Adele Diamond

Diamond, A. (2010). The Evidence Base for Improving School Outcomes by Addressing the Whole Child and by Addressing Skills and Attitudes, Not Just Content. Early Education and Development, New York: Taylor and Francis Group.

If we want the best academic outcomes, the most efficient and cost-effective route to achieve that is, counter intuitively, not to narrowly focus on academics, but to also address children’s social, emotional and physical development. Similarly, the best and most efficient route to physical health is through also addressing emotional, social, and cognitive wellness. Emotional wellness, similarly, depends critically on social, cognitive, and physical wellness.

Diamond, A. (2009). All or None Hypothesis: A Global-Default Mode That Characterizes the Brain and Mind. National Institute of Health Public Access: US Department of Health and Human Services.

Developmental psychologists, neuroscientists, pediatricians and teachers have long known a young child’s nervous system lacks precision in many ways. For example, when he or she intends to do something with one hand, there is often movement in the other hand as well. This paper discusses the author’s experiments on young children and babies, who were challenged to lift a box lid, then reach into the box with one hand in order to retrieve a toy. This paper states the mind and brain often work at a gross level and will only deviate from that with the use of fine-tuning or inhibition. This is true even when one might think the domains being given the global command should be distinct.

It’s easier to issue the same command to both hands than to move only one hand. If one needs to respond to the opposite of the stimulus, one is faster if the correct response is to the side opposite the stimulus. People tend to think of the nervous system as sending out very precise commands only to the relevant recipient, but it appears that often the command goes out more globally and then parts of the system need to be inhibited from acting on the command.

The conclusion of this report states although experts have known for some time that neural connections are initially grossly specified and later fine-tuned, many have not considered that gross, global commands might be the default at all stages of development, and across many contexts.

The report also reveals there is need for more constructive dialogue between those who support massive public investments in early childhood education, and those who question the cost and ask whether they really make a difference. Both perspectives have merit. This paper is designed to further inform sound policy decisions guided by state of the art knowledge, and to create a science-based framework where the public and private sectors work together the quality of life for children and their families.

Diamond, A. (2009). The Interplay of Biology and the Environment Broadly Defined. National Institute of Health Public Access: US Department of Health and Human Services.

This special section of Developmental Psychology contains articles on the interplay of biology and the environment that has the potential to change or challenge how developmental psychologists think. Topics include how experience affects gene expression; how genes affect how the environment is experienced and what effect the environment has; interactions between the environment and the presence or absence of early brain damage; motor neurons and the understanding of others’ beliefs and intentions; the effect of physical fitness on cognition and the brain; evidence that our brains work and develop differently from the way traditionally thought; misconceptions that can arise from treating children as if they are simply small adults; and how research with adults can provide insights into developmental processes in children. Each of the 16 articles in the special section forges new territory and crosses disciplinary boundaries. They suggest that investigators look at variables not typically considered, or look at them from perspectives not usually taken, and especially that they pay more attention to interrelations among variables.

Diamond, A., Amso, D., Poldrack, R., Wagner, A. (2008). Contributions of Neuroscience to Our Understanding of Cognitive Development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.

One major contribution of neuroscience to understanding cognitive development has been in demonstrating that biology is not destiny—that is, demonstrating the remarkable role of experience in shaping the mind, brain, and body. This insight is particularly important in advancing theory in cognitive development, where debates have raged about the importance of nature versus nurture.

The report also outlines how touch plays a powerful role for human infants in promoting optimal development and in counteracting stressors. The improved weight gain from neonatal massage has been replicated cross-culturally, and cognitive benefits are evident even a year later. It is not that infants sleep or eat more; rather, stimulating their body through massage increases vagal (parasympathetic nervous system) activity, which prompts release of food-absorption hormones. Such improved vagal tone also indicates better ability to modulate arousal and to attend to subtle environmental cues important for cognitive development.

The report also states neuro-imaging in developing children may perhaps be able to detect evidence of learning disorders—such as attentional, sensory-processing, language, or math deficits—before there is behavioral evidence of a problem. Already, research is being undertaken to see if infants’ neural responses to auditory stimuli might predict later linguistic problems.

Blair, C. & Diamond, A. (2008). Biological Processes in Prevention and Intervention: The Promotion of Self-Regulation as a Means of Preventing School Failure. Development and Psychopathology, 20, pp 899-911

This research examines the relationship between biological and social influences on the development of self-regulation in young children, and how this affects a successful transition to school.

