SES differences in language processing skill and vocabulary are evident at 18 months

Pedagogical practices and civic knowledge and engagement in Latin America: Multilevel analysis using ICCS data

This study explored the relationship between pedagogical practices and the civic knowledge and engagement of students from five Latin American and Caribbean countries, using a multilevel analysis of the 2016 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS). The results reveal the complex interplay of educational, sociodemographic, and attitudinal factors in shaping the civic knowledge and engagement of students. Extracurricular civic engagement showed a negative correlation with student civic knowledge and engagement as measured by the ICCS cognitive test. However, civic learning in school positively related to cognitive abilities, emphasizing the importance of integrating civic learning into the curriculum. Interestingly, students' educational aspirations emerged as a significant factor shaping their civic engagement, suggesting a strategy to foster high educational aspirations to enhance cognitive performance. Additionally, gender dynamics were evident in civic education, with girls consistently outperforming boys in all participating countries. The correlation between home literacy resources and test scores illuminated the significant role of home environments in academic achievement. Lastly, students' attitudes towards political participation had a notable connection to civic knowledge outcomes, presenting an exciting avenue for future research. Collectively, these findings underscore the need for a comprehensive approach to civic education and further research to refine effective strategies.

Realistic and broad-scope learning simulations: first results and challenges

There is a current 'theory crisis' in language acquisition research, resulting from fragmentation both at the level of the approaches and the linguistic level studied. We identify a need for integrative approaches that go beyond these limitations, and propose to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of current theoretical approaches of language acquisition. In particular, we advocate that language learning simulations, if they integrate realistic input and multiple levels of language, have the potential to contribute significantly to our understanding of language acquisition. We then review recent results obtained through such language learning simulations. Finally, we propose some guidelines for the community to build better simulations.

Mother-child and father-child "serve and return" interactions at 9 months: Associations with children's language skills at 18 and 24 months

Infants learn language through the back-and-forth interactions with their parents where they "serve" by uttering sounds, gesturing, or looking and parents "return" in prompt (i.e., close in time) and meaningful (i.e., semantically relevant to the object of interest) ways. In a sample of 9-month-old infants (n = 148) and their mothers and fathers (n = 296 parents) from ethnically and socioeconomically diverse backgrounds, we examined the associations between "serve and return" (SR) parent-child interactions and children's language skills at 18 and 24 months. We also examined the moderation effects between maternal and paternal SR interactions on language outcomes. SR interactions were transcribed and coded from videotaped parent-child toy play activities during home visits. We report three findings. First, mothers who provided more meaningful responses to their child's serves at 9 months had children with higher expressive language scores at 18 months. Second, fathers' prompt responses (i.e., within 3 s) at 9 months were associated with higher receptive language scores at 18 months, but their meaningful responses were negatively associated with receptive language scores at 24 months. Third, the negative association between fathers' meaningful responses and children's receptive language scores was reduced (compensated) when mothers' meaningful responses were high. Findings show that infants in ethnically and socioeconomically diverse families engage in frequent SR interactions with both mothers and fathers, who make unique contributions to infants' language development. We discuss implications for programs and policies that aim to promote early language development and reduce gaps in school readiness.

How do socioeconomic attainment gaps in early mathematical ability arise?

Socioeconomic attainment gaps in mathematical ability are evident before children begin school, and widen over time. Little is known about why early attainment gaps emerge. Two cross-sectional correlational studies were conducted in 2018-2019 with socioeconomically diverse preschoolers, to explore four factors that might explain why attainment gaps arise: working memory, inhibitory control, verbal ability, and frequency of home mathematical activities (N = 304, 54% female; 84% White, 10% Asian, 1% black African, 1% Kurdish, 4% mixed ethnicity). Inhibitory control and verbal ability emerged as indirect factors in the relation between socioeconomic status and mathematical ability, but neither working memory nor home activities did. We discuss the implications this has for future research to understand, and work towards narrowing attainment gaps.

What risk factors for Developmental Language Disorder can tell us about the neurobiological mechanisms of language development

Language is a complex multidimensional cognitive system that is connected to many neurocognitive capacities. The development of language is therefore strongly intertwined with the development of these capacities and their neurobiological substrates. Consequently, language problems, for example those of children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), are explained by a variety of etiological pathways and each of these pathways will be associated with specific risk factors. In this review, we attempt to link previously described factors that may interfere with language development to putative underlying neurobiological mechanisms of language development, hoping to uncover openings for future therapeutical approaches or interventions that can help children to optimally develop their language skills.

Relation of infants' and mothers' pointing to infants' vocabulary measured directly and with parental reports

Infants' and parents' pointing gestures predict infants' concurrent and prospective language development. Most studies have measured vocabulary size using parental reports. However, parents tend to underestimate or overestimate infants' vocabulary necessitating the use of direct measures alongside parent reports. The present study examined whether mothers' index-finger pointing, and infants' whole-hand and index-finger pointing at 14 months associate with infants' receptive and expressive vocabulary based on parental reports and directly measured lexical processing efficiency (LPE) concurrently at 14 months and prospectively at 18 months. We used the decorated room paradigm to measure pointing frequency, the Turkish communicative development inventory I to measure infants' receptive vocabulary, Turkish communicative development inventory II to measure their expressive vocabulary, and the Looking-While-Listening (LWL) task to measure LPE. At 14 months, 34 mother-infant dyads, and at 18 months, 30 dyads were included in the analyses. We found that only infants' index-finger pointing frequency at 14 months predicted their LPE (both reaction time and accuracy) prospectively at 18 months but not concurrently at 14 months. Neither maternal pointing nor infants' pointing predicted their receptive and expressive vocabulary based on indirect measurement. The results extend the evidence on the relation between index-finger pointing and language development to a more direct measure of vocabulary.

Socio-economic status and other potential risk factors for language development in the first year of life

A wide variety of language skills has been shown to be compromised in children from low socioeconomic status (SES). However, few studies have investigated the effect of SES on language development in infants. The aim of this study is two-fold: to investigate when the first SES-effects on language can be observed and to explore the effects of three variables often claimed to be linked to SES - gestational duration, stress and parent-child interaction - on language development. Parents/caregivers of 539 Dutch-acquiring infants aged 8-13 months from mid to high SES backgrounds completed a questionnaire including the LENA Developmental Snapshot (Gilkerson et al., 2017a) and the Brigance Parent-Child Interaction Scale (Glascoe & Brigance, 2002). No association was found between SES and language development. However, the results suggest that corrected age and parent-child interaction positively influence language development at this early age.

