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"Cooper, Peter J."
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Shared Picture Book Reading Interventions for Child Language Development: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis
Interventions that train parents to share picture books with children are seen as a strategy for supporting child language development. We conducted meta‐analyses using robust variance estimation modeling on results from 19 RCTs (Ntotal = 2,594; Mchildage = 1–6 years). Overall, book‐sharing interventions had a small sized effect on both expressive language (d = 0.41) and receptive language (d = 0.26). They had a large effect on caregiver book‐sharing competence (d = 1.01). The impact of the intervention on child language was moderated by intervention dosage, with lower dosage associated with a minimal impact. Child age and caregiver education level were unrelated to child outcome. This review and meta‐analysis confirms the promise of book‐sharing interventions for enhancing and accelerating child language development.
Journal Article
The longitudinal development of emotion regulation capacities in children at risk for externalizing disorders
The development of emotional regulation capacities in children at high versus low risk for externalizing disorder was examined in a longitudinal study investigating: (a) whether disturbances in emotion regulation precede and predict the emergence of externalizing symptoms and (b) whether sensitive maternal behavior is a significant influence on the development of child emotion regulation. Families experiencing high (n = 58) and low (n = 63) levels of psychosocial adversity were recruited to the study during pregnancy. Direct observational assessments of child emotion regulation capacities and maternal sensitivity were completed in early infancy, at 12 and 18 months, and at 5 years. Key findings were as follows. First, high-risk children showed poorer emotion regulation capacities than their low-risk counterparts at every stage of assessment. Second, from 12 months onward, emotion regulation capacities showed a degree of stability and were associated with behavioral problems, both concurrently and prospectively. Third, maternal sensitivity was related to child emotion regulation capacities throughout development, with poorer emotion regulation in the high-risk group being associated with lower maternal sensitivity. The results are consistent with a causal role for problems in the regulation of negative emotions in the etiology of externalizing psychopathology and highlight insensitive parenting as a potentially key developmental influence.
Journal Article
Food and Earth Systems: Priorities for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation for Agriculture and Food Systems
Human activities and their relation with land, through agriculture and forestry, are significantly impacting Earth system functioning. Specifically, agriculture has increasingly become a key sector for adaptation and mitigation initiatives that address climate change and help ensure food security for a growing global population. Climate change and agricultural outcomes influence our ability to reach targets for at least seven of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. By 2015, 103 nations had committed themselves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, while 102 countries had prioritized agriculture in their adaptation agenda. Adaptation and mitigation actions within agriculture still receive insufficient support across scales, from local to international level. This paper reviews a series of climate change adaptation and mitigation options that can support increased production, production efficiency and greater food security for 9 billion people by 2050. Climate-smart agriculture can help foster synergies between productivity, adaptation, and mitigation, although trade-offs may be equally apparent. This study highlights the importance of identifying and exploiting those synergies in the context of Nationally Determined Contributions. Finally, the paper points out that keeping global warming to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 requires going beyond the agriculture sector and exploring possibilities with respect to reduced emissions from deforestation, food loss, and waste, as well as from rethinking human diets.
Journal Article
Effects of a Dialogic Book-sharing Intervention for Female Caregivers in Rural Tanzania (EDBiT): Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial
Children in low- and middle-income countries face obstacles to optimal language and cognitive development due to a variety of factors related to adverse socioeconomic conditions. One of these factors is compromised caregiver-child interactions and associated pressures on parenting. Early development interventions, such as dialogic book-sharing (DBS), address this variable, with evidence from both high-income countries and urban areas of low- and middle-income countries showing that such interventions enhance caregiver-child interaction and the associated benefits for child cognitive and socioemotional development. Yet, evidence for DBS effects is lacking from poor rural communities where the need for such early development intervention may be greatest.
The objective of this study is to assess the effects of a DBS intervention, a parenting program for female caregivers of children aged between 15 and 45 months, implemented in rural Tanzania. We aim to assess the impact of the intervention on the following domains: child cognitive and socioemotional skills, parenting and parental stress, and child health.
The study is a 3-arm cluster randomized controlled trial. In total, 443 female caregivers participated in the study. Clusters of caregivers were randomized to either (1) an index DBS intervention group, (2) a playful activity active control group, or (3) a waitlist control group. The active control group was designed to control for any attention effects, ensuring that observed improvement in the index group can be attributed to the DBS intervention's content. The primary outcomes were child language, parental sensitivity, and parent-child interaction. The secondary outcomes concerned child attention and behavior, parenting practices, and parental stress. A combination of questionnaires and direct observations was applied. Qualitative methods were also used, primarily to capture caregivers' experiences and subjective perspectives on intervention-induced changes.
