Recently, I was describing my research on kinship terms to a friend, and how in Chinese culture, we never ever call anyone older than us by their given names. As I was explaining this custom, I suddenly realized that I could not remember my maternal grandfather’s name! She looked shocked. I meekly tried to explain that everyone in my generation called him Ah Gong, meaning ‘grandfather’; we never used his given name. Even now, 5 months after this exchange, I still have not been able to remember.

Knowing how to name people appropriately is one of the first things families teach their children, and reflects the concept of language socialisation (Kurniawati et al., 2021) – it lies at the intersection of social cognition and language development. While names that children address their parents with tend to be some of the earliest words acquired by infants (cf. Wordbank), languages differ in the conceptual structures encoded in kinship terminology, as well as practices for naming and address. For example, Mandarin kinship terms for children not only specify the generation and gender, but also relative birth order (e.g., 大姐 da4jie3 ‘big older sister’, 二哥 er4ge1 ‘second older brother’. Indeed, the audience this poster attracted at ICIS were mostly people with Asian heritage – from India, the Philippines, Taiwan etc. – and all of them immediately understood the context of how, unlike Westerners, there are many contexts in which Asians rarely if ever hear given names [see also Kinbank (Passmore et al., 2023), a database of over 200,000 kinterms consolidated from more than 1,200 spoken languages globally].

Given this cross-cultural variation, it remains an open question how multilingual communities socialise their children into culturally appropriate naming customs. In Singapore for instance, English is the main language of business and education, with 86.8% of people reporting speaking English alongside one or more of Singapore’s other official languages (Mandarin Chinese, Malay and Tamil; Singapore Department of Statistics, 2020). How do Singaporean parents teach their children to name their family members?

To help answer this question, 86 Singaporean families (ethnicity split: 40 Chinese, 35 Malay, 11 Indian) with children under the age of 4 years participated in an online survey with audio recording questions delivered via Qualtrics with Phonic.ai integration (an app that allows people to collect audio responses in surveys). We asked the parents of these families to report on how parent, sibling, and grandparent figures their child sees regularly are referred to in conversations with the child, as well as how the child is referred to in conversations with each family member. An example set of questions using ‘older sister’ as the target family member are depicted below. As a bonus question, we also asked about the term of address for strangers.

We found that when talking with their child about any adult (parent, grandparent), parents use child-centred relational terms (i.e., terms in which the younger family member would use to address the older family member; Dickey, 1997, Morita, 2003). Interestingly, only Chinese families included maternal/paternal information for grandparents; Malay and Indian families do not have words in their languages that mark this so distinctly. For example, Mandarin terms for maternal grandmother 外婆 wai4po2 and grandfather 外公 wai4gong1 have the 外 wai4 prefix, meaning ‘external’, i.e., external to the paternal line of descendents! (There are other terms that our participants used in this study; I highlight only this example.) It is heartening to note that, while probably not being very ‘traditional’ in the strictest sense of the word, the majority of Chinese families nowadays, or at least those in this study, used more neutral terms that do not distinguish maternal/paternal lines for all grandmothers/grandfathers. When talking about siblings, child-centered relational terms are used selectively when referring to older children in conversations with younger children (for example, ‘older sister’ versus ‘Sarah’), perhaps to further socialize the practice of using relational terms rather than proper names for elders. By contrast, when talking about their younger child John to someone older (grandparents, parents and older siblings), parents often use given names rather than relational terms (‘John’ versus ‘younger brother’/’little boy’).

Translations of some of the words in the word clouds:
Chinese languages: jie3jie1 (older sister, Mandarin), kor3kor2 (older brother, Cantonese though not typical Cantonese tones), mei4mei4 (younger sister, Mandarin), di4di0 (younger brother, Mandarin)
Malay: kakak (older sister), abang (older brother), adik (younger sibling)
Tamil: akka (older sister), anneh/anna (older brother), thangachi (younger sister), paapa/pappa (child)

In sum, early socialisation encodes the importance of using relational terms to refer to people who are older, but not younger, including when the referred-to individual is only slightly older (e.g., in the same generation as the child). We also learned that parents in Singapore (and I bet many other places too) also often use relational terms (‘uncle’, ‘auntie’) as generic names for strangers (no matter whether they are older or younger than the parent):

As the year draws to a close, I hope that everyone is surrounded by people who make them feel like family.

Final note: As one of the ICIS Communications Committee members, I would also like to thank everyone for engaging with our posts on Bluesky, X/Twitter, LinkedIn (here and here), TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Happy holiday season, see you in 2025!

Acknowledgements: With eternal gratitude to

• Dr Suzy Styles for your guidance in All of the Things and for being with me on this Glasgow trip.
• Jin Yi Loh (Mandarin), Xavier Ler (Mandarin), Shaza binte Amran (Malay), Vinitha Selvarajan (Tamil) and Sheetal Sahana Vimalraj (Tamil) for assisting with transcription of family terms.
• Shaza binte Amran and Kelly Si Ning Choo for assistance with family scenario images.

References

Choo, R. Q. & Styles, S. J. (2024). Kinship terms of address and reference among families in Singapore. Poster presented at the International Congress of Infant Studies, Glasgow, Scotland, UK, 8-11 July 2024. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/4FR52

Dickey, E. (1997). Forms of Address and Terms of Reference. Journal of Linguistics, 33(2), 255–274. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4176417

Kurniawati, W., Suhandano, S. & Kushartanti, B. (2021). Language socialization in family environments through terms of address to children. Litera, 20(2), 250–268. https://doi.org/10.21831/ltr.v20i2.39455

Morita, E. (2003). Children’s use of address and reference terms: Language socialization in a Japanese-English bilingual environment. Multilingua – Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 22(4), 367–395. https://doi.org/10.1515/mult.2003.019

Passmore, S., Barth, W., Greenhill, S. J., Quinn, K., Sheard, C., Argyriou, P., et al. (2023). Kinbank: A global database of kinship terminology. PLoS ONE, 18(5): e0283218. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283218

Singapore Department of Statistics. (2020). Census of Population 2020: Key Findings. https://www.singstat.gov.sg/-/media/files/publications/cop2020/sr1/findings.pdf

About the Author

Introduction

In 2017, 535 million children (one quarter) of the world’s children lived in countries affected by armed conflict, violence, disaster and/or chronic crisis.^[1] In 2018, over 29 million babies were born in conflict-affected areas, starting their lives in unstable and dangerous environments^[2]. In 2022, approximately 468 million children (18.8%) were living in conflict zones, with about two in six living less than 50 km away from where actual fighting was taking place, a 2.8% increase from the year before.^[3] The current situation is projected to escalate. By 2030, it is estimated that almost 60% of the world’s extreme poor will live in countries affected by fragility, violence and conflict.^[4]

Conflicts have devastating consequences for civilian populations but especially for infants and young children: an estimated 300 babies are killed each day with approximately 100,000 infant deaths each year attributed to the effects of conflict. Between 2013-2017, at least 550,000 infants likely died due to the indirect impacts of conflict in the ten worst-affected countries.^[5] Disruption of essential services like healthcare, clean water, and nutrition can be deadly for babies. Conflict often forces displacement, separating families and interrupting breastfeeding and early childhood care. Stress and trauma experienced by parents in conflict zones can negatively impact infant development.^[6]

Recognising the long-term developmental consequences of early war exposure for individuals and societies provides a powerful rationale for prioritising infant and young children’s protection in conflict zones. A nuanced understanding of the effects of war on infants can lead to more informed policy on conflict prevention, humanitarian aid, and post-conflict recovery efforts, helping to shape decisions around resource allocation, program design, and policy priorities to better safeguard the developmental potential of the most vulnerable. Additionally, this knowledge can inform approaches to post-conflict healing and reconciliation by highlighting the need to address the developmental legacy of war across generations.^[7]

Effects of War on Infant Development

War profoundly impacts infants’ motor, cognitive, and socioemotional development during a crucial period of rapid brain growth and plasticity. Exposure to violence, displacement, malnutrition, and lack of adequate medical care can impair physical growth. Disruption of vaccination programs leaves infants vulnerable to preventable diseases. The unpredictable and frightening nature of war creates an environment of fear, unpredictability, and deprivation. Such chronic stress can have profound neurobiological effects, negatively affecting brain development and potentially leading to difficulties with attention, learning, and emotional regulation later in life^{[8] [9]}

War can disrupt the stable, secure attachments infants need to develop trust and healthy relationships. Separation from caregivers, witnessing violence, and living in a state of hypervigilance can lead to attachment disorders and long-term challenges with emotional regulation and social functioning. Given their total dependence, infants are susceptible to their caregivers’ emotional states and the effects of war trauma can be passed down to infants through their caregivers’ mental health and parenting. The trauma and stress experienced by mothers living in war zones can lead to maternal mental health issues like depression and PTSD; a depressed or traumatised mother may struggle to provide responsive, nurturing care that supports optimal development.^[10].

