Executive Summary
Alphablocks Nursery School is committed to providing outstanding early years education and empowering children to become confident learners. Now in its second year (2024), our research organisation, Alphablocks Research Lab, contributed to a better understanding of how children develop cognitive and social skills, as well as how we can support the mental health of children and adolescents. This report summarises the year’s achievements and highlights how our findings can shape educational practice in our nursery school and beyond.
In brief, this year the lab focused its efforts on projects that examined language skills, prosocial behaviour, and the broader environmental and psychological factors impacting child development. In doing so, we aimed to provide evidence-based strategies for educators, parents, and policymakers.
Primary Research Areas
1. Language and Prosocial Development
Tsomokos, D.I., & Raviv, L.
A bidirectional association between language development and prosocial behavior in childhood: Evidence from a longitudinal birth cohort in the UK.
Developmental Psychology (2024). https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001875
In this study with Dr Limor Raviv (University of Glasgow, UK, and Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands), we examined over 11,000 children in the UK and found a reciprocal relationship between children’s language development and prosocial behaviour. In simple terms, when children develop their language skills, they can also become more caring and helpful, and vice versa.
Key Findings
- Reciprocal Growth: Improved language skills in the early years were linked to increases in social abilities, including helpfulness and empathy, from age 5 to age 11. Conversely, more prosocial children also went on to develop stronger language abilities.
- Theory of Mind: The concept of ‘theory of mind’—the ability to consider and understand others’ thoughts and feelings—was central to explaining this link, highlighting that a better understanding of others’ perspectives helps develop stronger language skills.
- Practical Implications: Parents and teachers can foster this positive cycle through storytelling, role-playing activities, and open discussions about characters’ emotions and motivations. Such interactive approaches encourage both expressive language skills and empathy.
Why It Matters
The study underscores the importance of integrated teaching strategies that marry language development with social-emotional learning. Encouraging children to communicate about their feelings and to reflect on others’ perspectives lays the groundwork not only for linguistic mastery but also for strong, supportive peer relationships. Early interventions can help children gain empathy and the confidence to express themselves, setting them up for success in both academic and social spheres.
2. Environmental Influences on Perinatal and Early Child Development
Greenspace and Perinatal Health
Tsomokos, D.I., Papachristou, E., Rakesh, D., & Flouri, E.
Family poverty, neighbourhood greenspace and perinatal outcomes.
Archives of Disease in Childhood (2024); 109:1017–1024 https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2024-327349
This study investigated whether urban greenspaces could moderate the relationship between low household income and gestational age. The findings revealed that access to neighbourhood greenspaces lessened some of the adverse outcomes commonly associated with family poverty in perinatal stages.
Key Insights
- Protective Role of Greenspaces: For low-income households, an increase in greenspace availability was linked to an improvement in gestational age.
- Public Health Implications: Improving access to greenspaces in disadvantaged areas could be a strategic public health measure to foster better perinatal outcomes.
Relevance to Early Years
These results suggest that urban planning and public policy should consider prioritising green areas, particularly in socioeconomically deprived neighbourhoods. Access to safe outdoor spaces should be viewed as a vital component of healthy childhood development.
Indoor Home Environment and Prosocial Behaviour
Tsomokos, D.I., & Flouri, E.
The impact of the indoor home environment on children’s prosocial behaviour.
Journal of Environmental Psychology (2024); 98: 102405. doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2024.102405
By analysing longitudinal data on home environments at age 3 years and tracking children’s prosocial behaviour at ages 3, 5, 7, and 11, this study highlighted how both the physical and emotional climate at home can shape children’s willingness to help others, cooperate and behave prosocially.
Key Findings
- Emotional Environment: The emotional atmosphere at home was found to have a stronger link to prosocial trajectories than physical organisation.
- Emotional Harshness: Emotional harshness may mediate how a disorganised home environment impacts children’s prosocial skills.
- Long-Term Effects: Early home environments seem to influence children’s prosocial behaviour well into late childhood to early adolescence.
