Title: Neural Activity during Natural Viewing of Sesame Street Statistically Predicts Test Scores in Early Childhood
Editor: Posner, Michael
Introduction: Naturalistic thought in this study is important to comprehend in children who learn from complex environments such as at school, home, computers, and from television. In order to collect neural measurements on this subject naturalistic neuroimaging is used to study the thoughts of children during real-world experiences. Much of the neural activity data is collected from children viewing Sesame Street. The inquiry is made whether it is possible to statistically predict a child’s performance from natural viewing of educational videos.
Reason for research: The purpose of the research data is to statistically predict test scores in early childhood. Traditional functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is utilized to test neural processes under conditions such as isolated pictures, tones, words, letters, or digits; in comparison to the natural viewing fMRI paradigm that uses a 20.3minute montage of clips with numbers and letters.
Also the study aims to interpret the brain’s neural activity in real-world situations by testing the correlation between children’s natural viewing neural activity and their school-based knowledge. The neural activity of children is compared to that of adults through tests focused on mathematics. Included in the study is to determine any disconnect between the results of verbal and mathematic test scores.
Method and Materials: The participants in this study include twenty-seven children (ages ranging from 4 to 11, 16 female) and twenty adults (ages 18 to 26, 13 female). From those figures the following participated successfully in the various experimental conditions: “(26 children and 20 adults in the natural viewing fMRI paradigm, 23 children and 20 adults in the traditional fMRI paradigm, and 19 children in the behavioral standardized testing).”
Results: Discovery of “neural maturity” between the children-to-adult subjects increased with age. It increased with age across large sections of the brain like basic sensory and motor cortices which transmit impulses to voluntary muscles. No correlations were made for the number-related test increases and children’s math test performance in the traditional paradigm. The natural viewing neural measures resulted in a correlation between children’s intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and math performance though.
Discussion: The natural viewing paradigm may present another advantage for studying children since the natural viewing stimuli causes the brain to activate better for development in the real world. Sesame Street is one example of an educational program that evidently helps children’s performance on reading, creativity, and school readiness after viewing the programs. All of which may be used to help with children’s school-based knowledge. “Complex real-world scenes simultaneously present multiple types of meaningful information across multiple [models].” (Posner 11)
Conclusions: The natural viewing paradigm appears to at least in part show a better correlation to a child’s performance in math than the traditional paradigm. The development of a child’s brain can be studied using an fMRI and to contrast it with the data collected on adults. Educational programs like Sesame Street may play a part in boosting a child’s early brain development.
Limitation of this study: The study used an fMRI, a scan that is deemed to be questionable among many people on the basis of its effectiveness and legality. The small number of people tested would ultimately affect the accuracy of the results. More people involved in the study would decrease the margin of error.
Bibliography: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001462