Analysing data from the psycholinguistic visual-world paradigm: Comparison of different analysis methods

In this paper, we discuss key characteristics and typical experimental designs of the visual-world paradigm and compare different methods of analysing eye-movement data. We discuss the nature of the eye-movement data from a visual-world study and provide data analysis tutorials on ANOVA, t-tests, linear mixed-effects model, growth curve analysis, cluster-based permutation analysis, bootstrapped differences of timeseries, generalised additive modelling, and divergence point analysis to enable psycholinguists to apply each analytical method to their own data. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of each method and offer recommendations about how to select an appropriate method depending on the research question and the experimental design.

A trial of nurturing care among children who are HIV-exposed and uninfected in eSwatini

INTRODUCTION

Children who are HIV-exposed and uninfected (CHEU) are a growing population at potential risk of poor neurocognitive development. We tested a nurturing care intervention on children's neurocognitive development and maternal depressive symptoms (primary) with mediation through caregiving activities (secondary).

METHODS

This study was conducted among six intervention and nine comparison antenatal-care/prevention of vertical transmission (ANC/PVT) HIV clinics in eSwatini. We enrolled pregnant women and measured infant development at 9 and 18 months. mothers2mothers (m2m) designed and implemented the clinic-home-community-based intervention. We measured infants' neurodevelopment, maternal depressive symptoms and caregiving activities with the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL), Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, HOME Inventory and Family Care Indicators. We fitted linear mixed effects regression models with clinic random effects to compare intervention versus comparison arms, and generalised structural equation models to evaluate mediation, adjusting for confounders.

RESULTS

Mother-infant pairs (n = 429) participated between January 2016 through May 2018. Socio-demographic characteristics were balanced between arms except for higher rates of peri-urban versus rural residence and single versus married mothers in the comparison group. The 18 month retention was 82% (180/220) intervention, 79% (166/209) comparison arm, with 25 infant deaths. Intervention MSEL scores were significantly, and modestly, higher in receptive language (55.7 [95% CI 54.6, 56.9] vs. 53.7 [95% CI 52.6, 54.8]), expressive language (42.5 [95% CI 41.6, 39.8] vs. 40.8 [95% CI 39.8, 41.7]) and composite MSEL (85.4 [95% CI 83.7, 84.5] vs. 82.7 [95% CI 81.0, 84.5]), with no difference in maternal depressive symptoms or in observations of mother-child interactions. Intervention book-sharing scores were higher (0.63 vs. 0.41) and mediated the effect on MSEL scores (indirect effect, p-values ≤ 0.024). The direct effects on visual reception and expressive language scores were significantly higher in the intervention compared to the comparison arm (coefficients 1.93 [95% CI 0.26, 3.60] and 1.66 [95% CI 0.51, 2.79, respectively]).

CONCLUSIONS

Nurturing care interventions can be integrated into ANC/PVT clinic-home-community programmes. The intervention, mediated through interactive caregiving activities, increased language development scores among CHEU. Partnering with a local team, m2m, to design and implement a culturally relevant intervention illustrates the ability to impact parent-child play and learning activities that are associated with children's neurodevelopment.

The development and productivity of a measure for identifying low language abilities in children aged 24-36 months

BACKGROUND

Accurate early identification of children with low language ability is important but existing measures generally have low sensitivity. This remains an area of concern for preventive and public health services. This study aimed to create and evaluate a measure of child language, communication and related risks which can be used by community health nurses to accurately identify children with low language aged 24-30 months.

METHODS

The Early Language Identification Measure (ELIM) was developed and comprised five measurement sections, each measuring different aspects of development combined into a single measure. This was tested blind against a reference standard language measure, the Preschool Language Scale-5 (PLS-5), at the universal 24-30-month health visitor review in England. The threshold for likely low language was the tenth centile or below on the PLS-5. The aim was to ascertain the performance of the five individual sections in the scale, and consider the optimum combination of sections, for predicting low language ability. Specificity, sensitivity, and positive and negative predictive values were reported for each of the five sections of the ELIM alone and in conjunction with each other. The performance for children from monolingual English-speaking families and those who spoke languages other than English were also considered separately.

RESULTS

Three hundred and seventy-six children were assessed on both the ELIM identification measure and the PLS-5 with 362 providing complete data. While each section of the ELIM predicted low language ability, the optimal combination for predicting language outcome was the parent reported vocabulary checklist coupled with the practitioner observation of the child's communication and related behaviours. This gave a sensitivity of 0·98 with a specificity of 0·63.

CONCLUSIONS

A novel measure has been developed which accurately identifies children at risk of low language, allowing clinicians to target resources efficiently and intervene early.

The more they hear the more they learn? Using data from bilinguals to test models of early lexical development

Children have an early ability to learn and comprehend words, a skill that develops as they age. A critical question remains regarding what drives this development. Maturation-based theories emphasise cognitive maturity as a driver of comprehension, while accumulator theories emphasise children's accumulation of language experience over time. In this study we used archival looking-while-listening data from 155 children aged 14-48 months with a range of exposure to the target languages (from 10% to 100%) to evaluate the relative contributions of maturation and experience. We compared four statistical models of noun learning: maturation-only, experience-only, additive (maturation plus experience), and accumulator (maturation times experience). The best-fitting model was the additive model in which both maturation (age) and experience were independent contributors to noun comprehension: older children as well as children who had more experience with the target language were more accurate and looked faster to the target in the looking-while-listening task. A 25% change in relative language exposure was equivalent to a 4 month change in age, and age effects were stronger at younger than at older ages. Whereas accumulator models predict that the lexical development of children with less exposure to a language (as is typical in bilinguals) should fall further and further behind children with more exposure to a language (such as monolinguals), our results indicate that bilinguals are buffered against effects of reduced exposure in each language. This study shows that continuous-level measures from individual children's looking-while-listening data, gathered from children with a range of language experience, provide a powerful window into lexical development.

Peekbank: An open, large-scale repository for developmental eye-tracking data of children's word recognition

The ability to rapidly recognize words and link them to referents is central to children's early language development. This ability, often called word recognition in the developmental literature, is typically studied in the looking-while-listening paradigm, which measures infants' fixation on a target object (vs. a distractor) after hearing a target label. We present a large-scale, open database of infant and toddler eye-tracking data from looking-while-listening tasks. The goal of this effort is to address theoretical and methodological challenges in measuring vocabulary development. We first present how we created the database, its features and structure, and associated tools for processing and accessing infant eye-tracking datasets. Using these tools, we then work through two illustrative examples to show how researchers can use Peekbank to interrogate theoretical and methodological questions about children's developing word recognition ability.

Sensitivity to Semantic Relationships in U.S. Monolingual English-Speaking Typical Talkers and Late Talkers

PURPOSE

Late talkers (LTs) are a group of children who exhibit delays in language development without a known cause. Although a hallmark of LTs is a reduced expressive vocabulary, little is known about LTs' processing of semantic relations among words in their emerging vocabularies. This study uses an eye-tracking task to compare 2-year-old LTs' and typical talkers' (TTs') sensitivity to semantic relationships among early acquired words.