While some infants show remarkable resilience, war exposure in early life is associated with higher rates of mental health issues across the lifecycle and developmental delays that can persist well beyond childhood.^[11] Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression are the most common mental health disorders in children affected by war. Studies have found prevalence rates of 22.7% for PTSD, 13.8% for depression, and 15.8% for anxiety disorders in refugee and asylum-seeking children and adolescents.^[12] Studies have shown that children of war-traumatized parents are at higher risk for emotional and behavioural problems.^[13]

Resilience and Protective Factors

It is evident that the effects of war on infants and young children can have complex and harmful impacts. However research suggests that, with proper support and interventions designed to support resilience and early childhood psychological development, the long-lasting effects of trauma can be mitigated and infants and young children can overcome some of the negative impacts of war exposure. A focus on resilience ‘emphasises war-affected children’s ability to cope with, adapt to, and navigate complex environments that are saturated with adversity’^[14] and can support their future development. The evidence suggests that the recovery trajectory for children who have experienced trauma is not significantly affected by the trauma itself.^[15]

A child’s ability to cope with and adapt to complex environments as a result of war, violence, and displacement is influenced by individual and community-based factors. Ensuring safety, stability, and nurturing caregiving relationships in the aftermath of conflict is critical for promoting healthy development and mitigating long-term consequences.

At the personal level, protective factors include healthy (and strong) attachment to parental figures and family members, self-regulation and cognitive skills development, agency and self-efficacy, and cultural adaptability.^[16] At the community level, protective factors include spaces such as schools, childcare facilities, and other safe environments for children to play and learn, as these promote structure in a child’s life, and enable social interaction with peers, which is important for child development. Lessons from practitioners in the field further reinforce protective factors such as supportive and loving caregivers, safety and a lack of violence within the family unit, and child-focused programming that sees children as active agents of their well-being as critical to supporting children’s resilience after exposure to war.^[17]

To support the cognitive and social development of infants and young children affected by conflict and war, there is a need for interventions that support the caregiving relationship, establish safety and normalcy, encourage community, and emphasise playing, learning, and positive engagement with peers and community members. Recognising that this is a significant challenge, as war often causes the destruction of communities and results in displacement, there is a need to consider interventions and approaches that provide opportunities for young children and infants to thrive, even in temporary living arrangements or emergencies. Infants and children can achieve their potential through a focus on providing nurturing care, including good health, adequate nutrition, responsive caregiving, security and safety, and opportunities for early learning.

When considering the earlier identified resilience and protective factors to foster infant development during wartime, ECD programmes in humanitarian settings can take two complementary forms: child-facing programmes that promote nurturing environments for their care, learning, and psychosocial development and parent or caregiver-facing programmes that enhance their ability to care for their children through the provision of direct support (financial and psycho-social).^[18]

Research and Practice Gaps

There is a growing evidence base of approaches and methods which can yield positive results and outcomes for programme participants once they reach a point of stability. However, there remains a need to more clearly define the outcomes—the longer-term results of interventions—which can appropriately, in culturally and contextually specific ways, indicate the effectiveness of interventions for infants and caregivers.

Further research, evaluation, and adaptive management of programmes designed to promote resilience and enhance protective factors is critically needed to ensure that we can meet the needs of affected populations. At the same time, we need to build evidence of what works as this is urgently needed by programme developers, practitioners, and policy-makers. There should be a stronger emphasis on evidence and learning that originates from the field and is generated by researchers from affected populations. This would contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the issues and their contexts.^[19] The Moving Minds Alliance has established a Research Forum to support this urgent priority.

By leveraging the power of locally-led research and combining it with tools and techniques for programme development and policy, practitioners and researchers can best understand and deliver support to those most in need. Ultimately, research, policy, and programmes can most effectively respond and deliver outcomes for infants and caregivers in war zones by placing the infant and parent or caregiver at the centre. Actively centring their voices and perspectives and supporting their agency is key to unlocking resilience to ensuring that programmes and policy are geared towards long-term outcomes and not just survival.

Conclusion

The devastating effects of war extend far beyond the immediate destruction of infrastructure and loss of life. As we have explored here, the impact on infant development in conflict zones is profound and far-reaching, with potential consequences across the life-cycle and even across generations. The critical and urgent need for targeted interventions to support infant development in war-affected areas cannot be overstated.

Maternal mental health and the quality of mother-infant interactions emerge as crucial factors in mitigating the negative impacts of war on infants. In the face of extreme adversity, the nurturing bond between a mother and her child can be a powerful protective shield, fostering resilience and promoting healthy development. However, this protective capacity is often compromised by the severe stress and trauma experienced by mothers in conflict settings.

To address these challenges effectively, we urge policymakers, researchers, and practitioners to prioritise infant development in conflict settings. This includes:

1. Implementing comprehensive support programs for expectant and new mothers in war-affected areas, focusing on both physical and mental health.
2. Developing and scaling up interventions that promote positive mother-infant interactions and secure attachment in challenging environments.
3. Allocating resources for long-term research on the developmental trajectories of infants exposed to war to inform evidence-based interventions.
4. Integrating holistic infant development and nurturing care into humanitarian aid and post-conflict reconstruction efforts. Protecting infants and young children is fundamental to conflict resolution and peace-building initiatives.

By recognising the unique vulnerability of infants in wartime and taking decisive action to support their development, we can help break the cycle of trauma and build more resilient future generations. The stakes are high, and the time to act is now. Each infant, regardless of the circumstances of their birth, deserves the chance to thrive and reach their full potential.

^[1] https://www.unicef.org/media/96586/file/Programme-Framework-Fragile-Contexts.pdf

^[2] 29 million babies born into conflict in 2018 (unicef.org)

^[3] Children Affected by Armed Conflict, 1990–2022 – World | ReliefWeb

^[4] https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/fragilityconflictviolence/overview

^[5] Conflict kills 300 children every day (savethechildren.org.uk)

^[6] Interparental Conflict and Infants’ Behavior Problems: The Mediating Role of Maternal Sensitivity – PMC (nih.gov)

^[7] War trauma and infant motor, cognitive, and socioemotional development: Maternal mental health and dyadic interaction as explanatory processes – PubMed (nih.gov)

^[8]The War On Children (savethechildren.org.uk)

^[9] War trauma and infant motor, cognitive, and socioemotional development: Maternal mental health and dyadic interaction as explanatory processes – PubMed (nih.gov)

^[10] Fazel, M., Reed, R. V., Panter-Brick, C., & Stein, A. (2012). Mental health of displaced and refugee children resettled in high-income countries: risk and protective factors. The Lancet, 379(9812), 266-282.

^[11]Impact of war and forced displacement on children’s mental health—multilevel, needs-oriented, and trauma-informed approaches – PMC (nih.gov)

^[12] Fazel, M., Reed, R. V., Panter-Brick, C., & Stein, A. (2012). Mental health of displaced and refugee children resettled in high-income countries: risk and protective factors. The Lancet, 379(9812), 266-282.

^[13] Surviving is Just the Beginning: The Impact of Conflict on Children’s Mental Health | Save the Children International

^[14] Meliani, F., Marliani, L., Pahlawanita, N. V., & Cahayaningtyas, A. (2024, February). Child development and resilience: exploring the dark side of war through the lens of children. In International Conference of Bunga Bangsa (Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 990-1007).

^[15] Hall, Ahmad, Nordenvig, and Gredeback. (2022). ‘Child development and resilience in war, conflict and displacement’ – Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

^[16] Masten, A. S., & Narayan, A. J. (2012). Child development in the context of disaster, war, and terrorism: Pathways of risk and resilience. Annual review of psychology, 63(1), 227-257.

^[17] Jones L. (2019). Adversity and resilience: 10 lessons I have learnt from working with children in humanitarian emergencies. Archives of Disease in Childhood. 104, 833-836

^[18] Early Childhood Development in Emergencies: Examples of ECDiE in Practice.

^[19] Moving Minds Alliance. (2022). Research on Young Children in Emergencies: Current Evidence and New Directions.

About the Author

Significant progress has been made in improving the lives of millions of children across the globe, providing many more children a chance to thrive than in previous points in history. For example, medical advances, sustained efforts by government and non-government organizations to improve access to healthcare and nutrition, and implementation of improved water and sanitation systems have led to a more than 50% decrease in global childhood mortality rates since 2000¹. We have also seen promising overall reductions in extreme childhood poverty, a well-known obstacle to accessing health care, nutrition, and clean water.²

Despite these positive trends, I still feel a harrowing sense of regret about the state of the world as the current and future home for children all over the globe. Recent reckonings with the devastating consequences of human actions on children’s wellbeing include outbreaks of mass violence and wars, natural disasters such as floods and heat waves amplified by climate change³, and evidence that environmental contaminants such as microplastics and “forever chemicals” are manifesting in our bodies, in human placentas⁴, and in breastmilk that is usually praised for its nutrition, purity, and protective properties for infants^5,6. Moreover, we see increasing rates of poor mental health in children⁷, which grew even higher during the pandemic⁸, and that appear to correlate with digital advancements and unregulated social media use⁹.

