Professor Saloni Krishnan and Professor Pablo Ripollés

From infancy onwards, humans display an innate motivation to acquire language and to communicate. We start acquiring words as babies and continue to do so throughout our lives. In fact, children are thought to learn over 3000 new words each year. However, relatively little work has focused on why we are motivated to learn words, particularly when it comes to adolescents. 

Adolescence is a period of great neurological change and sensitivity to learning. It's also marked by changes in reading behaviours. Whilst children become skilled readers between the ages of 10 and 18, this period is also associated with motivational changes in reading, with teens frequently showing a disinclination to read for pleasure. This change often coincides with the transition from primary to secondary school. 

 adolescents to read for pleasure, arguing that it would improve not just literacy outcomes, but also result in substantial economic and societal benefit.

Recent research has shown that adults find learning words to be intrinsically rewarding, and that this intrinsic reward facilitates the entrance of new words into long-term memory. Our researchers of the month, Professor Saloni Krishnan and Professor Pablo Ripollés, set out to establish whether the same is true for children and teens. 

 is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist and

 her research focuses on understanding childhood communication disorders, such as DLD (developmental language disorder) and dyslexia. She has been awarded funding from the Academy of Medical Sciences, the MRC and the ESRC to support my research. With her MRC New Investigator grant, she is leading a team 

focusing on investigating the links between motivation and language learning in neurodivergent children. She has won several prizes for my research, including the Neil O’Connor Award from the British Psychological Society and the NDAS Mid-Career Prize. She was named a Rising Star by the Association of Psychological Sciences in 2022. Her research has featured on the BBC, the Guardian, Daily Mail, and the Boston Globe.

 is an Assistant Professor with a joint position between the Department of Psychology and the Music and Audio Research Laboratory (MARL) at New York University. He has served as MARL's associate director since September 2020. He received a B.M. in Computer Engineering from University of València (2009), an MSc in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Navarra (2011), and a PhD in Biomedicine from the University of Barcelona (2016). His research focuses on building bridges between different fields of cognitive neurosciences - especially reward - and other areas of study, including music, technology, and language. His work also goes beyond basic research and includes applied scientific studies that capitalise on music to improve human health and wellbeing.

Professor Saloni Krishnan's research focuses on understanding childhood communication disorders, such as DLD (developmental language disorder) and dyslexia. Professor Pablo Ripollés focuses on building bridges between different fields of cognitive neurosciences - especially reward - and other areas of study, including music, technology, and language. They have recently published a 

 which explores why children are motivated to learn words.

Intrinsic reward and word learning

Dr Natalie Brown

Research has shown that menstruation and menstrual cycle symptoms can be disruptive and detrimental to physical, mental and social wellbeing. As many as 93% of teen girls experience dysmenorrhea (severe cramps) and girls with a typical cycle experience 11 menstrual cycle-related symptoms on average, potentially including mood changes, stomach cramps and increased levels of anxiety and fatigue. Adolescents with problematic symptoms have reported a negative impact on school attendance, behaviour, confidence around peers and participation in physical activity.

 suggests that menstrual health education delivered by teachers generally focuses on menstrual cycle biology, as opposed to management of menstruation and menstrual cycle related symptoms. Our latest researcher of the month, 

, set out to understand young people’s perceptions of menstrual education in schools and their experiences of menstruating whilst at school, including within physical education.

 involved nine focus groups with 10-15 year old female pupils attending primary and secondary schools across England and Wales. Pupils highlighted that, in their experience, menstrual education is limited and noted that the menstrual cycle impacts negatively on their school experience, affecting participation in sport and school attendance generally. Participants highlighted a need for more support and information regarding understanding and managing periods in school.

 is a Research Officer at the Welsh Institute of Performance Science, Swansea University. She focuses on female health, specifically the menstrual cycle in relation to sports participation. Dr Brown is driven to support females to stay active across their whole menstrual cycle and use exercise as a vehicle to manage female hormone related symptoms. She is dedicated to educating, raising awareness and breaking down barriers related to the menstrual cycle for girls and women.

Dr Natalie Brown's research focuses on female health, specifically the menstrual cycle in relation to sports participation. Along with co-authors, she has recently published an 

 which aims to develop a greater understanding about young people’s perceptions and experiences of menstrual education in schools and their experiences of menstruating whilst at school, including within physical education.

