@profsamwass.bsky.social
👶👨⚕️Child Psychologist/Neuroscientist🧠, attention and stress, 👨👩👧👦Dad of 2, 💻 @ERC_Research Fellow.
We loved listening to @profsamwass.bsky.social on Today this morning sharing why books are the perfect form of connection for very young children.
That's why our #ReadingRights campaign highlights the importance of early shared reading.
Listen from 2h25m 🎧
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
A toddler sat on a sofa, resting a digital tablet on their knees, captivated by the screen.
7. A new project led by @profsamwass.bsky.social records brain activity in babies and toddlers while they’re watching TV to find out. media.leverhulme.ac.uk/feature/swass
29.05.2025 09:51 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
A photo of a baby wearing a cap with wires attached being read to, plus the words: "The science behind the benefits of reading for babies"
We loved joining @profsamwass.bsky.social & Waterstones #ChildrensLaureate @frankcottrellboyce.bsky.social at a Baby Lab to discover what happens to babies' brains when they're read to.
Discover the neuroscience behind shared reading & how it enables children to flourish and thrive:
bit.ly/44YCeMu
Sir Michael Morpurgo and Frank Cottrell-Boyce backstage at Hay Festival
Frank Cottrell-Boyce and Professor Sam Wass at Hay Festival
We’ve had a fantastic day at @hayfestival.bsky.social with our Waterstones #ChildrensLaureate @frankcottrellboyce.bsky.social!
He appeared with our President Sir Michael Morpurgo in one event & spoke to @profsamwass.bsky.social about the neuroscience of sharing stories in a #ReadingRights talk!
Our #ReadingRights report with @frankcottrellboyce.bsky.social is out now, because early shared reading is vital.
Frank & our CEO @dianajgerald.bsky.social joined @profsamwass.bsky.social at a Baby Lab to discover the difference it makes - watch the full vid 👇
www.booktrust.org.uk/about-us/rea...
Those are just SOME of the reasons why sharing books is GREAT for young children’s brain development!
Full report here: www.booktrust.org.uk/about-us/rea...
Video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOry...
Structure: The frontal cortex, which helps join separate experiences into coherent goals, is slow to develop. Stories have structure. Regular story-telling may help to learn to understand about predictability and structure helping to learn to set goals. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
21.05.2025 09:55 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Clarity: Hyper-articulating speech sounds
by exaggerating mouth movements helps young children to hear the differences between words. It also helps if your child can see your mouth while you’re talking. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.01004.x
Rhythm: giving language input with a strong
rhythmic structure can help to nudge a child’s brain rhythms, which naturally are more irregular, into more stable adult-like rhythms, which helps language processing. doi.org/10.1016/j.dc...
Responsiveness: because children’s brains are messy, sometimes they’re ready for new information and sometimes they’re not. Waiting for them to initiate –by asking, looking or pointing – helps you to be sure that new info arrives when their brain is ready. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
21.05.2025 09:55 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Repetition: young brains are messy and overconnected. When they want to read the same book over and over, or look at the same picture – go with it! Doing things repeatedly helps to ‘practice’ understanding something, which builds stronger brain networks. t.co/wssvev7XXG
21.05.2025 09:55 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
To support the launch of
@booktrust.org.uk's Reading Rights report today with
@frankcottrellboyce.bsky.social, here are six neuroscience-informed tips for sharing books with young children 👇
Just out 📣 in @JEnvPsych- 'Differential Effects Of An Urban Outdoor Environment On 4-5 Year Old Children’s Attention In School' - with @GemmaGoldenberg, Molly Atkinson,
@jan_dubiel
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Images of Ann Cleeves, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Sally Dynevor and Sam Wass
The QRR will be hosting a Public Lecture on the benefits of reading at #BNA2025 featuring anncleeves.bsky.social Professor Frank Cottrell-Boyce,
Sally Dynevor and @profsamwass.bsky.social
www.eventbrite.com/e/the-queens...
