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June 21, 2007Research Links Childhood Social Skills and Learning Abilities |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: While federal programs such as No Child Left Behind emphasize the importance of academic skills to school success and achievement, there is growing interest in how social skills develop and how they contribute to learning. Research presented at the 2007 meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development by a team of Michigan State University researchers indicate that a child's social skills at age three could predict his or her future social and academic performance. "Early intervention is an important tool for enhancing and supporting early development," said Holly Brophy-Herb, an associate professor of family and child ecology who led the research team. Early Head Start is a national intervention and support program for income-eligible families and provides comprehensive services to families prenatally until the child is three years old. The Brophy-Herb led group is currently working with EHS providers in six Michigan counties to evaluate an infant/toddler curriculum, targeting early social and emotional development that was developed by the MSU team and their EHS partners. The MSU research team is also part of a National Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Consortium, which has been engaged in a study of EHS eligible children and their families since 1996. Overall, EHS children performed better on measures of cognition, language and social-emotional functioning than their peers at age three. In addition, they were less likely to be in the "at risk" category of cognitive and language functioning.By age five children who had received EHS programming as infants and toddlers continued to show fewer behavior problems and more positive approaches to learning.
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