Summary
Have you ever wondered why some students struggle with impulsivity more than others? Are you facing challenges with managing impulsive pupil behaviour in your classroom?
Then this episode has the answers you are looking for. Join us as we sit down with expert guests Ruth Pauli and Stephane Dr Brito (researchers into impulsivity) to unravel the mysteries behind impulsive behaviour in the classroom.
Important links:
Participate in Ruth and Stephane's research.
Get our FREE SEND Behaviour Handbook: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/send-handbook
Download other FREE behaviour resources for use in school: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/resources.php
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Show notes / transcription
Emma Shackleton
Working with students who you find are impulsive or find it hard to focus their attention, and it's impeding their schoolwork or their social relationships with their peers? Then this episode has the answers you've been looking for. We're going to break down the difference between the different forms of impulsiveness from trait impulsiveness to state impulsiveness. We're going to share the 5 key forms of long term impulsiveness in children, and we're going to explore the impact of adverse childhood experiences on impulsiveness and give you a set of strategies that you can use with your students to help to train and improve their ability to regulate their impulses, and that's all coming after the intro music.
Simon Currigan
Welcome to the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Simon Currigan. My co host is Emma Shackleton, and we're obsessed with helping teachers, school leaders, parents, and, of course, students when classroom behaviour gets in the way of success. We're gonna share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural special needs, whole school strategy, and more, all with the aim of helping your students reach their true potential. Plus, we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around the world. So you'll get to hear the latest evidence based strategies before anyone else. This is the School Behaviour Secrets podcast.
Hi there. My name is Simon Currigan, and welcome to this week's episode of School Behaviour Secrets. Here's a little known fact about me. I just can't spell the word occasion.
It just baffles me. First go, I always get it wrong. True story, not an interesting story. Not sure how much mileage you're gonna get out of retelling that to your friends and family at the pub tonight, but it is a true story. I'm joined today by my co host, Emma Shackleton. Hi, Emma.
Emma Shackleton
Hi, Simon.
Simon Currigan
Any words you consistently spell wrong?
Emma Shackleton
Loads, actually. And I think it's a family trait because I've noticed that both my mom and my son consistently spell the same words wrong in texts too, which is mildly interesting. Has this got any relevance to today's episode?
Simon Currigan
Not a lot. We're really putting our finger on the pulse of sort of SEMH issues sweeping the country, aren't you? I just wanted to put our weaknesses all out there in the public domain, but I do have a question that is related to today's show.
Emma Shackleton
Go on then.
Simon Currigan
Have you ever made an impulse purchase and regretted it afterwards?
Emma Shackleton
Oh, yeah. Definitely. Not so much lately because I'm trying to think a lot more carefully before I buy stuff now. But when I was younger, I did buy quite a lot of items of clothing that I really loved in the shop and got excited about and bought. But then when I got them home, I realised that they were pretty terrible and usually ended up taking them back to the shop again.
Simon Currigan
You're on an Amazon fast, aren't you?
Emma Shackleton
I am. Yes. Amazon fast.
Simon Currigan
The worst kind of fast?
Emma Shackleton
No. It's great.
A lot less recycling to go out as well, I must say. So, anyway, what's all this got to do with today's episode?
Simon Currigan
So today, we're gonna share my interview with Ruth Pauli and Stephane De Brito who are researchers into impulsivity. We're going to explore what impulsivity actually is at a scientific level, how impulsivity actually breaks down into a number of different traits or forms, and how we can support pupils whose behaviour is overly impulsive in a way that damages their outcomes or their social relationships or their experience in school.
Emma Shackleton
Perfect. But before we press play on that interview, I've got a quick request. If you're listening to this episode and you're enjoying School Behaviour Secrets and you've taken any value at all from it, please could you open your podcast app and hit the subscribe button? Subscribing will take you about 3 seconds, and it makes sure that you never miss another episode. And while you've got the app open, how about clicking on the share button and letting someone else know about School Behaviour Secrets? That way, your friends and colleagues will also be able to benefit from the thoughtful, interesting, and sometimes, let's face it, bizarre content that we share. Thank you so much for helping to spread the word.
Simon Currigan
We've also got a free download that accompanies this episode really well. It's called the SEND Handbook, and its purpose is to help you dig into the root causes of student behaviours that you see in class.
Emma Shackleton
And, of course, the idea here isn't for teachers to make a diagnosis because we're just not qualified to do that. But if we can start to link the behaviours that we see to possible underlying causes quickly, it means that we can get the right help and get early intervention strategies into place.
Simon Currigan
It even comes with a set of fact sheets for conditions like oppositional disorder, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and developmental language delay.
Emma Shackleton
The handbook is a completely free download, and we'll put a direct link in the episode description. So all you've gotta do is open your podcast app and click directly to get your copy. And now here's Simon's interview with Ruth Pauli and Stephane De Brito.
