catastrophe: the 30 Million Word Gap, by Betty Hart and Todd Risley, is their original summary of their research.

Todd Risley discusses this research in an 8 minute video interview. At the end he says, "We think we have got at what's at the core of social economic status and child achievement."  Quite a statement.

David Shenk, author of The Genius in All of Us, a PCM Top 10 book for Parents, published this article in The Atlantic, The 32 Million Word Gap.  It's an excerpt from Chapter 2 of his book.  Explains Hart and Risley's research in the framework of contemporary thinking about genetics.

This Ted Talk by Patricia Kuhl, The Linguistic Genius of Babies, is an eloquent and fascinating presentation of critical periods of language learning for babies.  The babies in science experiments are adorable, and you'll learn a ton in 13 minutes.

 Go to PCM's Top Ten Learning Concepts List