It is hard to think of an everyday activity that doesn’t involve the use of spatial skills. Whether we’re reading a map or packing a suitcase, we need to understand the location and dimensions of objects and their relationships to one other. Spatial ability varies across children, and predicts adult expertise in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). This is unsurprising, given the many examples of spatial skills that are integral to STEM professions (for example understanding graphs and diagrams). Recent research has found that it is possible to train spatial skills, and that this in turn can improve achievement in STEM subjects.

The BLOCS project (standing for Block Construction Skills for Mathematics) aims to determine how LEGO® is related to and can be used to improve maths achievement in seven to nine year-olds. Lego is not only a practical choice, but research has shown that it has the capacity to help children reach their mathematical potential. The project will also explore how digital technologies (a part of many children’s everyday activities) can improve spatial abilities. Specifically, it will identify how both physical Lego and digital Lego construction activities can be used to improve spatial abilities and measure the impact that this has on maths ability. This series of research studies is funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

The team

Publications

You can learn more about the project by reading the article on page nine of the Leverhulme Trust Newsletter. 

Principal Investigators: Wendy Best (UCL), Jackie Masterson (UCL-IoE), Michael Thomas (Birkbeck)

Funder: ESRC

Project description: We all experience difficulties in retrieving words occasionally. Children with difficulties learning language (around 7 per cent of the population) can experience considerable problems in retrieving words in their vocabulary. This difficulty can influence children’s relationships, self-esteem and education. The study has three strands. (1) The first involves collecting data from children with typically developing language (TDL) and others with word-finding difficulties (WFD). Accuracy and speed of naming, and related skills involving processing word meaning and sounds will be compared for children at different stages of development.(2) The second involves neurocomputational modelling of the processes involved in word retrieval. Constraints within the model can be varied to reflect the patterns shown by children TDL and with WFD. The model will then be used to predict optimal intervention approaches for children with different underlying difficulties. (3) And the third involves an experimentally controlled intervention in which children with WFD take part in one form of therapy most appropriate to their difficulty and one building on their strengths to determine which approach is more effective. Results on testing and on wider outcome measures will inform practice. By combining approaches from different disciplines, the research will inform understanding of typical and atypical language development and intervention.

Publications

Alireza, H., Fedor, A., & Thomas, M. S. C. (2017). Simulating behavioural interventions for developmental deficits: When improving strengths produces better outcomes than remediating weaknesses. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, London, UK, 26-29 July 2017.

Best, W., Hughes, L. M., Masterson, J., Thomas, M. S. C., Fedor, A., Roncoli, S., Fern-Pollack, L., Shepherd, D. L., Howard, D., Shobbrook, K., & Kapikian, A. (2017). Intervention for children with word-finding difficulties: a parallel group randomised control trial. International Journal of Speech Language Pathology, Jul 31:1-12.

Best, W., Fedor, A., Hughes, L., Kapikian, A., Masterson, J., Roncoli, S., Fern-Pollak, L., & Thomas, M. S. C. (2015). Intervening to alleviate word-finding difficulties in children: Case series data and a neurocomputational foundation. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 32:3-4, 133-168, Click here for pdf version.

Principal Investigators: Mireille Toledano (Imperial College), Paul Elliott (Imperial College), Iroise Dumontheil (Birkbeck), Martin Roosli (Swiss Tropical Public Health Institute), Michael Thomas (Birkbeck),

Funder: Department of Health

Website: https://www.scampstudy.org/

Project description: In the UK, 70-80% of 11-12 year olds own a mobile phone. Scientists remain uncertain as to whether children’s developing brains might be more vulnerable than adults to radio wave exposures to the head from mobile phones. This 3 year study follows a group of 2,500 secondary school children to investigate whether children’s use of mobile phones and/or other technologies that use radio waves e.g. portable landline phones and wireless internet, might affect their neurocognitive or behavioural development e.g. memory, problem solving skills.