Delivering effective menstrual education

Dr Margarita Panayiotou

A significant body of evidence tells us that young people's mental health has decreased over time, and a potential link between social media use and this mental health decline has triggered wide interest and concern. Research into social media use and mental health is being conducted at a rapid pace but, so far, findings are far from conclusive. Our new Researcher of the Month, Dr Margarita Panayiotou, adds to this body of work. She led a team of researchers who recently published a 

 involving thousands of young people in the UK. It set out to explore the interplay between social media use and teens' mental health, wellbeing and social life, and found that when considering the complex combination of multiple factors, things such as a lack of family support are arguably more important for adolescent mental health than social media use. 

Dr Margarita Panayiotou is a senior Lecturer in Educational Psychology at the University of Manchester. She is interested in understanding and improving adolescent mental health. Dr Panayiotou is currently leading a project that focuses on better understanding and assessing adolescent social media experience.

Dr Margarita Panayiotou is a senior Lecturer in Educational Psychology at the University of Manchester. She is interested in understanding and improving adolescent mental health. Dr Panayiotou is currently leading a project that focuses on better understanding and assessing adolescent social media experience. Along with co-authors, she has recently published a 

 examining the interplay between social media use and the mental health, wellbeing and social life of just over 12,000 UK teens.

How influential is social media on young people's mental health?

Dr Caoimhe Dempsey

We already know that children's relationships with their parents and teachers contribute to their school adjustment and achievement, and that positive, close relationships with adults are really important for a wide variety of children’s outcomes. However, few studies have examined interactions between these relationships or sought to address the nuances of children’s experiences in terms of how different relationships have different impact or influence.

To address this, along with colleagues, our new Researcher of the Month, Dr Caoimhe Dempsey, has recently published an 

 which aims to examine the links between children's relationships with their mothers, fathers and teachers, and three domains of school adjustment: academic achievement, academic self-concept and behavioural adjustment in the classroom. By examining a range of data, the researchers sought to find out whether some children are more susceptible to the effects of the quality of their relationship with their teacher.

Dr Caoimhe Dempsey is a postdoctoral researcher in Education at the 

 in Ireland. Her research examines child, family and school factors that influence children's adjustment and school experiences. Dr Dempsey's work bridges the fields of developmental and educational psychology and aims to provide tangible policy and practice implications. She holds a PhD and MRes in Developmental Psychology from the University of Cambridge and a Ba in Psychology from Trinity College Dublin. She has recently co-authored a book with Professor Claire Hughes and Dr Elian Fink called 

The Psychology of Starting School: An Evidence-Based Guide for Parents and Teachers

 examines child, family and school factors that influence children's adjustment and school experiences. Along with her co-authors, she has recently published an 

 which examines how young children's relationships with their parents and teachers contribute to their school adjustment and achievement.

How do young children’s relationships with parents and teachers impact their adjustment to school?

Dr Aurelie Lange

Supporting children to successfully transition from primary to secondary or senior school is vitally important. It's a big life change, which can leave both parents and children feeling excited and nervous in equal measure. At Tooled Up, we often use the analogy of a journey for the transitional experience. In fact, anyone who has attended or watched a talk with our founder, Dr Kathy Weston, is likely to have heard her say that we'd all want our children to be well prepared for any journey they go on, and that, as loving parents and carers, we wouldn't dream of sending them off on any journey without the right equipment, mindset and strategies to reach their destination safely and securely. Transition to a new school is no different.

Research shows that there are numerous holistic protective factors that can help to ease transition. Conversely, it's also the case that problems with successfully transitioning to secondary school and subsequent lower levels of school connectedness are associated with lower education outcomes, school drop-out, higher levels of depression and anxiety, and increased involvement in criminal, violent and antisocial behaviour. Research also shows that these difficulties may not be equal across different socio-demographic variables, with children from underserved communities (including those from minority ethnic backgrounds and lower socio-economic status) and children with behavioural difficulties facing greater challenges during the transition to secondary school. It's therefore important for all parents and educators to consider how to make this transition as seamless as possible.

Along with her co-authors, our Researcher of the Month, Dr Aurelie Lange, has published a 

 which evaluates the efficacy of a new UK-based online intervention called Level Up. In it, Dr Lange seeks to explore families' experiences of facilitators and barriers to engagement and change. 

Dr Aurelie Lange studied Pedagogical Sciences at Utrecht University and completed her PhD in 2018 at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam. She works as a researcher at the Youth Care research group on various projects. Before this, she worked at various mental health/youth care institutions in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and has conducted qualitative and quantitative research into the effectiveness and implementation of interventions for young people and families.

Dr Aurelie Lange works as a researcher at the Youth Care research group on various projects. Along with her co-authors, she has recently published a 

 exploring factors that might help or hinder children when transitioning from primary to secondary school. 