Emotional development and regulation is also influenced by the development of executive cognitive functions, which includes working memory, inhibitory control, and the mental flexibility necessary for regulating attention and behavior. Developing self-regulation is further understood to reflect an emerging balance between processes of emotional arousal and cognitive regulation.

Early childhood educational programs that effectively link emotional and motivational arousal with activities designed to exercise and promote executive functions have been effective in enhancing self-regulation, school readiness, and school success.

Diamond, A., Barnett. W.S., Thomas, J., & Munro, S., (2007). Preschool Program Improves Cognitive Control. Science, 318, 1387-1388.

A growing body of new research indicates that many children start school not ready to learn not because they do not know their letters or numbers but because they lack one critical ability: the ability to regulate their social, emotional, and cognitive behaviors. Current research shows that self-regulation– often called executive function — has a stronger association with academic achievement than IQ or entry-level reading or math skills.

Diamond’s research team obtained findings with direct and important implications for early childhood education. They compared two different educational approaches during the course of their study – The Tools of the Mind approach, based on Vygotsky’s insights into executive functioning, and the school district’s version of the Balanced Literacy Curriculum, which featured more direct academic instruction. They found that:

• Executive function can be improved in four to five year-olds. Some believed that was too early to try to improve these skills.
• Executive function can be improved in regular public-school classes, without expensive, high-tech equipment or one on one attention and by regular public-school teachers.
• A program that emphasized dramatic play produced better executive functioning abilities (and others showed improved academic outcomes) than ones that devoted more time to direct academic instruction (indicating that play may aid academic goals rather than take time away from achieving them).

This report also discusses characteristics of mature, intentional make-believe play, with further analysis of the Tools of the Mind curriculum.

Diamond, A. (2007). Interrelated and Interdependent. Developmental Science., Garsington Road, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

The possibilities for building and nourishing connections among the social, cultural, biological and cognitive sciences in the service of understanding children and their development are tremendously exciting. Crossing, and integrating across disciplinary boundaries, especially those disciplines relating to biology/neuroscience, society/culture, cognition, emotion, perception, and motor function has greatly increased over the last decade and hopefully will increase exponentially in the future. All of these aspects of being human are interrelated and we need to make far more progress in understanding those relationships.

Diamond, A., Davidson, M., Amso, D, Anderson, L. (2006). Development of cognitive control and executive functions from 4 to 13 years: Evidence from manipulations of memory, inhibition, and task switching. Neuropsychologica., Amsterdam: Elsevier Ltd.

Predictions concerning development, interrelations, and possible independence of working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility were tested in 325 participants. All were tested on the same computerized battery, designed to manipulate memory and inhibition independently and together, in steady state (single-task blocks) and during task-switching, and to be appropriate over the lifespan and for neuro-imaging. This is one of the first studies, in children or adults, to explore how memory requirements interact with spatial compatibility and how spatial incompatibility effects both with stimulus-specific rules and with higher-level, conceptual rules.

Diamond, A. (2006). Bootstrapping Conceptual Deduction Using Physical Connection: Rethinking Frontal Cortex. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Vol. 10, No. 5.  Amsterdam: Science Direct. Ensevier Ltd.

The age at which infants can demonstrate the ability to deduce abstract rules can be reduced by more than half, from 21 months to 9 months. The key is to introduce a physical connection between the items to be conceptually related. In this paper, Diamond argues that making the same change in how items are presented might also help some preschoolers with learning delays, especially some children with autism. She also suggests the roles of premotor and ventrolateral prefrontal cortices in deducing abstract rules might have been misinterpreted behaviorally and anatomically. The crucial brain region may be the periarcuate, which partially overlaps both premotor and lateral prefrontal cortex. The cognitive ability made possible by this region might be something far more elementary than previously considered: the ability to perceive conceptual connections in the absence of physical connection.

Diamond, A., Kirkham, N. (2003). Response: Sorting Between Theories of Perseveration: Performance in Conflict Tasks Requires Memory, Attention and Inhibition. Garsington Road, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Two commentaries have raised interesting and important questions regarding the authors’ theory of attentional inertia. In this short paper, Diamond and Kirkham respond to these questions.