U of M News Wire
April 17, 2008
Go, girl!
U study shows that as girls move from childhood to adolescence, their physical activity drops
By Patty Mattern
U of M News Wire
When girls engage in regular physical activity they can improve their health and reduce the risk of chronic disease, develop wider social skills and perform better academically. However, new University of Minnesota research shows that they do less and less of exercise as they move from childhood to adolescence.
The University of Minnesota's Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport released this week a report, "Developing Physically Active Girls: An Evidence-based Multidisciplinary Approach," which summarizes the most recent research on the benefits of and barriers to girls' physical activity and what can be done to change the situation. The report is a 10-year update on a study President Clinton commissioned in 1997.
"The research within the report confirms that many good things are happening when it comes to girls and physical activity," said Nicole LaVoi, researcher and associate director of the Tucker Center and a report author. "[They] are participating in organized sports more than ever and at all levels--from organized youth sports, to interscholastic sports and up through Olympic competition.
[But] while some girls are physically active, many girls fail to meet minimal standards of physical activity needed to accrue developmental and health benefits, or worse, they are completely sedentary. There remains a great deal of work left to be done."
Despite the breadth of knowledge specific to girls' physical activity and its positive outcomes, many barriers, stereotypes and gender inequities that limit girls are firmly in place, according to the report.
"Poverty, [for example], substantially limits many girls' access to and participation in physical activity and sport, especially for girls of color who are overrepresented in lower socioeconomic groups," said LaVoi.
The report also found:
- Outdated, stereotypical standards of femininity and masculinity continue to influence the extent to which girls participate in or shun physical activity.
- Girls' participation rates in all types of physical activities consistently lag behind those of boys, and girls' sport dropout rates are higher.
- Girls' experiences are shaped by the quality and expertise of the adults who make decisions, manage, govern, deliver, and coach physical activity programming, many of whom have minimal, if any, formal training.
- Female athletes continue to be trivialized through the popular media's widespread sexualization of women.
- Traditional models of physical education organized around competition, team sports, power, strength, aggression, plus a focus on the "motor elite" rather than skill development, put girls (and boys) who are less skilled to begin with at a disadvantage, which may contribute to a lack of enjoyment and a lifelong shunning of participation in physical activity.
"The United States as a whole--from parents and coaches to school administrators and community leaders to policy makers--needs to make a commitment to eliminating the barriers girls in this nation face when it comes to engaging in sports and physical activity," said Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center. "Physical activity is not an 'add-on,' but rather is a core value and principle for healthy and effective living."
The Tucker Center report is designed to provide a road map for the nation to ensure that every girl has ample opportunity to fully engage in sport and physical activity.
"Often, research done by sports scholars sits on the shelves and practitioners--such as coaches, parks and recreation directors, and physical education teachers--view the research as having no practical application," said University of Minnesota associate professor Diane Wiese-Bjornstal, another author of the report. "This report aims at bridging the gap between theory and practice. It details the best sports and activity programs for girls, suggests proven strategies [to encourage participation], and shows how to implement those strategies and programs."
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Why Miss Muffett skedaddled: Infants may be hard-wired to respond to spiders
By Deane Morrison
U of M News Wire
When Peter Jackson was sketching out the Lord of the Rings characters, he wanted the spiderlike monster Shelob to make the audience's skin crawl the same as real spiders had done for him as a child.
In a way it was an easy task, because plenty of people harbor a lifelong fear of spiders, even though most are harmless. It's as though we're born with a predisposition to develop arachnophobia.
Actually, that may not be far from the truth. A study by University of Minnesota psychology graduate student Jaime Derringer and a colleague suggests that the human brain has evolved to single out spiders for special attention.
Working with 5-month-old infants, Derringer found evidence that while we're not born afraid of spiders, evolution has given us the tools to quickly learn such fear. She performed the work under the direction of David Rakison, an associate professor of psychology at Carnegie-Mellon University, where she received her undergraduate degree. The two recently published the study in the journal Cognition.
In brief, the infants in the study seemed to have a brain "template" for spiders that draws their attention to the arachnids the first time they encounter one. They aren't afraid of them, though. Children most likely learn to fear spiders later, after watching adults or older kids respond that way, Derringer said.
"These infants were not afraid of spiders," she said. "They had had no traumatic spider experiences. They were just starting to get around and hadn't discovered any spiders on their own."
The brain template that predisposes babies to respond to spiders may be activated by the age of 5 months because that's when infants are about to start crawling and exploring and maybe encountering spiders, she said.
In the experiments, Derringer presented infants with images on a computer screen and noted how long each held their attention. They stared longer at a combination of lines and shapes when they closely resembled a spider than when they resembled a spider either slightly or not at all.