#readingforwellbeing #publicengagement #thequeensreadingroom
When it comes to early years screen media – how fast-paced is TOO fast? Just heard 🎉🍾🍾 we got funding from
@LeverhulmeTrust for new project measuring how young brains respond to screen media in real time. With @JuliaDavidson13, Rachel Barr,
@jessen_sarah, @MarriottIra, PLabendzki
How can you improve pupils' concentration in primary classrooms? @profsamwass.bsky.social and Dr Gemma Goldenberg share research-informed interventions ⬇️
30.03.2025 11:01 — 👍 4 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 1
Just out in Nature Communications Psychology - in a multilingual corpus of child-directed songs, the cumulative-compressibility of the lyrics reveals multiscale complexity patterns that could support different relevant functions, e.g. attention, learning and bonding.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Again, again, again! Article for Nursery World on the neuroscience of why repetition can help concentration in the early years
www.nurseryworld.co.uk/content/feat...
…changing interpretation of multiple previous studies. Paper - hopefully a big eye opener!! - written with @EmilyDevNeuro, @JBegumAli, Mark Johnson and others. Pre-print here: biorxiv.org/content/bior... www.biorxiv.org/content/bior...
24.03.2025 07:09 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0This matters because it suggests that, for almost any study that used EEG to look at brain activity using non-event-locked paradigms, findings could be due to timing/geography of fine-grained eye movements, or brain differences time-locked to eye shifts… 7/8
24.03.2025 07:09 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Theta activity, often treated as a marker of engagement/attention (in our previous papers and tonnes others!) now suddenly looks like sum of transient fixation-related P1/N170 components. Eg data sections where no FRPs present show strongly attenuated oscillatory activity. 6/8
24.03.2025 07:09 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
They are slower, which may drive developmental differences in frequency domain observed in previous resting state studies. FRPs also differentiate between social/non-social contexts, which may drive previously observed differences in frequency domain activity between contexts 5/8
24.03.2025 07:09 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
These fixation-related potentials (FRPs) look very different in children compared with adults – more specific to particular frequency bands, etc – but a lot like evoked response potentials seen in passive, event-related paradigms. 4/8
24.03.2025 07:09 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Using co-registered eyetracking and EEG in 24-month-olds and adults we look at transient increases in cortical excitability time-locked to eye movements (~3/sec). We can clearly separate eye movement-related artifact and genuine neural activity linked to offset of saccade 3/8
24.03.2025 07:09 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0The paper looks at how previous findings on changes in frequency-domain brain activity with age – eg changes in resting-state activity, ratio of theta/alpha between social/non-social viewing contexts etc - may be driven by transient changes during to micro-level eye movements2/8
24.03.2025 07:09 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Are brain states in children passively generated in response to things that happen in our environment? Or are they actively created through micro-level movements? Big questions in latest pre-preprint from @MarriottIra that re-examines developmental EEG findings 👇 1/8
24.03.2025 07:09 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
New preprint - 'From salience to semantics: multilevel hierarchical contingencies organise parent-infant joint attention' by Pierre Labendzki, @martaperapoch
with Louise Goupil, @EmilyDevNeuro and team from
@UEL_BabyDevLab
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.26638.47686
Guest Essay for the launch of The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood's Shaping Us framework - on an under-neglected topic - on why some of the most important learning happens BEFORE we develop the ability to focus #RoyalFoundation centreforearlychildhood.org/news-insight...
10.03.2025 05:53 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
When things are perfectly predictable, one doesn't need memory. Conversely, we need memory to store information that can be used in a world that is somewhat unpredictable.
Source:
Oxford Mathematics, Sam Cohen’s ‘Information Theory’ course.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScX2...
ONE WEEK TODAY!🧠☁️
The countdown is ON for the publication day of Take Action on Distraction, from
@profsamwass.bsky.social & Gemma Goldenberg!🎉
Take action on distraction and never battle for children's attention again!
