Kids Who Fall Behind in School Can Be Identified at Nine Months Old, Study Says
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By Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 03/01/2010
The U.K.’s Millennium Cohort Study of nearly 15,000 children says that babies who were slow to develop their motor skills at nine months were significantly more likely to fall behind in their cognitive development—and also likely to be less well behaved at age five, reports the U.K.’s Guardian.
The correlation between performance at nine months and five years was said to be significant even after the researchers considered the impact of poverty on children's development.
Another recent study by the U.K.’s Sutton Trust charity found that children from the poorest homes were more than a year behind their peers from well-off backgrounds when it came to their acquisition of vocabulary by the time they started school.
Academics from London University's Institute of Education analyzed the progress of 14,853 children, born in 2000 and 2001, from birth to five. The children's cognitive development was assessed at the age of five through a series of vocabulary, spatial reasoning, and picture tests, and their results compared with those from separate assessments years earlier.
The results at five were strongly linked to the babies' abilities in tests for gross motor development, such as crawling, and fine motor development, such as holding objects with their fingers, at nine months. The researchers also found that children who are read to every day at three are likely to be flourishing in a wide range of subjects by the age of five, the Guardian says.
Children who failed at nine months to reach four key milestones in gross motor development, relating to sitting unaided, crawling, standing and taking their first walking steps, were found to be five points behind on average in cognitive ability tests taken at age five, compared to those who passed the milestones. This equates to the difference between being in the middle of the ability range in the cognitive tests, and being below average.
Ingrid Schoon, professor of human development and social policy at the institute, who led the research, told the Guardian: "Delay in gross and fine motor development in a child's first year, which affects one in 10 children, was significantly associated with delayed cognitive development at age five. Delay in gross motor development also has a significant impact on the child's behavioral adjustment at five."
The report said: "This finding highlights the importance of early screening for developmental delay at ages under one year, as a tool to promote positive child development."
