About this session

Friday, 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Best Start: An RCT in ECE to Promote Toddlers’ Oral Language, Self-Regulation, and Brain Development

Globally, increasing numbers of children are attending early childhood education (ECE; OECD, 2023). Yet the ECE language environment can be of low quality (Dickinson et al., 2014), which is especially concerning for toddlers during rapid language development (Gilkerson et al., 2018). Children’s oral language is also a strong predictor of their self-regulation (Salmon et al., 2016); both skills are vital for children’s school readiness (McClelland et al., 2013; Pace et al., 2018). It is thus essential to foster educators’ high-quality talk. The three papers in this symposium report on the results of a large-scale cluster RCT in New Zealand of an oral language professional development program (ENRICH) for educators’ talk and children’s oral language, self-regulation, and brain development.

The first paper reports on the Main Trial findings with 1481 toddlers in 136 ECE centers (M at recruitment = 20.60 months). After 18 months, children in ENRICH centers showed higher oral language and self-regulation outcomes than children in Active Control centers. The second paper reports on the Video Project findings with a subset of 24 centers. After one year of intervention, educators in ENRICH centers were using higher-quality talk and children were talking more compared to Active Control. The third paper reports on a subset of 190 children’s resting-state EEG over the first 18 months of the study. Low effortful control was uniquely associated with subsequent atypical neurophysiological maturation over time. Together, these findings indicate that educators’ talk can be enriched to benefit children’s development at multiple levels.

Paper #1
Title	Benefits of Professional Development with Early Childhood Educators for Children’s Oral Language and Self-Regulation Skills
Presenting author	Elaine Reese, Ph.D., University of Otago, New Zealand

Paper #2
Title	Benefits of Oral Language Professional Development for Observed Educator-Toddler Talk in Early Childhood Education Classrooms
Presenting author	Isabelle Swearingen, University of Otago, New Zealand

Paper #3
Title	Longitudinal Associations Between Children’s Effortful Control and Neurophysiological Maturation in an Early Childhood Education Intervention
Presenting author	Anne Arnett, Ph.D., Harvard University, USA

View all paper details

Session chair
Vincent Reid, University of Waikato, New Zealand

Discussant
Dorthe Bleses, Ph.D., Aarhus University, Denmark

⇦ Back to schedule