METHOD

U.S. monolingual English-speaking LTs (n = 21) and TTs (n = 24) completed a looking-while-listening task in which they viewed two images on a screen (e.g., a shirt and a pizza), while they heard words that referred to one of the images (e.g., Look! Shirt!; target-present condition) or a semantically related item (e.g., Look! Hat!; target-absent condition). Children's eye movements (i.e., looks to the target) were monitored to assess their sensitivity to these semantic relationships.

RESULTS

Both LTs and TTs looked longer at the semantically related image than the unrelated image on target-absent trials, demonstrating sensitivity to the taxonomic relationships used in the experiment. There was no significant group difference between LTs and TTs. Both groups also looked more to the target in the target-present condition than in the target-absent condition.

CONCLUSIONS

These results reveal that, despite possessing smaller expressive vocabularies, LTs have encoded semantic relationships in their receptive vocabularies and activate these during real-time language comprehension. This study furthers our understanding of LTs' emerging linguistic systems and language processing skills.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23303987.

[The effect of the pandemic on language development in the first two years of life]

Background and objectives

The effects that the COVID-19 pandemic may have had on the language development of children are still poorly understood. In this study, we examine the effect of the pandemic on this development by analyzing the vocabulary and the morphosyntactic level in a sample of toddlers.

Participants and method

One hundred and fifty-three boys and girls between 18 and 31 months of age participated in the study. Of these participants, 82 were born and evaluated before the pandemic (PRE group) and the other 71 were born during the pandemic and were evaluated at the end of the 2021/2022 academic year, the last academic year in which restrictive measures derived from the pandemic were maintained in the schools (POST group). Both groups were matched by age and mother's educational level and attended nursery schools with similar socioeconomic characteristics.

Results

We found lower scores both in vocabulary and morphosyntactic development in the POST group than in the PRE group. These findings are consistent with the scarce previous studies on children's language development during the pandemic.

Conclusions

The measures adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic have had a negative impact on the language development of children under 3 years of age. It is necessary to pay special attention to these children due to the needs they may require in the immediate future.

One of these things is not like the other: Predictors of core and capital mentoring in adolescence

Informal mentoring has many demonstrated impacts on young people, including increased educational attainment, economic mobility, and both physical and mental health. Emerging work on a typology within informal mentoring suggests that "core" mentors are often extended family members and provide emotional support, while "capital" mentors are connected to formal institutions and provide valued advice and social capital. The present paper contributes to this emerging body of work by examining which qualities of a young person and their environment lead to core versus capital mentoring using a nationally representative sample of youth (N = 4226). Using both a series of regression analyses and conditional inference trees, findings demonstrate the importance of racial-ethnic identity and socioeconomic status. Peabody Picture Vocabulary score, a likely indicator of socioeconomic resources, was consistently a robust indicator of capital mentoring. Implications for both practice and research are discussed.

Nurturing the Literacy Lives of Boys of Color During COVID-19

When school buildings closed suddenly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, educators relied on families more than ever to mediate their children's learning. This yearlong case study details the narratives of 14 Black and Latinx families as they negotiated literacy practices with their teenage sons during remote schooling. This study finds that families bolstered their sons' literacies through dimensions of family literacy care, a notion developed by the author to describe the material, emotional, embodied, and digital mentoring exchanged between caregivers and boys around literacy practices at home. Entangled in these narratives are the complex ways that families enacted their roles as caregivers and teachers during the pandemic, and in turn, how boys acquiesced to and resisted their parents' attempts at family literacy care. These findings texture and advance the field of family literacy scholarship to understand better the varied ways boys orient toward (and away from) texts in their family context.

Widening Digital Divide: Family Investment, Digital Learning, and Educational Performance of Chinese High School Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic School Closures

The COVID-19 pandemic and school closures highlighted the need for research examining the effects of socio-economic status and digital learning on educational performance. Based on a panel dataset from a Chinese high school during school closures in 2020, our study explored whether the digital divide widened during the pandemic. The results showed that digital learning significantly mediates the association of socio-economic status with educational performance. In contrast, the indirect effects of digital learning were not significant before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, these effects immediately became significant during school closures and remote education instruction during the pandemic. After the schools reopened, the indirect effects of digital learning declined or even disappeared. Our findings provide new evidence for a widening digital divide during the COVID-19 pandemic school closures.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11482-023-10191-y.

The cumulative effect of socioeconomic status and dyslexia on linguistic, cognitive and reading skills among Arabic-speaking children

Research has shown that children with dyslexia and children with a low socioeconomic status (SES) fall behind in terms of literacy acquisition, but a question remains regarding the cumulative effect of dyslexia and SES on linguistic, cognitive and reading skills. To examine the impact of cognition and environment on literacy development, we returned to the data set of 1,441 elementary school children (223 dyslexic readers and 1,241 typical readers) from low and medium-high SES backgrounds within Palestinian society in Israel who had participated in the development study of a comprehensive battery of tests in oral and written Arabic. The findings of this retrospective study reveal that, across grade levels, dyslexic readers from a low SES background showed similar performance to those from a medium-high SES background on most linguistic, cognitive and reading measures. As for typical readers, SES contributed to individual differences in all linguistic, cognitive and reading indices, with the exception of RAN. Finally, a cumulative effect of dyslexia and SES was found in relation to morphology, vocabulary, listening comprehension and text-reading accuracy.

The effects of bilingualism on children's cross-situational word learning under different variability conditions

In the current study, we examined the separate and combined effects of exemplar and speaker variability on monolingual and bilingual children's cross-situational word learning performance. Results revealed that children's word learning performance did not differ when the input varied in a single dimension (i.e., exemplars or speakers) compared with a condition with no variability independent of their linguistic background. However, when performance in conditions that varied in a single dimension (i.e., exemplars or speakers) was compared with a condition that varied in multiple dimensions (i.e., exemplars and speakers), bilingual word learning advantages were observed; bilinguals were more likely to learn word-referent associations than monolinguals. Together, results suggest that children can learn and generalize word-referent associations from input that varies in exemplars and speakers and that bilingualism may bolster learning under conditions of increased input variability.

