Mothers Who Eat Peanuts During Pregnancy Lowers Risk of Peanut Allergy in Children

A new study by doctors in Boston Children's Hospital show that increased consumption of peanuts by pregnant mothers lower risk of peanut allergy in their babies. The study is based on mothers who are not allergic to peanuts.

Peanut allergies are a type of allergy where a person gets an allergic reaction from consuming peanuts and its derivatives. Peanut allergies are common in children. The reactions range from minor skin irritations to anaphylaxis (a life threatening reaction). For some people who has this allergy, even a tiny amount of peanut can cause a serious reaction.

Peanut allergies and other type of food allergies are caused when the proteins from the food is mistakenly considered a threat to the body by the immune system. The immune system releases chemicals to combat the presumed threat and causes the allergic reaction.

The latest study is still in its early stages to strongly prove that peanut consumption will lower peanut allergies. But what it does show is that eating peanuts even when pregnant does not cause the allergy to manifest in the mother's offspring.

Background TV Affects Cognitive And Reading Skills Of Children

The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages children before the age of 2 in watching television. The first two years is a critical time for development such as language acquisition. A child's brain triples in size during the first two years of life.

Aside from watching TV, even background TV may be detrimental to a child's mental development.

Background TV is a term used when the television is on without anyone actively watching. For children, background TV may mean that they are present near a television not watching the program being shown but doing something else.

Parents often watch a television show while a child plays nearby. Studies show that background TV affects the child as he or she plays with toys, even if they don't seem to be interested in the program. It reports that having the television on in the background can disrupt toddlers as they play with toys, causing them to lose focus during play which may lead to learning problems as they grow up.

American children exposed to high amounts of harmful background TV.

Children from the age of 8 months to 8 years are exposed to nearly 4 hours of background TV per day, according to a top paper to be presented at the International Communication Association's annual conference (Phoenix, AZ, May 24-28).

The study surveyed 1,454 English-speaking households with children between the ages of 8 months to 8-years-old. Younger children and African-American children were exposed to higher amounts of background TV. Models were included to explore whether demographic variables including child gender, ethnicity, race, age, and/or family income are associated with different levels of background TV. The report states that the rates are higher in minority households.

Previous research has shown that children with high exposure to background TV have been linked to poor performance in cognitive and reading tasks.

Words About Size and Shape Help Promote Spatial Skills in Children

Spatial skills gives the child the ability to manipulate images in his or her mind and apply it to the physical world.

Think of it as showing a child a picture of a stack of blocks, spatial skills allows the child to recreate the structure using real blocks just by looking at the picture.

In a study by Susan Levine, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, she notes that pre-school children who hear parents use words describing the size and shape of objects, (like "big", "small", "round", "tiny") and who then use those words in their day to day interactions do much better on tests of their spatial skills.

The study is the first to show that teaching children to use a wide range of words relating to size and shape may improve their later spatial skills. The study notes that children aged 1 to 4 yrs old who have heard and then spoke 45 additional spatial words describing size and shape had an average of 23% increase in their scores on non-verbal assessment of spatial thinking.

The study is published in the current issue of Developmental Science. Lead author Shannon Pruden, assistant professor of psychology at Florida International University and former postdoctoral fellow at UChicago, and Janellen Huttenlocher, the William S. Gray Professor Emeritus in Psychology at UChicago joined Levine in the study.

Levine says,"In view of findings that show spatial thinking is an important predictor of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) achievement and careers, it is important to explore the kinds of early inputs that are related to spatial thinking,"

Video: Susan Levine discusses her study on Spatial Skills in Children

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education is important for the current crop of science and technology innovators. A National Science Board report in 2007 state that in order to succeed in a highly technological society, students need to develop their STEM capabilities to levels far more above than acceptable levels the previous years. Enhancing spatial thinking is an important component of achieving this goal.

Soo-Siang Lim, the Director for the Science of Learning Centers Program at the National Science Foundation, says, "This study is important because it will help parents and caregivers to better recognize and to seek opportunities that enhance children's spatial learning. Study results could also help spatial learning play a more purposeful role in children's learning trajectories."

Levine discusses the research and the study in the video.

The research was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and an award from the National Science Foundation’s Science of Learning Center program to the University’s Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center.