To synthesize the effect size of early-life home environment on children's cognitive function and investigate the effect difference between full-term and preterm children.
Literature was searched ...from five databases (PubMed, Web of Science, PsycInfo, CINAHL, and Scopus). Studies with primary data, early-life home environment as the independent variable measured using the infant–toddler version of Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment, and cognitive function as the dependent variable measured at the age of 18 years or below were included. The Pearson correlation coefficient r was extracted as the effect size. Random effects model was used for this meta-analysis due to high heterogeneity among included studies.
The systematic search yielded 75 primary-data studies (N = 26,280). Results showed that early-life home environment contributed to child cognitive function with a moderate effect size (r = 0.31, p < .001), and this relationship was marginally stronger in preterm children (r = 0.36, p < .001) than in full-term children ((r = 0.23, p < .001; Q = 3.41, p = .065).
Attention should be paid to optimizing home environment in the first 3 years of life to promote child cognitive development for both full-term and preterm children. In the resource-limited deployment scenario, preterm children can be prioritized.
•Home environment was associated with child cognition, which may be stronger in preterm children than full term children.
Abstract Previous studies on sleep state misperception have objectively evaluated sleep status in special environments using polysomnography. There is a paucity of data from studies that evaluated ...habitual sleep status in home environments. The present study aimed to investigate sleep state misperception in the home environment of patients with chronic insomnia using a lumbar-worn actigraphy to identify sleep habits associated with sleep state misperception severity. Thirty-one patients and 42 healthy volunteers were included in the insomnia and non-insomnia group, respectively. Participants recorded subjective assessments in sleep diaries, objective assessments with an actigraphy worn for 14 days, and self-assessments using questionnaires. Both groups had similar objective sleep ratings; however, insomnia group had significantly worse subjective ratings (total sleep time, wake after sleep onset, and sleep onset latency). A significant correlation was found between subjective and objective total sleep time scores in non-insomnia group but not in insomnia group. Insomnia group had earlier bedtimes, significantly longer bedtimes, and impaired daytime functioning (Sheehan Disability Scale score); additionally, they underestimated their total sleep time, particularly with earlier bedtimes and longer laying durations. Monitoring the sleep status and habits of individuals in home environments could be instrumental in identifying key points for targeted interventions on sleep hygiene and cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.
Children's early environmental experiences are often considered highly influential for later life development. Yet, environmental contexts, such as the home and early care and education (ECE) ...setting, and multiple aspects of each setting, are not typically examined concurrently. In this study, we examined associations between cognitive stimulation and emotional support in the home and ECE setting during the preschool years (36-54 months) with adolescent (age 15; n = 708; 52% female) and adult (age 26; n = 584; 54% female) outcomes using data from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a study conducted at 10 sites across the United States. Cognitive stimulation in the home was significantly related to increased academic achievement at age 15 and educational attainment at age 26. Home emotional support was related to decreased behavior problems and increased social skills at age 15. No significant associations were found between either emotional support or cognitive stimulation in ECE and children's later development. These findings provide further support that the child's home environment during early childhood plays a substantial role in development.
Public Significance Statement
We examined how elements of the home and early care and education environments are related to children's long-term development. We find that cognitive stimulation provided in the home was correlated with children's long-term educational achievement and attainment in young adulthood. Our findings underscore the lasting association between home quality and development, and highlight the need for further research on the topic to inform future interventions.
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•SES was positively associated with language scores at age five.•Cognitive stimulation was positively associated with language scores at age five.•Cognitive stimulation mediated the association ...between SES and language scores.•Child language was positively associated with academic achievement 18 months later.•Language scores mediated the association between SES and academic achievement.
There is a strong positive association between childhood socioeconomic status (SES) and academic achievement. This disparity may, in part, be explained by differences in early environmental experiences and language development. Cognitive stimulation—including language exposure, access to learning materials, caregiver involvement in children’s learning, and variety of experiences—varies by SES and may link SES to language development. Childhood language development in turn is associated with academic achievement. In the current longitudinal study of 101 children (60–75 months), SES was positively associated with cognitive stimulation and performance on language measures. Cognitive stimulation mediated the association between SES and children’s language. Furthermore, children’s language mediated the association between SES and academic achievement 18 months later. In addition to addressing broader inequalities in access to resources that facilitate caregivers’ abilities to provide cognitive stimulation, cognitive stimulation itself could be targeted in future interventions to mitigate SES-related disparities in language and academic achievement.
