Evidence-Based Early Learning Apps for School Readiness

Cognitive ToyBox develops evidence-based learning games to accelerate language and math development for children under 5. At the core of its mission, the company aims to close the preschool and kindergarten achievement gap related to socioeconomic status.

Early childhood education has garnered tremendous interest, but the majority of “educational” media products have failed to deliver on the learning outcomes. Cognitive ToyBox (CTB) helps children learn-to-learn, a research-backed approach to improving learning outcomes. By working with leading developmental psychologists, CTB is developing a learning-to-learn curriculum for 1.5-5 year olds that successfully deliver on learning outcomes.

Our solution could have the most impact on the early learning trajectories of low-income children, who enter kindergarten more than a standard deviation behind in both math and reading scores. These differences arise early: at 2 years old, low-income children are already six months behind their higher-income peers in language skills. Additionally, differences in home environment are perhaps the most significant contributors to differences in early language skills, but most interventions focus on achieving equality in educational access without reaching children in the home. Closing the early achievement gap will require earlier interventions that help children in their home environments. 

We believe touchscreens are the ideal form of delivery for the CTB learning-to-learn curriculum, allowing cutting-edge scientific research to reach the most children at the lowest cost. 

Economists estimate that high-quality early childhood programs yield a 13.7% rate of return per annum. Cognitive ToyBox will amplify these returns by strengthening a child’s home foundation, so he or she will take better advantage of early childhood programs and start school ready to succeed. CTB’s product provides a replacement to “digital candy”, giving children the learning games that they deserve.

Early childhood development is critical to a child’s lifelong success. A 2-year-old’s language skills predict his or her academic and behavioral performance three years later in kindergarten. Moreover, school-entry scores predict important outcomes years later, including third-grade reading skills, high school graduation, earnings at age 27, and retirement savings.

Children from low socioeconomic status households are at a particular disadvantage: they enter kindergarten more than a standard deviation behind in both math and reading scores.

Cognitive ToyBox is committed to proving efficacy. All of our apps are based on peer-reviewed research and developed in partnership with leading academics. Moreover, the company has partnered with academics at Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, and Indiana University to run randomized controlled trial studies - the gold standard in efficacy research - to prove that using our apps accelerates early language and math trajectories. We have achieved promising preliminary results through our pilot studies and are seeking to do the next phase of studies, which will include larger sample sizes over a longer period of time.

At the core of its mission, CTB aims to close the preschool and kindergarten achievement gap related to socioeconomic status (SES). The team plans to provide low-income children access to CTB apps through partnerships with Early Head Start and Head Start centers nation-wide.

MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MCDI)

- 200 2-4 year olds in pilot studies will accelerate their vocabulary development over a 3 month period, as compared to control group.

Test of Early Mathematical Ability, Third Edition (TEMA-3) - 200 3-5 year old children in pilot studies will accelerate their math development over a 3 month period, as compared to control group.

App download and usage data - School administrators will get 200 children in pilot studies to use the app at home for 15 minutes per week.

Cognitive ToyBox’s products take a radically different approach from the 80,000 other “educational” apps in the App Store. Most current apps focus on reinforcing ABCs, 123s, colors, and other early fundamentals through rote learning and memorization, often with dubious success. 

In contrast, Cognitive ToyBox develops apps that help children learn-to-learn (L2L) — teaching high-level principles so children learn more efficiently outside of the app. There is compelling research demonstrating that teaching children L2L concepts, earlier than children discover them on their own, can accelerate early learning.

Human-centered design is a critical component of our product development. Prior to starting CTB, we conducted over 100 empathy interviews with folks, including parents, children, educators, and interventionists. As we build our product, we continue to do monthly feedback sessions at the the local children’s museum and with our school partners. These sessions help us ensure that we are building a solution that parents/educators will value and that children will play.

We believe touchscreens are the ideal form of delivery for the CTB curriculum, allowing cutting-edge scientific research to reach the most children at the lowest cost. Our apps are available for both Apple and Android smartphones and tablets.

The company is supported through grants from the National Science Foundation, Robin Hood Foundation, and 4.0 Schools. We plan to continue to pursue funding from foundations and institutional investors as we develop our technology.

We also expect to generate revenue from our existing apps in the market (see app link for one of our apps) and our early childhood assessment solution, which we sell to early learning centers and schools.

We are undergoing randomized control trial efficacy studies for our apps. One risk is that our product may not work as expected, although we have mitigated this risk by partnering with scientists, following established protocols from previous research, and running extensive pilot studies.

We believe that all children deserve the best learning games that science has to offer. We are excited to join the Solve community and connect with others who are passionate about improving life outcomes for disadvantaged youth. We are especially interested in working with the community to brainstorm ways to scale our product globally, in order to get our apps into the hands of children who need it most.

We have partnered with academic researchers at Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, and Indiana University to study the efficacy of our research-backed apps in accelerating early learning trajectories.

We are supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, Robin Hood Foundation, and 4.0 Schools.

Age of Learning, TinyBop, Lumosity