But when babies who had been shown pictures of real spiders were presented with these images, they showed the least interest in the most realistic spider shape. This, said the researchers, is what one would expect if babies have an inborn template that helps them learn about spiders in their environment. That is, once they have become habituated to images of real spiders, the realistic schematic should be familiar – and thus less interesting – to them.
"They're categorizing the schematic spider as the same as real spiders in the photos," Derringer said. "We showed them photos of real spiders until they became bored with them. Then we showed the stick figures, and they weren't as interested."
She also found that infants were not "fooled" by schematic spiders that had rectangular, instead of curved, bodies and legs. And they showed no evidence of having a brain template for a non-threatening organism – namely, a flower.
This work builds on studies by a variety of researchers working with primates and other animals, the researchers note. Those studies pointed to an innate ability to respond to predators.
Rakison is now repeating the spider study with images of snakes, since the idea is that the brain template primes infants to quickly learn that spiders and snakes should be avoided." So far, said Rakison, the data look promising.
And who is especially quick to associate spiders and snakes with danger?
"We're finding that girls learn pairing much more quickly than boys," Rakison said. "Also, women are four times more likely to have phobias for these stimuli than men. Women in the evolutionary past would have been gathering and looking out for infants, and so may have had more need to be vigilant."
Rakison knows of no similar research being done elsewhere on the underpinnings of fear. It is quite possible that infants are born with templates for many kinds of potential dangers. They may even have one "for male humans that facilitates the anxiety toward men but not women that appears around 7 months of age."
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Growing Concerns
A parenting question-and-answer column with Dr. Martha Erickson of the University of Minnesota
Question: How can I make the drop-off easier at daycare? My two-year-old son sometimes screams, cries and clings to me, making me feel extremely guilty that I have to go to work. His teachers say the crying doesn’t last long and he seems to enjoy the rest of the day, but he definitely isn’t happy when I leave. I’m a single mom and don’t have a choice to stay home with him, but I feel like I'm abandoning him!
Answer: It’s not unusual for toddlers to raise a fuss when their parents drop them off at childcare. The screaming and crying can reflect several different things. First of all, many two-year-olds have not yet moved beyond the normal stage of separation anxiety, a period when they feel most secure when a parent is nearby. This intense separation anxiety gradually decreases as the child develops language skills, becomes more interested in being with other children, and learns that parents leave for a while, but always come back.
In today’s busy world, children’s fussing about separations also can reflect their frustration at being rushed from one place to another – especially early in the morning when they would rather meet the day more gradually. Separation protest sometimes is exacerbated when the child picks up the ambivalent or guilty feelings parents have about leaving their child. If a child senses that the parent sees the separation as a big deal, he’s likely to see it the same way.
To ease your own guilt, it’s important to realize that being in childcare is not necessarily a negative thing for a two-year-old. In fact, there are many benefits associated with good childcare, including stimulation of language and cognitive development and opportunities to develop social skills.
That said, here are a few steps you can take to help ease the separations for both you and your child:
• Slow down your morning routines before you take your son to childcare. Build into your morning some time for snuggling and reading a story together. Or make time for a breakfast together that is unrushed. As hard as it is to get up a few minutes earlier in the morning, it is worth it to reduce the stress that comes with being too rushed.
• Encourage your son to use “transitional objects” to help him separate from you. That’s a fancy name for special blankets, teddy bears, or other special objects that give your son comfort.
• Be matter-of-fact when leaving your child at the childcare center. Give him a nice, warm hug and tell him his childcare provider will take good care of him while you’re at work. Then smile and say, “I’ll see you this afternoon,” as you walk confidently out the door.
• Relish the reunion when you pick your son up at the end of the day. Greet both him and his caregiver warmly, look at your son’s art work, or have him show you the things he played with. If you communicate to him that you think childcare is a safe and fun place for him, he’ll be more likely to perceive it that way too.
There is just one caveat to these reassurances: it is always possible that a young child’s ongoing crying indicates that his childcare setting is not a good place for him – or, in a small number of cases, that the child’s difficulty with separation signals an emotional problem. If over the next few weeks, your child does not respond well to the suggestions here, you should look further into the situation. Especially if your son is not settling down within a few minutes after you leave him, investigate more closely the quality of care he is receiving at the center. Or, if his separation anxiety is intense and prolonged and occurs across a variety of situations, seek guidance from your pediatrician or a child psychologist.
Want to hear more parenting advice?
Dr. Erickson and her daughter can be heard every Sunday, from 2 - 4 pm, on “Good Enough Moms,” on FM107.1 radio in the Twin Cities or via Webcast at www.FM1071.com
