The maternal language input literature suggests that mothers with more education use a greater quantity and complexity of language with their young children compared to mothers with less education ...although race and socioeconomic status have been confounded in most studies because of small sample sizes. The current Family Life study included a representative sample of 1,292 children, oversampling for poverty and African American, followed from birth. This study found no race differences within maternal education levels on five measures of maternal language input from 6 to 36 months. Maternal language input variables of number of different words, mean length of utterance and number of wh‐questions were partial mediators of the relationship between maternal education and later child language at school age.
This study considered the quality and stability of infant and toddler nonparental child care from 6 to 36 months in relation to language, social, and academic skills measured proximally at 36 months ...and distally at kindergarten. Quality was measured separately as caregiver–child verbal interactions and caregiver sensitivity, and stability was measured as having fewer sequential child‐care caregivers. This longitudinal examination involved a subsample (N = 1,055) from the Family Life Project, a representative sample of families living in rural counties in the United States. Structural equation modeling revealed that children who experienced more positive caregiver–child verbal interactions had higher 36‐month language skills, which indirectly led to higher kindergarten academic and social skills. Children who experienced more caregiver stability had higher kindergarten social skills.
This study examines whether changes in classroom quality predict within‐child changes in achievement and behavioral problems in elementary school (ages spanning approximately 6–11 years old). Drawing ...on data from a longitudinal study of children in predominantly low‐income, nonurban communities (n = 1,078), we relied on child fixed effects modeling, which controlled for stable factors that could bias the effects of classroom quality. In general, we found that changes in classroom quality had small and statistically nonsignificant effects on achievement and behavior. However, we found that moving into a high‐quality classroom, particularly those rated as high in Classroom Organization, had positive effects on achievement and behavior for children with significant exposure to poverty in early life.
Using an epidemiological sample (N = 1,117) and a prospective longitudinal design, this study tested the direct and indirect effects of preverbal and verbal communication (15 months to 3 years) on ...executive function (EF) at age 4 years. Results indicated that whereas gestures (15 months), as well as language (2 and 3 years), were correlated with later EF (φ s ≥ .44), the effect was entirely mediated through later language. In contrast, language had significant direct and indirect effects on later EF. Exploratory analyses indicated that the pattern of results was comparable for low- and not-low-income families. The results were consistent with theoretical accounts of language as a precursor of EF ability, and highlighted gesture as an early indicator of EF.
Objective
The current study examined the contributions of cultural and economic contexts and family, child, and parent characteristics to explain variation within and between mothers' and fathers' ...mental state talk (i.e., cognition, desire, modulation of assertion, and other mental state talk) to their 6‐month‐old infants.
Background
Growing evidence supports the importance of mental state talk for children, yet few studies have examined factors that might contribute to this type of verbal input.
Method
In a sample of 582 African American and European American mothers and 582 African American and European American fathers living in low‐wealth rural areas, we explored the extent to which cultural context (ethnicity), economic context (income), family characteristics (partners' use of mental state talk), child characteristics (gender, attention, distress to novelty), and parent characteristics (parental sensitivity) contribute to mothers' and fathers' use of mental state talk in a series of multilevel models.
Results
Results suggest that parental sensitivity was positively associated with mental state talk for both mothers and fathers, and child attention was positively associated with mental state talk for mothers with significant but small effect sizes. Fathers' mental state talk contributed positively to mothers' mental state talk, but this was true only for African American families.
Conclusion
Our identified main effects and significant interaction enhance our understanding of factors that contribute to mothers' and fathers' mental state talk with their preverbal infants.
This monograph describes some of the initial findings of the Family Life Project, a multidisciplinary longitudinal study that used an epidemiological sampling frame to recruit a sample of 1,292 ...infants and their families residing in one of six poor rural counties in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Arguments are laid out for why the Family Life Project was unique and for how it has contributed to the understanding of children's development in the rural context.
Path analysis was used to investigate the longitudinal associations among parenting and children's executive function and externalizing behavior problems from 36 to 90 months of age in the Family ...Life Project (N = 1,115), a study of child development in the context of rural poverty. While controlling for stability in the constructs, semistructured observations of parenting prospectively predicted performance on a battery of executive function tasks and primary caregivers' reports of externalizing behavior. Furthermore, the association between early parenting and later externalizing behavior was longitudinally mediated by executive function, providing support for a process model in which sensitive parenting promotes children's self-regulation, which in turn reduces children's externalizing behavior.
There has been little research comparing the nature and contributions of language input of mothers and fathers to their young children. This study examined differences in mother and father talk to ...their 24 month-old children. This study also considered contributions of parent education, child care quality and mother and father language (output, vocabulary, complexity, questions, and pragmatics) to children's expressive language development at 36 months. It was found that fathers' language input was less than mothers' language input on the following: verbal output, turn length, different word roots, and wh-questions. Mothers and fathers did not differ on type-token ratio, mean length of utterance, or the proportion of questions. At age 36 months, parent level of education, the total quality of child care and paternal different words were significant predictors of child language. Mothers' language was not a significant predictor of child language.
Teachers’ implementation of differentiated supplemental instruction is critical to help students with or at risk for reading-related disabilities acquire early reading and vocabulary skills. This ...study represents an initial investigation of whether classroom teachers’ intervention fidelity (exposure, adherence, and quality) of targeted reading instruction (TRI, formerly called targeted reading intervention), a professional development program with embedded student intervention and weekly webcam literacy coaching support, was related to spring reading and oral vocabulary gains for students at risk for reading-related disabilities. The study also examined whether teachers’ years of participation in TRI (1 year vs. 2 years) moderated associations between intervention fidelity and students’ reading and oral vocabulary outcomes. Findings suggested that teachers’ adherence to TRI strategies was directly associated with students’ vocabulary gains as well as word reading skills for teachers in their second year of participation. Furthermore, when teachers provided students with more TRI exposure during their second year of participation, students made greater gains in word reading and reading comprehension.
This article examined longitudinal relations among socioeconomic risk, maternal language input, child vocabulary, and child executive function (EF) in a large sample (N = 1,009) recruited for a ...prospective longitudinal study. Two measures of maternal language input derived from a parent–child picture book task, vocabulary diversity (VOCD), and language complexity, showed variation by socioeconomic risk at child ages 15, 24, and 36 months. Maternal VOCD at child age 24 months and maternal language complexity at child age 36 months mediated the relation between socioeconomic risk and 48‐month child EF, independent of parenting sensitivity. Moreover, 36‐month child vocabulary mediated the relation between maternal language input and child EF. These findings provide novel evidence about mechanisms linking socioeconomic risk and child executive function.
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