Sharon Wolf

Internally-displaced children often lack schooling and reside in highly multilingual contexts. In Nigeria, children must learn to read in a local language (e.g., Hausa), and English; here, language skills can transfer across languages to support biliteracy. Importantly, the strength of transfer is constrained by proficiency in language skills. Formal schooling and early life exposure are crucial for acquisition of language skills. In our sample of 1595 Nigerian internally-displaced children, we investigated how pre-displacement school enrollment and early life language language exposure (i.e., at home) predict language skills, and how language skills transfer across languages to support literacy. Pre-displacement school enrollment particularly supported phonological awareness, and early life language exposure particularly supported vocabulary. Phonological awareness was stronger in Hausa relative to English, resulting in greater transfer from Hausa to English. IDP context allows the investigation of cognition and environment to enrich theoretical models of biliteracy, and inform pedagogical practices.

Purpose:Many children in Majority World contexts are not meeting reading milestones, partly because many learn to read in a new language of instruction (LoI). Targeted instruction may improve reading outcomes, yet impacts may be limited for children who do not speak the LoI. This study examined how home language experience related to children’s language and reading skills after two years of reading instruction, and within a targeted instruction program delivered in French (PEC), in multilingual communities.Method:Children (N = 1050, girls = 506; Age M = 10.77, SD = 2.08) in this study were monolingual or bilingual/multilingual (with/without French [the LoI]) at home. We examined their language and reading skills and how home language experience moderated outcomes within PEC.Results:Bilinguals/multilinguals had overall better French language and reading skills compared to monolinguals especially when they spoke the LoI at home, but even when they did not. Bilingual/multilingual experience may therefore benefit language and reading development even when it does not include the LoI. Importantly, home language experience did not moderate the impact of PEC on language and reading. Conclusion:Targeted instruction programs demonstrate potential to provide equitable education in multilingual Majority World contexts, but a bilingual/multilingual component may be needed to improve reading outcomes further.

Violence against children violates human rights and fundamentally challenges the global objectives outlined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Children may frequently experience harsh discipline in both homes and schools, two main settings for early learning and development, yet longitudinal evidence on the developmental consequences of exposure to harsh discipline across these two settings remains scarce in Sub‐Saharan Africa. Further, the interaction between harsh discipline at home and in school remains underexplored. Drawing on data from a longitudinal study in Ghana, we examine whether repeated exposure to harsh discipline at home and school across three years (which we define as “cumulative exposure”) among pre‐primary school children aged 5–8 years ( N = 663; M _age = 6.94 years). By controlling for baseline outcomes in a value‐added design, we estimated the robust associations between cumulative harsh discipline at home and at schools with higher‐order cognitive skills, namely academic and executive function. Cumulative harsh discipline at home significantly predicted lower academic skills (𝛽 = ‐0.045, p < 0.05) but not executive function, while cumulative harsh discipline at school did not statistically significantly predict any skills. Moderation analyses showed that children's experiences of harsh discipline at home were negatively associated with executive function under conditions of low levels of harsh discipline at school. Findings highlight the urgent need for integrated, contextually grounded interventions targeting home and school disciplinary practices to support early learning and development in Sub‐Saharan Africa.

In the Minority World, children are exposed to number symbols early in life (e.g., television, toys, store signage). In these contexts, both symbolic (e.g., 3 vs. 4) and nonsymbolic (e.g., ∵ vs. ∷) magnitude processing, at both behavioural and neural levels, relate to mathematics skills, with stronger associations between symbolic magnitude and mathematics. However, little is known about the neurocognitive development of numerical processing in contexts where children have minimal exposure to number digits prior to formal schooling. We used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate the behavioural and neural predictors of mathematics development in rural Cote d’Ivoire (N=142, Mage=9.23, SDage= 1.44). Overall, mathematics skills were low, including in the oldest children (11-13) who still struggled with single- and double-digit addition and subtraction. Despite minimal exposure to number digits prior to formal schooling, at the behavioural level, symbolic skills were predictive of mathematics. At the neural level, age-related neural sensitivity to magnitude was related to how children leveraged symbolic skills for mathematics. More specifically, greater magnitude sensitivity in the right angular gyrus in younger, but not older, children was associated with stronger links between symbolic skills and emergent mathematics. Results suggest developmental sensitivity for successfully leveraging symbolic skills for mathematics. In line with a neuroconstructivist framework, our findings emphasize the complex interplay between development, neural processing of magnitudes, and symbolic magnitude skills in supporting mathematics.