Simon Currigan
I'm very excited to welcome Ruth Pauli and Stephane De Brito to the show today. Doctor Ruth Pauli is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham. She studies developmental psychopathology with a focus on impulsivity and behaviour problems. She uses computational modelling to better understand the cognitive processes involved in psychopathology in children and young people. Doctor Stephane DeBrito is an associate professor also at the University of Birmingham. He studies severe antisocial behaviour in children and adults and the effects of childhood maltreatment. Much of his research uses MRI brain imaging to investigate neural changes associated with the development of antisocial behaviour.
And they've agreed kindly to be on the show today to discuss their research into impulsivity in children. Both of you, welcome to the show.
Stephane De Brito
Thank you very much, Simon, for having us.
Simon Currigan
Thank you. So before we go too much further, let's define our terms here and be clear exactly what we're talking about when we talk about impulsivity. So when you think about impulsivity in your research, what are you actually focusing on? What you actually mean?
Stephane De Brito
It's a really good question, Simon. Actually, if you ask, my colleagues or people on the street, what is impulsivity, they'll probably all come up with, like, slightly different answer. And I would say all of them are correct because what we say is impulsivity is multifaceted. So some people might say, well, it's acting without regard for consequences. Other might say, well, it's fast reaction without conscious judgment or acting without enough thinking. Well, all these aspects are aspects of impulsivity. If we were to give like a really strict definition, the International Society For Research on Impulsivity says it's behaviour without adequate thought, the tendency to act with less forethought than do most individuals, or a predisposition toward rapid unplanned reaction to internal or external stimuli without the regard to the negative consequences of these actions.
So it is really a multifaceted construct, that basically reflects this tendency to give in, to urges, to act before thinking, or seek out excitement, and have difficulty to controlling one's behaviour.
Simon Currigan
Could you give us some concrete examples of what that might look like in terms of the children that you work with and you study?
Stephane De Brito
Maybe, Ruth, you want to give some examples?
Ruth Pauli
Yeah. So, obviously, there's some sort of quite obvious examples that a teacher would be aware of. So children who have ADHD or that kind of, presentation, they would often struggle with things like, shouting out an answer to a question in class when they've been told to put their hand up because they know the answer and they just can't quite bring themselves to wait. They might do things like risk taking, behaviour in the playground. So the football goes up onto the roof or something, and they try and climb after it without really thinking through the consequences. But there's also some examples that are probably less obvious because this kind of ADHD or slightly hyperactive presentation, I think most teachers would recognize that. But impulsivity is also actually quite common in other types of presentations, so things like anxiety, depression, eating disorders.
A lot of people with these problems will actually be impulsive as well. So in a school, for example, you might have a child who's very conscientious, who's very quiet, who always does their work on time. But actually, in an exam situation, they tend to panic, and they see a question they're not quite sure what the answer is. Instead of giving it a sufficient thought where they might come up with the right answer, they'll just write down the first thing that comes into their mind and rush through the rest of the paper. So that's also, I think, another nice example where a child might actually be quite impulsive. But because their behaviour isn't difficult or challenging, it's not going to be picked up on in the same way by a teacher.
Simon Currigan
That's really, really interesting. You're saying there's a whole kind of, like, raft of behaviours from children that might sort of go under the radar because they're not screaming, shouting, throwing a chair, or getting engaged in kind of like disputes with their friend. That's really worth thinking about actually. And often on this show, we're focusing on the big externalising obvious behaviours, but there can be other things bubbling underneath can't there? So you divide impulsivity into 2 separate categories, trait impulsivity and state impulsivity. Can we start with trait impulsivity? What does that look like, and how would we recognize it in the classroom?
Stephane De Brito
Yeah. So, usually, we say impulsivity can be seen as a stable personality facet, like a trait. Usually, we assess, trait impulsivity using a questionnaire. So we can ask the child, we can ask their teacher, we can ask their parent. And we assess different facets of these kind of trait impulsivity.
Like I said, it's multifaceted. We know that impulsivity trait can be kind of divided in usually, we divide it into kind of 5 categories. The first one is what we call urgency. So it's kind of acting rashly in an emotional state. So it can be acting in a,
Simon Currigan
rashly when you are in a positive
Stephane De Brito
state, when you are when you are in a positive state, when you are excited, and that we call it positive urgency. Or you can act rashly when you are in a negative mood. So let's say you've just had a bad grade at school and you decide to go on a shopping spree. So that's what we would call negative urgency. And then there's also the aspect of children who might be lacking in premeditation. So failing to think before acting. So for example, a child might decide to visit a friend on a school night without checking the return bus is running.
