Ambient Temperature Increases and Preschoolers’ Outdoor Physical Activity

JAMA Pediatrics · 2023 · 16 citations

• Medicine
• Environmental health
• Physical therapy

This cross-sectional study evaluates the association of high outdoor temperatures with children’s engagement in physical activity during play.

Preschoolers’ executive functions following indoor and outdoor free play

Trends in Neuroscience and Education · 2022 · 30 citations

• Psychology
• Environmental science
• Business

Entwicklungspsychologie im Kindes- und Jugendalter

Springer eBooks · 2021 · 48 citations

• Psychology

It matters how you start: Early numeracy mastery predicts high school math <scp>course‐taking</scp> and college attendance

Infant and Child Development · 2021 · 88 citations

• Psychology
• Mathematics education
• Developmental psychology

) administered to 1,364 children from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Childcare and Youth Development (SECCYD), this study measures children's mastery of three numeric competencies (counting, concrete representational arithmetic and abstract arithmetic operations) at 54 months of age. We find that, even after controlling for key demographic characteristics, the numeric competency that children master prior to school entry relates to important educational transitions in secondary and post-secondary education. Those children who showed low numeric competency prior to school entry enrolled in lower math track classes in high school and were less likely to enrol in college. Important numeracy competency differences at age 54 months related to socioeconomic inequalities were also found. These findings suggest that important indicators of long-term schooling success (i.e., advanced math courses, college enrollment) are evident prior to schooling based on the levels of numeracy mastery.

Measuring children's behavioral regulation in the preschool classroom: An objective, sensor‐based approach

Developmental Science · 2021 · 15 citations

• Psychology
• Developmental psychology

Children's abilities to regulate their behaviors are critical for learning and development, yet researchers lack an objective, precise method for assessing children's behavioral regulation in their everyday environments such as their classrooms. This study tested a sensor-based approach to assess preschool children's behavioral regulation objectively, precisely, and naturalistically. Children wore accelerometer devices as they engaged in center-based play in their preschool classrooms for roughly 45 min (N = 50 children, 48% female, mean age = 4.5 years). Set to record data each second, these devices collected information about children's movement (N = 140,564 observations). From these data, the authors extracted concrete behaviors hypothesized to index behavioral regulation and compared them with teacher and observer ratings of the same. Initiating movement more frequently, staying seated in activities for shorter amounts of time, and spending a greater amount of time in motion were related to lower ratings of attention and inhibitory control by teachers and by observers of classroom group time, median r = .45, p < .01. These same objectively measured behaviors showed only weak associations with children's performance on assessments of cognitive regulation, median r = .11, p = .47. The findings indicate that ambulatory accelerometers can capture movement-based indicators of children's behavioral regulation in the classroom setting and that performance on measures of cognitive regulation does not strongly predict children's behavior in the classroom. As an unobtrusive and objective measure, actigraphy may become an important tool for studying children's behavioral regulation in everyday contexts.