Data collection for the study was completed in September 2024. The study results are expected to be published by late 2025.
This randomized controlled trial of a DBS intervention implemented in rural Tanzania adds to a growing body of international literature exploring the impact and limitations of a simple and scalable early development intervention to enhance child outcomes.
International Standard Registered Clinical/Social Study Number (ISRCTN) ISRCTN12613329; https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN12613329.
DERR1-10.2196/68758.
Journal Article
The impact of early-years provision in Children’s Centres (EPICC) on child cognitive and socio-emotional development: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial
Background
There are marked disparities between pre-school children in key skills affecting school readiness, disparities that commonly persist and influence children’s later academic achievements, employment, and adjustment. Much of this disparity is linked to socio-economic disadvantage and its impact on the home learning environment. Children’s Centres are an ideal context in which to implement and evaluate programmes to address this problem. They principally serve the 30% worst areas on the Indices of Deprivation Affecting Children, providing for families from the antenatal period up to age 5 years, aiming to promote parenting skills and provide care for children.
Methods
We are conducting a randomised controlled trial, based in Children Centres, to evaluate a parenting intervention for caregivers of children between 28 and 45 months of age. The intervention provides training to parents in dialogic book-sharing. The training is run by a facilitator who sees parents in small groups, on a weekly basis over 7 weeks. The study is a cluster randomised controlled trial. Twelve of the Children’s Centres in the town of Reading in the UK have been randomly assigned to an index or control condition. The primary outcome is child cognition (language, attention, and executive function); and secondary outcomes are child social development, behaviour problems, and emotion regulation, parenting during book-sharing and problem solving and parental child behaviour management strategies. Data are collected at baseline, post-intervention and 4–6 months post-intervention.
Discussion
The Impact of Early-years Provision in Children’s Centres trial (EPICC) aims to evaluate the impact of an early parenting intervention on several key risk factors for compromised child development, including aspects of parenting and child cognition, social development, behaviour problems and emotion regulation. The study is being carried out in Children’s Centres, which largely serve the most disadvantaged families in the UK. Since the intervention is brief and, with modest levels of training, readily deliverable within Children’s Centres and similar early childcare provision centres, demonstration that it is of benefit to child cognition, socio-emotional development and behaviour would be important.
Trial registration
ISRCTN Registry,
ISRCTN28513611
. Registered on 28 March 2017.
This is version 1 of the protocol for the EPICC trial.
Journal Article
Parental Scaffolding during Book-Sharing Predicts Child General Intelligence
While much variance in general intelligence or
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is genetic, a substantial environmental component suggests a possible role for parent-child interaction. In particular, previous evidence suggests the importance of parental scaffolding, or provision of cognitive structure to shape child behaviour. A role for scaffolding is consistent with the proposal that, in adult cognition, a critical aspect of
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is decomposition of complex problems into a structure of simpler parts. Building on previous work, we recruited 162 parents attending Children’s Centres with a child aged 2–4 years, and examined parental scaffolding during a book-sharing activity. Scaffolding was measured as the first principal component of a variety of parental behaviours, including sensitivity, focusing attention, extending comprehension, and promoting child participation. Child
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was measured as the first principal component of a broad cognitive battery, including language, attention, working memory, and executive function. Importantly, we assessed contributions of the parent’s own intelligence, education, and family income. Though these variables were all associated with both child
g
and parental scaffolding, scaffolding remained predictive of child
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even once the influence of these variables was removed. In contrast to the correlation with cognitive proficiency, scaffolding did not predict child pro-social behaviour. We suggest that parental scaffolding supports the child’s development of a broad skill of attentional structuring, promoting the across-the-board cognitive proficiency that is reflected in
g
.
Journal Article
Treatment of child anxiety disorders via guided parent-delivered cognitive–behavioural therapy: Randomised controlled trial
Promising evidence has emerged of clinical gains using guided self-help cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) for child anxiety and by involving parents in treatment; however, the efficacy of guided parent-delivered CBT has not been systematically evaluated in UK primary and secondary settings.