Or something like lack of perseverance. So you can see that some children, they're quite unwilling to tolerate boredom. So they can give up on their homework after 5 minutes despite wanting to do well. And then a final aspect that we can also pick up on those question and measure is, like Ruth mentioned, sensation seeking, so seeking out novel or thrilling experiences. So for example, Chang would like to to play near the railway track, which obviously is not a great idea. We have those questions that can capture those different facets of impulsivity. And this is what we would say is tend to be a stable kind of personality facet.
Simon Currigan
So these are things kind of like in the long term that tend to be true about the child that people recognize. On an average day, this is kinda like what the child how the child presents.
Stephane De Brito
Exactly, Simon. Yes.
Simon Currigan
Okay then. So I'm probably gonna guess that if trait impulsivity are long term qualities. What state impulsivity? I'm guessing that's gonna be shorter term, comes and goes, transient?
Ruth Pauli
Yeah. So state impulsivity then is how we measure impulsivity just in the moment. So regardless of whether you're generally an impulsive person or not in terms of your personality, we probably all have moments where we do something that's impulsive. In research setting, we would measure this more, with computerized tasks, measuring things like reaction times rather than asking someone to reflect on their personality or on their child's personality. And again, there's different there's different types of state impulsivity. So one of them is motor impulsivity, and I think this is quite an interesting one to think about, especially in terms of primary school children. Because it's actually very difficult, especially for a small child, once they've made a decision to do something physically, you know, grab something that they're interested in and grabbing or they're running after someone in the playground, it can be quite difficult for them to actually stop that activity, physically to stop themselves.
So I think a really nice example is the children's game, Simon Says, where you have to do the action sometimes and not other times. And a lot of children will struggle with that because they're primed to do something, and then they can't quite stop themselves in time when they get this cue to not do it this time. And that's developmentally normal for young children. But I think a lot of teachers will see in a primary school that some children grow out of that earlier than others, and it can be a bit of an issue with older children if they can't quite stop themselves in time. You know, maybe they're cycling towards a red light and they don't manage to stop in time or, they're chatting and the teacher tells them to stop talking and they just can't quite do it in time. It's not a question of, thinking things through exactly. It's just a physical reaction and they don't quite have the control to stop themselves from doing something.
Then we'd also talk about choice impulsivity. So this is when you're given a choice. Can you make a decision essentially that you won't regret later? So typically, we would ask someone, would you like a small reward now, or would you like to wait a bit longer and have a bigger reward? So maybe you can have a little snack now, or you can wait till later and enjoy pudding after dinner. And some people, even adults, of course, but children especially, will find it really, really hard to wait for a bigger reward later even if that might be what on reflection, they would have wanted to choose.
Simon Currigan
So is this the idea of delayed gratification? Like, foregoing a small reward now for a bigger payoff later?
Ruth Pauli
Yes. Exactly. Exactly. It is.
And, obviously, in in some situations, it might be quite sensible to go for the smaller reward. So maybe you've been offered something by an adult and you think, well, actually, that adult isn't very trustworthy. In the past, they said they're going to do something and then they don't. So maybe it actually makes sense for me to take the smaller reward. But in general, children who do that will often regret later that they didn't wait longer. So it's still a sort of a problem if they if they're like that. And then we also talk about reflection impulsivity, which is when you make a decision when you haven't got enough information essentially to make that decision.
And I mentioned earlier about a child, panicking in the exam and maybe writing down an answer that they wouldn't have written down if they'd thought about it for a bit longer. So that's an example of that. And again, conversely, you don't want to wait too long if you do know that you've got enough information. There's no point sitting there for half an hour pondering over your one answer when you've got 20 more that you still got to do. But you shouldn't just do the first thing that comes to mind without thinking through, whether you've got enough information to make that decision.
Simon Currigan
Okay. So I think everyone listening to this can imagine how these different types of impulsivity would affect a child in the classroom being successful both academically and emotionally and socially as well because all these things are kinda bound together, aren't they? Can you tell us a little bit about how you're researching this in children? Because you're doing this scientifically. You're not kinda like doing this anecdotally like teachers comparing notes in the classroom. You're doing something concrete and specific. I think our listeners will be really interested in finding out about exactly what your approach is.
Stephane De Brito
What is really fascinating is so we know that these different facets of impulsivity, trait and state exist. What is really interesting is that they tend not really to correlate with each other. So in that sense, you can have children who might be showing high level of, you know, urgency but actually low level of sensation seeking. Or they might be showing high level of motor impulsivity but not being really impulsive when we think about the level of So our research is really measuring those different facets in a very detailed way using questionnaire, using task. So in terms of task, we have basically collaborated with colleagues in Australia who have developed gamified tasks. Those are tasks that look a bit like video games, but they are designed to measure, to assess very in a sensitive way all these different facet of state impulsivity. So a game like a bit of like a Pac Man game where the child has to decide whether he wants to take a longer route to go and get a coin that might be worth 100 points as opposed to take a shortcut and just get 5 points.
