Parenting predictors of cognitive skills and emotion knowledge in socioeconomically disadvantaged preschoolers

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2014.11.010Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We examined associations between parenting and school readiness in preschoolers.

  • Responsiveness significantly predicted cognitive and emotion skills one year later.

  • Inferential language input was associated with concurrent language and emotion skills.

  • There was an interaction between inferential language input and language skills.

  • Children with strong initial skills benefited from inferential language input.

Abstract

This study examined the concurrent and longitudinal associations of parental responsiveness and inferential language input with cognitive skills and emotion knowledge among socioeconomically disadvantaged preschoolers. Parents and 2- to 4-year-old children (mean age = 3.21 years, N = 284) participated in a parent–child free play session, and children completed cognitive (language, early literacy, early mathematics) and emotion knowledge assessments. Approximately 1 year later, children completed the same assessment battery. Parental responsiveness was coded from the videotaped parent–child free play sessions, and parental inferential language input was coded from transcripts of a subset of 127 of these sessions. All analyses controlled for child age, gender, and parental education, and longitudinal analyses controlled for initial skill level. Parental responsiveness significantly predicted all concurrent cognitive skills as well as literacy, math, and emotion knowledge 1 year later. Parental inferential language input was significantly positively associated with children’s concurrent emotion knowledge. In longitudinal analyses, an interaction was found such that for children with stronger initial language skills, higher levels of parental inferential language input facilitated greater vocabulary development, whereas for children with weaker initial language skills, there was no association between parental inferential language input and change in children’s vocabulary skills. These findings further our understanding of the roles of parental responsiveness and inferential language input in promoting children’s school readiness skills.

Introduction

During early childhood, children exhibit variation in their development of cognitive and social–emotional skills, which sets the stage for individual differences in school readiness as well as later academic performance (Duncan et al., 2007, McClelland et al., 2006, National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). Contextual factors have been shown to be crucial in the early development of cognitive and social–emotional skills. For example, family income and socioeconomic status (SES), child-care quality, and aspects of parenting during early childhood have all been shown to be positively related to early development and school readiness (Cutting and Dunn, 1999, Denham et al., 2012, Mistry et al., 2010, Pungello et al., 2009). Moreover, parenting has been consistently found to be a robust early childhood predictor of school readiness and to be a mechanism through which many contextual factors, such as SES, influence child development (Hoff, 2003, Lengua et al., 2007, Lugo-Gil and Tamis-LeMonda, 2008). Despite our knowledge of the general association between parenting quality and school readiness, associations between specific parenting factors and early cognitive and social–emotional skills remain poorly understood.

The current study examined the unique contributions of specific parenting dimensions to growth in school readiness skills across the late toddler period and early preschool period among socioeconomically disadvantaged children. We focused on the roles of parental responsiveness and inferential language input because these parenting factors are theoretically expected to be important contributors to early cognitive and social–emotional development. Given our low-SES sample, our study was equipped to shed light on the associations between parenting and school readiness in children at risk for difficulties in early cognitive and social–emotional development.

A range of early cognitive skills are important to children’s school readiness and later academic success, including language, emergent literacy, and emergent math skills (Duncan et al., 2007). Children’s early language skills include a variety of expressive and receptive abilities such as understanding and responding appropriately to different word and sentence structures and breadth of vocabulary (Chapman, 2000). These skills have been found to predict later reading achievement (Muter et al., 2004, Roth et al., 2002). During early childhood, the ability to understand and manipulate the sound units of language (phonological awareness) and understand that print carries meaning and how books and print work (print knowledge) also represent foundational skills for later reading (Catts et al., 1999, National Early Literacy Panel, 2008, Storch and Whitehurst, 2002). Children employ these skills as they learn to use letter–sound correspondences to decode printed text and as they begin to comprehend text (Kendeou, van den Broek, White, & Lynch, 2009). In addition, emergent mathematics skills, such as understanding of numbers and operations, geometry, patterns, and measurement, predict later mathematical competence in the elementary grades (Duncan et al., 2007).

