Poster #206 - Associations Between Shyness and Language Development Over Middle Childhood

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Temperament impacts the quality and quantity of children’s social interactions as and such may affect children’s opportunities for language learning (Rothbart, 2007). Previous work examining temperament and concurrent language skills found that temperamentally shy preschool-aged children score lower on expressive and receptive language measures relative to their more outgoing peers (Spere et al., 2004). Less is known, though, about how shyness relates to language skills once children enter school, where social interactions with peers and teachers are central to early learning. Therefore, the goal of this study is to examine the concurrent and short-term longitudinal associations between temperamental shyness and language abilities in middle childhood. It is predicted that temperamental shyness will have a negative impact on concurrent and later receptive, expressive, and pragmatic language skills.

Participants were recruited at age 7 as a part of a short-term longitudinal study (n= 91, mean age= 7.30 years, SD= 0.30, 46 male) and to-date 44 participants have returned for an 8-year assessment (mean age= 8.40 years, SD= 0.30, 22 male; expected final n =84). At 7 years, self-reported shyness was assessed using the Child Shyness Questionnaire (Crozier, 1995). At 7 and 8 years, children completed the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, administered via iPad, using the NIH toolbox (Dunn, 1981). Raw scores were used as an assessment of receptive vocabulary. At 8 years, children also completed the Expressive Vocabulary and Pragmatic Language subtests of the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language-Second Edition (Carrow-Woolfolk, 2017).

At age 7, shyness and receptive vocabulary were unrelated, r(91) = -.031, p=.769. A series of regression analyses revealed that receptive vocabulary at 7-years was positively associated with all three language outcomes at 8-years (receptive F(1,42)=9.809, p = .003, β = .435; expressive, F(1,41)= 14.761, p < .001, β= .515; pragmatic, F(1,41)=6.496, p= .015, β= .370). Shyness did not account for unique variability in expressive or pragmatic language skills. In contrast, over and above the effects of earlier receptive language, 7-year shyness significantly predicted 8-year receptive language, F(1,41)= 5.129, p= .029, β= -.301. Specifically, higher levels of shyness at 7 years predicted significantly lower levels of receptive language at age 8.

The preliminary partially support the hypotheses by demonstrating that shyness negatively impacts the rate with which children develop receptive language skills in the early elementary school years. Interestingly, shyness was unrelated to later expressive or pragmatic language skills. Results will be discussed in terms of potential mechanisms through which shyness specifically impacts receptive language including the impact of shyness on attention (i.e., self-focused attention in group setting may detract from language learning opportunities) and social learning processes (i.e,. social reticence may alter the quality and quantity of social interactions, leading to fewer opportunities to acquire new vocabulary).

Authors

• Mariam Abbasi, University of Waterloo
  Presenting Author

• Emma Green, University of Waterloo
  Non-Presenting Author

• Heather Henderson, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo
  Non-Presenting Author