•Examines an enhanced Home Numeracy Model.•Shared-number play predicted non-symbolic math outcomes.•Formal operational activities predicted symbolic math outcomes.•Links between home activities and ...children’s outcomes were domain specific.
We used structural equation modeling to evaluate an enhanced version of the Home Numeracy Model proposed by Skwarchuk and colleagues (2014, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 121, 63–84). Participants were 390 Chilean preschool children and their parents. Children completed numeracy and literacy tasks at the beginning of preschool (mean age: 4 years and 7 months) and approximately 8 months later. Parents reported on the home numeracy activities they engaged in with their children, including formal (i.e., mapping and operational), informal (i.e., parents’ number-game knowledge), and home literacy activities (i.e., code-related and meaning-related), as well as on numeracy and literacy attitudes and expectations for children’s performance prior to Grade 1. We found that parents with more positive numeracy attitudes and higher academic expectations reported a higher frequency of formal numeracy (mapping and operational) activities. In turn, formal operational activities predicted number line estimation and applied problem-solving skills. In contrast, informal activities (i.e., parents’ number-game knowledge) predicted children’s non-symbolic arithmetic and non-symbolic number comparison tasks, as well as their applied problem-solving skills. The links between home activities and numeracy outcomes were domain specific: Parents’ reports of literacy activities did not predict early numeracy skills. We discuss how our results support the enhanced Home Numeracy Model and thus provide a more complete framework connecting parents’ engagement in numeracy activities and children’s mathematical outcomes.
The quality of the interparental relationship is recognized as an important influence on child and adolescent psychopathology. Historically, clinically oriented research on this topic has focused on ...the impacts of parental divorce and domestic violence as primary interparental relationship influences on child outcomes, to the relative neglect of dimensional or qualitative features of the couple/interparental relationship for youth (child and adolescent) psychopathology. Recent research has highlighted that children are affected by attributes of interparental conflict, specifically how parents express and manage conflicts in their relationship, across a continuum of expressed severity and negativity – ranging from silence to violence. Furthermore, new evidence highlights that children's emotional, behavioral, social, academic outcomes, and future interpersonal relationships are adversely affected by conflict between parents/carers whether adults are living together or not (i.e. married or separated), or where children are or are not genetically related to their rearing parents (e.g. adoption). We review evidence and present an integrated theoretical model, highlighting how children are affected by interparental conflict and what this evidence base means for effective intervention and prevention program development, as well as the development of possible cost–benefit models. Additionally, we review policy implications of this research and highlight some very recent examples of UK‐based policy focusing on addressing the interparental relationship and its impact on youth psychopathology.
Read the Commentary on this article at doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12902
The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been used in wide range of applications, such as smart living, smart health and smart transportation. Among all these applications, smart home ...is most popular, in which the users/residents can control the operations of the various smart sensor devices from remote sites also. However, the smart devices and users communicate over an insecure communication channel, i.e., the Internet. There may be the possibility of various types of attacks, such as smart device capture attack, user, gateway node and smart device impersonation attacks and privileged-insider attack on a smart home network. An illegal user, in this case, can gain access over data sent by the smart devices. Most of the existing schemes reported in the literature for the remote user authentication in smart home environment are not secure with respect to the above specified attacks. Thus, there is need to design a secure remote user authentication scheme for a smart home network so that only authorized users can gain access to the smart devices. To mitigate the aforementioned isses, in this paper, we propose a new secure remote user authentication scheme for a smart home environment. The proposed scheme is efficient for resource-constrained smart devices with limited resources as it uses only one-way hash functions, bitwise XOR operations and symmetric encryptions/decryptions. The security of the scheme is proved using the rigorous formal security analysis under the widely-accepted Real-Or-Random (ROR) model. Moreover, the rigorous informal security analysis and formal security verification using the broadly-accepted Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool is also done. Finally, the practical demonstration of the proposed scheme is also performed using the widely-accepted NS-2 simulation.
