Parental Language Input and Toddlers’ Speech Use During a Self-Regulation Challenge among Economically Strained Families

• In Event: Diversifying a Normative Science of Children’s Self-Regulation

Abstract

Children’s developing language, which is influenced by socioeconomic status and parental language input (Hoff, 2013; Rowe, 2008), serves as a resource for emerging self-regulation in early childhood (Kopp, 1982). Language should influence self-regulation strategies (Cole et al., 2010). In this study, we investigate whether these early environmental influences extend to how children use language in a self-regulation challenge, i.e., speech during a delayed reward task. Participants are rural and semi-rural economically strained families, who do not face the profound disadvantages of poverty yet lack many advantages of wealth. First, we establish relations among children’s speech content, anger, and strategy use during a delayed reward situation. We then examine the extent to which economic strain is associated longitudinally with children’s speech content, testing whether these relations are mediated by parental language input, while controlling for child concurrent language ability.
From a larger longitudinal study, 120 rural/semi-rural economically strained families with young children (46% girls; 93.3% White) contributed demographic data as well as home and lab observational data at child ages 18, 24, 30 and 36 months. Average 18-month income-to-needs ratio (INR) was 2.32 (SD = 0.87) and 30-month INR was 2.49 (SD = 1.02), indicating economic strain (1 = poverty, 3 = middle class). A minority of parents were college educated (37% mothers, 27% fathers). Parent child-directed word tokens were counted from audio-recorded unstructured home visits at 18 and 30 months. At 24 and 36 months, child speech, anger, and strategy use were coded during an 8-minute wait task. Children received a wrapped gift and a boring toy; mothers told children they must wait to open the gift until mothers finished questionnaires. Three teams coded for (1) frequency of child speech about demands of waiting or unrelated topics, (2) child anger intensity, and (3) frequency of distraction behaviors as strategy (all κ’s from .78 to .93). Child MLU during non-challenging lab tasks was measured as an index for child language ability at 24 and 36 months.
Regression analyses show that more speech about task demands is associated with more anger expression and less use of distraction, but only at 36 months. Meanwhile, more speech unrelated to waiting is associated with less anger at both 24 and 36 months and more use of behavioral distraction, but only at 24 months. Mediation analyses controlling for child language ability reveal that 30-month INR is both directly and indirectly associated with children’s speech about task demands at 36 months, mediated by parent word tokens at 30 months (Figure 1). Additionally, 30-month INR is indirectly linked to children’s unrelated speech at 36 months via parent word tokens at 30 months (Figure 2). The findings suggest that children use unrelated speech to regulate frustration, but language serves a distinct resource itself apart from behavioral distraction by 36 months while speech about task demands show rather ineffective pattern for regulation. Moreover, not economic strain alone, but parental language input contributes to children’s use of speech as a regulatory strategy, suggesting implications for intervention for the economically disadvantaged families.

Authors

• Yeunjoo Kim, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Presenting Author

• Crystal Thinzar, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

• Margaret A. Fields-Olivieri, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

• Pamela M Cole, Pennsylvania State University, University Park