2-104 - Pathways to School Readiness for Low-Income Children: How Cognitive and Affective Aspects of Parenting Support Child Development

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Extensive research has documented poverty’s detrimental effects on children’s educational and psychological functioning (Brooks-Gunn & Duncan, 1997). Two main perspectives have emerged to explain how family processes mediate these effects: the ‘parental investment’ model suggests that limitations in material resources affect parents’ capacity to invest in their children’s intellectual development (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002), while the ‘parental stress’ model emphasizes how poverty-related stressors affect parents’ ability to interact in sensitive and nurturing ways with their children (McLoyd, 1990). These perspectives have informed development of strategies to prevent poverty-related disparities in school readiness, many of which target each of these pathways independently (e.g., through promotion of verbal/cognitive stimulation or nurturance/affective interactions, respectively). This symposium brings evidence from neuroscience and intervention research to examine how these pathways are interconnected and can support child development across domains.
The first presentation will examine the home language environment and maternal stress as potential mediators of links between poverty and child neurocognitive function. The second presentation will report evidence from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) showing that promotion of cognitive stimulation leads to cascading effects on parent-child affective interactions, resulting in improved child behavior. The third presentation will provide evidence from an RCT showing that a home visiting program seeking to prevent emergent conduct problems has additional impacts on verbal skills and school achievement. The discussant will highlight interventions that integrate strategies targeting both cognitive and affective aspects of parenting, and provide insights into how this evidence can inform the design of interventions and public policies.

Sub Unit

• Family Context & Processes

Chair

• Adriana Weisleder, New York University School of Medicine

Discussant

• Susan H Landry, University of Texas

Individual Presentations

• Socioeconomic Disparities in Brain Function and Cognitive Skills During Infancy - Presenting Author: Natalie Hiromi Brito, Columbia University Medical Center; Ana Leon-Santos, Teachers College, Columbia University; William P Fifer, Columbia University Medical Center; Kimberly Noble, Columbia University

• Enhancing Child Behavioral Outcomes through Promotion of Parent-Child Interactions in Reading Aloud and Play - Presenting Author: Alan Mendelsohn, New York University School of Medicine; Adriana Weisleder, New York University School of Medicine; Carolyn Brockmeyer Cates, New York University School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics; Caitlin Ford Canfield, NYU School of Medicine; Anne Seery, New York University School of Medicine; Jessica Harding, Mathematica Policy Research; Laura Curiel Duran, New York University School of Medicine; Adriana Chung, New York University School of Medicine; Benard P Dreyer, New York University School of Medicine

• Use of the Family Check-Up in Early Childhood to Promote School Readiness - Presenting Author: Daniel S. Shaw, University of Pittsburgh; Thomas J. Dishion, Arizona State University; Elizabeth Shelleby, Northern Illinois University; Lauretta Brennan, Johns Hopkins University; Erika Lunkenheimer, Pennsylvania State University; Melvin N. Wilson, University of Virginia