Leeds Developing Minds Lab

The research conducted in the Leeds Developing Minds Lab aims to increase our understanding of psychological development in children and adolescents, the mechanisms that drive psychological change, and the causes and consequences of, and best ways to support, developmental differences. We are interested in a range of topics, such as language and literacy, attention and memory, social and emotional abilities, and mental wellbeing. We work both on projects that explore neurotypical development during childhood and adolescence, as well as those that focus on diversity in development, and use a variety of research approaches. These include qualitative techniques like focus groups and interviews to understand different experiences, surveys and questionnaires about behaviour, game-like activities that give us insight into cognitive processing, and measurement of signals in the brain to understand what underpins the differences we see.

Meet the team

Our research group consists of seven core members of academic staff as well as our researchers and postgraduate students.
Dr Jenny Retzler
Dr Hannah Nash
Dr Paige Davis
Professor Amanda Waterman
Dr Luísa Superbia Guimarães
Professor Richard Allen

Examples of our current research

iKIDS: iKids: Investigating Kids’ Interaction with Digital Screens
Dr Jenny Retzler

Interactive electronic devices, such as tablets and smartphones, are commonplace in the lives of young children, but better understanding of the harms and benefits is needed to develop evidence-based recommendations for parents and early years practitioners. Dr Jenny Retzler is collaborating with a team of specialists in public health and physical activity on a unique NIHR-funded longitudinal project that explores how these devices affect the development of children under the age of 6. We are working with early years providers to recruit 1,400 families with children aged 3 and 4. Each child will complete some developmental assessments and measurements of physical activity and device use at this age, and again, a year later. Our goal is to understand how differences in emerging cognitive, academic and motor skills, and physical activity, relate to differences in how children engage with interactive electronic devices – including how long the children use devices for, and what kind of content they access. Understanding the positive and negative impacts associated with such technology will help to shape guidance that can improve children’s health and school readiness. You can read about iKids here.

 

The DART (Dynamic Assessment of Reading test) Project
Dr Hannah Nash

In this project funded by the Nuffield Foundation Dr Hannah Nash and Dr Paula Clarke, together with colleagues, explored whether a dynamic approach to assessment could accurately identify children at risk of later reading difficulties and provide a fairer means of assessment for the diverse community of primary pupils in England. Opportunities to learn vary greatly between children; children from disadvantaged backgrounds or those for whom English is an additional language may have had less opportunity to learn the foundation skills of reading in English. Dynamic assessment measures a child’s capacity to learn during a task rather than what they already know. In the project we created three computerised dynamic tests; of decoding in young children and of vocabulary and sight word learning in older children. All the dynamic assessments achieved excellent or outstanding levels of accuracy as screeners for later reading difficulties and the decoding and vocabulary tasks showed potential to add value to a battery of traditional static assessments for children with EAL. Data from a subsample of non-readers suggest that administering the decoding task earlier in the school year could improve screening accuracy further. We were recently awarded UKRI Impact Acceleration funding to co-design the decoding task as a web-based app with teachers and young children. You can read more about the DART project here.

Let’s Play: Socially Prescribed Creative Play for 0-2-year-olds
Dr Paige Davis

In collaboration with Theatre Hullabaloo Darlington and funded by the Arts Council England, Dr Paige Davis is leading a longitudinal study that looks at a 12-week creative play group for infants and their carers. This place based, socially prescribed programme is being developed by Theatre Hullabaloo and is offered at family hubs around the Northeast of England. This intervention provides a safe space to sing, play and helps to educate parents about what is going on in their infant’s brain while they are playing together. The goal of the programme is to reach those parents and infants that are amongst the most vulnerable. We are focusing on parent factors that influence later child outcomes like attachment, confidence and postnatal depression. We are also asking parents if they have noticed changes in their infants as well as looking at health behaviour changes around common parental issues. 

 

Our network

Our research group works in partnership with other groups who are interested in development, health and education of children and young people: The Leeds Child Development Unit, the Child Health Outcomes Research At Leeds (CHORAL). The Reducing Inequalities Through Education (RITE) network and Language@Leeds.