The Role of Socioeconomic Circumstance and Stress on Conversational Turn Taking During Infancy

• In Event: 3-168 - Untangling the Complex Relations Between Early-life Adversity and Stress: Insights From Physiology and Longitudinal Modeling

Integrative Statement

Background: Research suggests that children in socioeconomically disadvantaged households experience less child-directed speech during early childhood, which is associated with deficits in language development (Hart & Risley, 2003). Additionally, chronic parental stress has also been shown to have a negative influence on child language development (Perkins, Finegood, & Swain, 2013). However, much of the existing research has not leveraged physiological and longitudinal statistical methods in order to understand the complex interaction between socioeconomic status (SES) and chronic parental stress during the first year of life and their effect on child language development.

Methods: To date, 86 socioeconomically diverse families have been recruited as part of an ongoing longitudinal study examining the influence of socioeconomic factors and experience on infant development. Participants and their parents were invited to participate at 6, 9, and 12 months at age. Socioeconomic circumstance (mean parental education in years, family income) and maternal hair samples were collected during each infant’s first laboratory visit. Hair samples were were subsequently analyzed for cortisol concentration, which indexes chronic stress.
Each child wore a LENA recording device for one full day, which was used to extract conversational turns (e.g. a reciprocal verbal interaction). Latent growth curve modeling was conducted in order to examine both initial values of conversational turns (intercept at age 6 months) and longitudinal change (slope between 6 and 12 months) in conversational turns over the first year of life. Full information maximum likelihood estimation was used to account for missing data. The goal of the present study was to examine whether socioeconomic circumstance, maternal stress, or a combination impacted the prevalence of conversational turns during the first year of life.

Results: Initial findings indicate stress and SES interact to predict the number of conversational turns a child experiences at six months of age (intercept; B=-.0736, t=-3.1326, p=.0037). Follow-up tests indicate that when parental chronic stress is low, children from higher SES backgrounds experience more conversational turns than children from lower SES backgrounds (B=-6.0127, t=2.6176, p=.0134). SES was unrelated to the number of conversational turns a child experienced when parental stress was high (Figure 2a). The model examining whether SES and stress predicted longitudinal change in conversational turns (controlling for conversational turns at 6 months) also revealed a significant interaction between SES and stress. Follow-up tests indicate that at low levels of chronic maternal stress, SES was unrelated to longitudinal change in conversational turns (B=.3990, t=1.1050, p=.2777). However, at high levels of chronic maternal stress, increasing SES was associated with reduced experience with conversational turns (B=-1.3146, t=-4.1285, p=.003; Figure 2b).

Discussion: Together, these findings indicate that children from high SES backgrounds experience more conversational turns by six months, but only when maternal stress is low. Additionally, between six and twelve months of age, children continue to experience the same number of conversational turns if maternal stress is low. However, when maternal stress is high, children experience reductions in conversational turns during the first year of life – particularly for those children in higher socioeconomic circumstance.

Authors

• Sonya V Troller-Renfree, Teachers College, Columbia University
  Presenting Author

• Natalie Hiromi Brito, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ana G. Leon-Santos, Teachers College at Columbia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kimberly G. Noble, Teachers College, Columbia University
  Non-Presenting Author