Toddlers around 16 months old use more parts of their brains to develop cognitive skills, allowing them to follow simple instructions and control impulses. A recent study led by the Universities of Bristol and Oxford, published in Imaging Neuroscience, highlights the significance of brain development at 16 months.
During a child’s first two years, crucial cognitive skills, especially executive functions responsible for adjusting thoughts, actions, and behaviors, are developed for daily life.
One key executive function is inhibitory control, which helps individuals refrain from acting out of impulse, habit, or temptation. While it’s known that inhibitory control starts developing in infancy and continues through early childhood, the specific brain mechanisms involved were unclear until now.
Researchers from the Oxford University Baby Lab and Bristol University Baby Lab used a child-friendly brain imaging technique called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine the brain activity of 16-month-old toddlers. They conducted a simple touchscreen task requiring inhibitory control skills on 103 toddlers, revealing the brain regions activated when employing these skills. This study replicated a previous experiment with the same children at 10 months old.
Previous research indicated that 10-month-olds used the right side of their prefrontal and parietal cortex for inhibitory control. The latest study shows that by 16 months, toddlers predominantly use the left parietal cortex and both sides of the prefrontal cortex.
Despite the children’s consistent performance between 10 and 16 months, brain changes were notable. The findings suggest that, as toddlers age from 10 to 16 months, while they still struggle with inhibitory control, significant alterations occur in brain activation. This implies that 16-month-old toddlers engage more brain areas compared to when they were 10 months old, even with no visible improvement in their skills.
The study, led by Abigail Fiske, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, and Karla Holmboe, an Associate Professor in Developmental Science at the University of Bristol, reveals critical brain development around 16 months, enhancing toddlers’ ability to follow instructions and manage impulses.
Fiske and Holmboe emphasized the significance of these findings in understanding the brain changes from infancy to toddlerhood, highlighting the role of different brain areas in cognitive skill development.
The researchers suggest that the evolving brain changes observed in toddlers could help them in learning the important skill of inhibitory control. This insight could aid parents and caregivers in understanding and supporting toddlers who often struggle to stop impulsivity.
