Susan Levine - US grants

The proposed research investigates the effects of early unilateral brain lesions on subsequent neuro-cognitive development. Numerous studies have shown that age at the time of the brain damage has significant effects on the functional consequences of the damage. However, for the most part each study has investigated the effects of lesions on cognitive functioning at only a single point in time, providing only a "snapshot" of the consequences of the brain damage. This is particularly problematic when the brain damage is superimposed on a developed brain. The proposed research examines the effects of elapsed time since the brain damage on cognitive functioning in hemiplegic children with congenital lesions. Preliminary cross-sectional data suggest that elapsed time since lesion is an important factor in predicting the cognitive functioning of these children. In particularly, the overall IQ of these children appears to differ significantly from normals after, but not before age 7 - 8. Longitudinal information on the neuro-cognitive consequences of congenital unilateral lesions will be obtained by administering a broad range of cognitive and neurological tests to two groups of children we have already tested: 1) children with congenital unilateral brain lesions confirmed by CT-scans 2) children who do not have structural lesions, but who are matched to the brain damaged children for age, sex, race, socio-economic status and IQ at initial testing. Inclusion of such a control group will allow us to determine whether any changes in pattern or level of intellectual functioning over time are specific to early unilateral brain damage or rather, are IQ-level specific. In addition to cognitive and neurological tests, hemiplegic children will receive EEGs. This will allow us to relate EEG and/or seizure abnormalities to neuro-cognitive development. Finally, hemiplegic children will receive MRI studies in order to relate our understanding of the neuro- cognitive consequences of early brain lesions for the developing child should provide information about the time course of functional maturation of the nervous system as well as leading to better long-term planning of remediation programs for brain damaged children.

The focus of the program is on the acquisition of spatial representation and reasoning. The researchers believe that in order to achieve their long-term goal of devising optimal education programs in spatial competence, they must first come to understand the nature of spatial learning and determine the types of experiences that lead to higher achievement in the domain, about which relatively little is known. Their previous research indicates that the development of spatial cognition is highly sensitive to input and thus is malleable. The current project brings together researchers from across cognitive science. They will explore three, presumably interrelated, aspects of spatial intelligence: First, one part of the team will investigate how spatial expertise can be enhanced directly by training the mental processes that operate on spatial representations. Second, another part of the team will investigate how spatial reasoning can be enhanced through maps and language. Third, the remaining part of the team will investigate how spatial reasoning can be enhanced by applying measurement and graphs to quantitative information.

The Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC) brings together scientists and educators from Temple University, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Chicago Public Schools to pursue the overarching goal of understanding spatial learning and using this knowledge to develop programs and technologies that will transform educational practice and support the capability of all children and adolescents to develop the skills required to compete in a global economy. The consortium of researchers includes individuals from cognitive science, psychology, computer science, education, and neuroscience, as well as practicing geoscientists and engineers who are particularly interested in spatial thinking in their fields, and teachers in the Chicago Public Schools.

Spatial thinking is a key theoretical issue in cognitive science, as well as a critically important aspect of problem solving in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Spatial intelligence allows us to encode and transform information about objects and their location, and thus to find our way in the world and perform technical activities such as tool making. It also provides the foundation for a wide range of reasoning and communication skills, as varied as the design of buildings, the solution of mathematics problems, and the use of spatial metaphor in mental models of complex domains. Progress and performance in various STEM disciplines thus requires attention to improving people's ability to reason about spatial configurations and their properties. More generally, an informed citizen in the 21st century must be fluent at processing spatial abstractions including graphs, diagrams, and other visualizations. The SILC research activities are aimed to provide knowledge that can increase levels of spatial functioning, as well as reduce gender and socio-economic differences in spatial functioning.

The broader impacts of SILC include the production of a new sketch understanding system (to be called CogSketch) that can support new modes of teaching, the production of a new assessment battery to assess spatial skills as they develop in preschool and elementary school, the design of curricular enhancements to enrich spatial content in teaching children from 3 to 10 years of age, and the development of more powerful methods for teaching geoscience and engineering that may be broadly applicable to other STEM disciplines. SILC also includes cross-disciplinary training opportunities that span the educational spectrum from high school students to junior scientists; outreach to pre-service and in-service teachers in the form of conferences and summer workshops; interfaces with university teaching in the STEM disciplines; hosting of scientific conferences; visiting scientist programs of international scope; and, partnerships with children's and science museums.

The proposed research investigates the growth of language and reading skills during the elementary school years in a group of 40 children with unilateral pre- or perinatal lesions (PL) whose preschool language development has been studied longitudinally since the preschool years. By continuing to follow the same group of children during elementary school, we have a unique opportunity to investigate whether functional plasticity for early language skills extends to more complex oral and written language skills. In Study I, we examine language and reading development from kindergarten through 4th grade in relation to children's lesion characteristics. Together with the preschool data, this will provide language growth trajectories from 14 months to 10 years. In Study 2, we examine how brain-injured children use gesture to support more complex language skills, and whether they use gesture in a compensatory manner. In Study 3, we use hierarchical linear modeling to examine the importance of children's preschool growth trajectories, preschool input, and lesion characteristics in predicting their later language and reading development. The data collected in Projects I and II will serve as a normative base for these studies of brain-injured children. This research will add to our knowledge about development in the face of early brain injury in several ways. First, it will provide needed information about the development of later language skills and reading in this population, skills that are important to school success. Second, it will provide information about the relation of early language trajectories to these later developing skills. Third, it will provide information about the role played by gesture in language learning. Finally, it will elucidate the joint effects of the biological characteristics of children's lesions and the language input they receive from primary caregivers on their language and reading development. The research has theoretical as well as practical implications. With respect to theory, our studies will help delineate the limits and extent of functional plasticity, allowing us to determine whether the plasticity observed for early language processes in the face of PL extends to more complex language and reading. With respect to application, characterizing the nature of caregiver-child language interactions that are effective in promoting the language skills of brain-injured children has obvious implications for intervention efforts.