Of course, all of these societal and environmental changes affect adults as well as children. However, because infants and children are physically, emotionally, and cognitively immature, they lack the consciousness and agency to seek out better circumstances or to enact change. Still, children stand to experience the greatest burden. Children’s immaturity and lack of mobility is the reason they have specific rights laid out in the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The CRC is an international treaty outlining basic human rights for children that was drafted by the UN Assembly in 1989. It extends other treaties like the well-known Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and seeks to ensure not only basic human rights for children, but also that all children are given the best possible circumstances to thrive.

The CRC defines a child as any human being under the age of 18 and seeks to protect the interest of the individual child by comprehensively promoting children’s healthy development and opportunity to fulfil their unique potential across domains of physical and mental health, as well as personal, cultural, and even artistic fulfilment. In doing so, it sets a high bar for what we as nations and as responsible adults should do to ensure children’s wellbeing, and seeks to protect childhood as a period of not only development and learning, but also opportunity and hope. The CRC, for example, stresses all children’s right to a stable and loving caregiving environment with all possible effort put towards keeping families together and avoiding separations except if in the interest of the child. It mandates that signatory nations must enforce children’s right to health, starting with prenatal care for the mother, postnatal care for the mother and child, continuous preventive care and treatment, and education of parents and children on knowledge of child health, nutrition, and safety. The CRC mandates that children’s access to primary education is compulsory and free, and that education must support the development of children’s personalities, talents, and mental and physical development in ways that respect children’s and their parent’s cultural identity. It mandates that children must be protected from violence and exploitation and that children, depending on their age and mental capacity, should be respectfully informed and invited to actively participate in decision-making on matters affecting their lives. The full document can be found here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child.

The CRC also provides a framework for how nations can enforce and monitor the rights outlined within it. O nce a country signs the CRC, it must regularly report on the status of its children to the committee, initially after two years and then typically every five years. When reporting, nations are encouraged to involve not only policymakers but also other experts working with or in the interest of children, including child development researchers and pediatricians. The Committee, which is an independent group of child rights experts, reviews the submitted reports and provides recommendations to governments on how they can continue to improve their child right s record. These recommendations are not legally binding, but they nevertheless serve as guidance and apply pressure on countries to address areas of improvement.

The CRC is widely supported; on the first day it was released it had the largest number of signatories by UN member nations of any convention in history. To date, the document has been ratified by 197 of 198 countries; notably, the only country that has not signed the agreement is the United States.

Despite its widespread support, m any people remain unfamiliar with the CRC, particularly within the US which is where so many developmental scientists reside. Thus, it is time to cast light on children’s rights as laid out in the CRC, to raise awareness and encourage reflection on what we (as adults and professionals) are currently doing to protect the world’s children and whether it is enough. Indeed, while the idea of acting on the interest of the child seems natural to most when considering individual children, the same principle is too often neglected when considering children as a group.

As infant and developmental scientists from around the world, ICIS-members can show our commitment to the international standards laid out in the CRC and work to ensure that they are given due consideration when adults – be they parents, practitioners, or policy-makers – make decisions that shape children’s current and long-term environments. As professionals uniquely positioned to advocate for children, we have a responsibility to work towards increasing public awareness and appreciation of children’s interests and rights. Starting with our own work, we can reflect on how to advocate for children to be more visible in policy development processes that inevitably will shape their developmental trajectories. This includes advising on legislation concerning, for example, gun violence, climate change, and regulations on digital technology and social media.

They say it takes a village to raise a child. This is because children depend on support from multiple adults who bring different perspectives, skills, and experiences to their upbringing. As a global community I consider all of us to be part of that village. So, let’s work together to promote the interest of children and invite children to participate as we define paths for sustainable change.

References

1. UNICEF: https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-survival/under-five-mortality/
2. World Bank: https://worldpoverty.io/
3. Editorial (2024). Child-centred climate action cannot wait. The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.
4. Ragusa, Antonio, Alessandro Svelato, Criselda Santacroce, Piera Catalano, Valentina Notarstefano, Oliana Carnevali, Fabrizio Papa et al. “Plasticenta: First evidence of microplastics in human placenta.” Environment international 146 (2021): 106274.
5. Ragusa, A., Notarstefano, V., Svelato, A., Belloni, A., Gioacchini, G., Blondeel, C., … & Giorgini, E. (2022). Raman microspectroscopy detection and characterisation of microplastics in human breastmilk. Polymers, 14(13), 2700.
6. Zheng, G., Schreder, E., Dempsey, J. C., Uding, N., Chu, V., Andres, G., … & Salamova, A. (2021). Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in breast milk: concerning trends for current-use PFAS. Environmental science & technology, 55(11), 7510-7520.
7. Bhandari, N., & Gupta, S. (2024). Trends in Mental Wellbeing of US Children, 2019–2022: Erosion of Mental Health Continued in 2022. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 21(2), 132.
8. Samji, H., Wu, J., Ladak, A., Vossen, C., Stewart, E., Dove, N., Long, D. and Snell, G., 2022. Mental health impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on children and youth–a systematic review. Child and adolescent mental health, 27(2), pp.173-189.

9.Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Random House.

About the Author

The CRC is the most ratified international human rights treaty. All Member States of the UN Assembly have ratified the CRC, except for the United States of America (USA) (see https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IV-11&chapter=4&clang=_en). Under international law, once a Member State becomes a State Party to such conventions, they must ensure it is implemented. Thus there is a world-wide obligation to respect, fulfill and support children’s human rights.

The CRC has four General Principles: non-discrimination (Article 2); a child’s best interests must be a primary consideration in all actions concerning children (Article 3); the right to life, survival and development (Article 6); and the child’s right to express views in all matters affecting the child, and those views to be given due weight (Article 12). These are ‘cross-cutting’ and thus they engage with all the other CRC rights. In total, the CRC has 54 articles and these are often grouped into the ‘Four Ps’: participation; protection; prevention of harm; and provision of assistance (attributed to van Bueren 1995). All rights must be considered holistically—that includes considering not only CRC rights but also children’s rights under other international human rights treaties.

The CRC has three further Optional Protocols, which Member States can separately ratify, including the recent procedure for investigations and complaints directly to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. The UN Committee has a key role in monitoring the CRC: for example, it receives reports from States Parties and issues Concluding Observations evaluating each State Party. It publishes General Comments, which are authoritative interpretations of the CRC, as a way to elaborate on particular articles and to address key issues. The UN Committee currently has 26 General Comments—and one of them is on early childhood. To quote this General Comment, “Early childhood is a critical period for realizing children’s rights” (2005, page 3).

What does the CRC mean for young children, and related policy and practice? It underlines that key provisions for young children—such as health services (Articles 6, 24 and 25), educational, play and recreational provision (Article 28, 29 and 31), and measures to protect children from exploitation or abuse (Articles 19 and 34-39)—are not optional obligations, based on charitable philanthropy or a hierarchy of needs. They are entitlements and claims. The CRC requires attention to all children, and particularly to those children whose rights are most at risk of not being met. Unlike frameworks for children’s wellbeing, policy and practice cannot be satisfied if most children are reaching certain outcomes; a rights’ framework requires attention to every child having their rights met (Tisdall 2015). It requires recognising all of children’s human rights, not only the familiar ones of protection and provision, but also ones more challenging to realise for young children. For example, young children have often been excluded from individual or collective decision-making, despite Article 12 (Hester and Moore 2018). Yet research shows how attending to even the youngest children’s expression of views can lead to notable realisations for practice, from neonatal care in the UK (Alderson et al. 2017) to early childhood learning in Brazil and South Africa (Wright et al. 2023). The CRC requires adult systems, policy and practitioners to recognise a wider array of children’s rights related to children’s own participation, cultures and civil rights.

Further, young children are core to the most current happenings in children’s human rights. Thanks to research from such fields as neuroscience and economics, early childhood education and care is identified specifically in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). But global monitoring shows that, world-wide, we are far from achieving the SDG 4.2 target of universal access to quality early childhood education and care. As a response, 70 experts and researchers have submitted a letter to the UN Committee, calling for recognition of free early childhood education in international law. Importantly, the CRC itself is a minimum standard: we can and should aspire to go beyond it, to recognise the most current challenges and changing needs.