Supporting children's transition to secondary school

Dr Kasia Kostyrka-Allchorne

Over the last decade, digital developments have led to major changes in the ways that teens learn, work, play and interact with others. Digital access is a daily reality for most children and young people. Nine in 10 children in the UK now own a smartphone by the time they reach the age of 11, and the large majority of children aged 11 now use social media (78%) and have a social media profile (72%), despite being younger than the minimum age requirement for many platforms. By the time teens are 17 years old, 97% will use social media.

Coincident with this change, adolescent mental health problems have also increased in prevalence. It is therefore no surprise that much research has focused on the relationship between digital experiences and adolescent mental health. However, comparatively few studies have directly compared the experiences of teens with mental health conditions meaning that some key questions remain unanswered. Do adolescents with pre‐existing mental health conditions differ in terms of why and how they engage with the digital world compared to peers without such difficulties? Are specific mental health conditions linked to different patterns of digital usage? What role do such differences play in the development and escalation of these conditions?

, our Researcher of the Month, Dr Kasia Kostyrka-Allchorne, and her colleagues, explore what the evidence shows about the digital experiences of teens with mental health vulnerabilities.

 is a developmental psychologist and lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Queen Mary University of London. Broadly, she researches the risks and opportunities of growing up in a digital world. Her current research cuts across the disciplines of child and adolescent development, mental health, clinical interventions, and human-computer interactions. She works on large, cross-institutional research projects that come under two main strands.

The first strand focuses on gathering evidence of whether digital interventions can provide a solution to the growing problem of the lack of psychological support for parents, who may have a difficult time bringing up their children. Within this strand, Dr Kostyrka-Allchorne works with parents, clinicians, app developers and other researchers on developing and testing digital applications supporting parents both in the community as well as in the clinical services.

Second, she is involved in the work of the 

 study, which investigates whether, why, and for whom digital engagement is a risk or protective factor for mental health. This strand of research aims to provide a comprehensive characterisation of the associations between adolescent digital activity and mental health and identify some of their underpinning mechanisms.

Find Dr Kostyrka-Allchorne’s research here

Dr Kasia Kostyrka-Allchorne researches the risks and opportunities of growing up in a digital world.

The impact of digital experiences on teens with mental health vulnerabilities

Dr Gill West

Oral language skills provide the foundation for formal education, yet many children enter school with language weaknesses. Oral language is fundamental to children’s overall development and educational success. It is linked to all higher level cognitive skills and is pivotal for literacy development, and education more generally. It’s also vitally important for children’s social and emotional development.

The term oral language refers to a complex set of skills that should ideally work seamlessly together to enable children to communicate with others by producing and understanding language. It’s an umbrella term, encompassing numerous component skills which include having a good vocabulary and the grammatical ability to combine words effectively to convey meaning, along with an understanding of cause and effect, memory skills and the ability to plan what to say and what not to say.

Language skills develop rapidly between the ages of 3–6 years making preschool an excellent time to intervene to support language development. Because of this, Dr Gill West and her colleagues – as part of a team headed by Professor Charles Hulme – have developed and 

 of a new language enrichment programme, the 

Nuffield Early Language Intervention—Preschool (NELI Preschool)

, which is delivered to children the year before they enter formal education. The programme combines language enrichment for all children, with additional targeted support for those with language needs, potentially narrowing the gap in language skills associated with social disadvantage.

 is Lecturer in Language Sciences: Development and Disorders at University College London. Before taking up this role in 2023, she was a Research Fellow and Lecturer in Child Development and Education at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on language assessment and intervention in children, including large-scale randomised control trials of school-based language interventions. Recent projects include evaluations of the Nuffield Early Language intervention (NELI), the development of an online teacher training and support model for the programme to enable delivery at scale and the subsequent rollout of NELI to over 10,000 schools between 2020 to 2022, funded by the DfE as part of its Covid 19-recovery effort. She was also part of the development team behind LanguageScreen (www.languagescreen.com), an app used in schools to assess the language skills of children aged 3-8 years. She is now involved in the development and evaluation of a new early language enrichment programme for children in nursery. A successful efficacy trial funded by the Nuffield Foundation has been completed and recruitment of nurseries for the next stage of the research – a large-scale effectiveness trial funded by EEF – is underway. 

In addition to her academic role, Gill is also one of the Directors of a University of Oxford spin out company, OxEd and Assessment Ltd, created to translate research into children’s language and reading difficulties into practical applications. Gill completed her PhD at UCL, combining an interest in both memory and language to investigate the relationship between memory processes and language in children.

Dr Gill West is Lecturer in Language Sciences: Development and Disorders at University College London. Her research focuses on language assessment and intervention in children, including large-scale randomised control trials of school-based language interventions. 