The validity of LENA technology for assessing the linguistic environment and interactions of infants learning Hebrew and Arabic

The present study assessed LENA's suitability as a tool for monitoring future language interventions by evaluating its reliability, construct validity, and criterion validity in infants learning Hebrew and Arabic, across low and high levels of maternal education. Participants were 32 infants aged 3 to 11 months (16 in each language) and their mothers, whose socioeconomic status (SES) was determined based on their years of education (H-high or L-low ME-maternal education). The results showed (1) good reliability for the LENA's automatic count on adult word count (AWC), conversational turns (CTC), and infant vocalizations (CVC), based on the positive associations and fair to excellent agreement between the manual and automatic counts; (2) good construct validity based on significantly higher counts for HME vs. LME and positive associations between LENA's automatic vocal assessment (AVA) and developmental questionnaire (DA) and age; and (3) good concurrent criterion validity based on the positive associations between the LENA counts for CTC, CVC, AVA, and DA and the scores on the preverbal parent questionnaire (PRISE). The present study supports the use of LENA in early intervention programs for infants whose families speak Hebrew or Arabic. The LENA could be used to monitor the efficacy of these programs as well as to provide feedback to parents on the amount of language experience their infants are getting and their progress in vocal production. The results also indicate a potential utility of LENA in assessing linguistic environments and interactions in Hebrew- and Arabic-speaking infants with developmental disorders, such as hearing impairment and cerebral palsy.

Relations between oral language skills and English reading achievement among Spanish-English bilingual children: a quantile regression analysis

Understanding factors that influence reading achievement among bilingual children is considerably more complex than it is for monolingual children. Research on dual language development indicates that bilingual children's oral language abilities are often distributed across languages in varied ways, due to heterogeneity of dual language exposure and input. Consequently, there may be greater variability in the associations between oral language proficiency and reading achievement among bilingual children than there is for monolingual children. This study evaluated how vocabulary knowledge and morphosyntactic ability in Spanish and English were associated with English reading achievement among 117 bilingual kindergarten and first grade children in the USA using both OLS and quantile regression. Results indicated that although English vocabulary and morphosyntax were both significantly associated with reading achievement, English vocabulary knowledge was most strongly associated with reading at higher quantiles of reading achievement. Cross-language analyses indicated that both Spanish vocabulary and morphosyntax made significant contributions to predicting English reading achievement beyond the effects of English oral language. Spanish vocabulary was uniquely predictive of reading at high and low quantiles of English reading, whereas relations between Spanish morphosyntax and English reading did not differ across quantiles. These results were consistent with predictions derived from theoretical models such as the simple view of reading and suggest that Spanish vocabulary knowledge may provide more unique information about children's underlying capacity for acquiring language and literacy skill than does morphosyntax.

What explains children's digital word reading performance in L2?

Word reading fluency is crucial for early L2 development. Moreover, the practice of digital reading has become increasingly common for both children and adults. Therefore, the current study investigated factors that explain digital word reading fluency in English (L2) among Chinese children from Hong Kong. Eighty-six children (age: M = 9.78, SD = 1.42) participated in a digital silent word reading test using a mobile phone, a computer, or a tablet. This is a 10-minute timed test of English word reading. Overall, children's digital word reading fluency was highly correlated with print word reading fluency, even when measured a year apart. A hierarchical regression model revealed that socio-economic status ( β = .333), grade ( β = .455), and English reading motivation ( β = .375) were positively and uniquely associated with performance in digital reading. These predictors explained 48.6% of the total variance in task performance. Two additional variables, i.e., the type of reading device and extraneous cognitive load, were included as well. Digital word reading fluency was significantly poorer when done using a phone as compared to a computer ( β = -.187). No significant difference was found between reading on a tablet and a computer. Extraneous cognitive load ( β = -.255) negatively and uniquely explained digital word reading fluency as well. Overall, the model explained 58.8% of the total variance. The present study represents the first attempt to highlight a comprehensive set of predictors of digital word reading fluency.

Specificity of phonological representations in U.S. English-speaking late talkers and typical talkers

Late talkers are a heterogeneous group of children who experience delayed language development in the absence of other known causes. Late talkers show delays in expressive phonological development, but less is known about their receptive phonological development. In the current study, U.S. monolingual English-speaking typical talkers (TTs) (n = 23, mean age = 26.27 months, 57% male; 78.3% White) and late talkers (n = 22, mean age = 24.57 months, 59% male, 72.7% White) completed a Looking-While-Listening task to assess their sensitivity to mispronunciations. Results revealed that late talkers and TTs looked to the referent of a word for a shorter duration when it was mispronounced than when it was correctly pronounced, suggesting they were sensitive to mispronunciations. However, there were no significant differences between the two groups in their sensitivity to mispronunciations.

The home language environment and early language ability in rural Southwestern China

Using premier Language Environment Analysis technology to measure and analyze the home language environment, this observational study aims to describe the home language environment and child language ability, drawing on empirical data from 77 households with children aged 18–24 months from rural China. The results show large variation in measures of the home language environment and early language ability, similar to other rural Chinese samples. Results also demonstrate significant correlations between child age and the home language environment, maternal employment and the home language environment, father’s educational attainment and the home language environment, adult–child conversations and early language ability, and child vocalizations and early language ability.

Groupitizing reflects conceptual developments in math cognition and inequities in math achievement from childhood through adolescence

Understanding the cognitive processes central to mathematical development is crucial to addressing systemic inequities in math achievement. We investigate the "Groupitizing" ability in 1209 third to eighth graders (mean age at first timepoint = 10.48, 586 girls, 39.16% Asian, 28.88% Hispanic/Latino, 18.51% White), a process that captures the ability to use grouping cues to access the exact value of a set. Groupitizing improves each year from late childhood to early adolescence (d = 3.29), is a central predictor of math achievement (beta weight = .30), is linked to conceptual processes in mathematics (minimum d = 0.69), and helps explain the dynamic between the ongoing development of non-symbolic number concepts, systemic educational inequities in school associated with SES, and mathematics achievement (minimum beta weight = .11) in ways that explicit symbolic measures may miss.

Examining Shared Reading and White Matter Organization in Kindergarten in Relation to Subsequent Language and Reading Abilities: A Longitudinal Investigation

Parent-child language interaction in early childhood carries long-term implications for children's language and reading development. Conversational interaction, in particular, has been linked to white matter organization of neural pathways critical for language and reading. However, shared book reading serves an important role for language interaction as it exposes children to sophisticated vocabulary and syntax. Despite this, it remains unclear whether shared reading also relates to white matter characteristics subserving language and reading development. If so, to what extent do these environmentally associated changes in white matter organization relate to subsequent reading outcomes? This longitudinal study examined shared reading and white matter organization in kindergarten in relation to subsequent language and reading outcomes among 77 typically developing children. Findings reveal positive associations between the number of hours children are read to weekly (shared reading time) and the fractional anisotropy of the left arcuate fasciculus, as well as left lateralization of the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF). Furthermore, left lateralization of the SLF in these kindergarteners is associated with subsequent reading abilities in second grade. Mediation analyses reveal that left lateralization of the SLF fully mediates the relationship between shared reading time and second-grade reading abilities. Results are significant when controlling for age and socioeconomic status. This is the first evidence demonstrating how white matter structure, in relation to shared reading in kindergarten, is associated with school-age reading outcomes. Results illuminate shared reading as a key proxy for the home language and literacy environment and further our understanding of how language interaction may support neurocognitive development.

