Omega-3 benefits learning: Fact or fiction? | Integrated Learning Therapy

There’s quite a lot of hype going around about the miraculous effects an omega-3 supplement may have on a child’s ability to learn, attend and behave appropriately. There is no doubt that these oils are needed for building the brain in young children and having it function well throughout our lives. We know how the brain utilizes the oil so it seems logical that having too little may negatively affect the brain. Yet the evidence for supplementation isn’t consistent.

For example, research from the University of Oxford in 2008 found that dietary supplementation with Omega-3 improved both reading progress and behaviour in children from the general school population who were struggling with reading. Disappointingly, the same research team duplicated this study in 2018 and this time found no evidence that Omega-3 helped or improved the reading ability or memory of underperforming school children. The results were entirely different.

Contradicting this recent finding are two further studies. One, published in 2016, was conducted by the University of Sweden and found that children with attention problems may be helped sin their reading with the addition of these fatty acids. In particular, they found significant improvement in the children’s ability to read a nonsense word aloud and pronounce it correctly and read a series of letters quickly.

The second study, reported in 2018 in the journal, Aggressive Behavior, found that children taking omega-3 over a year showed decreased psychological aggression and improved behaviour, effects that seemed to encourage less fighting and arguments between caregivers. This is the first to suggest that improving child behaviour through Omega-3 supplementation could have long-term benefits to the family system as a whole.

It seems sensible to address this somewhat contentious issue with caution especially as good Omega-3 supplements are expensive. Certainly personal experience by ILT practitioners shows that some children benefit markedly by regular, long-term supplements of Omega-3 as well as eating more foods containing this oil. Others show less dramatic improvements.

We cannot always blindly believe research studies but if your child shows unusual difficulty in learning, consider first whether or not she shows some signs of Omega-3 deficiency. These include:

Dry skin

Dandruff

Frequent urination

Irritability

Soft, brittle or easily frayed nails

Scaly, ‘crocodile’ skin

Cracked skin on heels or fingertips

Chicken skin bumps on backs of upper arms or thighs

Dry, unmanageable hair

Dry eyes

Excessive thirst

Tiredness, weakness, frequent infections, lowered immunity (always sick) and allergies.

If you can’t afford supplements, encourage your child to eat cold water fish, such as snoek, pilchards, salmon, hake (but grilled or baked – not battered and deep-fried) and walnuts and pumpkin seeds. Flax seed oil is cheaper and not as strong-tasting as fish oil and can be hidden in smoothies, salad dressings, milk over cereals and so on.

To conclude, don’t expect that your child’s problems will miraculously disappear once you start on an Omega-3 supplement. Give it at least 4 months before seeing results. In addition, oil deficiency may not be the one underlying cause of the child’s challenges. There may be other areas needing intervention. Try to have a comprehensive evaluation of all the factors that may be impacting on a learner’s ability to cope with the demands of school and life.

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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.