Poster #94 - Family Environment, SES, and Children’s Language Development: A National Study in Taiwan

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Family Context & Processes

Integrative Statement

Introduction: According to ecological system theory of child development, proximal (such as family environment) and distal (such as socioeconomic status, SES) environmental factors both account for developmental outcome in young children (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998). Prior research on English-speaking children indicated that maternal sensitivity and cognitive stimulation mediated the relation between SES and language development (Raviv, Kessenich, & Morrison, 2004). Family environment and child developmental status may vary across cultures. Little is known about what family environment factors are related to language skill in Taiwanese children. There is also no research on the mechanism through which SES affects Taiwanese children’s language abilities. This study aims to explore: (1) What are the relationship between family environment factors, SES and language skill in three-year-old children in Taiwan? (2) What family environment factors mediate the relation between SES and children’s language abilities?
Sample and Method: Sample of this study came from a nationwide, longitudinal project called Kids in Taiwan: National Longitudinal Study of Child Development & Care (KIT). KIT is an on-going project which aims to examine Taiwanese children’s development in the areas of cognition, language, social emotion and motor as well as their experiences at home and school from age 0-8. 2164 (boys =1,113, girls =1,051) nationally representative 3-year-olds who were born between 2013-2014 participated in this study. Parents were asked to fill out questionnaires about their children’s developmental status and family environments. Three dimensions of language development were assessed, including comprehension, expression, and emergent literacy. Family environment factors include language support measures (e.g., I teach the child names of various objects) and measures adapted from the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (Caldwell & Bradley, 1984), i.e., play materials (e.g., I let the child play with plush pillows, stuffed animals, or playset toys), variety of stimulation (e.g., I help the child learn numbers), variety of experiences (e.g., I take the child to visit families and friends), parental responsivity (e.g., I kiss or hug the child), and child discipline (e.g., I scold the child if he/she is not obedient). Two Factor (parental education and occupation) Index of Socioeconomic Status (Hollingshead,1975 ; Lin, 2005) was used to measure the social status of a child.
Results: Three main results were observed: (1) Significant positive correlations were found across SES, family environment factors, and language development. (2) Results of hierarchal regression analyses showed that SES, language support and other family environment factors (HOME) explained 5.5, 23.6, and 4% (total of 33.2%) of the variance in language ability respectively (see Table 1). (3) Using mediation model with PROCESS (Hayes, 2013), this study found that play materials (indirect effect = .002, 95% CI = [.001, .003]), variety of stimulation (indirect effect = .002, 95% CI = [.001, .002]) and language support (indirect effect = .003, 95% CI = [.002, .004]) mediated the relation between SES and children’s language abilities (see Figure 1).

Authors

• Chien-ju Chang, National Taiwan Normal University
  Presenting Author

• Yi-ling Shih, National Taiwan Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Li-tuan Chou, National Taiwan Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Huei-Mei liu, Department of Special Education, National Taiwan Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author