Children with pre- or perinatal unilateral brain injury (PL) exhibit remarkable plasticity for early language skills but appear to have difficulty with later developing, more complex aspects of language. This limitation may negatively impact children's school success, which depends not only on basic linguistic skills, but also on the ability to use these skills to link ideas to one another - to make inferences, draw comparisons and analogies, construct hierarchies and partonomies, enlist schemas and definitions - in other words, to use their language skills to engage in higher order thinking. Higher order thinking has been identified as core to children's ability to become adaptive, innovative and academically successful thinkers. Project II examines how children with PL use connected discourse to express higher order thinking from the earliest stages of language development through early adolescence, compared to the SES-matched typically developing children studied in Project I. Project II also examines variations in lesion characteristics and variations in the input parents provide in their talk to illustrate and elicit higher order thinking from their children, with the goal of understanding how biological and input variations relate to the development of children's higher order thinking skills and their academic achievement. By focusing on how language is used for higher order thinking and on academic achievement our research expands what is known about plasticity in this population since existing research has largely focused on early developing language and cognitive skills and has not included information on parental input. The project has three specific aims: (1) Study 1 describes changes in how children with PL develop higher order thinking from 14 months of age through 14 years as a function of their lesion characteristics, and how this development compares to that of typically developing children. (2) Study 2 describes the input the parents of children with PL provide to higher order thinking from 14 to 58 months of age and later at age 10, asking whether there is continuity in this input over time, whether the amount and nature of this input differs as a function of children's lesion characteristics, and whether it differs from the input parents of typically developing children in Project I offer their children. (3) Study 3 asks how the characteristics of children's lesions and the input they receive from parents combine to predict the development of their higher order thinking and their academic achievement, and whether input plays a differentially important role for children with PL compared to TD children. RELEVANCE (See instructions): In the proposed research, we extend work on the role of language input in the development of early language functions in children with pre- or perinatal brain injury to an essential aspect of language- the use of language for higher order thinking. It is critical that we identify the kinds of input that support the use of language for higher order thinking in children who are biologically compromised in order to develop interventions that help them develop to their full potential as well as to achieve the broader societal goals of increasing human capital and diversifying the workforce.

This proposal requests funding for eight American scientists to attend a meeting at the Salzburg
Global Symposium entitled, "Untapped Talent: Can Better Testing and Data Accelerate
Creativity in Learning and Societies" The five day conference focuses on the current need to
develop assessments that measure skills critical for success in the 21st century workplace.
Currently available assessments are not adequate to tap these important skills, and have not been sufficiently connected to instructional plans about how to build on areas of strength and bolster areas of weakness. The goal of the symposium is to develop new pathways for people to develop important skills and attitudes about learning, with particular attention to identifying and developing these skills in marginalized groups at risk of exclusion across generations. This session will specifically address the growing demand for assessments that inform educational practice, helping educators individualize instruction and improve learning.

Participation at this meeting will allow the sharing of insights from a decade of cognitive and neuroscience research funded by NSF?s Science of Learning Centers. This will facilitate the use of cutting edge research on learning and assessment in action plans for the development of innovative assessments. The scientists attending the conference will share information about domains of knowledge that are both malleable and important for STEM success, notably spatial learning, and the importance of assessing attitudes about learning in addition to assessing knowledge and cognitive skills. They will present recent advances in integrating assessments with instruction, and the use of Big Data to make assessments efficient and informative.

These interactions between scientists and assessment professionals will also stimulate new research questions about how people learn and the ways that assessment design and use can optimally be used to identify and foster talent. The Salzburg Global Forum has a well-established record of convening international meetings to tackle a wide-range of global challenges through engagement of diverse constituencies and expertise from scientists, education practitioners, and policy makers, government institutions, industry leaders, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders. Participation of the US scientists at this meeting will enable the dissemination of research about learning to a diverse audience, not generally represented in conventional scientific/professional meetings

This Science of Learning Collaborative Network brings together a diverse group of experts to examine how math knowledge and attitudes together affect early math achievement, and to develop tools to promote math learning at home and in school for children in kindergarten to grade three. The network focuses on early math because achievement in this domain is a powerful predictor of future academic success. Moreover, math is a cornerstone for careers in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) and our technological society has a high need for a STEM workforce that can push the frontiers of innovation. Success in mathematics requires learning content, but also has social and emotional dimensions. Yet math instruction does not typically address the emotional dimension, instead focusing exclusively on content. This is particularly problematic because many parents and elementary school teachers have both high levels of math anxiety and less-than-optimal knowledge of how to promote math learning and interest in young children. The end result is a cycle of inter-generational transmission of low math achievement and high math anxiety.

To break this cycle, the network brings together: (a) researchers who study the knowledge and attitudes that support math achievement; (b) developers who translate research findings into effective educational tools; (c) practitioners who implement educational tools in real-world learning settings, and (d) experts in the dissemination of such tools. By combining these different kinds of expertise, the network will increase understanding of how young children learn math and develop attitudes about math. Further, the network will use this knowledge to support children's math learning at home and in school by developing a toolkit for parents and teachers to help them more effectively provide math instruction to children from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. The network will evaluate whether the toolkit improves children's math learning and math attitudes as well as teachers' and parents' math attitudes, and will refine the toolkit based on feedback from those who are using it. Finally, the network will widely share the toolkit via a publicly available website.