A wide range of social–emotional skills are also important to children’s successful transition to school (Bierman et al., 2008, Coolahan et al., 2000). One crucial early social–emotional skill, emotion knowledge, refers to the ability to recognize and label emotion expressions and to connect emotion expressions with their situational causes (Bierman et al., 2008). The acquisition of emotion knowledge during the preschool years contributes to adaptive social–emotional functioning in a school setting (Denham, 2006, Denham et al., 2003, Garner and Waajid, 2008, Shields et al., 2001). Children who are able to read the emotional expressions of others accurately and predict a likely emotional reaction in a given social situation can use this information to negotiate interpersonal relationships with teachers and peers (Izard et al., 2001).

The cognitive and social–emotional skills that predict academic success start to develop as early as infancy and toddlerhood, making it important to understand the predictors of early cognitive and social–emotional development, even many years prior to school entry. Multiple lines of research suggest that aspects of parenting quality, including responsiveness and cognitive stimulation, may shape young children’s cognitive and social–emotional development (e.g., Lugo-Gil & Tamis-LeMonda, 2008).

Parental responsiveness (also termed sensitivity or sensitive responsiveness) refers to a parenting style characterized by warm acceptance of children’s needs and interests and attunement and contingent responding to children’s cues. Parental responsiveness is theorized to foster a secure parent–child attachment relationship and keep emotions and stress reactivity at manageable levels, which in turn allows children to explore the environment and engage in learning activities (Ainsworth et al., 1978, Bowlby, 1969/1982). Parental responsiveness may also support cognitive development by allowing children to take the lead and make choices, which may promote self-efficacy and support children’s autonomy in problem-solving activities (Grolnick & Ryan, 1989).

In line with theory, empirical evidence suggests that parental responsiveness during early childhood may play an important role in early cognitive development (Landry et al., 2001, NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2001). Specifically, parental responsiveness has been found to influence language development (Pungello et al., 2009, Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2001) and emergent literacy and math (Hirsh-Pasek & Burchinal, 2006).

Parental responsiveness has also been found to predict aspects of early social–emotional development (Landry et al., 2001, Razza and Raymond, 2013, Stams et al., 2002). With regard to emotion knowledge in particular, effects of parenting constructs similar to parental responsiveness have been found. Higher parent–child attachment security has been associated with more advanced emotion knowledge during the preschool years (De Rosnay and Harris, 2002, Greig and Howe, 2001, Laible and Thompson, 1998, Ontai and Thompson, 2002, Raikes and Thompson, 2006). In addition, parents and family environments rated as being high in emotion socialization (e.g., those modeling the expression of positive emotion, showing high levels of emotional responsiveness, encouraging children’s own emotional expression, and discussing emotional events) have more affectively competent children (Denham and Kochanoff, 2002, Perlman et al., 2008). Higher levels of parental responsiveness may lead to more shared experiences around emotion regulation, which give children opportunities to learn about emotion in a supportive context (Raikes & Thompson, 2006).

Parental language input is an important general area of parenting that is associated with children’s early cognitive and social–emotional development. Parental language input is theorized to facilitate children’s development of cognitive reasoning skills needed to learn about reading, math, and emotions (Snow, 1991). One aspect of parental language input is the quantity of language spoken to the child, which has been found to support language development across multiple studies (Chapman, 2000). Recent evidence suggests the importance of considering not just the quantity of input but also the qualities of input associated with stronger language growth (Huttenlocher et al., 2010, Rowe, 2012).

One quality of language input that is of increasing interest to investigators of young children’s linguistic and cognitive development is inferential language input. Oral language spans a continuum from literal to inferential levels of cognitive demand. Literal discourse includes talk about objects and events that can be directly perceived in the immediate environment, whereas inferential discourse addresses more decontextualized topics such as talk about the past or future or hypothetical or abstract situations that are not part of the immediate environment (Blank et al., 1978, Sigel, 1999). Although literal input is thought to be quite important early in life to ensure a strong foundation of language and vocabulary skills, parental inferential language may need to increase as children develop in order to support inferential reasoning skills needed to learn school readiness concepts (van Kleeck, 2008).