We can learn a lot from recognising young children’s rights. They show the relationality of children’s human rights (and indeed all human rights): with 36 mentions of parent or parents in the CRC text itself, Freeman (2014) points out that the CRC is as much a parents’ charter as a statement of children’s rights. As adults attend more to young children’s participation rights, they question how ‘voice’ too often has privileged words, excluding other forms of communication—and thus not only the views of young children but others such as disabled children who may communicate in other ways. Early childhood education and care by and with indigenous groups can show how to address the challenges of decolonisation, breaking down dichotomies between the ‘natural’ and the social world (e.g. Pace-Crosschild 2018). Attending to early childhood and young children offers wide lessons for both theory and practice.

Recognising young children as human rights holders is challenging. It includes concerns about their vulnerability, dependency, and protection—but goes further. It requires children to be respected as human beings with dignity and who have entitlements. It holds duty-bearers – those who have a responsibility to promote and realise human rights – to account. It requires a children’s rights approach that questions hierarchies of intergenerational power in our systems, policies and practices. It recognises that we can—and should—do things differently.

This blog draws on collaborative work, including:

International and Canadian Child Rights Partnership https://www.torontomu.ca/international-canadian-child-rights-partnership/

Safe, Inclusive and Participative Pedagogy https://www.sipp.education.ed.ac.uk/

Blaisdell, C. and Tisdall, E.K.M. (2024) ‘Early Childhood: Contemporary Children’s Rights Issues’, in J. Todres and U. Kilkelly (eds) Children’s Rights and Children’s Development: An integrated approach, NYC USA: NYU Press. (forthcoming)

Tisdall, E.K.M., Davis, J.M., Fry, D., Konstantoni, K., Kustatscher, M., Maternowska, M.C. and Weiner, L. (2023) Critical Childhood Studies: Global Perspectives, London: Bloomsbury.

References

Alderson, P., Hawthorne, J. and Killen, M. (2017) ‘The participation rights of premature babies’, in U. Kilkelly (ed) Children’s Rights, London: Routledge.

Freeman, M.D. (2014) ‘Introduction: Children’s Rights Past, Present and Future’, in M. D. Freeman (ed) The Future of Children’s Rights, Leiden: Brill Nijhoff.

Hester S. and Moore S. (2018) ‘Understanding Children’s Participation through an Eliasian Lens’, The International Journal of Children’s Rights 26(3): 446–467. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718182-02603002

Pace-Crosschild, T. (2018) ‘Decolonising Childrearing and Challenging the Patriarchal Nuclear Family Through Indigenous Knowledges’, in R. Rosen and K. Twamley (eds) Feminism and the Politics of Childhood: Friends or Foes?, London: UCL Press.

Tisdall, E.K.M. (2015) ‘Children’s Rights and Children’s Wellbeing: Equivalent Policy Concepts?’ Journal of Social Policy 44(4): 807-823. doi:10.1017/S0047279415000306

Van Bueren, G. (1995) The International Law on the Rights of the Child, Dordrecht: Nijhoff.

UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2025) General Comment No. 7, Implementing child rights in early childhood, https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CRC%2FC%2FGC%2F7%2FRev.1&Lang=en

Wright, L.H.V., Rizzini, I., Gwele, M., McNair, L., Porto, C.L., Orgill, M., Tisdall, E.K.M., Bush, M. and Biersteker, L. (2023) ‘Conceptualising Quality Early Childhood Education’, British Educational Research Journal https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3940

About the Author

Guatemala, a Central American nation of 18 million inhabitants, boasts rich cultural, ethnic, and geographical diversity along with abundant natural and human resources. An estimated 40.19% of the total population is under the age of 18 (6.57 million children; 2018 National Census), and  in 2020 it was estimated that the population of young children (aged 0-6) was 2.6 million. Of these, 1.8 million were thought to live in poverty, including 800,000 in extreme poverty (United Way, using official figures from 2014, 2018 and 2020).

Young children and their caregivers in Guatemala face severe impacts from entrenched socioeconomic and political injustice, which have intertwined and emerging consequences. Due to its location in the Dry Corridor of Central America, the country regularly deals with the impacts of climate change, including food insecurity, particularly in its western regions. Guatemala is also prone to tropical storms, droughts, hurricanes, and earthquakes. Additionally, the country has long grappled with violent land conflict (despite recent progress), worsening levels of social conflict, structural racism, and state capture by political, military, and economic elites, which have long maintained their privileges at the expense of Guatemala’s Indigenous peoples. These difficulties, combined with violence, organized crime, the lack of educational and livelihood opportunities, and desires for family reunification drive displacement, internal migration, and migration from mainly the western, predominantly Indigenous regions of the country to the United States. Internal displacement to large cities and migration to the U.S. from underserved rural, majority Indigenous areas is a common survival mechanism that disrupts the family structure and identity of communities. Over 55% of the children who are returned to their home communities from the U.S. or Mexico (10,404 children in 2023) after having migrated are Indigenous, predominantly Mam and K’iche’ children from the western regions, and have experienced violence and significant racism during their journey towards the United States.

Based on data from 2021-2022, Guatemala has scored 50% in the Early Childhood Development Index, or ECDI. This means that just half of children aged 24-59 months are developmentally on track in health, learning, and psychosocial well-being, in line with indicator 4.2.1 of the SDGs. Rates of adequate development differ by population: whereas 57.9% of non-Indigenous children show adequate development, only 45% of Indigenous children do (UNICEF, based on data from the baseline of the National Crusade for Nutrition 2021/2022). Despite the scarcity of specific studies for Guatemala, existing evidence from the Latin American region indicates that displaced young children are at increased risk of survival challenges, particularly in areas with extreme weather and harsh environmental conditions. Their families have limited access to childcare provision, and child protection policies and programs targeting them are not adequately tailored to the needs of younger children and their families (UNICEF, 2023). These factors hinder child development and complicate the delivery of services to children and their families.

Learning on what works to protect young displaced or returned children

The Breakthrough Series Collaborative on Promoting Early Childhood Development for Young Children on the Move in Northern Central America was implemented between September 2023 and August 2024 by the Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues at Georgetown University. The program is an effort to learn from innovative community-based responses to address the early childhood development (ECD) and protection needs of young Guatemalan children in displacement settings, returned children, and at risk of migrating in Guatemala. These organizations, present in Guatemala City and its outskirts, Quetzaltenango (Xela) and Huehuetenango, offer integrated services and advocate for the rights of young children and their families, including those displaced due to gender-based violence, at risk of being displaced, or who face challenges to reintegrate after being returned from the United States or Mexico. This collaborative project is funded by the Bainum Family Foundation’s Global Education Fund (GEF).

But how best to help displaced children? To find out, the Collaborative conducted thirty-one in-person and 11 online interviews with selected international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), donors, community-based organizations, and government agencies with the goal of identifying what is working to support early childhood development (ECD) and violence prevention for displaced Guatemalan families with young children (see this blog post for more details). Based on the findings from the needs assessment, we held two online convenings involving community-based organizations, Guatemalan government representatives, USAID, and Global Fund for Children, in May and June 2024. These convenings aimed to foster an environment of open dialogue, knowledge exchange, and learning for preventing violence against children through integral early childhood development for displaced children and their families.

Preliminary Insights and Findings

A two-week fieldwork in Guatemala, additional online interviews, and two online convenings highlighted the complex and politically sensitive nature of topics such as early childhood development in Guatemala.

As it pertains to the policy context, Guatemala approved its first government’s 10-year Integrated Early Childhood Development cross-sector national plan in 2010, and a window of opportunity currently exists after the approval of a new 20-year early childhood development plan. The newly elected Partido Semilla administration is keen to advance social policy areas related to early childhood. Additionally, the country recently approved its first-ever migration policy. This policy establishes the child’s best interest as a cross-cutting, overarching principle and identifies girls, boys, and adolescents—especially those who are unaccompanied or separated—, family units on the move with children, and pregnant and lactating women as priority groups in policy and support services. Additionally, it assigns specific objectives and government entities responsible for ensuring their rights.

All the organizations visited during the fieldwork strive to employ a “whole family” or “two-generation” approach. In this, early childhood development and violence prevention is integrated with livelihoods, local development, psycho-social support, and poverty alleviation programs for their caregivers who are often women and adolescent heads of households. Supporting adolescent-headed households is particularly significant in Guatemala as in 2023 nearly 70,000 children aged 10 to 17 were married or in unions, and over 62,000 girls and women aged 10 to 19 registered births.

During the online convenings, it was universally acknowledged among the speakers that all interventions should be guided by principles of meaningful child participation, gender equity, and an anti-patriarchal stance to tackle systemic gender inequalities and injustices that affect children and their carers. A two-generation approach was emphasized, recognizing the critical roles of youth and women as caregivers and the need to engage with the entire community to incorporate Indigenous and local knowledge. To achieve this, the community-based organizations interviewed require direct and flexible funding, technical cooperation and/or capacity-building for institutional development, and connections with donors in the Global North to systematize and publish their proven methodologies, including versions in Indigenous languages.

