Researchers from the University of Warwick have created a simple test that can predict how well a toddler will perform in school by age eight, and this benefit children who may need to be helped at an earlier age.
“An easy, five-minute raisin game task represents a promising new tool for follow-up assessments to predict attention regulation and learning in preterm and term born children,” said co-author Dieter Wolke, a psychology professor at the University of Warwick and senior author of the study published in the Journal of Pediatrics, in a Futurity report.
“The results also point to potential innovative avenues to early intervention after preterm birth.”
Super simple test can lead to big results
The test goes like this: A raisin is placed under an opaque cup within arm’s reach of a toddler. Following three training runs, the toddler is asked to wait 60 seconds for permission to touch and eat the raisin. However, not all children can stand the wait, and some snatched the raisin before the time was up—showing a certain lack of self-control.
The team studied 558 children born after 25 to 41 weeks of gestation, with pre-term births running between 25 to 38 weeks. At the age of 20 months, each child was assessed for self-control using the raisin test, and then at age eight was evaluated by a team of psychologists and pediatricians using three different behavior ratings of attention and standardized tests to assess academic achievement.
It was here that a clear difference emerged between the two gestational groups: The prematurely born children in particular were more likely to grab the raisin before they were told, indicating lower self-inhibitive behavior. Later, researchers linked this inability while toddlers to later poorer performance in schools, as compared to their full-term peers.
This means that a cheap and simple test may help guide parents into taking extra early measures to help their children.
“This new finding is a key piece in the puzzle of long-term underachievement after preterm birth,” said Julia Jaekel, lead author of the study and honorary research fellow at the University of Warwick.
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
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