Fathers' language input during shared book activities: Links to children's kindergarten achievement

doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2014.11.009

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology

Volume 36, January–February 2015, Pages 53-59

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2014.11.009 Get rights and content

Highlights

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African American and Caucasian families were the focus of the study.
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We examine relations between paternal language input and child outcomes.
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Paternal language input predicted child outcomes in this study.

Abstract

The present study used data from the Family Life Project (FLP) to examine predictive relations between fathers' and mothers' language input during a wordless picture book task in the home just before kindergarten entry and children's letter–word identification, picture vocabulary, and applied problems scores at the end of kindergarten. Fathers' and mothers' language input was defined as the number of different words and mean length of utterance and was measured using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT). Hierarchical regression analyses with demographic controls revealed that mothers' mean length of utterance predicted children's applied problems scores. More importantly, fathers' mean length of utterance predicted children's vocabulary and applied problems scores above and beyond mothers' language. Findings highlight the unique contribution of fathers to children's early academic achievement. Implications for future research, practice, and policy are discussed.

Section snippets

Theoretical and empirical foundations

Ecological theory framed this study and guided the selection of demographic factors that were included as controls in our analyses (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998). Ecological theory posits that home environments represent the most salient and enduring context for child development. Within the family context, processes related to early parenting can impede or enhance children's academic development and preparation for school. Particularly important are the proximal processes (e.g., shared book

Participants and design

The FLP was designed to study families who lived in two of the four major geographical regions in the Eastern U.S. with the highest rural child poverty rates (Dill, 1999). Specifically, three counties in Eastern North Carolina and three counties in Central Pennsylvania were selected to be indicative of the Black South and Appalachia, respectively. All counties had poverty rates for children under 5 of 50% or greater. In 2008–9 the federal poverty level for a family of four was $21,200/year (

Preliminary analyses

Means and standard deviations for key study variables are shown in Table 1. Further, Table 2 shows correlations among key variables in the study. Some bivariate correlations merit mention. Chiefly, mothers' number of different words and mean length of utterance was positively correlated with fathers' number of different words and mean length of utterance. The table also indicates that mothers' number of words and mean length of utterance were positively associated with children's letter–word

Discussion

This study provides an examination of parent language input that draws attention to the unique contribution of fathers to children's early academic achievement and success. Our findings also highlight the importance of the shared picture book task for children's academic-related skills. The key finding in this study was that fathers' language input predicted children's receptive vocabulary and applied problems scores above and beyond mothers' language input. More specifically, fathers' mean

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Citation Excerpt :
Despite the dearth of studies examining adults’ questioning and its relation to children’s math skills, there are studies that have found that other aspects of adults’ verbal input, such as the complexity or abstractness of their speech, affect children’s math skills (e.g., Baker, Vernon-Feagans, & Family Life Project Investigators, 2015; Ribner, Tamis-LeMonda, & Liben, 2020). Baker et al. (2015) found that the complexity of fathers’ language input, as measured by the mean length of their utterances during shared book viewing with their 5-year-old children, was associated with children’s math skills during the spring of their kindergarten year. This relation held even after controlling for maternal language input, SES, race, parental age, and parental education.
The cognitive complexity of adults’ questions, particularly during shared book reading, supports children’s developing language skills. Questions can be described as having low cognitive demand (CD; e.g., labeling, matching) or high-CD (e.g., comparing, predicting). Little is known about the relation between different types of parental questioning and children’s math abilities. The current study examined the quantity of low- and high-CD and domain-specific math questions that parents posed to their 4-year-old children in three structured activities and how the frequency of those questions relates to children’s concurrent math and language skills. Parent–child dyads (n = 121) were observed interacting with a picture book, grocery store toys, and a puzzle for about 5 min each, and children completed math and spatial assessments. Although the frequency with which parents asked questions did not relate to children’s outcomes, parents’ use of high-CD questions was associated with children’s spatial skills, standardized math scores, and vocabulary skills after controlling for parental utterances, child utterances, child age, and family socioeconomic status. However, domain-specific math questions were not related to any child outcomes above and beyond parents’ total questions. This study suggests that domain-general questions that vary in CD (low and high) are differentially related to children’s math and language abilities, which can inform the ways in which parents engage in early learning opportunities with their children.
Effects of embedding decontextualized language during book-sharing delivered by fathers in Turkey
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This study investigated the effects of embedding decontextualized language cues during book-sharing delivered by fathers living in low socioeconomic status (SES) in Turkey. A multiple baseline design across behaviors evaluated the effects of intervention on decontextualized language and dyadic interaction outcomes for four father–child dyads. Fathers demonstrated increased decontextualized language utterances in intervention and generalization sessions. All children tended to mirror their fathers decontextualized language utterances. After the intervention was introduced dyads with limited interactions in baseline showed significant increases and the contextualized talk in baseline was replaced with greater decontextualized talk. This study advances our understanding of how fathers can be more effective conversational partners with their preschool-aged children when the training and resources are provided.
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View full text

Fathers' language input during shared book activities: Links to children's kindergarten achievement

Highlights

Abstract

Section snippets

Theoretical and empirical foundations

Participants and design

Preliminary analyses

Discussion

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Developmental Review

Cognitive Psychology

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Joint book reading strategies in working-class African American and white mother–toddler dyads

Journal of Speech and Hearing Research

Fathers' and mothers' home literacy involvement and children's cognitive and social emotional development: Implications for family literacy programs

Applied Developmental Science

African American fathers' contributions to children's early academic achievement: Evidence from two-parent families from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort

Early Education & Development

Family and sociodemographic predictors of school readiness among African American boys in kindergarten

Early Education & Development

How homes influence schools: Early parenting predicts African American children’s classroom social-emotional functioning

Psychology in the Schools

Sources of child vocabulary competence: A multivariate model

Journal of Child Language

The ecology of developmental processes

The contribution of parenting to ethnic and racial gaps in school readiness

The Future of Children

The influence of parent education and family income on child achievement: The indirect role of parental expectations and the home environment

Journal of Family Psychology

Poverty in the rural U.S.: Implications for children, families, and communities

The impact of nonnormality on full information maximum-likelihood estimation for structural equation models with missing data

Psychological Methods

Multiple dimensions of family involvement and their relations to behavioral and learning competencies for urban, low-income children

School Psychology Review

Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children

Differential contributions of three parenting dimensions to preschool literacy and social skills in a middle-income sample

Merrill-Palmer Quarterly

The specificity of environmental influence: Socioeconomic status affects early vocabulary development via maternal speech

Child Development

Kaufman Functional Academic Skills Test (K-FAST)

The role of the father in child development

Cultural capital in educational research: A critical assessment

Theory and Society

The analysis of social science data with missing values

Sociological Methods & Research

Emergent literacy skills and family literacy

Handbook of family literacy

A boy, a dog and a frog