Community-based organizations, given their close interaction with community needs, were identified as crucial for informing project programming. Organizations emphasized in particular that evaluations and needs assessments should be locally driven. On funding, there was agreement on the necessity for flexible, multi-year financial support to foster systemic and sustainable changes, with pooled funds and collaborative donor efforts seen as effective strategies for achieving such funding frameworks. This aligns with the aim to move away from prescriptive international agendas towards support that truly reflects the needs of young children and their families (for more details, visit the Reconstructing Children’s Rights Institute). Community-led programs can ensure children and their caregivers benefit from localized and culturally tailored approaches that value Indigenous expertise and prioritize genuine community involvement and knowledge. When properly supported by donors through direct long-term, flexible grants, community-based organizations can ensure the contextual relevance, continuity, and sustainability of programs.

About the Author

Lessons learned from implementing neurodevelopmental research in The Gambia, West Africa

by Sam McCann

Convenience sampling has been ingrained in developmental psychology since its inception. In fact, the very first researchers in this field used the ultimate convenience sample—their own children. Since then, the tools we use, and the questions we ask of the developing brain have changed drastically, yet the infants involved in our research have not. Overwhelmingly, our knowledge of the developing brain is based on infants from White, middle-class families living close to well-resourced Universities in the global north. As we learn more and more about how genetics, nutrition, physical environment, caregiving practices, cultural practices, physiological stress, and countless other factors shape the developing brain, we must acknowledge that these factors differ from family to family, neighborhood to neighborhood and country to country. Recently, Lisa Oakes wrote an insightful ICIS Baby Blog addressing the issue of ‘convenience sampling’, and the need to explicitly acknowledge that studies of, for example, White middle-class infants in north America are unsurprisingly only representative of, well, White middle-class infants in north America. We need to challenge this as normal practice and prioritize the inclusion of less ‘convenient’ groups.

That is, however, easier said than done. Convenience samples are just that—convenient. Engaging with harder-to-reach families requires additional time, resources, expertise, and may also involve navigating complex ethical and governance processes. Kristin Buss and Frances Lobo recently shared their experiences on successfully engaging more hard-to-reach groups from their community around Penn State, USA. But if we are aiming for true representation of infants and children, we need to go even further—we need to go global. Thankfully, this is more feasible than ever! Neurodevelopmental tools such as fNIRS, EEG, MRI and eye tracking have undergone transformation in recent years to become more robust, portable, user-friendly, and affordable. This evolution has hugely facilitated their use in many settings previously deemed unreachable.

The Brain Imaging for Global Health study, ‘BRIGHT’ took advantage of this progress, by implementing fNIRS, EEG, and eye tracking assessments in a longitudinal study of neurodevelopment in rural Gambia, West Africa as well as the more familiar setting of Cambridge, UK. I would like to share some of our experiences, the lessons we have learned, and importantly, lessons we are still learning about the practicalities of working in a particularly unfamiliar setting.

Capping for an  fNIRS assessment in the BRIGHT study in Keneba.

Lesson 1: Ask the Experts

As researchers, we are often referred to as “experts”. The reality is, we each know a lot (or at least a fair bit) about very little. My PhD was focused on brain development, but if you put me in front of an MRI scanner, I’d struggle to even switch it on! For that reason, we achieve most when we work together and share knowledge across disciplines. Successfully implementing BRIGHT required the usual scientific expertise that you would expect in a study of neurodevelopment, as well as expertise that is often assumed when we work in communities we know (or think we know) well. This included expertise in the practicalities of conducting research at our study site, knowledge of available infrastructure, cultural norms, values, and lifestyles, and understanding the day-to-day experiences of children and parents in this setting. This knowledge, and much more, was provided by colleagues at MRC Keneba, many of whom had grown up in the region and worked in the community for many years. In other settings it may be necessary to collaborate with multiple partners to ensure that all relevant expertise is represented.

 Lesson 2: One Size Does Not Fit All

When implementing neurodevelopmental research in a new setting, the focus should not be on making the process identical, but rather on trying to ensure the outcome is equivalent.

Sometimes this is very intuitive. For example, translating speech-based stimuli into the primary language of the participants or ensuring people and objects in visual stimuli reflect what is familiar in the study setting. However, the impact of context may be less obvious, and infants’ responses to a given stimulus may differ across research settings for numerous reasons. Thus, it is important to work with local experts to tailor research to fit the setting in the initial study planning stages, but also to continue to think critically about the extent to which this has been achieved throughout the project, particularly when analyzing findings.

In BRIGHT we used fNIRS to measure habituation while infants listened to repeats of a sentence spoken by a female voice and then assessed the response to novelty when the speaker changed to a male voice. The pattern of activity we observed was not as expected. Infants continued to attend to the female voice and did not display a ‘novelty’ response to the male voice at any age. This could indicate developmental delay because of poverty-associated risk factors. However, it is equally possible that this is an adaptive response in this context. Given that women make up the overwhelming majority of caregivers in rural Gambia, it is possible that female voices are just more powerful in initiating neural responses in infants than male voices. In which case what we are seeing could be persistent and preferential attention towards female voices. To explore this further we are now running a small study piloting different versions of this stimulus to determine whether habituation and novelty detection is truly attenuated, or we are measuring something else.

Lesson 3: Support Local

In many low- and middle-income countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, there is a long colonial history of inequitable scientific research “on” communities as opposed to research with and for communities. When we are establishing collaborations, particularly in places with such a history, we must ensure that all collaborative work is equitable and mutually beneficial to all partners. This means investing in the community, in local collaborators, and in the sustainability of the research field.

Examples of community investment could include fair training and employment opportunities for local people and ensuring the research agenda is aligned with local priorities. In terms of supporting collaborators, local data ownership, adequate representation in leadership, and opportunities for career development at every level are all important. In settings where infancy research is novel, long-term investment in the development of research leaders, as well as in the required infrastructure to deliver the research, is particularly important for the sustainability of the field. Another way to promote sustainability is to invest in the next generation of researchers. This could be done through partnering with local schools or universities. For example, establishing mentoring networks focused on STEM or social sciences, or offering internships, summer schools, or extra-curricular activities.

These practices are integral to the success and longevity of research, but they are very resource heavy. Including dedicated funds within grant budgets and/or seeking additional dedicated funds is hugely beneficial to the science and the collaboration. As an example, we’ve recently received additional funding to conduct a pilot study on caregiving practices. This work will be co-designed with representatives from the community and implemented with support from students at the University of The Gambia. We hope this will allow us to both champion the voice of our research participants and inspire the next generation of Gambian neurodevelopmental scientists.

An interactive mental health workshop demonstrating the benefit of “sharing the load” during a public engagement event in Keneba, The Gambia.

Lesson 4: True Representation

Far too often people hear “Africa” and assume a homogeneous land of extreme poverty, malnutrition, and infectious diseases. This is the Africa that is presented in news stories and charity campaigns. It is true that this is a reality for many, and advocacy for the poorest is important. That said, sub-Saharan Africa is also home to a booming middle class and incredible diversity in terms of genetics, linguistics, lifestyle, culture, and wealth. If we are to accurately represent sub-Saharan Africa in neurodevelopmental research, we must aim to also represent these complexities as opposed to propagating poverty-focused assumptions. One limitation of BRIGHT has been that the Gambian cohort is solely made up of families living in one rural district. The inclusion of a higher-income urban Gambian cohort was beyond the original remit of BRIGHT, but will be invaluable for contextualizing our findings in the future.

Lesson 5: Be Ambitious

Personally, the greatest lesson I learned while working in The Gambia was simply that there is always a way. Plans don’t necessarily work out the first time (or let’s be honest – they often don’t work out the second, third, or fourth time) but given adequate time, resources, expertise, and enthusiasm, very few good ideas are impossible. When designing studies, we need to move away from limiting ourselves by what we deem doable or convenient, and move toward focusing on what is important and working out how to make that happen.

Asking experts as opposed to making assumptions, tailoring research to fit the setting, supporting local people and institutions, focusing on true representation, and thinking BIG. These lessons – learned in The Gambia – are equally relevant 10 miles or 10,000 miles outside of the ‘convenient’ zone.

The BRIGHT Study team in Keneba with visiting researchers from BRIGHT UK.

About the Author

by Mireille Babineau, Katherine Jung, Myah Meleca, Shelby Suhan,  Anicole Tan and Yi Lin (Elaine) Wang  

Although a large body of literature extensively studies language acquisition and factors that contribute to language development from infancy and beyond, the universality of such findings remains unclear. For instance, previous research emphasizes the importance of infant- and child-directed speech in fostering language development ; highlighting that more child-directed speech (quantity) and better child-directed speech (quality) each lead to improvements in language developmental outcomes (e.g., Hoff & Naigles, 2002; Golinkoff, Can, Soderstrom, & Hirsh-Pasek, 2015; Weisleder & Fernald, 2013). However, studies conducted in relatively small scale populations have led to observations that call our understanding of certain ‘universally accepted’ language acquisition processes into question. 

