Update for parents

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Now that all our data has been collected and the majority analysed, we wanted to give you an update on the current state of the project.

In total, we tested 95 children (45 females) over the course of last summer. Preliminary analyses show no performance differences between the early schoolers (those who enrolled in school August 2018) and the late schoolers (those who will enrol this August 2019). This is in line with our prediction as we did not expect to find any performance differences at this stage – since children were the same age in both groups and neither group have begun formal schooling.

Below, we have included two pictures demonstrating where the lights from the cap your children wore were placed on the brain. Image 1 is taken from the Colour game (where your children saw coloured squares and had to say whether they were the same or different) and the Cats-and-Dogs game (where your children pressed a button when they saw a dog  but not when they saw a cat). Image 2 is taken from the Story-telling Game (where your children watched 12 different stories and answered questions about each story).

The next steps for us involve starting to analyse the brain data – our focus right now is on the Colour game and the Cats-and-Dogs game. Because there were no performance differences between the two groups, we will combine them into one sample and begin looking at individual differences on each task. We are also beginning to prepare for our second round of data collection, which will take place June – August this year.

In addition to re-testing all your children, we are keen to recruit an extra group of early schoolers. These would be children born in January and February 2015 who are planning on enrolling in school this August 2019. If you happen to know any parents of children who fit into this category and would be interested, please do share our contact details! Our email is sand.project@stir.ac.uk and our phone number is 07548 808095.

If any of your personal details have changed or you wish to withdraw from the project, please do let us know. Again, we want to thank you for being a part of this exciting project and we look forward to seeing you all again soon!

Warm regards,

The SAND Project