Abstract
Latino toddlers fall behind White peers at 24 months of age in oral language and interactive skills with their mothers in English or Spanish. But Latino children enter kindergarten with social skills that rival White peers, despite social-class disparities. We ask whether cognitive trajectories widen during the 24–48 month period, how these patterns differ for Latinos, especially Mexican–Americans, and whether similar gaps in social-emotional growth appear. We analyzed growth patterns for a nationally representative birth sample (n = 4,690) drawn in 2001, estimating levels of change in development from 24 to 48 months of age, focusing on Latino subgroups. The mean gap in cognitive processing for Mexican–American children, already wide at 24-months of age relative to Whites (three-fourths of a standard deviation), remained constant at 48 months. But differences in social-emotional status were statistically insignificant at both 24 and 48 months. Mexican–American mothers were observed to be equally warm and supportive relative to White peers during interaction tasks. Yet the former group engaged less frequently in cognitive facilitation, oral language, and preliteracy activities in the home. Growth in both cognitive and social domains was considerably lower in larger families, placing children raised in poor or Spanish-speaking homes within a large household at greater risk of delays. Pediatricians and practitioners must carefully gauge the social-emotional well-being of Latino children, in developmental surveillance activities. Growth in cognitive and social domains unfolds independently for children of Mexican heritage, even when raised in economically poor families.
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Notes
Culturally oriented developmental psychologists at times emphasize the interwoven nature of cognitive learning and the social context and utility of what’s learned by young children. That is, by separating the two domains, we are distracted by their interplay in how youngsters acquire knowledge that serves culturally appropriate social behaviors [12].
We examined correlations between parent and preschool-teacher reports of the focal child’s social behavior and emotional status for a second, smaller sample of children who had entered preschool. These paired correlations were moderate in magnitude (Pearson r’s equal between 0.20 and 0.35, depending on paired items). Focusing on parent reports allowed us to examine change over the 24- to 48-month period.
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Acknowledgments
This study was funded in part by grant R40 MC 21517 to Dr. Guerrero from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Research Program. Berkeley team members were funded by this grant and the Institute of Human Development. Dissemination activities are supported by the McCormick Foundation.
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Guerrero, A.D., Fuller, B., Chu, L. et al. Early Growth of Mexican–American Children: Lagging in Preliteracy Skills but not Social Development. Matern Child Health J 17, 1701–1711 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-012-1184-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-012-1184-7