NELI Preschool: a new oral language enrichment programme for preschools and nurseries

Dr Julie Moote

Does school-based careers education, advice, information and guidance (CEAIG) have any influence on later life outcomes? A body of research has shown that careers education and activities can play an important role in helping young people to prepare for and navigate transitions into the world of work. It has also shown that the quality and quantity of provision can vary considerably, with those who are most socially disadvantaged experiencing the least and lowest quality provision. However, until now, the impact of careers education on later life outcomes has remained unclear.

A new paper written by Dr Julie Moote and colleagues seeks to find out what relationship there is between young people’s perceptions of the quality and quantity of school-based careers activities and education experienced at the age of 14–16 and their outcomes several years later, when they are 21–22. Findings are discussed in the light of recent legislation relating to careers support in England, which highlights how important it is to ensure that the needs of all young people transitioning into the workforce and adulthood are met.

 started out as a science teacher, but has been an academic researcher for a decade and is now a freelance research and evaluation consultant. Her most significant project has been the ASPIRES investigation. ASPIRES was a huge longitudinal study which followed a cohort of students over a 13 year period – from primary school leavers, through to university graduates and young people transitioning into the world of work – investigating how their aspirations for education, and then work, in STEM-related disciplines formed and developed over time. The findings of this project have been reported to Parliament and are informing government policies on how to encourage more young people to get into STEM careers. Broadening the pursuit of STEM is one of Julie’s main passions – particularly making STEM a safer and more inclusive space for people of all backgrounds and characteristics. And she is also very interested in how inquiry-based learning programmes can help to inspire budding scientists.

 started out as a science teacher, but has been an academic researcher for a decade and is now a freelance research and evaluation consultant. Her most significant project has been the ASPIRES investigation

"More is more”: the impact of careers education on later outcomes

Dr Sona Kumar

In the US, as in numerous countries including the UK, female and non-White students are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) fields. A significant body of research demonstrates significant gender disparities in STEM achievement, participation and attitudes from early childhood, and that these continue to widen as children get older. Children are strongly influenced by their early environments and conversations with adults. Whilst gendered messages around STEM are now rarely explicit – children are unlikely to be told that girls can’t be scientists – they may receive more subtle messages about representation and belonging. These differences may contribute to children’s beliefs about their own STEM ability, their performance in STEM activities, and their decision to pursue a career in STEM.

US researcher, Dr Sona Kumar, and her colleagues sought to explore whether there are subtle differences in the messages that preschool educators send girls and boys about STEM. Previous, older research with caregivers found that parents tended to provide more scientific explanations to boys than to girls. Studies have also found that, within classroom settings, boys often receive more attention from teachers on science-related subjects than girls. Dr Kumar predicted that teachers would direct more scientific questions to boys than girls and tested this by observing a preschool setting.

 is a postdoctoral researcher at Purdue University studying how the messages that adults like parents and teachers communicate about who belongs in STEM impacts children’s STEM motivation in early childhood. She works in the 

Dr Kumar’s research focuses on children’s STEM motivation in early childhood.

STEM in preschool settings: do teachers’ scientific questions differ by child gender?

Dr Mariya Stoilova

Policymakers and technology companies promote the use of parental control tools to ensure children’s safety in our digital age. In recent years, there has been considerable industry investment in this new generation of technical child protection measures, designed to help parents and carers to control what their children see and do online. Some of these tools operate at the level of the device (such as a phone or tablet). Other tools are embedded into specific services, such as Snapchat, or streaming services such as Netflix. Others work at the level of the operating system, such as IOS, Android or Windows, or are provided by your broadband company.

Control tools vary in functionality. Some allow parents to limit the amount of time that children spend on a device or particular app. Others can track their child’s location. Internet filters block certain categories of content (violence, adult content or gambling, for example), or specific websites. There are other tools that track children’s online activity (search history, online purchases or activity logs, for example) and provide reports or real-time alerts to parents. Some tools track activity and interactions on social media platforms and can limit children’s contact with unknown users.

But how many families actually make use of them, and do they work? Our Researcher of the Month, Dr Mariya Stoilova, and her colleagues, reviewed all available evidence in a 

 is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her area of expertise is at the intersection of child rights and digital technology with a particular focus on the opportunities and risks of digital media use in the everyday lives of children and young people. She works also on data and privacy online, digital literacy, pathways to online harm, mental health and wellbeing. Dr Stoilova has spent the last 10 years researching and publishing on these issues.

Dr Stoilova’s research focuses on the opportunities and risks of digital media use in the everyday lives of children and young people.

Researcher of the Month

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