Poster #1 - Power of language: Does the quality of preschool teacher language translate into child executive function?

• In Event: Poster Session 13

Abstract

Children’s language skills and executive function (EF) lay a critical groundwork for cognitive development that is directly related to subsequent educational success (Mann et al., 2017). EF, a set of skills including working memory, inhibitory control, and attention, is a significant predictor of later academic and social-emotional outcomes (Best, Miller, & Naglieri, 2011). Research has identified a link between children’s early language and EF, both in concurrent and temporal associations (Authors, 2016). Significantly, child language serves as a process mechanism linking mothers’ language and subsequent child EF, suggesting that caregiver language may be leveraged to improve children’s EF (Daneri et al., 2018). These findings have yet to be investigated in preschools. High-quality childcare and high-quality teacher language are associated with gains in children’s language skills (Carr et al., 2019). We also know that improving preschool teacher language leads to improvement in children’s school readiness (Cabell et al., 2015). However, we do not know whether or what types of preschool teacher language is related to children’s EF.
The current study addresses these gaps, using secondary data analysis of a longitudinal dataset of children living in rural communities who attend publicly funded preschools. This knowledge is important for low-income children, who are more likely to begin school with lower EF and to sustain an achievement gap because of lower EF (Willoughby et al, 2016). These analyses will examine the association between the quality of teachers’ language and children’s academic and EF outcomes.
Analytic Strategy
We defined high-quality teacher language as using requests and elaborations and eliciting language from the child during interactions. We employed a two-level hierarchical linear regression (HLM) approach, using a random effect to account for children nested within classrooms. We were interested in change over two timepoints. As such, change scores were calculated as the difference between a child’s spring pre-kindergarten or fall kindergarten score and fall pre-kindergarten score. Covariates used in models included child sex, race, age, dll status, family income, maternal education, as well as teacher education and emotional support in the classroom.
Results
In the data, we observed teacher language scores ranged from .05% to .48%. This demonstrated that children’s experiences of high-quality teacher language were skewed towards receiving little high-quality language input. On average, children experienced about 20% (M = 0.20, SD = 0.09) of their observed time in some form of high-quality language interaction.
For children who receive high-quality language input (scored as 0, 1) there was a benefit to change scores in early literacy from pre-kindergarten fall to spring, but not for other language or math skills, or in EF. Looking into kindergarten, we found that children who received high-quality language there was a benefit to change scores for early literacy and language from the fall of pre-kindergarten to the fall of kindergarten (see Tables 1 and 2).
Results indicate that high-quality teacher language during preschool has some benefit for child language into kindergarten, but not for EF skills. Future work should examine potential moderation of EF skills by child language.

Authors

• Laura J Kuhn, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author

• Irina Mokrova, Duke University