So we have a number of tasks like this where we can look at how the child makes those decisions and kind of measures those different facets of impulsivity. And we can also manipulate their mood. So getting them a bit more excited or a bit more frustrated and see whether different mood, state, influence, exacerbate some of those facets of impulsivity.
Simon Currigan
And what do you find when you run those tests? Are you at the point yet where you're starting to discover any patterns? Or like you said, you're discovering that, different traits don't necessarily overlap. You might have one or another, but they you tend not to have full house to describe it that way. Well, what kind of things are you discovering?
Ruth Pauli
We're still collecting data, so we haven't looked at our results for that yet. Anecdotally, working with the children, I do see that there are differences in how they respond to these kinds of tests. We have one task, for example, which is quite fun with the younger children. We call it a picture decision task, and we have a picture that's revealed gradually bit by bit on the screen. So they might see a line, and then they're asked, would you like to guess what this picture is showing now? Or would you like to see a bit more? And they can ask you a bit more, and it eventually builds up to the full picture.
And that's about information gathering. So will they make a decision too early, or will they perhaps, wait even longer when they kind of knew what it was already? And we definitely see some differences in how children are responding to that. So I noticed, for example, that a child who is quite conscientious and generally quiet, if they realize they've made a mistake in a previous, trial and they've guessed a bit too early, they'll wait much longer and so on. We haven't analysed the data to see whether that's going to come out across the whole sample, but just looking at the children that we've had in so far, we do notice some differences. And we also, of course, we notice differences in how well the children can actually tolerate sitting in a room and doing these
Stephane De Brito
tasks as well.
Ruth Pauli
Some of the little ones, they, they they struggle and they need a few breaks.
Simon Currigan
That that sounds really interesting. It sounds as if the children themselves, for themselves, are learning to manage those impulses based on the feedback they're getting. Is that maybe early signs?
Ruth Pauli
Yeah. So in all of these games, they get feedback on what they've just done. So if, for example, in a in a sort of measurement of reaction time, they've pressed too late or something, they'll get feedback on that. They do learn from that. There's obviously also a motor component, a physical component. So especially for the younger children or the more impulsive children, and if they have that kind of motor impulsivity that we talked about earlier, they might be perfectly able to see what the feedback is, but they can't quite stop themselves from responding anyway. And we do see that with the little ones, and they sometimes get quite frustrated because they understand the game, but they just can't quite do it physically.
Simon Currigan
What's the overall aim of your research?
Stephane De Brito
So the research we are doing at the moment is is to try to understand how early adversity in the form of child maltreatment might influence those different facets of impulsivity. So what we know from previous research is that there is an association between early childhood maltreatment and the development of psychopathology, both internalizing problem and externalizing problems.
Simon Currigan
Before you go any further, can I just ask you for listeners what you mean by psychopathology just in case they're hearing this down for the first time?
Stephane De Brito
Yeah. So we know that there is a relationship between early adversity, childhood maltreatment, and psychopathology, which is basically psychiatric disorder. So things like depression, mood, and anxiety, but also externalizing problems like ADHD, conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder. And in our research, our hypothesis is that maltreatment exacerbate different forms of impulsivity. Because we know that impulsivity is present in different form of psychopathology, both in depression, anxiety, but also externalizing problem. So our working hypothesis is that children who have experienced early adversity in the form of childhood maltreatment, this has had an impact on their impulsivity, which in turn increases their risk of developing mental health problem later on. So that's basically the aim of our research is to try to understand the relationship between those 3 different variables, if you want.
Simon Currigan
And when I speak to teachers in classrooms and we look at children, one of the phrases they often use is that they live sort of in inverted commas in the now. They don't think things through. They're very now focused survival in the moment. And I guess that would tally with that kind of underlying brain development, which is what you're investigating to see whether that's true, isn't it?
Ruth Pauli
Yeah. So yeah. Definitely. I think behaviours that are impulsive or not impulsive is very much learned from our environment. So if a child's grown up in an environment where there's no consistency and they've got unreliable adults or things keep changing that are out of their control, that's not an environment that is going to teach a child to restrain their impulses or, you know, wait for a later reward rather than a a smaller one now, that kind of thing. Because you just have to. And if you're living in that kind of environment, you know, if there's food available now, you've got to take it.
And that's not just a child in a sense. It's also true for the adult. You know, they might have to eat what's available. They might have to, take what accommodation is available rather than being able to save up and move somewhere nicer or safer. People just often have to live in that way. So children often coming into school where they've had this environment from birth that is encouraging them to be impulsive, Sometimes through poverty and lack of resources, but also if the parent is inconsistent or unreliable. So they say that they're going to do something and then they don't do it and so on.
