School Readiness
Create strong foundations for early learning.
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Early Learning
Research shows that high-quality early learning experiences can have lasting effects on children’s development and later academic success. We invest in research that advances understanding of how young children develop language, literacy, math, and social-emotional skills, and how early learning environments can best support that development. This includes studies of language-rich interactions, early childhood curricula and instruction, educator practices, and interventions that improve outcomes for young children, ensuring they enter kindergarten ready to thrive. We also support the creation and validation of measures and assessment tools that accurately capture young children’s learning and development, helping researchers, educators, and policymakers better understand outcomes and track progress over time.
Completed
Dual-MEG Interbrain Synchronization During Turn-Taking Verbal Interactions Between Mothers and Children
This is a correlational study of brain activity of 23 mother-child pairs as measured by dual MEG (magnetoencephalography) machines during various verbal interactions.
Completed
LENA Grow’s Impact on Children’s Kindergarten Readiness
This white paper summarizes evidence from three quasi-experimental studies of LENA Grow, a professional development program for early educators designed to increase the number of interactions between teachers and children, in three different school districts.
Completed
Scaling Up a Kindergarten and Pre-K Curriculum with a Focus on Teacher Agency
In this case discussion, the researchers analyze scaling strategies adopted by Tools of the Mind, a pre-kindergarten and kindergarten curriculum emphasizing active teacher engagement supporting high-quality play and building school readiness.
Completed
Heart-To-Heart: Infant Heart Rate at 3 Months Is Linked To Infant-Directed Speech, Mother–Infant Interaction, and Later Language Outcomes
Using a sample of 31 three-month-olds, the research team assessed infant heart rate during mother-infant face-to-face interaction in a laboratory setting.
Completed
Infants’ Brain Responses to Social Interaction Predict Future Language Growth
The research team used infant magnetoencephalography (MEG) technology to measure five-month-old infants’ neural responses during live verbal face-to-face interactions with adults (treatment).
Completed
Mother-Infant Social and Language Interactions at Three Months Are Associated With Infants’ Productive Language Development in the Third Year of Life
This is a descriptive study examining associations between adult-child social interactions in the first three months of life—specifically maternal sensitivity, infant-directed speech (IDS), and conversational turn-taking (CT)—and children’s later language development.
Completed
Measuring LENA Grow’s Impact on Kindergarten Readiness
This study examined the impact of LENA Grow on young children’s school readiness outcomes in three school districts in South Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
Completed
Language Experience During Infancy Predicts White Matter Myelination at Age Two
This is a correlational study of parent and child language skills and youth brain development in early childhood for 22 parent-child pairs, as measured by home recordings of parent-child verbal interactions and estimates of white matter myelination as derived from quantitative MRI when the children were two years old.
Completed
The Effect of Exposure to Reach Out and Read on Shared Reading Behaviors
This is a correlational study that aims to leverage existing survey data from parents of children ages six months to five years old who had brought their child to a well visit at one of 427 pediatric clinics in North and South Carolina.
Completed
The Impact of a Language-Based Intervention, a Two-Part Study
This is a small randomized controlled trial of LENA Grow, a language-based coaching program for early childhood teachers designed to improve communication skills.
Completed
Language Input in Late Infancy Scaffolds Emergent Literacy Skills and Predicts Reading-Related White Matter Development
This is a correlational study of parent and child language- and reading-related skills in early childhood for 53 parent-child pairs, as measured by the Language ENvironment Analysis System (LENA) and other measures of language development.
Completed
Young Mathematicians in Worcester Evaluation
This is a pre-post study of Young Mathematicians-Worcester (YM-W), a preschool math program serving young children and their caregivers in Worcester, MA.
Completed
The Relationship Between Conversational Turns and Student Achievement
This is a secondary correlational analysis of data derived from a randomized controlled trial of a 13-week parenting course that was designed to encourage verbal interactions between parents and their young children, with the goal of improving kindergarten readiness.
In Progress
Evaluating the Impact of Reach Out and Read on Caregiver-Clinician Relationships and Pediatric Care Satisfaction
This study evaluates the impact of Reach Out and Read on caregiver-clinician relationships and parent satisfaction with pediatric care, and explores effects on well-child visit attendance and vaccine adherence.
Open Research Questions
We plan to fund work on this topic in 2026 and will share links to studies aligned with this question once grants have been approved.
Completed study findings aligned with this question in our repository include:
Completed study findings aligned with this question in our repository include:
Completed study findings aligned with this question in our repository include:
- Dual-MEG Interbrain Synchronization During Turn-Taking Verbal Interactions Between Mothers and Children
- The Effect of Exposure to Reach Out and Read on Shared Reading Behaviors
- LENA Grow’s Impact on Children’s Kindergarten Readiness
In-progress studies that address this question are:
Completed study findings aligned with this question in our repository include:
- Infants’ Brain Responses to Social Interaction Predict Future Language Growth
- Language Input in Late Infancy Scaffolds Emergent Literacy Skills and Predicts Reading-Related White Matter Development
- Language Experience During Infancy Predicts White Matter Myelination at Age Two
In-progress studies that address this question are:
We plan to fund work on this topic in 2026 and will share links to studies aligned with this question once grants have been approved.
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