To learn about the study of cross-cultural variation in children’s linguistic experiences, the Babineau Lab spoke to researchers Dr. Alejandrina (Alex) Cristia (CNRS researcher at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris), Dr. Camila Scaff (postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich) and Dr. Ruthe Foushee (postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago), whose respective field work has explored potential gaps in the classical literature of early language development. The findings from their research conducted in small-scale communities in the Bolivian Amazon, Mexico, and Papua New Guinea revealed the importance of exploring multiple definitions of both diversity (e.g. cultural and social) and context (e.g. linguistic and developmental) when investigating theories of language acquisition.

The three researchers graciously shared with us the origins of their interest in language acquisition research and subsequent challenges they faced in the field. They also highlighted key differences between these communities and their North American/Western European counterparts as well as how their findings have contributed to the field of language acquisition.

The beginning of a journey 

Language has always been a subject of significance for these passionate researchers. Growing up in Chile as a Spanish-French bilingual created an interesting cultural and linguistic experience for Dr. Scaff, inspiring her to study how language acquisition varies across different types of environments. According to Dr. Foushee, the roots of her early passion for studying language lies in her childhood shed, which contains multiple notebooks with notes she made as a child about the prosody of different aged individuals in her neighborhood. As for Dr. Cristia, she initially did not think her passion for reading would be worth pursuing. It was only after she switched from studying engineering to literature and took a couple of linguistics classes that she realized how much she enjoyed reading and writing about language.

 Dr. Camila Scaff in the Bolivian Amazon

Her living quarters during her stay (a simple tent)

All three scientists have been fascinated by the fact that across the world, individuals end up speaking or signing the language that they are exposed to in their environment. They were intrigued about how different linguistic and cultural experiences, such as the type and amount of language input children receive, might impact language acquisition. Based on a commonly held assumption in the field,  infant- or child-directed speech is highly important for language acquisition. However, the prevalence of speech addressed to children varies greatly across cultures (e.g., Cristia, Dupoux, Gurven, & Stieglitz, 2019). In fact, Dr. Cristia was inspired to start conducting research in small-scale communities after learning that Tsimane’ adults almost never speak directly towards their infants; yet, infants still learn to speak the language. With the help of an experienced anthropologist (Dr. Jonathan Stieglitz), Dr. Cristia and Dr. Scaff embarked on an exciting new scientific journey in the Bolivian Amazon to explore the language children are exposed to, and the speech they produce. Dr. Foushee went on similar, equally exciting adventures. After exploring what American children can learn from different types of input (such as overheard speech: Foushee, Srinivasan, & Xu, 2021), she collaborated with a Mayan community in Mexico to examine the quantitative and qualitative properties of speech heard by young children there. By immersing themselves in new cultures and studying the social and linguistic interactions of infants and children growing up in these communities, these three researchers were able to begin obtaining answers to some of their questions. 

What’s special about these communities? 

Conducting research in these communities presents a variety of unique challenges, from recruitment to consenting to broader issues of who the research is for. Since participants cannot simply be contacted by phone or email, the recruitment experience is highly unique. For example, individual families from the Tseltal Maya community were reached by trekking into the community’s mountainous terrain and inquiring whether a family would be willing to participate. In contrast, the Tsimane’ community was first contacted via radio message with the assistance of a community representative, and subsequently called to meet with the researchers by the sound of a horn. Further, given the small size of many of these communities, researchers need to be patient and often make several trips to the same community in order to recruit enough participants to obtain a reasonable sample size per age group. As Dr. Cristia pointed out, findings are ultimately highly representative of a given population, since a large percentage of the community ends up participating. 

Given past and present power dynamics between foreigners and community members, researchers must adopt a sensitive approach and respectfully adapt the consent process to the needs and desires of each community. As most participants have no schooling experience and have not been exposed to the research conventions of Western societies, something as simple as thoroughly explaining a task to participants can be challenging. Instead of providing a written consent form requiring reading long paragraphs of text, researchers obtain families’ verbal consent and convey important details orally or by showing pictures. To ensure the communication of key information, it is best that researchers have at least rudimentary knowledge of the language spoken by the community. During her trip to Papua New Guinea, Dr. Cristia was amazed by her colleague Dr. Marisa Casillas’s ability to notice when her bilingual research assistant, speaking the challenging language Yélî, forgot to mention some information during the consent process. Other features of these communities also change the consent process; for instance, the lack of sound-proofing in large households (sometimes even a lack of walls) in some communities requires an emphasis on wider participant consent and unique privacy considerations. Finally, researchers must also consider participants’ unique cultural beliefs and practices. For example, with Rossel Islanders, verbal or non-verbal direct consent from infant and children participants is also required: If a toddler runs away from you, you take this as a clear ‘no’ and move on to the next child.

Most importantly, researchers develop strong ties with the communities and are grateful for their support. Community members are proud to have their identity represented in research and are often involved in projects for the long term; as researchers have traveled far to study a foreign language and culture, many community members are eager to help as best as they can and have a stake in how the research turns out. For instance, Dr. Cristia found herself being approached by curious Rossel Islanders who wanted more information on previous studies conducted in their community. Researchers typically work closely with local bilingual research assistants to ensure studies are designed in community-appropriate ways and to ensure effective communication with participants; both participants and research assistants contribute valuable and much welcomed cultural and linguistic insights about stimuli and procedures. Indeed, in the Tseltal Maya and the Rossel Island communities there are now several generations of research assistants from the same family! These individuals not only help to ensure the research is conducted effectively, they also help foreign researchers understand if they are asking their questions in the right ways. 

Expecting the unexpected! 

Dr. Cristia, Dr. Scaff and Dr. Foushee encountered many expected and unexpected challenges while working in remote villages. As an ex-girl scout, Dr. Scaff was not afraid of leaving the comfort of her Parisian life, but acknowledged the unpredictable nature of field work was hard for her morale at times. “Even if you plan everything because you think everything will go as planned, it never goes as planned in the field,” said Dr. Scaff when talking about the time her truck broke down on the way to one of the villages. At this point, she had already made many trips to the Amazon rainforest, but still could not have predicted  that she would have to carry all her equipment, food, and personal items to the research site on foot. 

Technological challenges are common, as these isolated communities have no electricity, a far cry from the lab environments where typically-studied populations are tested. Dr. Scaff recalled bringing lots of different solar panels to generate her own power. Unexpectedly, the equipment could only be used in the morning and in the late afternoon due to the scorching heat of midday when it would “just burn and fry.” On the flip side, 2 days of non-stop rain meant 2 days without any sort of power at all and thus, 2 days without data collection. Dr. Foushee recalled preparing for months on end before even embarking on her journey. Traveling light, she had to ensure all her equipment was no bigger than the diagonal of a carry-on suitcase. She set up a makeshift camp in her apartment, testing her equipment under various conditions including variable lighting and a lack of continuous power. Despite her extensive preparation, there was one setback she could not predict: the screws holding her mount together were not sold in Mexico, forcing her to create a new mount in the field. Moreover, Dr. Foushee could not have imagined that infants would cry at the sight of her when wearing a white t-shirt. Similarly, Dr. Cristia encountered unexpected methodological problems with her set-up while attempting to conduct a looking-while-listening task.  Her stimuli simply failed to catch children’s attention. Turns out screens are not universally attractive! As she told us, you quickly learn that “most of your intuitions are going to be wrong” and that working with these populations requires humility and a willingness to listen and learn from your mistakes. 

Dr. Alejandrina Cristia working in the field, courtesy of S. Levinson.

Contributions to the field and future directions 

Despite the physical and mental challenges that researchers must endure while working in remote locations, work by Dr. Scaff, Dr. Foushee, Dr. Cristia and other researchers who strive to explore language acquisition in culturally unique communities reveal the invaluable role of social context and diverse sampling in developmental science research. Studies conducted in remote forager-farmer Bolivian villages reveal that, despite rare exposure to child-directed speech, the Tsimane’ children still achieve language proficiency—potentially through picking up on indirect sources of language (Cristia et al., 2019; Scaff et al., under review). Dr. Foushee’s recent work showcases children’s resilience and adaptability to their learning environment, as Tseltal Mayan infants have been shown to learn word meanings from overheard speech (Foushee & Srinivasan, in prep). Taken together, their work aims to test the universality of previous language acquisition theories, increase the generalizability of claims regarding language and child development, and open various lines of inquiry for future study to explore language learning processes.  

References

Cristia, A., Dupoux, E., Gurven, M., & Stieglitz, J. (2019). Child-directed speech is infrequent in a forager-farmer population: A time allocation study. Child Development, 90 (3), 759-773, 10.1111/cdev.12974. 