Practice-Based Coaching for Speech-Language Pathologists Supporting Paraeducators and Speech-Language Pathology Assistants

PURPOSE

This tutorial is designed for speech-language pathologists who supervise speech-language pathology assistants (SLP-As) and/ or paraeducators. SLP-As and paraeducators often support young children with disabilities within early childhood settings, but do not always have access to professional development to learn and/or enhance their skill set. Practice-based coaching (PBC) provides a collaborative framework under which professionals can effectively implement instructional strategies with fidelity to support preschool children with language delays.

CONCLUSIONS

In this tutorial, we will share the components of PBC including implementation materials that can be immediately utilized by SLPs. We will also share methods for embedding effective vocabulary instruction into shared book reading sessions to ensure early literacy instruction is more accessible to learners with varying educational needs.

Towards a Characterization of Late Talkers: The Developmental Profile of Children with Late Language Emergence through a Web-Based Communicative-Language Assessment

Children acquire language naturally, but there is variation in language acquisition patterns. Indeed, different internal and external variables play a role in acquiring language. However, there are open research questions about the contribution of different variables to language development. Moreover, with societal changes and due to the pandemic situation, there has been a growing interest in testing digitalization related to indirect language acquisition assessment. In this study, a web-based assessment survey was developed to (1) describe the relation between expressive vocabulary, Socio-Conversational Skills (SCS), gender, parental education, executive functions (EFs), and pretend play; (2) determine whether the survey can detect differences between late talkers (LTs) and children with typical language development; (3) identify children with "overall high" and "overall low" communicative-language scores to test the validity of expressive vocabulary as a main indicator to detect LTs. The parents of 108 Italian children (51 males) aged 24-36 months participated in the study. The results showed that expressive vocabulary correlates with measures of SCS (assertiveness and responsiveness) and is reliable in identifying LTs (d = 2.73). Furthermore, SCS and EFs contribute to better characterizing the developmental profile of children aged 24-36 months.

Implementing the Maternal Postnatal Attachment Scale (MPAS) in universal services: Qualitative interviews with health visitors

Background: A secure parent-infant relationship lays the foundations for children's development, however there are currently no measurement tools recommended for clinical practice. We evaluated the clinical utility of a structured assessment of the parent-infant relationship (the Maternal Postnatal Attachment Scale, MPAS) in a deprived, multi-ethnic urban community in England. This paper answers the question: what are health visitors' views on the parent-infant relationship, and experiences of piloting the MPAS? It explores the barriers and facilitators to implementation, and complements the paper on psychometric properties and representativeness reported in Dunn et al (2022).   Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 health visitors and data were analysed using thematic analysis.  Results: Health visitors saw identification and support of the parent-infant relationship as an important part of their role, and reported benefits of the MPAS, including opening conversation and identifying and reporting concerns. Challenges included timing and workload, the appropriateness of language, perceived intrusiveness and understanding of the questions, and the length of the tool. Suggestions for improvements to the tool were put forward.  Conclusions: The experiences, benefits and challenges identified help to explain results in Dunn et al, and the wide-ranging challenges identified would hinder assessment of the parent-infant relationship in routine practice. Further work with health professionals and parents has been undertaken to co-produce an acceptable, feasible and reliable tool for clinical practice.

Longitudinal links between maternal directives, children's engagement in family conversations, and child linguistic skills

Background

Research on mother-child verbal interaction is largely inspired by Vygotsky. The results align with his view that children acquire language and culture-specific ways of using language through actively participating in daily conversations with adults. Supporting Vygotsky's concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, the facilitative features of such conversations have been found to depend on age, the level of the child's language skills, and the interactional context. Most previous studies in the field have been conducted in English-speaking Western families with a focus on the first years of children's lives. As Estonian middle-class mothers have been found to put greater emphasis on controlling children than mothers from other cultural contexts, we included the frequency of using directives as one of the features of mothers' speech that might have an impact on child language development.

Aim

Accordingly, the current study explored the relative impact of various aspects of mother-child interaction (e.g., mothers' vocabulary diversity, use of attentional and behavioral directives, wh-questions, and the amount of children's talk) on children's language skills using data collected from Estonian middle-class families at two timepoints, 1 year apart. As a novel approach to this topic, the study also examined the correlation between mothers' input features and children's participation in the parent-child conversation.

Method

A total of 87 children aged 3;0 and 4;0 and their mothers participated in the study. We observed the mother-child interactions during a semistructured videotaped game played at home. Mothers reported their children's language skills via the ECDI-III. Children's language comprehension and production were measured using the examiner-administered NRDLS.

Results and conclusion

Although the results showed somewhat differential effects of various aspects of mothers' speech on different measures of child language skills at two timepoints, the diversity of mothers' speech was positively, and mothers' frequent use of directives negatively related to children's language skills. At both ages, the diversity of mothers' speech predicted the amount of children's verbal contribution to conversations. The findings will be discussed in light of Vygotskian and his followers' theoretical views and theories about child language development.

Improving Children's Expressive Language and Auditory Comprehension Through Responsive Caregiving: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial of a Strength-Based Video-Coaching Intervention

Young children from low-SES backgrounds are at higher risk for delayed language development, likely due to differences in their home language environment and decreased opportunities for back and forth communicative exchange. Intervention strategies that encourage reciprocal caregiver-child interactions may effectively promote young children's language development and enhance optimal language outcomes. The Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND) program is a brief strength-based video-coaching intervention designed to promote increased back and forth ("serve and return") interactions between caregivers and their children. The current study used data from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to examine the effectiveness of the FIND program in improving auditory comprehension and expressive communication skills among children from low-SES backgrounds. The current study used a pretest-posttest design to evaluate intervention effects from an RCT with 91 low-SES families. Families with children aged 4 to 36 months old (41.8% female) were randomly assigned to an active control or FIND intervention group. Children's auditory comprehension and expressive communication were assessed using the Preschool Language Scales, Fifth Edition (PLS-5) during both pre- and post-intervention sessions. Children in the FIND intervention group showed significantly increased expressive communication skills and a non-significant increase in auditory comprehension skills across the intervention period. In contrast, children in the active control group showed non-significant changes in expressive communication and a statistically significant decline in auditory comprehension abilities between pre- and post-intervention assessments. All analyses controlled for sex, age, and home language. This study provides preliminary evidence that the FIND intervention promotes the development of expressive and receptive language skills among young children in high-stress, low-SES environments.

The association of prenatal cocaine exposure with expressive and receptive language skills, phonological processing and reading ability at age 17

OBJECTIVE

Prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE) has been associated with small but significant effects on language development in childhood and early adolescence. This study examined whether this association persists into later adolescence and what relationship language skills may have with reading proficiency in this population.