And that's been sort of taught the children almost as a habit. And then they come into school and the school environment is obviously or hopefully, it's different, and now it's not going to reward impulsive behaviours in quite the same way. But children have to sort of relearn when they come into school. So they need to have that really, really consistent environment. They need to have clear routines. They need to have clear consequences. All the things that would be helpful for any child, but they're so much more important for children who haven't had that
Simon Currigan
Because these impulsive behaviours, they're habits really.
Ruth Pauli
They're sort of learnt ways of because these impulsive behaviours, they're habits really. They're sort of learnt ways of responding that the child has. And if you've had a very inconsistent environment, then it's, of course, going to take you longer to realize that this environment is not inconsistent. So if the teacher is trying to be very consistent and have very good routines with the child, but after a month or two, they think, oh, this just this isn't making any difference. The child isn't responding. I'd say don't give up because the child might have had 4 or 5 years where they haven't had consistency. Therefore, they're gonna have to take longer to learn that this is a consistent environment.
And children can change. They can change these habits and ways of responding. So even if it doesn't feel to the teacher that they're making a lot of progress, the fact that they are being consistent and the child has that structured environment will be helping them. And, hopefully, over sort of months, years even, the child's, impulsive behaviour will start to improve, and they will start to have more impulse control, especially as they grow up.
Simon Currigan
And in your research, you're sort of specifically comparing groups of kids that have had kind of, like, adverse childhood experiences as opposed to a control group. There'll be teachers listening to this thinking, hold on.
I've got a child with ADHD. That's slightly different. Yeah?
Stephane De Brito
Yeah. Basically, the focus of the research is really to understand how childhood maltreatment might have influenced those different facets of impulsivity. So we are collaborating with different agency who, come and school who come in contact with children who have experienced different forms of adversity, specifically child maltreatment. And we are basically comparing those who have experienced quite high level of those adversity versus children who haven't experienced this kind of, adversity to try to really understand how maltreatment might be related to these different facets of impulsivity.
But like everything, we just not look at it like just clear cut. Yes. No. We can also look more dimensionally in terms of quantifying kind of how much of kind of early adversity is kind of related to these different facets of impulsivity.
Simon Currigan
Can you give us examples of any strategies or activities teachers can use to support children or parents can use to support children whose impulsivity is a barrier to their success, especially in school?
Ruth Pauli
So we already talked a bit about some of the obvious things that teachers, I think, will be aware of, like clear routines, consequences, structure, and so on. But I'd also say, especially with little children, there's a lot of traditional games and activities that although they're not explicitly perhaps designed in a sense to help with impulsivity, they are actually very helpful. So these kinds of games like Grandmother's Footsteps and Simon Says, they do help the child to learn to control their impulses, in that case, their motor impulses. And I think other activities which naturally involve waiting or have a bit of rhythm or routine to them. So, for example, if you make a loaf of bread, you've got to wait for it to rise and you've got to wait for it to bake. You can't just eat it straight away. If you're growing seeds in the forest school area or in the garden, whatever you have at school, then you've got to wait for the right season, and you've got to wait for the sunshine, and you've got to wait for the rain, and you've got to wait for their fruits to mature and so on.
I think a lot of children these days, they're not having a lot of those kinds of experiences even in quite, you know, well functioning households because we live in a very sort of now focused culture. So they might be, online a lot. They can order whatever they want off Amazon. It will be delivered tomorrow. We don't have a lot of waiting generally in our culture. We don't have a lot of incentive to wait for things because we don't have to. And I think for children, that's not very helpful.
So all of these kinds of games and activities that give them a bit of rhythm in their lives and a bit of natural waiting. You know, not as a punishment. I'm not telling the child it's good for you to wait, so I'm going to make you wait for a week before you get your parcel over in the post. But things where you naturally have to wait, I think that's very helpful for children when the teacher can do that at school. I'd also say that impulsive behaviours, a lot of these sort of behaviours in general, as we said, they are a habit. And if children are going to learn good habits, they need to practice getting it right, not getting it wrong, if that makes sense. So I think it's really important, especially for primary school age children, to minimize the opportunities that they have to go wrong, to make mistakes.
So if you know that a child is going to be distracted by having a fidget toy on their desk or having a brightly coloured display next to them or perhaps another child who's going to speak to them. Just try and avoid putting them in that situation in the first place because they are only going to learn that they get put there and then they start chatting and this is what happens at school and it becomes a learned habit. So if they can sort of prevent rather than cure in a sense in that way by avoiding opportunities for children to make mistakes and go wrong. It's also, I think, a very good idea for teachers to try and observe children as closely as possible to look at what kind of triggers there are for impulsive behaviour. So Stephane mentioned earlier about positive and negative urgency and how in general different mood states could be triggers for different children. So it might be that you have one child, and as soon as they're a bit bored or they haven't got something that's interesting for them to do, then they will start to act impulsively, wander off, start chatting, do things they're going to regret. For another child, it might be when they're under time pressure.
