NIH Study: Preschool Children Can Benefit from "Innovative Curriculum"

A new study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) indicates that preschool children in low-income, urban classrooms can benefit from curriculum changes aimed at improving their cognitive skills. These findings have significant implications for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and social adjustment problems. The curriculum changes do not require special education teachers or expensive technology and can be implemented by any teacher.

"Executive functions," also called cognitive control skills, are crucial to a child's ability to succeed both scholastically and socially. These skills include retaining information, not allowing distractions to interfere with functioning, and adapting to change. Researchers have found connections between poor executive function skills and difficulties like ADHD, poor school performance, drug use, and criminal behavior. While some children are biologically predisposed to disorders such as ADHD, cognitive skills training can help.

"Helping at-risk children improve [executive function] skills early might be critical to closing the achievement gap and reducing societal inequalities," said Dr. Adele Diamond of the University of British Columbia. Diamond led the research team.

For this study, funded by NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Human Early Learning Partnership, researchers compared a previously developed curriculum called Tools of the Mind with a standard preschool curriculum. Tools of the Mind consists of 40 core activities which involve techniques for improving abilities such as paying attention and retaining information, as well as social pretend play.

Teachers, teaching assistants, and low-income 4- and 5-year-old preschool students from an urban school district were randomly assigned to two groups. One group of preschoolers received the Tools of the Mind curriculum, while the other group learned according to a standard curriculum. Researchers then administered computer tests to 147 children after 1 or 2 years. The tests were designed to measure children's ability to recall rules, resist distractions, and adapt to changes.

The children who studied under the Tools of the Mind curriculum performed far better on the computerized tests than the children who followed the standard curriculum. On one of the tests, nearly twice as many children from the Tools group scored better than 75 percent correct. The results were so dramatic at one school that the research was stopped after one year in order to provide the Tools curriculum to all of the children.

One drawback to the study was that the children's skill levels were not assessed at the beginning of the study. Because of this, researchers cannot demonstrate that the two groups had comparable skills before one group received the Tools curriculum. Further research on Tools of the Mind is needed to confirm the results of this recent study. If future studies show similar results under better controls, Tools of the Mind could be a low-cost way to help children who are at risk for difficulties in social functioning and poor school performance.

Source:

NIH "Research Matters":
http://www.nih.gov/news/research_matters/december2007/12102007kids.htm