METHODS

Enrolled were 338 (167 with PCE, 171 with NCE or no cocaine exposure) 17-year-olds recruited at birth who, together with their current caregiver, were seen as part of a 17-year follow-up. Participants were given assessments of reading achievement (WIAT-III), receptive and expressive language (CELF-IV), and phonological processing (CTOPP). Relationships between PCE status and language outcomes were modeled using multiple linear regression controlling for environmental and caregiver factors, and other prenatal substance exposures.

RESULTS

Adolescents with PCE scored lower in areas of phonological processing and reading related skills compared to adolescents with NCE. PCE by sex interactions were identified on language, memory and spoken language comprehension, with lower scores for girls with PCE compared to girls with NCE.

CONCLUSION

These findings suggest the persistence of PCE's relationship with phonological awareness well into adolescence. PCE was also associated with lower scores on measures of skills related to reading ability, which may be a manifestation of the observed deficits in phonological processing.

Estimating Demographic Bias on Tests of Children's Early Vocabulary

Children's early language skill has been linked to later educational outcomes, making it important to measure early language accurately. Parent-reported instruments, such as the Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs), have been shown to provide reliable and valid measures of children's aggregate early language skill. However, CDIs contain hundreds of vocabulary items, some of which may not be heard (and thus learned) equally often by children of varying backgrounds. This study used a database of American English CDIs to identify words demonstrating strong bias for particular demographic groups of children, on dimensions of sex (male vs. female), race (white vs. non-white), and maternal education (high vs. low). For each dimension, many items showed bias; removing these items slightly reduced the magnitude of race- and education-based group differences, but did not eliminate them. Additionally, we investigated how well the relative frequency of words spoken to young girls versus boys predicted sex-based word learning bias, and discuss possible sources of demographic differences in early word learning.

Drivers of Lexical Processing and Implications for Early Learning

Understanding words in unfolding speech requires the coordination of many skills to support successful and rapid comprehension of word meanings. This multifaceted ability emerges before our first birthday, matures over a protracted period of development, varies widely between individuals, forecasts future learning outcomes, and is influenced by immediate context, prior knowledge, and lifetime experience. This article highlights drivers of early lexical processing abilities while exploring questions regarding how learners begin to acquire, represent, and activate meaning in language. The review additionally explores how lexical processing and representation are connected while reflecting on how network science approaches can support richly detailed insights into this connection in young learners. Future research avenues are considered that focus on addressing how language processing and other cognitive skills are connected.

Influence of Respiratory Tract Infections on Vocabulary Growth in Relation to Child's Sex: The STEPS Study

Common health issues have been less examined in studies of early language development, particularly in relation to the child's sex. Respiratory tract infections, often complicated by acute otitis media, are common in children during the first years of life, when early vocabulary development takes place. The present study, conducted in Finland, aimed to investigate whether possible associations between recurrent respiratory tract infections, background factors, and vocabulary growth differ in boys and girls aged 13 to 24 months. The participants (N = 462, 248 boys and 214 girls) were followed for respiratory tract infections and acute otitis media from 0 to 23 months of age. The parents completed daily symptom diaries of respiratory symptoms, physician visits, and diagnoses. The expressive vocabulary was measured with parental reports. We found that recurrent respiratory tract infections were not associated with slower vocabulary development in boys or girls. In fact, boys with recurrent respiratory tract infections had more vocabulary growth during the second year than boys who were less sick. We found that vocabulary growth was associated differently with respiratory tract infections and background factors as a function of the child's sex. The vocabulary growth of boys seems to be more influenced by environmental factors than that of girls.

Spoken language comprehension in children and adults with Angelman Syndrome

INTRODUCTION

Objective evaluation of receptive communication abilities in nonspeaking individuals using standardized behavioral measures can be complicated by co-occurring intellectual disabilities and motor difficulties. Eye tracking during listening may offer an informative complementary approach to directly evaluate receptive language skills.

METHOD

This study examined feasibility of eye gaze measures as an index of spoken language comprehension in nonspeaking children and adults with Angelman syndrome (AS; n = 23) using a looking-while-listening procedure. Typically developing children (n = 34) provided a reference data set. Primary caregivers of participants with AS completed standardized informant reports (MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures; Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-3; Aberrant Behavior Checklist-2) to characterize communicative skills and general adaptive functioning.

RESULTS

Gaze data in participants with AS, particularly in the individuals reported by caregivers to have larger receptive vocabularies and stronger adaptive communicative functioning, demonstrated the expected pattern of comprehension reflected by the increased probability of looks to the target images after vs. before they were named in a spoken sentence. However, processing speed (gaze reaction time) was significantly slower in participants with AS than in the typically developing group.

CONCLUSIONS

Gaze-based paradigms could be an informative measure of receptive communication processes in participants who are unable to complete traditional standardized behavioral assessments.

Self-regulation in toddlers and the emergence of pre-academic disparities

A growing body of research has examined how children's self-regulation during early and middle childhood mediates SES disparities in academic achievement. Evidence suggests that these self-regulation skills begin developing even earlier, during the toddler years, but more work is needed examining how different measures of self-regulation relate to key constructs such as socioeconomic status (SES) and toddlers' pre-academic skills. In this online study, we examine multiple approaches to measuring self-regulation using confirmatory factor analyses and assess the extent to which self-regulatory skills help explain SES differences in early math and language skills among a sample of 158 two- and three-year-old children. Self-regulation was assessed through a battery of parent- and examiner-ratings. Children's counting, cardinality, and vocabulary skills were measured online through direct assessments and parent surveys. Two self-regulation factors emerged representing parent-reported and observational measures, and only observational measures of self-regulation mediated associations between SES and children's math and language skills. Parent-reported self-regulation was not uniquely related to SES or children's pre-academic skills, underscoring the need for careful consideration of how self-regulation is measured among toddlers when examining its associations with pre-academic skills.

The impact of interactive book sharing on child cognitive and socio-cognitive development (the REaL trial): study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND

The quality of children's early home learning environment has an influence on their cognitive development, preliteracy skills, and subsequent educational outcomes. Early intervention programs that promote positive parenting behaviors and child cognition have great potential to positively influence children's school readiness and thereby support social equality. One often advocated parental practice for promoting child language and cognition is interactive book sharing.

METHODS

We have conducted a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effects of a parent-child interactive book sharing intervention on early child language, cognition, and parental behaviors. Participating caregivers and their 10-month-old child were randomized to an interactive book sharing intervention group (n = 59) or to an active control group (n = 56). The intervention was delivered by a facilitator to small groups of parent-child dyads on a weekly basis over 5 weeks. The primary outcomes were child language and socio-cognition; secondary outcomes were child executive function and parental scaffolding, sensitivity and reciprocity during book sharing, and problem-solving tasks. Data were collected at baseline, post-intervention, and at 6 and 12 months post-intervention.

