Periodic Reporting for period 2 - INTERLEARN (Individualised Interventions in Learning: Bridging Advanced Learning Science and 21st CenturyTechnology)
Berichtszeitraum: 2018-11-01 bis 2021-06-30
Over the last decade, there has been profound scientific progress in understanding how children's and ultimately adults' abilities in various domains are strongly influenced by a host of genetic, environmental, educational, cognitive, and socio-emotional drivers that interact over development. However, we have a much more limited understanding of how, when, and why these factors might affect any given child's learning trajectory - and above all, how that individual will respond to an intervention or novel challenge to learning.
Achieving a more complete picture of how an individual child will respond to training is of fundamental importance for a socially and economically diverse European society, one with increasingly stretched resources for raising, educating, and training children, who themselves are confronted with increasing perceptual, cognitive, linguistic, and social demands.
The INTERLEARN (‘Individualised Interventions in Learning: Bridging Advanced Learning Science and 21st Century Technology’) European Industrial Doctorate programme has established an Innovative Training Network via the European Industrial Doctorate scheme, dedicated to creating a new generation of European experts in approaches to interventions in learning. Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) each lead one of a complementary and cohesive set of five multi-methodology projects dedicated to characterising and then manipulating the trajectory of learning at different points in development, starting in very early infancy. Crucially, these targeted interventions in learning are guided by rich multimodal data about genetic, socio-economic, or cognitive characteristics of each individual child, and their momentary attentional, emotional or motivational states. The key objective underlying the research projects in INTERLEARN is to address not only which enhancement of learning is best for an individual child, but also at what point in development and learning this intervention should take place.
The projects in INTERLEARN range from studying how babies' sleep affects learning, to understanding how social touch and interaction between babies and caregivers can promote learning, to intervening at critical periods in education with online learning platforms that are designed to help children maximise their attentional and cognitive abilities.
Throughout the project, all five ESRs distinguished themselves in leading projects that advanced our understanding of learning and development at both the individual and group level using new technology, data acquisition techniques, analytic methods, and community outreach approaches. Their success in moving into directly-related research positions - with all ESRs offered employment contracts or postdoctoral fellowship funding before defending their PhDs - speaks to the relevance and quality of their projects. All projects delivered new approaches and tools that were developed and adopted at multiple sites across the INTERLEARN network, and have begun to be used by outside organizations, for instance in understanding how reading in children with dyslexia is affected by different kinds of sound.
INTERLEARN has established new and lasting international scientific partnerships between the beneficiaries (Birkbeck in London and P&G in Frankfurt, whose collaborations have deepened significantly as a function of the project) and each non-academic partner (NeuroDyanamics in Cluj-Napoca, Oefenweb/Prowise in Amsterdam, and Regionaal Instituut voor Dyslexie in Rotterdam/Amsterdam/Maastricht). INTERLEARN Early Stage Researchers have successfully disseminated their work despite the COVID-19 pandemic, including in an online conference organised entirely by them, and attended by stakeholders and members of the public.
Achieving a more complete picture of how an individual child will respond to training is of fundamental importance for a socially and economically diverse European society, one with increasingly stretched resources for raising, educating, and training children, who themselves are confronted with increasing perceptual, cognitive, linguistic, and social demands.
The INTERLEARN (‘Individualised Interventions in Learning: Bridging Advanced Learning Science and 21st Century Technology’) European Industrial Doctorate programme has established an Innovative Training Network via the European Industrial Doctorate scheme, dedicated to creating a new generation of European experts in approaches to interventions in learning. Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) each lead one of a complementary and cohesive set of five multi-methodology projects dedicated to characterising and then manipulating the trajectory of learning at different points in development, starting in very early infancy. Crucially, these targeted interventions in learning are guided by rich multimodal data about genetic, socio-economic, or cognitive characteristics of each individual child, and their momentary attentional, emotional or motivational states. The key objective underlying the research projects in INTERLEARN is to address not only which enhancement of learning is best for an individual child, but also at what point in development and learning this intervention should take place.
The projects in INTERLEARN range from studying how babies' sleep affects learning, to understanding how social touch and interaction between babies and caregivers can promote learning, to intervening at critical periods in education with online learning platforms that are designed to help children maximise their attentional and cognitive abilities.
Throughout the project, all five ESRs distinguished themselves in leading projects that advanced our understanding of learning and development at both the individual and group level using new technology, data acquisition techniques, analytic methods, and community outreach approaches. Their success in moving into directly-related research positions - with all ESRs offered employment contracts or postdoctoral fellowship funding before defending their PhDs - speaks to the relevance and quality of their projects. All projects delivered new approaches and tools that were developed and adopted at multiple sites across the INTERLEARN network, and have begun to be used by outside organizations, for instance in understanding how reading in children with dyslexia is affected by different kinds of sound.