To evaluate the efficacy of low-intensity guided parent-delivered CBT treatments for children with anxiety disorders.
A total of 194 children presenting with a current anxiety disorder, whose primary carer did not meet criteria for a current anxiety disorder, were randomly allocated to full guided parent-delivered CBT (four face-to-face and four telephone sessions) or brief guided parent-delivered CBT (two face-to-face and two telephone sessions), or a wait-list control group (trial registration: ISRCTN92977593). Presence and severity of child primary anxiety disorder (Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for DSM-IV, child/parent versions), improvement in child presentation of anxiety (Clinical Global Impression - Improvement scale), and change in child anxiety symptoms (Spence Children's Anxiety Scale, child/parent version and Child Anxiety Impact scale, parent version) were assessed at post-treatment and for those in the two active treatment groups, 6 months post-treatment.
Full guided parent-delivered CBT produced superior diagnostic outcomes compared with wait-list at post-treatment, whereas brief guided parent-delivered CBT did not: at post-treatment, 25 (50%) of those in the full guided CBT group had recovered from their primary diagnosis, compared with 16 (25%) of those on the wait-list (relative risk (RR) 1.85, 95% CI 1.14-2.99); and in the brief guided CBT group, 18 participants (39%) had recovered from their primary diagnosis post-treatment (RR = 1.56, 95% CI 0.89-2.74). Level of therapist training and experience was unrelated to child outcome.
Full guided parent-delivered CBT is an effective and inexpensive first-line treatment for child anxiety.
Journal Article
Improving quality of mother-infant relationship and infant attachment in socioeconomically deprived community in South Africa: randomised controlled trial
Objective To assess the efficacy of an intervention designed to improve the mother-infant relationship and security of infant attachment in a South African peri-urban settlement with marked adverse socioeconomic circumstances.Design Randomised controlled trial.Setting Khayelitsha, a peri-urban settlement in South Africa.Participants 449 pregnant women.Interventions The intervention was delivered from late pregnancy and for six months postpartum. Women were visited in their homes by previously untrained lay community workers who provided support and guidance in parenting. The purpose of the intervention was to promote sensitive and responsive parenting and secure infant attachment to the mother. Women in the control group received no therapeutic input from the research team.Main outcome measures Primary outcomes: quality of mother-infant interactions at six and 12 months postpartum; infant attachment security at 18 months. Secondary outcome: maternal depression at six and 12 months.Results The intervention was associated with significant benefit to the mother-infant relationship. At both six and 12 months, compared with control mothers, mothers in the intervention group were significantly more sensitive (6 months: mean difference=0.77 (SD 0.37), t=2.10, P<0.05, d=0.24; 12 months: mean difference=0.42 (0.18), t=−2.04 , P<0.05, d=0.26) and less intrusive (6 months: mean difference=0.68 (0.36), t=2.28, P<0.05, d=0.26; 12 months: mean difference=−1.76 (0.86), t=2.28 , P<0.05, d=0.24) in their interactions with their infants. The intervention was also associated with a higher rate of secure infant attachments at 18 months (116/156 (74%) v 102/162 (63%); Wald=4.74, odds ratio=1.70, P<0.05). Although the prevalence of maternal depressive disorder was not significantly reduced, the intervention had a benefit in terms of maternal depressed mood at six months (z=2.05, P=0.04) on the Edinburgh postnatal depression scale).Conclusions The intervention, delivered by local lay women, had a significant positive impact on the quality of the mother-infant relationship and on security of infant attachment, factors known to predict favourable child development. If these effects persist, and if they are replicated, this intervention holds considerable promise for use in the developing world.Trial registration Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN25664149.
Journal Article
Intergenerational Transmission of Social Anxiety: The Role of Social Referencing Processes in Infancy
Responses to an unfamiliar adult were examined in infants of mothers with social phobia (N = 79) and infants of nonanxious comparison mothers (N = 77) at 10 and 14 months in a social referencing paradigm. On each occasion, a female stranger first interacted with the mother and then approached and interacted with the infant. Over time, infants of mothers with social phobia showed increasing avoidance of the stranger, particularly when they were behaviorally inhibited. In boys, maternal social phobia was associated with increasing fearful responses. Infant avoidance was predicted by expressed maternal anxiety and low levels of encouragement to interact with the stranger. The findings are discussed in relation to theories concerning the intergenerational transmission of social anxiety.
Journal Article