DISCUSSION

The Roadmap to Executive function and Language (REaL) trial aims to evaluate the impact of a brief early parenting intervention on key factors for child development, including child cognition and parental behaviors. If this intervention is beneficial for child outcomes, that would be of significance for the development of early interventions to promote child development.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

The REaL trial is registered on the International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Number database, registration number ISRCTN22319305. Retrospectively registered on 7 February 2020.

Explaining gaps by parental education in children’s early language and social outcomes at age 3–4 years: evidence from harmonised data from three countries

Child outcomes vary by family’s socioeconomic status (SES). Research on explanatory factors underlying early SES-related disparities has mainly focused on specific child outcomes (e.g., language skills) and selected influencing factors in single countries often with a focus on individual differences but not explicitly on early SES-related gaps. This study uses harmonised data from longitudinal large-scale studies conducted in the United Kingdom, United States, and Germany to examine parental education-related gaps in early child language and social skills. Twelve theoretically proposed family-, child-, and childcare-related factors were systematically evaluated as explanatory factors. In all countries, parental education-related gaps were particularly pronounced for early child language compared to social skills. In the decomposition analyses, the home learning environment was the only measure that significantly explained gaps in all child outcomes across all countries. Early centre-based care attendance, family income, and maternal age at childbirth contributed to gaps in child outcomes with the specific pattern of results varying across outcomes and countries. Maternal depressive feelings significantly contributed only to explaining gaps in children’s social skills. Thus, while some mechanisms found to underpin early parental education-related gaps can be generalized from single-country, single-domain studies, others are outcome- and context-specific.

Temperament and children's accuracy and attention during word learning

When hearing a novel word, children typically rule out familiar objects and assume a speaker is referring to a novel object. This strategy is known as fast mapping, and young children use this with a high degree of accuracy. However, not all children engage in fast mapping to the same extent and temperament can play a role. Shyness is associated with poorer fast mapping and less attention to target objects, which is associated with poorer retention (Hilton et al., 2019; Hilton & Westermann, 2017). We further investigated the relationship between temperament and fast mapping by presenting 2.5-year-old children with 8 familiar target fast mapping trials and 4 novel target trials presented twice. We considered two temperamental dimensions: approachability due to its similarity to shyness; and reactivity, which could predict children's capacity to engage during fast mapping. We found an association between approachability and fast mapping accuracy the second time children fast-mapped novel targets, and approachability was associated with greater retention accuracy. Reactivity predicted proportions of target looking during fast mapping with less reactive temperament scores associated with greater focus on targets. This provides support for a relationship between two dimensions of temperament and fast mapping and retention. Approachability may be associated with a further opportunity to fast map and memory for novel words, and/or how willing children are to guess the targets. Reactivity may be associated with the capacity to focus during word learning situations. Different aspects of temperament could have implications for children's capacity to disambiguate and learn words.

Masked-Speech Recognition for Linguistically Diverse Populations: A Focused Review and Suggestions for the Future

PURPOSE

Twenty years ago, von Hapsburg and Peña (2002) wrote a tutorial that reviewed the literature on speech audiometry and bilingualism and outlined valuable recommendations to increase the rigor of the evidence base. This review article returns to that seminal tutorial to reflect on how that advice was applied over the last 20 years and to provide updated recommendations for future inquiry.

METHOD

We conducted a focused review of the literature on masked-speech recognition for bilingual children and adults. First, we evaluated how studies published since 2002 described bilingual participants. Second, we reviewed the literature on native language masked-speech recognition. Third, we discussed theoretically motivated experimental work. Fourth, we outlined how recent research in bilingual speech recognition can be used to improve clinical practice.

RESULTS

Research conducted since 2002 commonly describes bilingual samples in terms of their language status, competency, and history. Bilingualism was not consistently associated with poor masked-speech recognition. For example, bilinguals who were exposed to English prior to age 7 years and who were dominant in English performed comparably to monolinguals for masked-sentence recognition tasks. To the best of our knowledge, there are no data to document the masked-speech recognition ability of these bilinguals in their other language compared to a second monolingual group, which is an important next step. Nonetheless, individual factors that commonly vary within bilingual populations were associated with masked-speech recognition and included language dominance, competency, and age of acquisition. We identified methodological issues in sampling strategies that could, in part, be responsible for inconsistent findings between studies. For instance, disparities in socioeconomic status (SES) between recruited bilingual and monolingual groups could cause confounding bias within the research design.

CONCLUSIONS

Dimensions of the bilingual linguistic profile should be considered in clinical practice to inform counseling and (re)habilitation strategies since susceptibility to masking is elevated in at least one language for most bilinguals. Future research should continue to report language status, competency, and history but should also report language stability and demand for use data. In addition, potential confounds (e.g., SES, educational attainment) when making group comparisons between monolinguals and bilinguals must be considered.

Experience-driven plasticity and the emergence of psychopathology: A mechanistic framework integrating development and the environment into the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) model

Despite the clear importance of a developmental perspective for understanding the emergence of psychopathology across the life-course, such a perspective has yet to be integrated into the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) model. In this paper, we articulate a framework that incorporates developmentally specific learning mechanisms that reflect experience-driven plasticity as additional units of analysis in the existing RDoC matrix. These include both experience-expectant learning mechanisms that occur during sensitive periods of development and experience-dependent learning mechanisms that may exhibit substantial variation across development. Incorporating these learning mechanisms allows for clear integration not only of development but also environmental experience into the RDoC model. We demonstrate how individual differences in environmental experiences-such as early life adversity-can be leveraged to identify experience-driven plasticity patterns across development and apply this framework to consider how environmental experience shapes key biobehavioral processes that comprise the RDoC model. This framework provides a structure for understanding how affective, cognitive, social, and neurobiological processes are shaped by experience across development and ultimately contribute to the emergence of psychopathology. We demonstrate how incorporating an experience-driven plasticity framework is critical for understanding the development of many processes subsumed within the RDoC model, which will contribute to greater understanding of developmental variation in the etiology of psychopathology and can be leveraged to identify potential windows of heightened developmental plasticity when clinical interventions might be maximally efficacious. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Exploratory Mixed-Methods Study of a Primary Care-Based Intervention Promoting Shared Reading During Infancy

Parent-child "shared" reading can be a rich source of language exposure. Clinic-based programs, notably Reach Out and Read (ROR), are intended to enhance this. However, ROR has been traditionally introduced at 6 months and only recently expanded to younger ages. This study explored efficacy of an intervention delivered during pediatric well visits promoting shared reading prior to 6 months old, in terms of home reading attitudes and routines. The intervention group received children's books and anticipatory guidance about benefits of shared reading, whereas the control group received general age-related anticipatory guidance. Surveys were administered at the child's newborn (pre-intervention) and 6-month (post-intervention) well visits. Significant findings at 6 months included more frequent shared reading (P = .03), greater comfort reading at this age (P = .01), and greater importance attributed to shared reading (P = .04) in the intervention group relative to controls. These support the expansion of early literacy interventions such as ROR into early infancy.