So a more anxious child, for example, they might really struggle to complete a piece of work if they know that they've got time pressure because that just puts them in a state where they can't focus. And then another child might be the complete opposite that they actually need a bit of time pressure to focus them, otherwise they sort of feel out with, you know, I can do that later. So I think as far as much as it's possible in a sort of busy classroom environment, the teacher should try to think about these different triggers and mitigate them as much as possible because it will be very different for different children. And I think one last thing that I see happening in schools, which I think maybe isn't always helpful in this particular context, is that we tend to give children a lot of choices. And, obviously, that can be, helpful in some situations. So if a child doesn't react well to authority and you need them to do something, it might be helpful to give them a choice so that they feel that they've made the decision to comply. But for children who are impulsive, I think sometimes that's quite unhelpful because this is the kind of situation where they're really going to struggle to make a thoughtful decision.
And if we're giving them constant decisions, it's almost like a cognitive overload for them that they're just not quite going to be able to cope with that. And I think as adults, it's really easy for us to think, well, if we're offering them, you know, do your maths now and then do some colouring in 5 minutes or do some colouring now and do your maths in 5 minutes, it's trivial and it doesn't really matter. But if you're 5, that might be the most important decision that you've made all day. So it's quite a lot when children have to make these choices constantly. And I talked earlier about avoiding opportunities for children to go wrong or to make mistakes they're going to regret. And I think that's really relevant here. So I would say if you know that a child is actually going to struggle with decisions, is going to struggle with making thoughtful decisions, try and avoid giving them lots and lots of choices if you can because it it is really just a form of cognitive overload for them, and it just gives them opportunities to make mistakes and get in the habit of making mistakes that they will regret.
Simon Currigan
We're actually seeing this more and more in the early years where they they go into a classroom and they just have this tidal wave of choices. They could go to one table or another table. They can go outside or they could play. And you just see them. And for a moment, they're frozen and then they're overwhelmed. And then they just get emotionally heightened and don't know what to do, so they throw the LEGO bricks at someone. So that's really true.
It's really, really true. Is impulsivity always bad? Are there any cases where it might be adaptive for certain students to be impulsive?
Ruth Pauli
Yeah. Definitely. I think some people would say, by definition, impulsivity is bad. But if we go with the sort of broader definition that Stephane talked about earlier, then, yes, I would say definitely it's helpful. Mean, we already talked about the kind of home environment where you often need to be impulsive just to survive. So don't wait to have a delicious meal later if there's food now because you don't know if you're going to get your delicious meal later. And, you know, if an adult is volatile or is violent, you need to be able to make a snap decision about whether you're going to to stay in the room or run away.
You need to be able to read people's emotional states very quickly to be able to keep yourself safe, which then in an environment like school might make a child very, hyperreactive to emotion, but home or in a more volatile environment that actually makes sense. But even for children who don't come from these kinds of backgrounds, I think there are situations for all of us where impulsive decisions are necessary. So, for example, if we're in a life or death situation, you're not going to stand there and think through all your options. You know, shall I go and help that child get down from the tree, or should I just sit here and wonder if they're going to fall? You have to make a decision, don't you? You have to just jump to it. And so we wouldn't want to not be impulsive in that situation.
And there are other examples as well. You know, sometimes, I think we've all had this experience. You're browsing for something online. You're wasting a bit of time maybe because you're putting off doing something else that you ought to be doing, and you spend hours and hours comparing 2 saucepans on Amazon or something. You don't really need to spend that much time making that decision. You know, you could have a quick look, see which one's got better reviews, make a decision, and get on with what you're supposed to be doing. So there's definitely a balance.
You don't want to be overly impulsive, but you don't want to be indecisive as well and waste lots time doing things that you don't need to be doing.
Stephane De Brito
No. And just to go back, to children and kind of in the classroom, I think one of the thing that was also mentioned in a previous podcast is they will get it wrong, the children. And it's really trying to focus on positive reinforcement when they get it right and to try to encourage when they've shown example where they could wait for their turn, where they didn't act too rationally, is actually praising them and giving a lot of positive reinforcement rather than focusing on when they get it wrong.
Simon Currigan
To encourage that behaviour in the future, that sort of delayed gratification or the thinking ahead or the restraining of the sensory impulse, whatever it was.
Stephane De Brito
Exactly.
Simon Currigan
Your research is really interesting, and I know this is where our audience comes in, that you are looking for families and children to participate in your study right now. So if schools or families wanna get involved, what are you looking for? What does their participation look like? And how do they get in touch with you?
