Poster #136 - Maternal Child-Directed Language and Father Involvement Predict Verbal Competence of African American Preschoolers

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Prior research suggests that African American children perform worse than Caucasian children on measures of language development (Qi et al., 2006). However, research has often ignored SES and class composition as potential confounds, resulting in misleading findings (Ensminger et al., 2003). Moreover, given that roughly two-thirds of African American children do not live with their biological father, compared to less than one-third of Caucasian children (US Census Bureau, 2011), surprisingly little research has investigated the impact of father involvement on the language development of African American preschoolers (McLanahan et al., 2013). In addition, maternal child-directed language predicts positive language outcomes in samples unselected for race, but research has yet to identify whether the quality of the mother’s input to the child predicts verbal competence in African American preschoolers above and beyond demographic risk factors, father involvement, and child characteristics theorized to impact child language development, such as gender, emotion regulation, attentional problems, and early language skills. The current study sought to investigate these issues using a sample of African American families from heterogeneous socioeconomic backgrounds. Analyses were based on longitudinal data collected for 116 African American children and their mothers followed from the child’s birth to age four. Sample characteristics are presented in Table 1.

Hierarchical linear regression was used to evaluate the associations between early child competencies, father involvement, quality of maternal input to the child, and preschool verbal competence, controlling for cumulative demographic risk and child gender. Predictors were entered in the following order: (1) cumulative demographic risk and child gender; (2) child emotion regulation (average of 6 and 18 months scores from the Behavior Rating Scale, Bayley Scales of Infant Development); attentional problems at 18 months (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Problems subscale from the Child Behavior Checklist), and expressive vocabulary at 18 months (MacArthur Communicative Developmental Inventory); (3) average father involvement from 3, 6, and 18 months; and (4) maternal verbal input to the child (amount and quality of child-directed descriptive language contingent on the child’s behavior and vocalizations) during mother-child interactions at 18 months, as scored from videotapes by reliable coders using a 7-point Likert scale. The dependent variable was a composite of children’s standard scores on two indicators of verbal ability at age four: the Differential Ability Scales verbal ability subscale and the K-SEALS vocabulary subtest (α = 0.81).

Regression results for each model were significant (see Table 2). The results of the final model corroborate prior findings in samples unselected for race, highlighting that child characteristics (i.e., emotion regulation, attentional problems, and early language skills), father involvement, and quality of maternal verbal input as measured during infancy account for significant, unique variance in the verbal skills of African-American preschoolers, after controlling for cumulative risk and child gender.

Interventions that encourage parents from low socioeconomic backgrounds to foster children’s emotion regulation and use child-directed descriptive language that is high in quantity and quality, and is produced in response to their child’s behavior and vocalizations may help foster positive trajectories of verbal competence into later childhood.

Authors

• Jessica Lee Irwin, University of California, Los Angeles
  Presenting Author

• Marjorie Beeghly, Wayne State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jordan L. Boeve, Wayne State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mahya Rahimian Mashhadi, Miami University of Ohio
  Non-Presenting Author

• Edward Tronick, University of Massachusetts Boston
  Non-Presenting Author

• Britta K. Shine, Wayne State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jessica Goletz, Wayne State University
  Non-Presenting Author