Children throughout the world attend school and learn to read in a language of instruction (LoI) other than the language(s) they speak at home, which is one factor contributing to poor reading outcomes. Understanding reading development in multilingual, Majority World contexts is important for improving reading skills globally. In a linguistically diverse sample of children in rural Côte d’Ivoire, we examined how home language experience (monolingual, regional bilingual [two Ivorian languages], French bilingual [French + Ivorian language], French multilingual [French + two Ivorian languages]) relates to children’s (N = 1335) language and reading skills. Bilingual children (French and regional) outperformed monolingual children on French language tasks, suggesting bilingual experience benefits language skills regardless of whether it includes the LoI (French). However, this language advantage did not extend to reading; there were no differences in reading scores between groups and all children leveraged phonological awareness for reading regardless of their home language experience. The findings suggest that bilingual/multilingual education programs, and reading instruction that strengthens language skills, may support reading outcomes in multilingual, Majority World contexts.

Significance: The first three years of life represent a period of heightened neural plasticity, during which early adversity—such as poverty and maternal stress—can shape long-term developmental trajectories. However, little is known about how these adversities are linked to neural network organization in infants and toddlers living in low-resource settings.Aim: This study examined how prenatal exposure to maternal poverty and mental health symptoms relates to neural network organization in early childhood.Approach: We conducted a longitudinal study with 42 children (6–36 months old) from economically-vulnerable households in rural Côte d’Ivoire. Maternal multidimensional poverty and mental health symptoms were assessed around conception and during pregnancy. Two years later, children’s development was measured using the Caregiver Reported Early Development Instruments (CREDI), and resting-state brain activity was recorded using portable functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Graph-theoretic metrics of functional connectivity, including segregation, integration, and small-worldness, were computed to characterize neural network organization.Results: Greater exposure to poverty was associated with reduced network segregation and integration. In contrast, higher maternal mental health symptoms were linked to increased segregation and integration. These findings suggest that deprivation and maternal stress differentially relate to early neural network architecture.Conclusions: Our results align with dimensional models of adversity, and suggest that deprivation (related to poverty) and threat/unpredictability (related to maternal mental health and caregiving) may become biologically embedded. These findings underscore the importance of addressing both structural poverty and maternal mental health during pregnancy and early childhood to promote healthy brain development in high-adversity contexts.

The effectiveness of early childhood interventions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is well-documented, but it remains unclear whether and how much such programs could reduce current socioeconomic inequities in child outcomes. This paper reviews existing literature on socioeconomic status (SES)–based outcome gaps for young children in global contexts, estimates the magnitude of SES gaps with recently released Round 6 Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS6) data, and compares these gaps to effect sizes found in the literature on early childhood intervention. We also include descriptive analyses using MICS6 data to shed light on whether participation in early childhood care and education services may mitigate existing SES gaps. Using data from 12 countries, we find that SES gaps in preschool-age children’s skills are extensive, but with significant variation across different countries. Within-country differences in child development scores across the highest and lowest wealth quintiles range from 0.17 SD (in Uzbekistan) to 0.92 SD (in Nigeria). Generally, SES gaps exceed average reported intervention effect sizes, which range from 0.12 to 0.44 SDs across different meta-analyses. Collectively, these findings suggest that new or combined approaches to early childhood care and education are needed to more meaningfully realize the equalizing potential of early childhood intervention and to support the world’s most economically disadvantaged children.

This study introduces the Picture Food Insecurity Task (PicFIT), an intuitive and quick picture-based assessment tool that uses culturally appropriate pictures to gauge children's food insecurity (FI) levels. This novel tool aims to address the limitations of existing household-level and text-based FI measures used with child respondents that may not capture children's individual experiences or be developmentally appropriate. Implemented with children ages 4-17 years (n=3,326) in rural Côte d'Ivoire, this study validated the PicFIT against two established FI measures: a household-level measure (HFIAS) administered to caregivers and a verbal-based measure (CFIES) administered to children. Additionally, we show that PicFIT scores correlate more significantly with children's physical development (height-for-age) than HFIAS and CFIES. These findings suggest that PicFIT is a promising measure for assessing FI in children.