Ruth Pauli
So we're running a study at the University of Birmingham. We're asking families to come and, visit us at the university to take part, ideally. Although if there are people who are interested in taking part and they live further afield, we do have a short online version that families can do as well, so they don't have to visit us in person. We're looking for children aged 9 to 16 years old and a parent or carer who can participate with them. We can take most children in that age range. Unfortunately, we can't take children with autism. That's just part of our ethics that we can't take them at the moment if they've got a diagnosis.
And they would have to be able to sort of understand the purpose of the study and so on to consent. But assuming they meet all those criteria, University of Birmingham, and they can come for 1 or 2 sessions. So, typically, they might come for 2 afternoons after school or they might come for a whole day at the weekend or school holidays. We always offer slots outside of school time, so we're obviously not asking children to, miss school for this. So they come in. We'll give some questionnaires to the parent asking a bit about their child's behaviour and their background, and the child will do some very simple computer games. We always call them computer games.
I think children these days are so used to computer games that they come in and say, this isn't a proper game, but it's a sort of gamified, online task and some questionnaires for them to do as well. And these questionnaires and games are measuring the different types of impulsivity that we've talked about. So motor impulsivity based on reaction times, how much information do you take into account before you make a decision, and so on. We also offer to children who are interested for them to come and have an MRI scan, which is a a brain scan. It's noninvasive. It doesn't involve any contrast agents or any, radioactive, substances or anything like that. So it's completely safe.
That takes about 30 minutes, and it's just an optional extra. If children are interested in that, they can do that part of the study and get a picture of their brain to take home, which most of them find quite exciting to do. If families live locally, we will pay their travel expenses to come into the university, and we give the parents a little payment as well for their time. The children get a certificate, and they get a book about brain. And in their second session, when we do some games designed to test how their mood affects impulsivity as well, they'll have a chance to win a little prize of their choice, so a toy or game or a voucher if they're a bit older.
Simon Currigan
And how do people get in touch with you to participate in that?
Ruth Pauli
So I think you're going to put our contact details, aren't you, in the information that comes with the podcast. There's, should be an email address and a phone number on there and a link that links to our, website where they can see our study flyer with all the information. So if parents are interested, they can get in touch with us, and we'll, do a quick screening on the phone to make sure the child is suitable and then take it from there.
Simon Currigan
So if you're listening to this, all you need to do now is open up your podcast app. Look at the episode description, and you'll see all the links and email addresses explaining how you can participate there in the text underneath the episode description. If you're a teacher or school leader listening to this podcast, what's the best first step you can take today to help a people in your class who's struggling with their impulsivity?
Ruth Pauli
Yeah. I would say recognizing the impulsivity is a habit. So you don't want to train children to have the wrong habit. So thinking about what is likely to trigger a child to be impulsive. And as you said, that's gonna be different for every child. Trying to remove opportunities for them to make decisions that they're going to later regret. And this is things like, you know, having clear routines, having clear consequences.
It sounds really obvious, but if a child doesn't actually know what the consequences of their behaviour are going to be, then they can't plan ahead because they don't know what's going to happen. So it's important that children do know how you're going to react to different kinds of behaviour so they can take that into account. And I think something that's really helpful for situations where children do have to make decisions. So it's not just sort of their habitual normal behaviour, but they've got to make a decision about something at school, you know, how to react to a child being mean to them or something. It can be really helpful to rehearse in advance with that child how they're going to respond Because we know that when people are put on the spot and asked to make a decision, it's much easier for them to make a thoughtful decision if they've rehearsed a little bit mentally how they're going to react to that situation. So that might in the classroom, that might look like a teacher having a conversation with a child about if Josh says something mean to you in the playground or this child takes your toy away. How are you going to respond to that?
And actually have the child rehearse a little bit. You know, I'm going to take a deep breath, and I'm going to walk away, and I'm going to fetch a teacher rather than reacting badly and hitting him or yelling, this kind of thing. It's just really helpful, I think, for children to have those conversations so that they know how they're going to respond. And sometimes they won't manage to. Sometimes they'll just be too wound up in the situation. And and like Stephane mentioned earlier, then you try not to focus too much on the negative. You reward them when they have done well and focus on when they have done the right thing.
But having those sort of almost pre prepared scripts so that the child has a plan for what to do when things go wrong, that is really helpful.
Simon Currigan
That's really helpful practical advice for, everyone listening out there, I'm sure. And finally, we ask this of all our listeners. Who is the key figure that's influenced you, or what is the key book that you've read that's had the biggest impact on your approach to working with kids?
