24-Month-Old Children With Larger Oral Vocabularies Display Greater Academic and Behavioral Functioning at Kindergarten Entry

• In Event: 33.029 - Correlates of Academic Achievement

Abstract

Data were analyzed from 8,650 children participating in a nationally representative, longitudinal study to identify socio-demographic, gestational and birth, cognitive and behavioral, and family functioning factors associated with or predictive of U.S. children’s oral vocabularies at 24 months of age. Additional analyses then evaluated whether the children’s oral vocabularies, measured using a brief parental survey of 50 possible spoken words, uniquely predicted their academic and behavioral functioning at 60 months of age. Prior to and following extensive statistical control for possible confounds, children with larger oral vocabularies at 24 months of age displayed (a) greater reading achievement, (b) greater mathematics achievement, (c) increased behavioral self-regulation, and (d) fewer externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors at kindergarten entry.

Authors

• Paul L. Morgan, The Pennsylvania State University

• Carol Hammer, Temple University

• George Farkas, University of California - Irvine

• Marianne Hillemeier, The Pennsylvania State University

• Steven Maczuga, The Pennsylvania State University