A Longitudinal Analysis of Caregiver Capacity and Children’s Cognitive Development (Poster 26)

• In Event: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Across the world, diverse stakeholders are concerned with children’s widespread exposure to early risk factors and the associated negative consequences. The current study focuses on two experiences that may reduce parents’ caregiving capacity and are associated with lower school achievement and cognitive functioning: depression symptoms and family poverty. Educational disparities at school entry have been widely studied and are troublesome because educational gaps persist throughout elementary school. Yet, fewer studies have investigated the effect of caregiver capacity on trajectories of cognitive and academic skills, which is important as little is known about when children’s neural structures that support cognitive development are the most malleable. Data for this project come from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011, a nationally representative sample of kindergarteners followed through fifth grade. I address (i) how caregiver capacity at kindergarten predicts children’s initial status and the growth of cognitive and academic skills, and (ii) how the strength of the relation between family poverty, parent depression symptoms, and children’s cognitive and academic skills change over elementary school. Using latent growth curve modeling, preliminary analyses show non-linear growth patterns for executive function, reading, and math. Further, above and beyond children’s developmental trajectories, there are particular time windows in which reduced caregiver capacity can undermine children’s skills. This longitudinal analysis will potentially point to periods across childhood that may be optimal for interventions, and can inform how early interventions can be extended throughout elementary school based on children’s changing needs.

Author

• Noelle Suntheimer, University of Pennsylvania