Toddlers and preschoolers are increasingly able to understand and produce inferential language, suggesting that the early years are an important period for children to experience inferential parent talk. Between 24 and 36 months of age, children produce inferential talk such as pretend play, past tense verbs, and “why” questions (Paul, 2001). Experimental evidence shows that 24-month-olds demonstrate predictive understanding of causal relations (Sobel & Kirkham, 2006) and that their understanding of causal relationships can be significantly enhanced when adults provide simple verbal explanations about how objects function (Bonawitz, Horowitz, Ferranti, & Schulz, 2009). As children develop, their inferential reasoning capacities become more adult-like, with 3-year-olds making accurate relevance inferences about adults’ ambiguous communication (Schulze, Grassmann, & Tomasello, 2013) and 4-year-olds using past events to accurately reason about a character’s future-oriented thoughts, emotions, and decisions (Lagattuta & Sayfan, 2013).

Observational research shows that parents typically provide a combination of literal and inferential language input with increasing proportions of inferential talk as children move from toddlerhood to the preschool ages. For example, in everyday home activities, 1.5-year-olds hear approximately 2% inferential utterances, whereas 3.5-year-olds hear 9% inferential talk (Rowe, 2012). In shared book reading with 3.5- to 4.0-year-olds, middle-class parents tend to focus on inferential topics in 20 to 40% of utterances (Hammett et al., 2003, Hindman et al., 2008, van Kleeck et al., 1997).

Individual differences among parents in their use of inferential language with toddlers and preschoolers may relate to variability in children’s school readiness skills. Several studies show that higher levels of inferential language, such as past and future talk during mealtimes and pretend talk during play, predict later vocabulary skills (Katz, 2001, Snow and Beals, 2006). Decontextualized, cognitively stimulating parental language input with toddlers and preschoolers during everyday routines and toy play also predict children’s later reading comprehension, decoding, and mathematics skills (Cook et al., 2011, Dieterich et al., 2006). A narrow type of inferential language, parental talk about emotions, predicts preschoolers’ later emotion knowledge (Ontai and Thompson, 2002, Salmon et al., 2013).

Vygotskian theories of cognitive development suggest that language input must be matched to the developmental level of the child in order to be beneficial (Vygotsky, 1978). Inferential language, which places higher cognitive demand on the child than literal language, may support development when children have higher language skills. Some research suggests differential effects of inferential adult talk such that younger children or children with weaker initial language skills benefit more from lower proportions of inferential talk, whereas children with strong initial skills profit from higher proportions of inferential talk (Reese and Cox, 1999, Zucker et al., 2010). Research is needed to understand the extent to which higher levels of parental inferential talk support a range of school readiness skills in young preschoolers from low-SES backgrounds.

The goal of the current study was to examine the concurrent and longitudinal associations between specific parenting factors and school readiness outcomes in socioeconomically disadvantaged preschoolers. To address this goal, during the winter of the academic year when children were enrolled in child-care programs, parents and 2- to 4-year-old children (mean age = 3.21 years) participated in a free play session with a standard set of toys, and children’s cognitive skills (language, early literacy, and early math) and emotion knowledge were measured. Approximately 1 year later, children again completed assessments of their cognitive skills and emotion knowledge. Parental responsiveness and inferential language were coded from videotapes of the parent–child free play sessions.

We examined concurrent and longitudinal associations to understand the potential effects of these parenting variables on children’s current functioning as well as on growth in their skills over time. Based on previous research, we hypothesized that parental responsiveness would be positively associated with children’s cognitive skills and emotion knowledge both concurrently and longitudinally. We also expected that higher levels of parental inferential language would promote children’s cognitive skills and emotion knowledge because, to some extent, all of these domains require decontextualized cognitive processes. However, previous research suggests that the benefits of parental inferential language may be greater for children with higher initial skill levels. Therefore, in our longitudinal analyses, we also tested interactions between the level of parental inferential language and children’s initial skills to consider possible differential growth. By using a longitudinal design, we were able to gain a greater understanding of whether these parenting factors may play causal roles with regard to children’s school readiness outcomes.

