Cookie Monster teaches self-control
University of Iowa professor finds videos starring a favorite Sesame Street character helps preschoolers develop skills critical to school readiness
2014-11-13
(Press-News.org) Who would have thought a Sesame Street video starring the Cookie Monster, of all characters, could teach preschoolers self-control?
But that's exactly what Deborah Linebarger, an associate professor in Teacher and Learning at the University of Iowa, found when she studied a group of preschoolers who repeatedly watched videos of Cookie Monster practicing ways to control his desire to eat a bowl of chocolate chip cookies.
"Me want it," Cookie Monster sings in one video, "but me wait."
In fact, preschoolers who viewed the Cookie Monster video were able to wait four minutes longer than their peers who watched an unrelated Sesame Street video. They were also better able to control the impulse to shout out character names and to remember and repeat back longer number sequences.
Linebarger says learning to master these executive functioning skills are critical to school readiness.
"A formal school situation requires that children control impulses, follow directions, transit smoothly between activities, and focus on relevant task information," she says. "These skills also predict other academic skills including reading, math, and science."
Linebarger presented the findings of her study on Nov. 10 during the London International Conference on Education. The results of the study, which was funded by a grant from the Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind the Sesame Street television program, have not yet been published.
The study involved 59 preschool children who were recruited from six child-care centers in and around a small city in the Midwest. The study involved a new curriculum developed by Sesame Street that features Cookie Monster and is designed to teach preschoolers executive function skills such as self-control, working memory and switching gears between activities.
"These are the non-academic skills that help make a child successful at school," Linebarger says. "They help children manage their behavior, sit still and pay attention."
Kindergarten teachers report that more than half of children entering school suffer deficits in these areas.
Linebarger, who is also director of the Iowa Children's Media Lab and a consultant to Congress, media producers and early childhood nonprofits such as LeapFrog, Disney, Nickelodeon and Sesame Workshop, made a second presentation Nov. 10 at the London conference about an earlier study she conducted about whether preschoolers can learn early literacy skills from an educational television program called Super Why!
INFORMATION:
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2014-11-13
In a potential breakthrough against ovarian cancer, University of Guelph researchers have discovered how to both shrink tumours and improve drug delivery, allowing for lower doses of chemotherapy and reducing side effects.
Their research appears today in the FASEB Journal, one of the world's top biology publications.
"We hope that this study will lead to novel treatment approaches for women diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer," said Jim Petrik, a Guelph biomedical sciences professor. He worked on the study with Guelph graduate student Samantha Russell and cancer ...
2014-11-13
LAWRENCE -- Like hedonistic rock stars that live by the "better to burn out than to fade away" credo, certain galaxies flame out in a blaze of glory. Astronomers have struggled to grasp why these young "starburst" galaxies -- ones that are very rapidly forming new stars from cold molecular hydrogen gas up to 100 times faster than our own Milky Way -- would shut down their prodigious star formation to join a category scientists call "red and dead."
Starburst galaxies typically result from the merger or close encounter of two separate galaxies. Previous research had revealed ...
2014-11-13
INDIANAPOLIS -- Researchers have identified two proteins that appear crucial to the development -- and patient relapse -- of acute myeloid leukemia. They have also shown they can block the development of leukemia by targeting those proteins.
The studies, in animal models, could lead to new effective treatments for leukemias that are resistant to chemotherapy, said Reuben Kapur, Ph.D., Freida and Albrecht Kipp Professor of Pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
The research was reported today in the journal Cell Reports.
"The issue in the field for ...
2014-11-13
Plants all over the world are more sensitive to drought than many experts realized, according to a new study by scientists at UCLA and China's Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden. The research will improve predictions of which plant species will survive the increasingly intense droughts associated with global climate change.
The research is reported online by Ecology Letters, the most prestigious journal in the field of ecology, and will be published in an upcoming print edition.
Predicting how plants will respond to climate change is crucial for their conservation. ...
2014-11-13
MOUNT VERNON, Wash. -- A new study by researchers at Washington State University shows that mechanical harvesting of cider apples can provide labor and cost savings without affecting fruit, juice, or cider quality.
The study, published in the journal HortTechnology in October, is one of several studies focused on cider apple production in Washington State. It was conducted in response to growing demand for hard cider apples in the state and the nation.
Quenching a thirst for cider
Hard cider consumption is trending steeply upward in the region surrounding the food-conscious ...
2014-11-13
As our society ages, a University of Montreal study suggests the health system should be focussing on comorbidity and specific types of disabilities that are associated with higher health care costs for seniors, especially cognitive disabilities. Comorbidity is defined as the presence of multiple disabilities. Michaël Boissonneault and Jacques Légaré of the university's Department of Demography came to this conclusion after assessing how individual factors are associated with variation in the public costs of healthcare by studying disabled Quebecers over ...
2014-11-13
The scientists showed that the Parkin protein functions to repair or destroy damaged nerve cells, depending on the degree to which they are damaged
People living with Parkinson's disease often have a mutated form of the Parkin gene, which may explain why damaged, dysfunctional nerve cells accumulate
Dublin, Ireland, November 13th, 2014 - Scientists at Trinity College Dublin have made an important breakthrough in our understanding of Parkin - a protein that regulates the repair and replacement of nerve cells within the brain. This breakthrough generates a new perspective ...
2014-11-13
There are no approved treatments or preventatives against Ebola virus disease, but investigators have now designed peptides that mimic the virus' N-trimer, a highly conserved region of a protein that's used to gain entry inside cells.
The team showed that the peptides can be used as targets to help researchers develop drugs that might block Ebola virus from entering into cells.
"In contrast to the most promising current approaches for Ebola treatment or prevention, which are species-specific, our 'universal' target will enable the selection of broad-spectrum inhibitors ...
2014-11-13
In a study of middle-aged men who were overweight, researchers found that if a man's parents were older at the time of his birth, he was more likely to have lower blood pressure, more favorable cholesterol levels, and improved glucose metabolism. It's unknown whether the beneficial effect was due to having an older mother, an older father, or both.
Additional studies are necessary to help shed light on the effects of parental age at childbirth on the metabolism of men and women. "In particular, more research is required to understand whether these effects are due to ...
2014-11-13
In a study that looked at what factors might affect whether or not a patient receives intensive medical procedures in the last 6 months of life, investigators found that older age, Alzheimer's disease, cancer, living in a nursing home, and having an advance directive were associated with a lower likelihood of undergoing an intensive procedure. In contrast, living in a region with higher hospital care intensity and black race each doubled a patient's likelihood of undergoing an intensive procedure.
"It's pretty striking the extent to which nonclinical factors--such as ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Cookie Monster teaches self-control
University of Iowa professor finds videos starring a favorite Sesame Street character helps preschoolers develop skills critical to school readiness