Practical Takeaways
Small but consistent improvements in a home’s emotional climate, such as establishing warm, responsive communication patterns and consistent routines, can foster children’s kindness, supportiveness, and empathy over time. Physical organisation matters too, but ensuring a nurturing emotional environment is relatively more important.
3. Emotion Regulation and Cognitive Skills
Flouri, E., & Tsomokos, D. I.
Feeling the distance: The relationship between emotion regulation and spatial ability in childhood.
Development and Psychopathology (2024); 1–8. doi.org/10.1017/S0954579424001093 (Open Access)
Drawing on a large UK birth cohort, this study examined data from children at ages 5 and 7, revealing a reciprocal link between spatial ability (an important non-verbal cognitive skill) and emotion regulation (a key self-regulation skill, which is strongly associated with better mental health throughout childhood and adolescence).
Key Findings
- Bidirectionality: Children with stronger spatial abilities at age 5 were less dysregulated emotionally at age 7, and vice versa.
- Independence from Verbal Ability: These relationships remained significant even when controlling for verbal ability and other socioeconomic, family, and environmental factors.
- Practical Implications: Incorporating activities that help build children’s spatial skills—like puzzles, construction play, and interactive storytelling that involves perspective-taking—may complement more traditional emotion regulation strategies, helping children develop both cognitive and social-emotional skills.
Fostering Spatial Abilities and Emotion Regulation in the Classroom
For practical ways in which both spatial skills and emotion regulation can be boosted in early years settings and primary schools, read our blog post: The co-development of spatial ability and emotion regulation in children: implications for early years education.
4. Adolescent Development and Mental Health
Chronotype and Adolescent Depression
Tsomokos, D. I., Halstead, E., & Flouri, E.
Chronotype and depression in adolescence: Results from a UK birth cohort study.
JCPP Advances (2024) e12245. doi.org/10.1002/jcv2.12245 (Open Access)
This research study showed that an adolescent’s chronotype (whether they are more naturally an ‘early bird’ or a ‘night owl’) is associated with mental health (depressive symptoms). As children grow older, schools and families may benefit from considering individual sleep patterns and their impact on emotional well-being.
Bullying, Interpersonal Distrust, and Mental Health
Tsomokos, D. I., & Slavich, G.M.
Bullying fosters interpersonal distrust and degrades adolescent mental health as predicted by Social Safety Theory.
Nature Mental Health (2024) 328-336. Media Coverage.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-024-00203-7
Building on data from 10,000 children in the UK Millennium Cohort Study, this research reported a link between bullying at age 11 years, increased interpersonal distrust at age 14, and a markedly higher likelihood of mental health problems at age 17.
Key Messages
- 3.5 Times More Likely: Adolescents experiencing a higher level of interpersonal distrust (as a result of social exclusion, rejection, or victimization) were more than three times as likely to face clinically significant mental health challenges later on.
- Implications for Interventions: Anti-bullying programmes that specifically target trust-building, social cohesion and belonging might be crucial for stemming the long-term psychological impact of peer victimisation.
Wider Context
With rising awareness of mental health challenges among young people, these findings stress the need for comprehensive preventative strategies and interventions at school, community, and public health levels. Encouraging trust and positive social connections from an early age could help curb the devastating emotional toll bullying can have later, throughout childhood and adolescence.
Conclusions
The 2024 research findings from Alphablocks Research Lab offer rich insights into how children learn, grow, and navigate the world around them. Across all studies from this year, a key message emerges and resonates strongly with our work in early education, namely that children’s development is multifaceted, and shaped by language abilities, prosocial behaviour, social-emotional learning, and environmental conditions (in the home, schools, and communities).
These findings reiterate our mission to create nurturing environments, whether indoors or outdoors, that enrich language ability, foster social skills and behaviours, and support emotion regulation and well-being. By informing our curriculum with the lab’s findings in the coming weeks and school terms, we aim to continue expanding the support and learning opportunities for our children and their families and to enhance their readiness for the next steps in their educational journey.