Child development

  • Parents should keep talking to boost infant language development

    Children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds tend to have poorer language skills when starting school than those from higher SES backgrounds. Now, data shows that increasing the amount of “contingent talk”— whereby a caregiver talks about objects that an infant is directly focusing on — within an infant’s first year of life promotes a wide vocabulary later in infancy.

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  • Low activity levels affect child mental development

    High activity levels (AL) in early childhood are associated with sub-optimal social and behavioural outcomes, but whether low AL have negative outcomes is unclear. Now, a study conducted by researchers at Boston University has demonstrated that AL are curvilinearly related to mental development.

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