Foushee, R. & Srinivasan, M. (in prep). Evidence of early lexical knowledge in Tseltal Maya infants primarily exposed to overheard speech.

Foushee, R., Srinivasan, M., & Xu, F. (2021). Self-directed learning by preschoolers in a naturalistic overhearing context. Cognition, 206, 104415. 

Golinkoff, R. M., Can, D. D., Soderstrom, M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2015). (Baby) talk to me: the social context of infant-directed speech and its effects on early language acquisition. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(5), 339-344.

Hoff, E., & Naigles, L. (2002). How children use input to acquire a lexicon. Child Development, 73, 418– 433. 

Scaff, C., Casillas, M., Stieglitz, J., & Cristia, A. (under review). Characterization of children’s verbal input in a forager-farmer population using long-form audio recordings and diverse input definitions.

Weisleder, A., & Fernald, A. (2013). Talking to children matters: Early language experience strengthens processing and builds vocabulary. Psychological Science, 24, 2143– 2152.

About the Authors

by Laia Fibla, Jessica E. Kosie, Ruth Kircher, Casey Lew-Williams, and Krista Byers-Heinlein

Baby Sophia hears Spanish from her mother and Catalan from her father. Baby Andreas hears English from his mother, German from his father, and French at daycare. Baby Jayden hears English and Mandarin from both of his dads, and hears Hokkien from his grandmother. These babies are examples of the millions of children around the world who grow up bilingual in diverse contexts, learning two or more languages from early in life (Wei, 2000). Early bilingualism is linked to benefits across many different domains (e.g., Bialystok, 2018). Supporting the bilingual development of babies like Sophia, Andreas, and Jayden is essential, as early language development predicts later language skills, cognitive abilities, and school achievement (e.g., Schwab & Lew-Williams, 2016).

Even though much of early language transmission occurs in the home with caregivers, policymakers and communities play an essential role in supporting bilingual babies’ language learning. Recent research from a variety of domains – including psychology, linguistics, and education – provides a solid scientific foundation for creating policies that support successful bilingualism. Our recent article highlights six main implications for policy, which are also summarised on the pinwheel below (also available at https://osf.io/zbm36/).

• Caregivers and communities need public support to raise their children bilingually.

Caregivers – and communities more broadly – need to be empowered to raise children with multiple languages from infancy if they so desire. Spread the word about the long-term, positive outcomes of the intergenerational transmission especially of Indigeneous and immigrant heritage languages – that is, languages other than the one(s) of the wider community. Develop tailored, community-based programs. For example, the “Sacred Little Ones” program develops early childhood education projects tailored to Native American communities, promoting languages and culture.

• Encourage high-quality interactions between caregivers and their children.

Language learning is linked to the quality of language that infants and children hear, and bilingual children need to have lots of high-quality experiences in each of their languages. High-quality interactions are rich with language and interactions between a caregiver and the child.  Child-directed speech, which is high-pitched and melodic, is especially beneficial to language learning. In bilingual families, high-quality interactions can include language switching, where a speaker changes languages during a conversation, either within a sentence or between sentences. Studies indicate that parents often use language switching strategically to boost their children’s understanding and teach them new words.. Further, reading to children is a great way to expose them to multiple languages in an interactive way. For example, Storybooks Canada is a free online resource, which provides culturally diverse stories with text and/or audio in over 30 languages, including many Indigenous and immigrant heritage languages.

• Paid parental leave can help primary caregivers provide more frequent high-quality language experiences to their bilingual infants.

Young bilinguals’ development will benefit from policies that allow key caregivers to spend more time with their infants during the first years of life. Some countries, such as Canada and Sweden, offer policies that promote the sharing of family leave between both parents, which can help ensure that bilingual children get sufficient rich exposure to all of their home languages. This is particularly important within Indigeneous and heritage language families, where parents often provide children’s main exposure to a language.

• Children learning Indigenous and immigrant heritage languages might need extra support. 

It can be challenging for children to gain sufficient high-quality experiences in languages that are spoken less widely in the community, such as Indigeneous and immigrant heritage languages. Making childcare available in multiple languages can help support families’ language choices and children’s bilingual development. Nursery or preschool programs could expose children to diverse languages, not only to support language learning but also to promote positive attitudes and related cultural knowledge. Targeted playtimes or storytimes in cultural centres and public libraries help support social networks among families that share the same language(s). Those institutions can provide useful resources, such as children’s books in different languages and in bilingual formats. There are lots of great examples worldwide. “REFORMA” in the U.S. promotes Spanish-English bilingualism and biculturalism by making more books in Spanish available in libraries. The New York Public Library provides both recorded and live storytimes in a variety of languages, including Japanese and Spanish. In Singapore, the Early READ Programme from the National Library Board offers storytime livestream sessions and online resources in multiple languages such as English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. Multilingual storytime initiatives are also common in libraries in Israel.

• Bilingualism needs to be supported in both typically and atypically developing children.

Bilingualism does not cause language impairments or developmental delays. Nonetheless, unrelated to their language backgrounds, some children face special developmental challenges such as Autism Spectrum Disorder or Down Syndrome. Early education policies need to address bilingual language learning in children with diverse needs, and give access to clinical and educational services in all the child’s languages. Clinical evaluations must take into account bilingual children’s full, diverse language achievements, and bilingual children should not be assessed in the same way as monolingual children. Whenever possible, evaluations should be conducted by trained professionals who are knowledgeable about bilingual assessment, and (if possible) who are fluent in each of the child’s languages.

• Each bilingual family and community is unique and has different needs.

One of the challenges in creating policies that support bilingualism is the substantial variability in the experience of bilingual children. Different children hear different languages, and languages are used in different ways across diverse bilingual households including who speaks different languages around them and how the languages are used. This means we need to develop policies that can be adapted to each child’s context and family needs, to be able to support diverse family structures across the globe.

Overall, scientific research shows that children’s success in learning each of their languages is a direct consequence of the quality of their everyday language experience, including at home, in daycare and preschools, and in the broader community context. This has implications for policy making. Moreover, we can see that Sophia, Andreas, and Jayden have very different experiences with bilingualism: there are arguably as many ways to grow up bilingual as there are bilingual children. To promote successful bilingual development, we need policies that acknowledge this variability and support frequent exposure to high-quality experiences in each of a child’s languages.

About the Authors

by Rachel Barr

This month, Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences (PIBBS) is featuring a special issue highlighting the work of some of our ICIS members, each of which has provided a brief review on an important issue regarding infant development and its implications for public policy. The special issue is divided into three sections, one of which contains 3 articles on issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion during infancy. The three papers focused on the need to consider the cultural context in which infants develop, discussing the need for and exposure to diverse faces from multiple races in everyday interactions, the need for digital equity, and the importance of inclusion of multiple cultural perspectives on parent child rearing practices for motor development.

In the first paper on diversity, Laurie Bayet discusses the importance of diverse exposure to different faces during infancy due to the privileged perceptual role that faces have early in infancy. Infants learn a wealth of information from faces from gaze following to learn about objects, lip reading to learn about language, and emotional expressions to learn emotion. Just as they do with different phonemes, infants experience a relative loss in the ability to individuate the faces of people from social groups unfamiliar to them, unless they have more diverse exposure to different faces. By 9- to 12-months, infants are less able to process gender, race, or species differences if they have less experience with them. By 9 months, children growing up in monoracial environments are more likely to match other race faces with a foreign language and less likely to follow the gaze of the other race face. However, Bayet stresses that infancy is a period of plasticity for processing faces and states that “perceptual training with other-race faces in infancy prevents the other-race effect”. Bilingualism is also associated with less racial bias. She concluded that infant interaction with people from diverse racial backgrounds is necessary to reduce or prevent perceptual and social biases to faces. She also discusses the implications of mask wearing for the development of face processing.  She reports that infants seem to be able to learn from faces even when covered by masks and how infants do this is not yet clear. However, such learning may be partly due to rich interactions with individuals in the home who do not wear masks. The risk however is that this may provide less diverse exposure.

I discuss the role of digital equity. Digital media is pervasive in everyday life and media’s utility was brought into sharp focus during the COVID pandemic. The paper considers the potential benefits and pitfalls of media for young children. There are many benefits of carefully produced educational media and video chat during early childhood. For example, exposure to diverse racial faces can reduce perceptual and social bias as described by Bayet, and media has been demonstrated to be effective in this reduction. However, many low-resourced families and those living in rural communities are not able to reap these benefits due to underconnectivity. Underconnectivity is not due to lack of devices, but rather results from poor bandwidth and/or the prevalence of outdated technology that cannot keep up with the current demands and software updates. Increased and affordable access to broadband is needed to allow infants to gain educational and social benefits of media. On the other hand, the media also brings risks. For example, many platforms include algorithms that drive viewers to engage for protracted periods, such as the autoplay feature. Other platforms are monetized and request users to pay for digital items. Finally, media content is not universally inclusive. Additional resources are needed to develop content that is educational, racially linguistically and culturally inclusive, and free of bias.