The study is conducted in year 7 children (ages 11-12 years) from ~25 schools across outer London, with follow-up in year 9 (ages 13-14 years). Children undertake a computer assessment conducted at their school, including questions assessing: how fast and accurately they can solve problems and recall images; behavioural problems e.g. hyperactivity; and use of mobile phones, other radio frequency (RF) technologies and lifestyle. Information on phone usage is also obtained via mobile phone companies and from smartphone apps. This project uses innovative technology to record mobile phone usage without identifying users and content.

Papers:

Mireku, M. O., Mueller, W., Fleming, C., Chang, I., Dumontheil, I., Thomas, M. S., … & Toledano, M. B. (2018). Total recall in the SCAMP cohort: validation of self-reported mobile phone use in the smartphone era. Environmental research, 161, 1-8.

Mireku, M. O., Barker, M. M., Mutz, J., Dumontheil, I., Thomas, M. S., Röösli, M., … & Toledano, M. B. (2019). Night-time screen-based media device use and adolescents’ sleep and health-related quality of life. Environment international, 124, 66-78.

Verghese, G. R., Friedman, K. G., Rathod, R. H., Meiri, A., Saleeb, S. F., Graham, D. A., … & Fulton, D. R. (2012). Resource utilization reduction for evaluation of chest pain in pediatrics using a novel standardized clinical assessment and management plan (SCAMP). Journal of the American Heart Association, 1(2), e000349.

Principal Investigators: Denis Mareschal, Michael Thomas, Iroise Dumontheil (Birkbeck), Andy Tolmie, Emily Farran, Kaska Porayska-Pomsta, Sveta Mayer (Institute of Education), Derek Bell (Learnus)

Funder: Education Endowment Fund and Wellcome Trust

Project description: UnLocke is a project to develop and test software that aims to improve pupils’ ability to “inhibit” irrelevant prior knowledge when learning new concepts in 100 primary schools. When learning new concepts in science and maths, pupils must be able to inhibit prior contradictory knowledge and misconceptions in order to acquire new knowledge successfully. This skill of “interference control” varies between pupils, with variation evident from an early age. Disadvantaged pupils seem to have weaker control skills than their wealthier peers. The project will use a computer game to train pupils’ ability to control such interference. Pupils in up to 100 primary schools will undertake 15 minutes of exercises 3 times a week, at the beginning of maths or science lessons. In the game, a child-friendly character will try to solve problems with help from the player, providing prompts and suggestions. The aim is to train the pupils to inhibit their initial response, and instead give a more delayed and reflective answer. Exercises will relate to specific maths and science content. For example, exercises will help pupils to realise that mice and elephants have the same-sized cells, or that the world is round despite seeming flat. Teachers (or Teaching Assistants) will receive a half-day training workshop to understand the content and background, but the hypothesis is that interference control improves best with practice, not through a change in pedagogy. In terms of existing research, evidence from neuroscience supports the hypothesis that inhibition control is necessary to develop the reasoning skills required in maths and science. The proposed intervention draws on work which suggests that when being trained in inhibition control, participants begin to engage more of the parts of the brain required for logical thinking. Emerging neuroscience research suggests that the inhibition needs to happen in the networks that are specific to the skills being developed, thus the need for exercises to be related to specific subject knowledge. Primary schools are being recruited to take part in the research. For more information contact unlocke@psychology.bbk.ac.uk.

Papers:

Roy, P., Rutt, S., Easton, C., Sims, D., Bradshaw, S., & McNamara, S. (2019). Stop and Think: Learning Counterintuitive Concepts. Report from the National Foundation for Educational Research for the EEF. 

Wilkinson, H. R., Smid, C., Morris, S., Farran, E. K., Dumontheil, I., Mayer, S., … & Mareschal, D. (2019). Domain-specific inhibitory control training to improve children’s learning of counterintuitive concepts in Mathematics and Science. Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, 1-19. doi: 10.1007/s41465-019-00161-4

Blogs:

Children’s understanding of counterintuitive concepts in maths and science, by Dr. Iroise Dumontheil

Results from the paper Domain-specific inhibitory control training to improve children’s learning of counterintuitive concepts in Mathematics and Science, by Dr. Hannah Wilkinson.