Abstract
Before the age of three, children’s brains undergo critical structural and functional development milestones that facilitate later emotional, cognitive and behavioural abilities. This time window therefore lends well to possible interventions and enrichment programs to facilitate successful establishing of fundamental processes in the brain. One such intervention avenue that has been suggested is early language enrichment, due to its early life emergence, wide range of processing cortices, and importance in cognitive development. This study recruited toddlers at a baseline mean age of 20 months to investigate the benefits of a teacher-led language enrichment program (ENRICH) for early language, self-regulation and brain marker development over 10 months. Results showed significant improvements in language vocabulary and syntax over the study’s duration. We further found a reduction in P100 latency during auditory stimulus processing, an automation effect of P100 during a distractor stimulus presentation and a potential increase in P300 processing capability reflective of a more capable neural system development. We found no change in effortful control, which is related to self-regulation. Nor were there yet significant benefits of ENRICH on children’s language, self-regulation, or brain development. These results suggest that during early brain development, language skill improves alongside the brain’s move towards faster and more capable processing networks. I suggest future avenues of research to further investigate language enrichment at an early age.