Our new study shows how educational disruption shapes reading comprehension 📖 When formal literacy instruction is interrupted, kids rely more on language comprehension than decoding. 🧠 Neuroimaging reveals compensatory pathways supporting reading comprehension Check out the preprint: osf.io/m9e3c_v1

Most children in the Majority World learn to read in a 2nd language, often late. 🇨🇮 Our study in Côte d’Ivoire shows L1 phonological awareness boosts L2 reading—even when children never learn to read in the L1 Implications for global literacy efforts & SDG 4.6. Check out the preprint: 📘 osf.io/5av3y

Caregiver stress is linked with internalizing problems in adolescents. BOLD lab students Andrea De Bartolo and Julianna Corbett presenting work from Côte d’Ivoire at the Let’s Talk About Youth conference.

📚 New research from rural Côte d’Ivoire: 🔴 Higher maternal stress, anxiety, and food insecurity predict harsh discipline. 🟢 Parents' educational aspirations for children are protective. 🔍 A call for reducing poverty & consequent poor mental health + stress. 🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How does war & displacement shape young minds? 🧠 Our new #fNIRS study on Syrian refugee children resettled in Canada shows that early & prolonged displacement changes brain network organization, potentially affecting long-term cognitive development #Refugees www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New preprint: the developmental timing of displacement in refugee children relates to neural network organization. Varied age and duration of displacement were used to examine the timing of adversity. Early and prolonged displacement is linked with reduced small worldness. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Communities of practice can improve teachers’ professional development. But, infrastructural challenges pose difficulties for in-person connections in rural communities. Check out Vikram Cannanure's work on how social media & chatbots can create virtual communities: dl.acm.org/doi/full/10....

Mentoring is crucial for teachers' professional development but challenges of access, resources & capacity make it difficult in low-infrastructure contexts. Mobile technologies can scale teacher professional development. Check out Vikram Cannanure's work: dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Socioeconomic risk influences cognitive development & learning. Socioeconomic disadvantages and kinship fostering (child in care of extended family while parents pursue economic opportunities) linked with poorer EF and literacy in rural Côte d'Ivoire. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#fNIRS study of language processing in deaf adults using a cochlear implant: early ASL exposure doesn't disrupt spoken language, but may offset negative effects of language deprivation that deaf children without sign language exposure experience pre-CI. direct.mit.edu/nol/article/...

School quality is linked to reduced child cocoa labor in Côte d’Ivoire. Investments in quality education #SDG4 may serve the dual purpose of reducing child labor #SDG8_7 alongside improving children’s learning outcomes journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

BOLD lab study led by Dr. Shakhlo Nematova shows that phonological similarity between two languages may explain the previously reported bilingual effect in audiovisual speech perception sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Stat learning and reading in Côte d’Ivoire: a very challenging study with many careful experimental iterations to develop a culturally appropriate paradigm. Hats off to Ben Zinszer for realizing this impressive program. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Prioritizing research–policy–community partnerships, promoting complementary research approaches, considering measurement timescales, and capacity exchange approaches are key to large-scale impact evaluations and RCTs in Majority World contexts. Check out our paper: doi.org/10.1037/dev0...

BOLD lab study on statistical learning and emergent literacy in primary school children in Côte d'Ivoire led by Dr. Ben Zinszer highlighting the importance of testing theories in understudied contexts onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Bilingual education is often linked to (but doesn't guarantee) better learning. BOLD lab study led by Mary Ball identifies implementation & sociocultural factors critical to high-quality effective bilingual programs in Francophone West Africa. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Cash transfers to economically vulnerable moms improve mental health, reduce stress, and improve household economic conditions. Check out our paper. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

In rural Côte d’Ivoire, kids of varying ages learn in the same classroom. Younger vs older readers show different neural activity for phonological processing—neural language & reading networks may depend on the developmental timing of reading instruction. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

In Côte d’Ivoire, parental involvement is positively (but parental expectations are negatively) related to children's socioemotional skills. SE skills mediate the link between parent factors and learning outcomes. Led by BOLD's Medha Aurora. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Paper from BOLD's Brooke Wortsman. In Côte d’Ivoire, children who enroll in school late, poor readers📖, & cocoa laborers🍫 are more likely to dropout of primary school. But, quality education is protective against dropout for high risk children. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Good readers are sensitive to statistical regularities between print and sound. Not in low-literacy contexts: good readers leverage semantic regularities to read instead. Implications for statistical learning theories of reading? Check out our paper: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Check us out at #SRCD23 https://t.co/lLwSGxX41U

New publication on bilingual children’s language skills in four Ivorian languages and French. Our Ivorian language assessment toolkit is available for anyone interested. https://t.co/cpfKf2yZQo

Check out our latest work on quality education and children’s work on cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire https://t.co/yApZedWFzY

🚨Postdoc position in education and developmental cognitive neuroscience🚨 Join our research team at @APHDatOISE at the University of Toronto. Come work on exciting #fNIRS #neuroimaging studies of child development and learning in Côte d'Ivoire https://t.co/ahjs3kW9fo https://t.co/ncZY01knGH

BOLD Lab is on the move! 🚛🇨🇦🏠Our new home is the University of Toronto! https://t.co/7YYSaNAhmq

We are so glad that we got the opportunity to host Bradley White from @GallaudetU for his presentation on "Listening Effort and Neurocognitive plasticity in Hearing Aid and Cochlear Implant Users". We had a blast and learned a lot! @BL2Neuro @VL2Science https://t.co/jnqz1dNRtH