Beware of noisy toys this festive season | Integrated Learning Therapy

We’re rapidly approaching the festive season, when many people delight in treating children to gifts, mainly toys. But before you make a selection for a young child, consider whether or not the toy makes a noise.

Dennis Thompson reports that the American Academy of Audiology (AAA) is warning parents that noisy playthings can do long-lasting damage to a child’s hearing

The ADD says that tiny ears are particularly susceptible to hearing damage. The inner ear contains delicate hair cells that don’t regrow, resulting in permanent hearing loss if damaged by noise.

What’s more, children like to hold toys up to their ears while playing.

In an AAA news release, they stated that many parents don’t realize the permanent damage a simple toy can inflict on a child’s hearing. “When we fail to protect a child’s hearing, the result can be irreversible hearing loss.

We are born with about 16,000 hair cells within the cochlea, the part of the inner ear involved with hearing. Those cells allow the brain to detect sound. These need to be protected in order to function well. In addition, noise can also damage the auditory nerve that carries signals from the ear to the brain.

So before you buy a noise-making toy, download a phone app to test the sound levels emitted by the toy.

American guidelines acknowledge 85 decibels as the level at which noise can cause damage to a person’s hearing, if they’re exposed to the sound for extended periods of time. If 85 decibels or higher is registered when holding your phone near them, like a child would hold the toy near their own ear, the toy may be risking damage to the ear.

It is hardly necessary to remind ourselves of the challenges faced by children with hearing problems. These can set a child back at school as well in social life. Apart from missing what is being said, they use so much extra effort to hear, they often become distracted and exhausted by the end of the day. Lack of focus and even depression can result from difficulty hearing. It is also likely that hearing problems may be mistaken for learning disabilities.

With this in mind, it is well worth exercising caution when buying sound-producing toys, including video games. Whenever possible, make sure the level of sound of particularly games are set at an acceptable, non-harmful level and teach children to keep them at that level.

Also be aware of any signs of hearing difficulties that your child might be showing and have them tested if you are concerned.

Image supplied by Freepik.

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.