Clinical feasibility, utility, and usability of the Profile of Preschool Communication: A pilot test in community settings

AIM

. This study aimed to pilot test, assess usability and utility of, and identify barriers to implementation for the Profile of Preschool Communication (PPC) - a new data collection tool designed to support outcome monitoring in preschool speech-language programs and practice-based research.

METHODS

. This pilot study was conducted with three sites in the Ontario Preschool Speech and Language (PSL) program. Twenty-three speech-language pathologists used the PPC for all outcome monitoring assessments for 2-3-months and provided feedback about their experience using it in practice. Then, 18 of the 23 speech-language pathologists completed online surveys to rate usability and utility, and report their perceived implementation barriers and facilitators.

RESULTS

. Speech-language pathologists reported difficulties completing some sections of the PPC, most notably obtaining data related to maternal education and family history of mental health concerns. Usability and utility were generally rated favorably with some items rated as neutral. Barriers to implementation included the paper format, completion time, requirement to ask personal questions, and the perception by some that data were useful for outcome monitoring but not practice. Facilitators included ease of use, an improvement over the existing tool, and the collection of data to support service planning.

CONCLUSIONS

. The PPC shows potential as an outcome monitoring data collection tool in preschool speech-language pathology programs. Findings will be of interest to researchers engaged in practice-based research and those interested in engaging end users to develop clinically meaningful tools.

I See What You Are Saying: Hearing Infants’ Visual Attention and Social Engagement in Response to Spoken and Sign Language

Infants are endowed with a proclivity to acquire language, whether it is presented in the auditory or visual modality. Moreover, in the first months of life, listening to language supports fundamental cognitive capacities, including infants’ facility to form object categories (e.g., dogs and bottles). Recently, we have found that for English-acquiring infants as young as 4 months of age, this precocious interface between language and cognition is sufficiently broad to include not only their native spoken language (English), but also sign language (American Sign Language, ASL). In the current study, we take this work one step further, asking how “sign-naïve” infants—hearing infants with no prior exposure to sign language—deploy their attentional and social strategies in the context of episodes involving either spoken or sign language. We adopted a now-standard categorization task, presenting 4- to 6-month-old infants with a series of exemplars from a single category (e.g., dinosaurs). Each exemplar was introduced by a woman who appeared on the screen together with the object. What varied across conditions was whether this woman introduced the exemplar by speaking (English) or signing (ASL). We coded infants’ visual attentional strategies and their spontaneous vocalizations during this task. Infants’ division of attention and visual switches between the woman and exemplar varied as a function of language modality. In contrast, infants’ spontaneous vocalizations revealed similar patterns across languages. These results, which advance our understanding of how infants allocate attentional resources and engage with communicative partners across distinct modalities, have implications for specifying our theories of language acquisition.

A national examination of poverty and interactive caregiving practices among parents of young children

Interactive caregiving practices can be protective for the development of the brain in early childhood, particularly for children experiencing poverty. There has been limited research examining the prevalence of interactive caregiving practices in early childhood at the population level across the U.S. The purpose of this study was to describe the prevalence of three interactive caregiver activities: (1) reading, (2) telling stories/singing songs, and (3) eating a meal together, using the 2017-2018 National Survey of Children's Health, among a sample of children age five and younger, and to examine the relationship between these interactive caregiving practices across income levels and by selected potentially confounding household characteristics. Children living in families with incomes below the federal poverty level had lower odds of being read to every day compared to children living in families with incomes at 400% or more above the federal poverty level (aOR 0.70; 95% CI 0.53-0.92). Children living in families within incomes at 100-199% of the federal poverty level had lower odds of being sung to and told stories to every day than children living in families with incomes at 400% or above the federal poverty level (aOR 0.62; 95% CI 0.50-0.78).These findings have long-term implications for children, as interactive caregiving practices are known to improve cognitive activities such as language development, which is associated with educational attainment into adulthood. Finding ways to increase the adoption of interactive caregiving practices may be one way to mitigate disparities in education, especially among families experiencing poverty.

Vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension account for SES-differences in how school-aged children infer word meanings from sentences

Socioeconomic status (SES)-related language gaps are known to widen throughout the course of the school years; however, not all children from lower SES homes perform worse than their higher SES peers on measures of language. The current study uses mediation and moderated mediation to examine how cognitive and language abilities (vocabulary, reading, phonological processing, working memory) account for individual differences in a children's ability to infer a novel word's meaning, a key component in word learning, in school-aged children from varying SES backgrounds. Vocabulary and reading comprehension mediated the relationship between SES and accuracy when inferring word meanings. The relationship between SES, vocabulary, and inferring word meaning was moderated by age, such that the influence of vocabulary on task performance was strongest in young children. The reading pathway did not interact with age effects, indicating reading is an important contributor to SES-related differences in how children infer a word's meaning throughout grade school. These findings highlight different paths by which children's trajectories for inferring word meanings may be impacted.

Trajectories of socioeconomic inequality in early child development: a cohort analysis

Background

Addressing socioeconomic inequalities in early child development (ECD) is key to reducing the intergenerational transmission of health inequalities. Yet, little is known about how socioeconomic inequalities in ECD develop over the course of childhood. Our study aimed to describe how inequalities in ECD by maternal education develop from infancy to middle childhood.

Methods

We used data from Generation R, a prospective population-based cohort study in The Netherlands. Language skills were measured at ages 1, 1.5, 2, 3, and 4 years, using the Minnesota Child Development Inventory. Socioemotional (i.e. internalizing and externalizing) problems were measured at ages 1.5, 3, 5 and 9 years using the Child Behavior Checklist. We estimated inequalities in language skills and socioemotional problems across the above-mentioned ages, using linear mixed models with standardized scores at each wave. We used maternal education as indicator of socioeconomic position.

Results

Children of less educated mothers had more reported internalizing (B = 0.72, 95%CI = 0.51;0.95) and externalizing (B = 0.25, 95%CI = 0.10;0.40) problems at age 1.5 years, but better (caregiver reported) language skills at 1 year (B = 0.50, 95%CI = 0.36;0.64) than children of high educated mothers. Inequalities in internalizing and externalizing problems decreased over time. Inequalities in language scores reversed at age 2, and by the time children were 4 years old, children of less educated mothers had substantially lower language skills than children of high educated mothers (B = -0.38, 95%CI = -0.61;-0.15).

Conclusions

Trajectories of socioeconomic inequality in ECD differ by developmental domain: whereas inequalities in socioemotional development decreased over time, inequalities increased for language development. Children of less educated mothers are at a language disadvantage even before entering primary education, providing further evidence that early interventions are needed.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12939-022-01675-8.