Analyses were conducted while controlling for variables that have been found to correlate with early developmental skills such as children’s age, gender, and parental education (Garner and Waajid, 2008, Hoff, 2003). Given the expected continuity in children’s developmental skills over the 1-year period, we also controlled for initial levels of these skills in our longitudinal analyses. In addition, we controlled for verbal skills in our analyses predicting emotion knowledge (Cutting and Dunn, 1999, Salmon et al., 2013).

This study is unique in examining these questions among children exposed to socioeconomic adversity. Because these children are at risk for problems with school readiness, it is especially important to understand the factors that might relate to their early development. This study also extends previous research by examining the roles of parental responsiveness and inferential language with regard to growth in a range of school readiness skills, including language skills, literacy, math, and emotion knowledge, during a transitional period when children are entering preschool.

Section snippets

Sample characteristics

Participants in the current study were 2 to 4 years of age at Time 1 (mean age at Time 1 = 3.21 years; 48% male), and 78% of children were African American. They were from families in Houston, Texas (53%), and Tallahassee, Florida (47%), in the United States. On the parent questionnaire, 28% of parents reported having a high school diploma or a lower level of education, 45% of children came from single-parent households, and 62% of parents reported their marital status as “never married,”

Preliminary analyses

We identified covariates by examining correlations of child age, gender (1 = female, 0 = male), race/ethnicity, parental education, parental marital status (currently married or not currently married), number of parents in the household, intervention condition, site, and cohort with predictor and outcome variables. Child age, gender, and parental education were associated with predictor and outcome variables (see Table 3 below). Parental responsiveness differed by race/ethnicity, with African

Discussion

The current study shows that specific measures of parenting quality relate to school readiness outcomes in young socioeconomically disadvantaged preschoolers. We found that parental responsiveness uniquely predicted a range of school readiness outcomes both concurrently and 1 year later, whereas parental inferential language input related more narrowly to language and emotion knowledge, with some associations depending on children’s language abilities. These findings are important because they

Acknowledgments

The School Readiness Consortium key investigators are Susan H. Landry, Tricia A. Zucker, Heather B. Taylor, Paul R. Swank, Jeffrey M. Williams, Michael Assel, April Crawford, Weihua Huang, Jeanine Clancy-Menchetti, Christopher J. Lonigan, Beth M. Phillips, Nancy Eisenberg, Tracy L. Spinrad, Jill de Villiers, Peter de Villiers, Marcia A. Barnes, Prentice Starkey, Alice Klein, and Carlos Valiente. This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human

References (87)

  • S.C. Widen et al.

    Children acquire emotion categories gradually

    Cognitive Development

    (2008)
  • T.A. Zucker et al.

    Preschool teachers’ literal and inferential questions and children’s responses during whole-class shared reading

    Early Childhood Research Quarterly

    (2010)
  • M.D.S. Ainsworth et al.

    Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the Strange Situation

    (1978)
  • P.M. Bentler et al.

    Significance tests and goodness of fit in the analysis of covariance structures

    Psychological Bulletin

    (1980)
  • A. Bernier et al.

    From external regulation to self-regulation: Early parenting precursors of young children’s executive functioning

    Child Development

    (2010)
  • K.L. Bierman et al.

    Promoting academic and social–emotional school readiness: The Head Start REDI Program

    Child Development

    (2008)
  • M. Blank et al.

    The language of learning: The preschool years

    (1978)
  • E.B. Bonawitz et al.

    The block makes it go: Causal language helps toddlers integrate prediction, action, and expectations about contact relations

  • M.H. Bornstein et al.

    Maternal responsiveness to infants in three societies: The United States, France, and Japan

    Child Development

    (1992)
  • J. Bowlby

    Attachment and loss, Vol. 1: Attachment

    (1982)
  • M. Bullock et al.

    Further evidence of preschoolers’ interpretation of facial expressions

    International Journal of Behavioral Development

    (1985)
  • H.W. Catts et al.

    Language basis of reading and reading disabilities: Evidence from a longitudinal investigation

    Scientific Studies of Reading

    (1999)
  • R.S. Chapman

    Children’s language learning: An interactionist perspective

    Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

    (2000)
  • J. Cohen et al.

    Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences

    (2003)
  • G.A. Cook et al.

