9th January 2026
Delegates at our recent iHV Leadership Conference were wowed by a brilliant presentation by Professor Sam Wass, developmental cognitive neuroscientists and one of the UK’s leading experts on early years brain development, titled, “When Childhood Glows: Technology, Brain development and Broken Bonds”.
By popular demand, we are making the recording of the session open-access to enable more people to hear these important messages.
Professor Sam Wass is the Director of the Institute for the Science of Early Years at the University of East London. And Sam has the rare ability to translate complex scientific information into easy-to-understand concepts which can be translated into everyday life.
You may have heard him recently on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on the postcode lottery of early parenting and support – as well as his appearance in the award-winning Channel 4 series “The Secret Life of 4 year-olds” and as a spokesperson for public campaigns by the Department for Education.
Sam’s ground-breaking research is focused on understanding how babies and young children actually experience the environments that we create for them. He uses naturalistic real-world observations, alongside technology with microphones, cameras, and monitors to measure fluctuations in babies’ physiology and brain activity – all focused on understanding how attention and arousal states develop, and the impacts of early interactions with caregivers and digital overload.
With growing interest in the impacts of digital technologies on children’s outcomes, there remains a lot to be learnt about their impacts on the early years. Sam’s presentation provides a whistle-stop introduction to the ways that babies learn through predictions about the environment. Sam describes how babies learn best from things that are predictable – which is why they enjoy repetition – banging a spoon repeatedly on a table, reading the same book over and over again. They like knowing what will happen next. As time goes on, our brains gather knowledge and experience and we learn to cope and learn from less predictable environments.
Sam summarises this as:
“What we learn most from is predictability during early life and unpredictability during later life. The problem, then, is that we’re giving a lot of screen exposure during early childhood – which is very fast-paced and unpredictable – to young children at a time when slow-paced predictability is what they need. Their brains need something else.”
Listen to the iHV Leadership Conference presentation recording and brief audience Q&A session with questions directed at Sam to learn more.
Want to join an iHV conference in the future?
Look out for the launch of our forthcoming Evidence-based Practice Conference which will be held at Bournemouth International Centre on 6 May 2026 (with an online conference option too) – save the date.
Full programme details and booking information will be published on our website next week.
