This paper was authored by Associate Professor Anne Rifkin-Graboi, who can be contacted here should you have any questions about the article.
Summary
Prior to school entry, a child’s home environment provides critical signals that prompt the developing brain to conditionally adapt to anticipated future demands. This article explores how two primary experience-dependent factors shape domain-general neurocircuitry and pre-academic skills:
- Bilingual Exposure: Growing up with multiple languages alters structural and functional language processing circuitry. It frequently enhances executive functioning abilities, such as set shifting and inhibitory control, though it may alter trajectories like the cross-linguistic transfer of number-word meanings.
- Sensitive Caregiving Quality: Early caregiving serves as an indicator of safety or environmental adversity. Lower caregiving sensitivity can accelerate danger-related memory circuitry and threat detection, whereas sensitive care supports optimal emotion regulation, complex exploratory play, and later classroom success.
Rather than viewing behaviors like distractibility or heightened vigilance as objective deficits, the authors argue they represent adaptive strengths tailored to harsh environments. Therefore, the basis of the BE POSITIVE study is to inform upstream interventions and clarify how these early home trajectories interact with school settings.
Reference
Rifkin-Graboi, A., Khng, K. H., Cheung, P., Tsotsi, S., Sun, H., Kwok, F., … & Tan, N. C. (2019). Will the future BE POSITIVE? Early life experience as a signal to the developing brain pre school entry. Learning: Research and Practice, 5(2), 99-125.
Read the article in full here –
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