Karasik and Robinson discuss the importance of inclusiveness in developmental science by considering multiple cultural contexts in which infants develop. They point out that a major pitfall in understanding motor development is the disconnect between the theory that motor development is invariant and hence there are clear motor milestones and a body of literature showing that motor development is highly sensitive to context. There is a huge range of childrearing practices associated with physical development. For example, in Tajikistan, cradling – involving tightly binding children into cradles for extended periods throughout their infancy – is a common practice to enhance sleep, emotion regulation, and social interactions. Although motor skills do emerge later for Tajik children than Western milestones, no long-term negative effects on motor development have been associated with cradling practices. At the other extreme, some cultural groups stress freedom of movement and frequently “exercise” their infants to encourage motor development. These – sometimes profound – variations reveal that motor development is not a linear process wherein each milestone must be met at a given time and in a set order, but rather depends on the environment and childrearing practices that surround each child. Notably, this conclusion is at odds with the fact that interventions are typically based on screening tests for having passed a certain milestone at a given age. The authors stress that “…milestones are inadequate conventions for charting early development. Based on Western standards, milestones ignore cultural variation in childrearing and environment.” 

The articles not only point out potential problems associated with lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion; the authors also provide insightful evidence-based strategies for how we can address them. Bayet suggests the need for interaction with people from different racial groups to reduce perceptual and social racial bias. Barr argues that policymakers can increase equity in access to media and digital resources by facilitating the access to affordable and reliable broadband. Policy makers should also ensure that children have access to a safe digital playground. To reduce risks of exploitative practices, policy makers can introduce and enforce new regulations. Finally, Karasik and Robinson argue that research needs to be much more inclusive to consider the multitude of ways that early experiences can shape development. “Policy should incorporate the cultural and ecological context in which children’s behavior occurs.” We can only gain as a scientific field by including more cultural perspectives in our developmental science and in the policy implications we derive from it. Thus, the authors of the articles in this section came to a similar overarching conclusion: Developmental science and public policy on diversity, equity, and inclusion support positive infant development across multiple domains.

ICIS members can access the Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences Special Issue free of charge via the Member Only section of the ICIS website.  To log in, please click here. 

About the Author

by Hyesung Grace Hwang

We, as developmental psychologists, know neighborhoods are important in shaping child development. Bronfenbrenner’s (1989) ecological model includes neighborhoods as a vital part of the environment or ecological systems that influence a child’s development. Significant progress has been made in understanding how neighborhood environmental factors (such as poverty, unemployment, violent crime, food deserts, etc.) relate to infants’ physical health and children’s academic success (Brooks-Gunn et al., 1993; Chetty et al., 2016; Cubbin et al., 2008; Ellwood-Lowe, 2021; Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000; Leventhal & Dupéré, 2019). Yet, less attention has been focused on how neighborhood factors influence infants’ socio-cognitive development. That is, what roles do neighborhoods play in how infants learn to interact with others? How do neighborhood environments relate to infants’ emerging understandings about social groups, especially race and language groups?

From several studies, we know that the people infants see around their community can shape infants’ face perception (Anzures et al., 2013; Quinn et al., 2018, 2019). For instance, 3-month-old infants from African immigrant families in Israel spent equal time looking at African and White faces whereas same-age infants who had only lived in Africa looked longer at African faces and Israeli infants who had always lived in Israel looked longer at White faces (Bar-Haim et al., 2006). Recent research from our laboratory suggests that living in more diverse neighborhoods may not only shape how infants process faces but also how infants process and learn about people’s actions – especially people from linguistic and racial backgrounds different from them. 

In one study (Howard et al., 2014), we found that 19-month-old infants from English-speaking monolingual households were more likely to imitate actions of a foreign-language speaker (in this case, a Spanish speaker) if they lived in more linguistically diverse neighborhoods – that is, in zip codes with more non-English speaking population according to United States census – compared to infants who lived in less linguistically diverse neighborhoods. This pattern held even when controlling for other neighborhood level factors, such as median income and population density. Further, it was not only the Spanish speaking population in these zip codes but the overall non-English speaking population that predicted whether infants were more likely to imitate the foreign Spanish speaker, suggesting that exposure to people who speak a language different from the infant, rather than specific exposure to Spanish speaking people, is what predicts infants’ openness to learn from a foreign language speaker. These findings suggest that even if infants have limited exposure to other language speakers at home, living in a more linguistically diverse neighborhood can influence their openness to foreign speakers.

In another study (Hwang et al., 2021), we investigated whether living in a racially diverse neighborhood could influence how infants perceive and process people’s actions based on race. To do so, we tapped into an existing dataset that collected infants’ neural responses to observing people make goal-directed actions. This dataset used electroencephalography (EEG), which passively measures infants’ brain activities through electrical signals from the scalp, and consisted of 7- to 12-month-old infants who varied in racial backgrounds and were from a range of neighborhoods across Chicago, Illinois and College Park, Maryland. For some of the participants, the people that the infants observed happened to be the same race as them and their parents (i.e., ingroup), whereas other infants saw people that were from different racial backgrounds from them and their parents (i.e., outgroup). We found that 7- to 12-month-old White infants from more racially diverse neighborhoods exhibited greater frontal theta oscillation (an index of top-down attention and information encoding) and more mu rhythm desynchronization (an index of motor system activation and potentially neural mirroring) when viewing a racial outgroup person grasp an object than White infants from less racially diverse neighborhoods. These results suggest that the racial diversity in infants’ neighborhoods in the first year of life could have an impact on how White infants are starting to perceive people based on race. This study extends findings that by early childhood, neighborhood racial contexts are related to children’s early emerging conceptions of race and essentialization of race (Mandalaywala et al., 2019; Pauker et al., 2010, 2016) and suggest neighborhoods may start shaping these conceptions starting in the first year of life. 

An important point to note is that unlike in White infants, we did not see any evidence of neighborhood racial demographic effects on racial minority (i.e., not identified as monoracial White) infants’ neural responses to racial outgroup individuals. This null result could be because we had a limited sample size of racial minority infants (with not enough representative samples from specific racial groups). Nonetheless, this finding raises an intriguing possibility that neighborhood racial diversity might matter more for White infants than racial minority infants in shaping their social group understanding. Perhaps racial minority infants are more likely to encounter people from different racial backgrounds in their daily lives regardless of neighborhood racial demographics compared to monoracial White infants. Such possibilities underscore the importance of research on infants from racially minoritized backgrounds. Only with more research with diverse populations will we be able to fully answer how neighborhoods impact infants’ social group reasoning.  

These studies present intriguing first-look findings that infants’ neighborhoods may not only shape their physical health but also their emerging understanding of the social world. Of course, it is important to acknowledge that infants in these studies were not randomized into different neighborhoods so establishing a causal link is difficult. Even so, we know that infants cannot choose their own neighborhoods; thus, it seems likely that neighborhood level exposure to linguistic and racial outgroup populations are driving these effects. However, what does neighborhood demographics at the zip code level capture? It may represent the mere exposure infants have to different race individuals in public spaces, like the park or on the bus. It may or may not correspond to the frequency of more interactive experiences infants have with different race individuals, such as sharing meals or playing together. To disentangle why neighborhood demographics relate to infants’ openness to outgroup people, our group has been exploring infants’ social networks – the people that infants regularly interact with on a daily and weekly basis (Burke et al., under review). Whether diversity in infants’ daily interactions have differing impacts or interactive effects with diversity at the neighborhood level is an open research question we are currently exploring. 

Future research on the impact of neighborhoods is moving beyond quantifying demographics and populations to incorporate how social structures within neighborhoods relate to infant development. For instance, sociologists, economists, epidemiologists, and many others have found cohesiveness of social networks, trust among neighbors, and reciprocal exchanges among residents predict morbidity and mortality (Promise Neighborhoods Research Consortium et al., 2011; Sampson et al., 1997, 1999) suggesting that the social structures within neighborhoods may have profound effects on infants’ socio-cognitive development as well. For instance, infants who live in higher trust neighborhoods may form different expectations about how strangers will act, how and what kinds of people will affiliate, and who can be trusted compared to infants who live in lower trust neighborhoods. Perhaps neighborhood environments could also have influences on infants’ emerging moral development, personality, and more.

It is clear that infants’ proximal environments – the parents and family groups that infants have direct interactions with – have important influences on infants’ early social cognitive development. But comparatively, we know less about the influence of more distal environmental factors – like neighborhood contexts – on infant development. We hope our work begins to open doors and pique interest in developmental psychologists to examine the neighborhoods as a major source of context that contributes to infants’ lived experiences and healthy development. 

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About the Author