Winnie Yu

Bio: Winnie Yu is an academic researcher from University of California, Irvine. The author has contributed to research in topics: Child development & Cognitive skill. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 2 publications receiving 277 citations.

Persistence and Fadeout in the Impacts of Child and Adolescent Interventions

Abstract: Many interventions targeting cognitive skills or socioemotional skills and behaviors demonstrate initially promising but then quickly disappearing impacts. Our paper seeks to identify the key features of interventions, as well as the characteristics and environments of the children and adolescents who participate in them, that can be expected to sustain persistently beneficial program impacts. We describe three such processes: skill-building, foot-in-the-door and sustaining environments. We argue that skill-building interventions should target "trifecta" skills - ones that are malleable, fundamental, and would not have developed eventually in the absence of the intervention. Successful foot-in-the-door interventions equip a child with the right skills or capacities at the right time to avoid imminent risks (e.g., grade failure or teen drinking) or seize emerging opportunities (e.g., entry into honors classes). The sustaining environments perspective views high quality of environments subsequent to the completion of the intervention as crucial for sustaining early skill gains. These three perspectives generate both complementary and competing hypotheses regarding the nature, timing and targeting of interventions that generate enduring impacts.

Distinctions without a difference? Preschool curricula and children's development.

Abstract: Public preschool programs require the use of a research-based, whole-child curriculum, yet limited research examines whether curricula influence classroom experiences and children’s develop...

Interpreting Effect Sizes of Education Interventions.

Abstract: Researchers commonly interpret effect sizes by applying benchmarks proposed by Jacob Cohen over a half century ago. However, effects that are small by Cohen’s standards are large relative to the im...

How much does education improve intelligence? A meta-analysis

Abstract: Intelligence test scores and educational duration are positively correlated. This correlation could be interpreted in two ways: Students with greater propensity for intelligence go on to complete more education, or a longer education increases intelligence. We meta-analyzed three categories of quasiexperimental studies of educational effects on intelligence: those estimating education-intelligence associations after controlling for earlier intelligence, those using compulsory schooling policy changes as instrumental variables, and those using regression-discontinuity designs on school-entry age cutoffs. Across 142 effect sizes from 42 data sets involving over 600,000 participants, we found consistent evidence for beneficial effects of education on cognitive abilities of approximately 1 to 5 IQ points for an additional year of education. Moderator analyses indicated that the effects persisted across the life span and were present on all broad categories of cognitive ability studied. Education appears to be...

Education and Cognitive Functioning Across the Life Span.

Abstract: Cognitive abilities are important predictors of educational and occupational performance, socioeconomic attainment, health, and longevity. Declines in cognitive abilities are linked to impairments in older adults' everyday functions, but people differ from one another in their rates of cognitive decline over the course of adulthood and old age. Hence, identifying factors that protect against compromised late-life cognition is of great societal interest. The number of years of formal education completed by individuals is positively correlated with their cognitive function throughout adulthood and predicts lower risk of dementia late in life. These observations have led to the propositions that prolonging education might (a) affect cognitive ability and (b) attenuate aging-associated declines in cognition. We evaluate these propositions by reviewing the literature on educational attainment and cognitive aging, including recent analyses of data harmonized across multiple longitudinal cohort studies and related meta-analyses. In line with the first proposition, the evidence indicates that educational attainment has positive effects on cognitive function. We also find evidence that cognitive abilities are associated with selection into longer durations of education and that there are common factors (e.g., parental socioeconomic resources) that affect both educational attainment and cognitive development. There is likely reciprocal interplay among these factors, and among cognitive abilities, during development. Education-cognitive ability associations are apparent across the entire adult life span and across the full range of education levels, including (to some degree) tertiary education. However, contrary to the second proposition, we find that associations between education and aging-associated cognitive declines are negligible and that a threshold model of dementia can account for the association between educational attainment and late-life dementia risk. We conclude that educational attainment exerts its influences on late-life cognitive function primarily by contributing to individual differences in cognitive skills that emerge in early adulthood but persist into older age. We also note that the widespread absence of educational influences on rates of cognitive decline puts constraints on theoretical notions of cognitive aging, such as the concepts of cognitive reserve and brain maintenance. Improving the conditions that shape development during the first decades of life carries great potential for improving cognitive ability in early adulthood and for reducing public-health burdens related to cognitive aging and dementia.

Social and Emotional Learning as a Public Health Approach to Education

Abstract: Summary:Evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programs, when implemented effectively, lead to measurable and potentially long-lasting improvements in many areas of children's lives. In the short term, SEL programs can enhance children's confidence in themselves; increase their engagement in school, along with their test scores and grades; and reduce conduct problems while promoting desirable behaviors. In the long term, children with greater social-emotional competence are more likely to be ready for college, succeed in their careers, have positive relationships and better mental health, and become engaged citizens.Those benefits make SEL programs an ideal foundation for a public health approach to education—that is, an approach that seeks to improve the general population's wellbeing. In this article, Mark Greenberg, Celene Domitrovich, Roger Weissberg, and Joseph Durlak argue that SEL can support a public health approach to education for three reasons. First, schools are ideal sites for interventions with children. Second, school-based SEL programs can improve students' competence, enhance their academic achievement, and make them less likely to experience future behavioral and emotional problems. Third, evidence-based SEL interventions in all schools—that is, universal interventions—could substantially affect public health.The authors begin by defining social and emotional learning and summarizing research that shows why SEL is important for positive outcomes, both while students are in school and as they grow into adults. Then they describe what a public health approach to education would involve. In doing so, they present the prevention paradox—"a large number of people exposed to a small risk may generate many more cases [of an undesirable outcome] than a small number exposed to a high risk"—to explain why universal approaches that target an entire population are essential. Finally, they outline an effective, school-based public health approach to SEL that would maximize positive outcomes for our nation's children.