    Fathers’ and mothers’ cognitive stimulation in early play with toddlers: Predictors of 5th grade reading and math

    Family Science

    (2011)
  • K. Coolahan et al.

    Preschool peer interactions and readiness to learn: Relationships between classroom peer play and learning behaviors and conduct

    Journal of Educational Psychology

    (2000)
  • T.N. Cristofaro et al.

    Mother–child conversations at 36 months and at pre-kindergarten: Relations to children’s school readiness

    Journal of Early Childhood Literacy

    (2012)
  • A.L. Cutting et al.

    Theory of mind, emotion understanding, language, and family background: Individual differences and interrelations

    Child Development

    (1999)
  • M.D. De Rosnay et al.

    Individual differences in children’s understanding of emotion: The roles of attachment and language

    Attachment & Human Development

    (2002)
  • S.A. Denham

    Social–emotional competence as support for school readiness: What is it and how do we assess it?

    Early Education and Development

    (2006)
  • S. Denham et al.

    Parental contributions to preschoolers’ understanding of emotion

    Marriage & Family Review

    (2002)
  • S.A. Denham et al.

    Preschoolers’ emotion knowledge: Self-regulatory foundations, and predictions of early school success

    Cognition & Emotion

    (2012)
  • S.A. Denham et al.

    Preschool emotional competence: Pathway to social competence?

    Child Development

    (2003)
  • G.J. Duncan et al.

    School readiness and later achievement

    Developmental Psychology

    (2007)
  • C.K. Enders

    The performance of the full information maximum likelihood estimator in multiple regression models with missing data

    Educational and Psychological Measurement

    (2001)
  • C.K. Enders

    Applied missing data analysis

    (2010)
  • A. Fernald et al.

    Infants’ developing competence in recognizing and understanding words in fluent speech

  • N. Forget-Dubois et al.

    Early child language mediates the relation between home environment and school readiness

    Child Development

    (2009)
  • A. Greig et al.

    Social understanding, attachment security of preschool children, and maternal mental health

    British Journal of Developmental Psychology

    (2001)
  • W.S. Grolnick et al.

    Parent styles associated with children’s self-regulation and competence in school

    Journal of Educational Psychology

    (1989)
  • L.A. Hammett et al.

    Patterns of parents’ extratextual interactions during book sharing with preschool children: A cluster analysis study

    Reading Research Quarterly

    (2003)
  • K. Hirsh-Pasek et al.

    Mother and caregiver sensitivity over time: Predicting language and academic outcomes with variable- and person-centered approaches

    Merrill-Palmer Quarterly

    (2006)
  • Cited by (48)

    • The roles of stimulating parenting and verbal development throughout early childhood in the development of mathematics skills

      2021, Cognitive Development
      Citation Excerpt :

      A variety of stimulating parenting behaviors were found to be concurrently (Baker, 2015; Kleemans, Peeters, Segers, & Verhoeven, 2012) and longitudinally (Manolitsis, Georgiou, & Tziraki, 2013) associated with children’s mathematics skills. This finding was also validated in samples of low socioeconomic status (Baker, 2015; Burchinal et al., 2006; Merz et al., 2015). Several home learning experiences such as engagement in numeracy activities (Blevins-Knabe & Musun-Miller, 1996; LeFevre et al., 2009), literacy activities (Anders et al., 2012), and a combination of literacy and numeracy activities (LeFevre, Clarke, & Stringer, 2002; LeFevre, Polyzoi et al., 2010) were associated with mathematics skills at kindergarten, at school entry, and beyond.

    • Family's social economic status and child educational outcomes in China: The mediating effects of parenting practices and children's learning attitudes

      2020, Children and Youth Services Review
      Citation Excerpt :

      The study by Altafim, McCoy, and Linhares (2018) examined the relationships between SES, parenting practices and child behavior problems in the context of Brazil and their results illustrated that lower SES families were related to child behavior problems and more negative parenting practices. Some studies have particularly focused on early childhood development, for example Merz et al. (2015) found that sensitive parenting is significant predictor of cognitive skills among pre-school children. Except for the importance of parenting practices, child individual characteristics are also important for their own development outcomes especially in educational achievement.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text