The Home Learning Environment in Toddlerhood: Connections to SES and Early Math and Language Skills

• In Event: The Implications of Family and Home Environments for Development in Early and Middle Childhood

Abstract

Introduction
Despite the wealth of research examining SES differences in preschoolers’ and kindergarteners’ academic skills, less is known about whether younger children’s pre-academic competencies are susceptible to variations in environmental factors such as SES. Likewise, many studies have examined characteristics of the home environment that may promote children’s language, reading, and math skills. However, most of this work focuses on the preschool and kindergarten years, with less known about how parents support their toddlers’ pre-academic skills. In this study, we explore dimensions of the home learning environment (HLE) among parents of two-year-old children and examine whether these factors explain SES differences in early math and language skills.

Method
Participants
Data for this study were collected from 157 parents (95% mothers) and toddlers (50% girls; mean age = 31.86 months; SD = 2.47) who participated in the Parents Promoting Early Learning (PPEL) Study. Based on household income and family size, 22% of families were classified as low-income, 32% as middle-income, and 46% as high-income.

Measures and Procedures
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this study was conducted entirely online through a combination of video conferencing calls, phone calls, and online surveys.

Children’s vocabulary and number skills. To measure children’s expressive vocabulary, parents completed the Development Vocabulary Assessment for Parents (DVAP), a checklist of 212 words adopted from the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) – Fourth Edition. Scores were calculated as the total number of words parents identified having heard their children say. Children completed assessments of their number skills, including a modified version of the Give-A-Number task, where children provided a specific number of objects to the researcher, a Point-to-X task, where they pointed to a specific number of objects given two choices, as well as a Counting task, where children were asked to count out loud on their own. Performance on each of the three tasks was standardized and averaged to form an overall number skills composite measure.

Home learning environment. Parents answered 35 age-appropriate questions about the frequency of different home activities over the past month: 19 questions about the frequency of home math activities (e.g., playing with number-related toys) and 16 home literacy activities (e.g., reading stories together).

Results and Discussion
Based on exploratory factor analyses, three subdimensions of number activities were identified (Table 1): number concepts (e.g., “identifying the meaning of numbers”), written numerals (e.g., “reading number storybooks”), and number applications (e.g., “measuring ingredients while cooking”). Two dimensions of literacy activities were identified: basic language principles (e.g., "identifying sounds of alphabet letters”) and early literacy (e.g., “reading stories together”). We examined structural models in SEM using Mplus to examine whether subdimensions of the HLE mediated associations between SES and children’s number skills and expressive vocabulary. A standard deviation higher SES predicted differences from about one fifth to one third of a standard deviation in parents’ reports of their activities. Significant mediating pathways are noted in Figure 1. Future work will include longitudinal analysis into age 3 to strengthen causal inference.

Authors

• Heather J. Bachman, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Leanne Elliott, University of Pittsburgh

• Tamara Podvysotska, University of Pittsburgh

• Melissa E Libertus, University of Pittsburgh

• Portia Miller, University of Pittsburgh

• Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, University of Pittsburgh