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Block-Play may Improve Language Development in Toddlers |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Playing with toy blocks may lead to improved language development in middle- and low-income children, according to a report in the October issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "The newborn brain triples in size between birth and 2 years of age. Dimitri A. Christakis, M.D., M.P.H, of the University of Washington, Seattle and the Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute, and colleagues conducted a pilot study involving 175 children age 1.5 to 2.5 years. One group of 88 children was mailed two sets of building blocks and two newsletters with suggestions for parents about activities that families could do with the blocks (for example, sorting them by color). Parents, who were told only that they were participating in a study of child time use, completed a questionnaire about basic demographic information at the beginning of the study and provided time diaries that tracked the activities of their child during two 24-hour periods during the trial. Parents completed another questionnaire by telephone six months after enrollment that included assessments of their children's language and attention. Of those who received the two sets of blocks during the study, 52 (59 percent) had block-play reported in their diaries compared with only 11 (13 percent) of those in the other group. "In this pilot study, we found that distributing blocks was associated with significantly higher language scores in a sample of middle- and low-income children," the authors write. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
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