Stephane De Brito
Personally, there's lots of scientists in this field of work that have been really influential, but I would say one in particular is Dante Cicchetti. He's a psychologist in the United States and has developed this, what we call the developmental psychopathology approach. It's really a way of understanding how biological, emotional, cognitive, relational, and also unconscious processes, how they interact together to lead to psychopathology or maladaptive behaviour. And it's really this approach to really look at the child in a holistic way, thinking about the emotional, the cognitive, the relational aspect, but also unconscious processes and how they might interact to create different outcome. Because we know, for example, that children who have experienced adversity, some of them will develop anxiety, mood disorders. Others might develop more like externalizing problems. Others will have a combination of those kind of problems, internalizing, externalizing.
And also some children will actually be resilient. So this approach is really, really important and has been really instrumental in understanding these different outcomes. And I think one of the aspects of this developmental psychopathology approach is really focusing on developmental processes that are both reciprocal and transactional. So what we mean by that is if you look at the child factors, their aspects, they will influence the environment. And the environment will respond to that and influence the child. So basically, it's gonna be a reciprocal kind of influence, the child and the environment. And those influences change the child as well as their environment.
So if you think about the child who has ADHD, who is very impulsive, they will be very difficult to parent. They will be very difficult to work with in a school setting. So the child, their characteristic will influence the environment, but the environment will respond to that child. And that will also shape how the child will respond. So this approach that Dante Cicchetti has developed has a number of these kind of key core aspects that has really helped us tremendously in understanding these kind of transactional processes between the child and the environment.
Simon Currigan
Sounds like an important framework for understanding why children do the things they do.
Stephane De Brito
Yeah. And how we respond to them and, how that might in turn influence them and, you know, contribute to sometimes kind of cycle that become really entrenched and difficult to, to change.
Simon Currigan
I was literally about to say, and around and around it goes. Exactly. Ruth, how about you?
Ruth Pauli
I think I would mention there's a research psychologist in America called Russell Poldrack, and he does a lot of work not just with, impulsivity. He's a sort of looking at decision making and psychology generally. But he wrote a book, I think, a couple of years ago called Hard to Break, where he was looking at how habits develop. It's not just about impulsivity, but I think it's quite interesting in this context because he's talking about, the brain and he's talking about the different systems of memory. So our more sort of, like, conscious deliberate memory versus our more habitual system and how these relate to different aspects of our behaviour. So addiction, for example, is something that's very much based on our habitual memory. Whereas making a conscious decision to learn how to do quadratic equations, for example, would be very, very conscious.
And I think it's quite interesting in the context of impulsivity for teachers to think about this. So one of the things that he mentions in this book, which I like, he says, as far as you can, make rules, don't make decisions. And I think that nicely encapsulates a lot of what we've talked about today because children or adults for that matter struggle to make good decisions because they're impulsive. It's really helpful to have a rule that, you know, in this situation, I do this, and that's the end of the story. So you then don't have to to keep using your willpower essentially to just keep making decisions that are difficult for you. And I think that's a really nice phrase in a way for teachers to bear in mind when they're thinking about the best way to work with these children because it just, yeah, it just sums up everything that's gonna make it easier for people to make good decisions.
Simon Currigan
I think there's something that we all can take away there, children and adults, you know, for improving our lives. Ruth and Stephane, thank you for sharing your expertise on the show. I really appreciate you, joining us today.
Ruth Pauli
Thank you.
Stephane De Brito
Thank you for having us.
Emma Shackleton
Oh, so that really makes you think about the behaviours from the kids that you're seeing in class and how they are affected individually by the different forms of impulsivity and how potentially more old fashioned play activities might have actively encouraged children to learn to restrain their impulses, where more modern ones, I'm thinking screens here, don't coach children in the same way.
Simon Currigan
Yeah. Just think about how many games and apps nowadays are engineered to keep giving kids hits of dopamine and rewards to keep playing rather than waiting for a reward. Did you remember? I was in a shop the other day, and I actually saw a pram. Right? Imagine like a stroller with a strap across the front like a bar to hold a tablet in front of a baby's face so they didn't even have to look at the real world. That is just shocking, isn't it?
Emma Shackleton
That's a really worrying trend, I think. And, of course, we should say that if you're working with children with specific conditions such as autism or ADHD, and there may be an underlying reason at the brain based level why those children find impulse control difficult, and those students may require a specialized approach to make progress.
Simon Currigan
And if you're interested in being part of Ruth and Stephane's research, remember, I have put direct links in the episode description. If you've enjoyed today's show, remember to rate and review us. Every single review you leave prompts the algorithm to share school behavior secrets with other listeners helping us get the word out there to other school leaders, parents, and teachers who need this information.
Emma Shackleton
And that's all we've got time for today. We do hope that you have a great week, and we can't wait to see you next time on next week's episode of School Behaviour Secrets. Bye for now.
(This automated transcript may not be 100% accurate.)