INTERLEARN has established new and lasting international scientific partnerships between the beneficiaries (Birkbeck in London and P&G in Frankfurt, whose collaborations have deepened significantly as a function of the project) and each non-academic partner (NeuroDyanamics in Cluj-Napoca, Oefenweb/Prowise in Amsterdam, and Regionaal Instituut voor Dyslexie in Rotterdam/Amsterdam/Maastricht). INTERLEARN Early Stage Researchers have successfully disseminated their work despite the COVID-19 pandemic, including in an online conference organised entirely by them, and attended by stakeholders and members of the public.
The first stage of the project was dedicated to helping early-stage researchers start their PhDs, train up for their new careers, as well as moving ahead with their own research projects. The INTERLEARN team put on a series of intensive workshops across Europe including a scientific 'bootcamp', a product development course, two neuroimaging workshops, a scientific engagement and dissemination workshop, and sponsored and participated in several conferences. Early Stage Researchers made great progress in their projects, setting up series of experiments in Romania, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK that have acquired data with the help of hundreds of infant, child, and adult volunteers. Even early on in the program, INTERLEARN Early Stage Researchers published papers and gave a number of conference presentations on their work, and engaged with the public with a number of informal presentations, parent sessions, via social media and the internet. After just the first year of the project, results from one INTERLEARN project informed the way that online learning was being delivered in the Netherlands.
At the close of the grant period, all five ESRs have produced important results, and have delivered these through multiple media, including formal scientific publications, conferences, lectures, public talks, social media (including the INTERLEARN website and Twitter feed), and online symposia, including one organised by the ESRs themselves.
For instance, in a study on the relationship between infants' sleep, maternal status, and learning, ESR1 (based in Germany and Great Britain) found that standard sleep questionnaires and more quantitative physiological sleep measures provide quite different information - and that this is influenced by the age of the infant as well as the mother's stress levels. Along the same vein, another ESR (also based in Germany and Great Britain) studying the effect of parental touch on infant development found that touches to infants by parents and caregivers are quite contingent on the particular context (for instance, play, or parent-child interaction). This has implications for the impact of caregiver touch on learning and social orienting. ESR3 (based in Romania and the UK) investigated the role of a particular 'brain rhythm' and found that 10-month-olds’ high-gamma activity is modulated by infants' learning as well as by lower frequency oscillations. ESR4 (Netherlands/UK) used a massive online study to show that primary school children's mathematics learning could be negatively affected by time pressure, but that this depended on their underlying level of 'executive functioning'. Finally, ESR5 (Netherlands/UK) showed that distracting background speech had significant effects on the accuracy and speed of children's reading, and that these effects depended on their degree of cognitive control.
At the close of the grant period, all five ESRs have produced important results, and have delivered these through multiple media, including formal scientific publications, conferences, lectures, public talks, social media (including the INTERLEARN website and Twitter feed), and online symposia, including one organised by the ESRs themselves.
For instance, in a study on the relationship between infants' sleep, maternal status, and learning, ESR1 (based in Germany and Great Britain) found that standard sleep questionnaires and more quantitative physiological sleep measures provide quite different information - and that this is influenced by the age of the infant as well as the mother's stress levels. Along the same vein, another ESR (also based in Germany and Great Britain) studying the effect of parental touch on infant development found that touches to infants by parents and caregivers are quite contingent on the particular context (for instance, play, or parent-child interaction). This has implications for the impact of caregiver touch on learning and social orienting. ESR3 (based in Romania and the UK) investigated the role of a particular 'brain rhythm' and found that 10-month-olds’ high-gamma activity is modulated by infants' learning as well as by lower frequency oscillations. ESR4 (Netherlands/UK) used a massive online study to show that primary school children's mathematics learning could be negatively affected by time pressure, but that this depended on their underlying level of 'executive functioning'. Finally, ESR5 (Netherlands/UK) showed that distracting background speech had significant effects on the accuracy and speed of children's reading, and that these effects depended on their degree of cognitive control.
The many results from INTERLEARN projects deliver invaluable information about how children learn, and even more importantly, how we can maximise their chances for learning. One of the most important parts of the INTERLEARN project is that scientific results are translated into changes in educational and societal strategy, and into new industrial and consumer products. In several cases, this translation to educational practice has already occurred or is in the process of being rolled out at individual schools. Successfully optimising learning techniques to the individual - and making this process practical and understandable for children, parents, and educators - should have major impact on the ability of European society to innovate, invent, and thrive in the next decades.