A new study has revealed that children’s brain development can depend on their parents’ knowledge and beliefs. Published in the journal ‘Nature Communications’, the study investigated one potential source of discrepancy in child skill level. 

The study involved experimental studies involving hundreds of families across the Chicagoland area. 

The researchers highlighted that parental knowledge and beliefs differ across socioeconomic statuses. However, these beliefs can be changed, with the right intervention. 

Moreover, these changes can have measurable effects on child outcomes. The results may offer policymakers insights into addressing an important contributor to disparities in child skill development.

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Suskind, Professor of Surgery and Paediatrics and Co-Director of the TMW Centre for Early Learning and Public Health said, “Neuroscience clearly shows that building early brain connections in children relies on the nurturing ‘serve and return,’ meaning the interactions between adult and child.”

“There are many deep, structural drivers of inequality that have enormous impacts on child development. At the same time, we know that parental input plays a major role in early foundational brain development.”

Suskind added, “However, little research has been centred on understanding, number one, what parents know and believe in the first place, and, number two, whether or not changing what parents know and believe maps onto changes in child input and child outcomes.”

Suskind and her collaborators decided to investigate what underlies parental beliefs about their role in their child’s development. 

This is when the team asked whether these beliefs could even be changed and what method of doing so might be most effective in doing so.

For this, the team conducted two field experiments, from 2016 to 2019, with families living in and around Chicago. 

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The results were also correlated with improvements in child outcomes, such as vocabulary, math skills and social-emotional skills. “We were able to show robust impacts in what parents knew and believed as well as both a related shift in nurturing behaviour, more talking interaction and changes in child outcomes,” said Suskind.

It was concluded that not only parental attitudes and beliefs are correlated with parental investment and child outcomes, but that these beliefs can be altered. 

The experiments also provide examples of effective methods for changing parental beliefs.