The aim of the present study was to examine the kinds of developmental profiles of arithmetic fluency skills that can be identified across Grades 1-9 (ages 7-16) in a large Finnish sample (n = ...2,518). The study also examined whether membership in the developmental profiles could be predicted using a comprehensive set of kindergarten-age factors, including information on cognitive skills; motivational, parental, and home environment factors; and gender. Four profiles of arithmetic fluency skills development were identified using a factor mixture model: persistent arithmetic difficulties (12.23%), precocious onset (50.24%), delayed onset (36.96%), and precocious onset with a Grade 7 drop (.06%). The Cholesky models predicting membership in the three largest profiles suggested that overall, the strongest kindergarten-age predictors were cognitive skills (especially counting, number concepts, spatial relations, rapid automatized naming RAN, phonological awareness, and letter knowledge), but motivational, parental, and home environment factors were also significant. Membership in the profile with precocious onset was predicted by most of the kindergarten-age measures, suggesting that the strengths in early skills, as well as motivational, parental, and home environment factors, are reflected in the advanced start in arithmetic development at school. The profiles with delayed onset and persistent difficulties were similar in most kindergarten-age measures but differed in task avoidance and four cognitive skills (letter knowledge, counting, number concepts, and RAN), suggesting that these factors predict differential development over the longer term.
Public Significance Statement
This study provides valuable insights into the development of arithmetic fluency skills over a long period, from primary school to lower secondary school. The study's person-oriented approach and use of a unique longitudinal data set that includes multiple predictive factors allow for a more comprehensive examination than is typical in the field, contributing to a greater understanding of the development of arithmetic fluency skills. By including an extensive set of kindergarten-age cognitive skills, parental factors, home learning environment, motivational factors, and gender, the study identifies key predictors of the different developmental pathways of arithmetic fluency skills.
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As the amount of time people spend indoors increases globally, exposure to indoor air pollutants has become an important public health concern. Asthma is a complex disease caused and/or exacerbated ...by increased exposure to diverse chemical, physical and biological exposures from multiple indoor and outdoor sources. This review aims to investigate the relationship between increased indoor PM and VOC concentrations (i.e. objectively measured) and the risk of adult asthma in higher-income countries.
Eleven databases were systematically searched on the February 1, 2019 and again on the February 2, 2020. Articles were limited to those published since 1990. Reference lists were independently screened by three reviewers and authors were contacted to identify relevant articles. Backwards and forward citation chasing was used to identify further studies. Data were extracted from included studies meeting our eligibility criteria by three reviewers and assessed for quality using the Newcastle-Ottawa scale designed for case-control and cohort studies.
Twelve studies were included in a narrative synthesis. We found insufficient evidence to determine the effect of PM2.5 on asthma in the indoor home environment. However, there was strong evidence to suggest that VOCs, especially aromatic compounds, and aliphatic compounds, were associated with increased asthma symptoms.
Discussion & conclusion: Although no single exposure appears to be responsible for the development of asthma or its associated symptoms, the use of everyday products may be associated with increased asthma symptoms. To prevent poor health outcomes among the general population, health professionals and industry must make a concerted effort to better inform the general population of the importance of appropriate use of and storage of chemicals within the home as well as better health messaging on product labelling.
The study was conducted to investigate the effects of a nursing intervention aimed at home environment modification on symptom control, quality of life, and the number of triggers in children with ...allergic rhinitis.
This one-to-one, parallel-arm, randomized controlled trial was conducted with a pre-test/post-test design. The study used stratified sampling method. A total of 52 participants were randomly assigned to the intervention group (n = 26) and the control group (n = 26). The intervention group received education on home environment modification and the child was provided with anti-allergic bedding set. The control group continued with routine practices. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05.
After the nursing intervention for home environment modification, a significant difference was found between the groups in terms of the number of home environment triggers (p < 0.05). According to the mean scores of the Pediatric Rhinoconjunctivitis Quality of Life Questionnaire, no significant difference was found between the groups (p > 0.05). There was no significant difference between the groups in terms of the mean scores for nasal discharge, nasal congestion, sneezing, nasal itching, and eye itching (p > 0.05) after the nursing intervention for home environment modification.
The findings indicate that the nursing intervention for home environment modification is an effective method in reducing the number of triggers in the home environment. However, no significant impact was observed on symptom control and quality of life.
Awareness can be increased by educating children with allergic rhinitis and their families about triggers in the home environment.
•Nursing interventions in the home reduced triggers for allergic rhinitis in children.•No significant impact was observed on symptom control and quality of life.•Some modifications in the home can be made to environment to reduce allergens.
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