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We investigated whether child temperament (negative emotionality, 5 months) moderated the association between maternal stimulation (5 months--2½ years) and academic readiness and achievement (vocabulary, mathematics, and reading). We applied structural equation modeling to the data from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development (N = 1121-1448; mostly Whites; 47% girls). Compared to children with low negative emotionality, those with high negative emotionality had higher levels of academic readiness (6 years) and mathematics achievement (7 years) when exposed to high levels of maternal stimulation ([Beta] = 3.17, p < 0.01 and [Beta] = 2.91, p < 0.01, respectively). The results support the differential susceptibility model whereby highly emotionally negative children were more susceptible to the influences of low and high levels of maternal stimulation in academic readiness and mathematics achievement's developments.

This paper estimates the acute effect of community-level homicides on early childhood language development and explores the moderating role of maternal efficacy and satisfaction in Chile. It uses data from the 2017 wave of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey of Chilean Children (N = 1194, M[subscript age]: 52.8 months, 52% girls). Children in municipalities with homicides 1 month before the Peabody Picture Vocabulary assessment scored between 0.18 and 0.41 SDs lower compared to children in the same municipality but for whom homicides happened after the assessment. On average, higher maternal satisfaction appears to have a protective effect, though it dissipates in the most violent municipalities. Evidence that higher maternal efficacy protects children from the negative effects of violence is inconclusive.

Parenting and children's temperament are important influences on language development. However, temperament may reflect prior parenting, and parenting effects may reflect genes common to parents and children. In 561 U.S. adoptees (57% male) and their birth and rearing parents (70% and 92% White, 13% and 4% African American, and 7% and 2% Latinx, respectively), this study demonstrated how genetic propensity for temperament affects language development, and how this relates to parenting. Genetic propensity for negative emotionality inversely predicted language at 27 months ([Beta] = -0.15) and evoked greater maternal warmth ([Beta] = 0.12), whereas propensity for surgency positively predicted language at 4.5 years ([Beta] = 0.20), especially when warmth was low. Parental warmth ([Beta] = 0.15) and sensitivity ([Beta] = 0.19) further contributed to language development, controlling for common gene effects.

An individual participant data meta-analysis was conducted to test pre-registered hypotheses about how the configuration of attachment relationships to mothers and fathers predicts children's language competence. Data from seven studies (published between 1985 and 2014) including 719 children (M[subscript age]: 19.84 months; 51% female; 87% White) were included in the linear mixed effects analyses. Mean language competence scores exceeded the population average across children with different attachment configurations. Children with two secure attachment relationships had higher language competence scores compared to those with one or no secure attachment relationships (d = 0.26). Children with two organized attachment relationships had higher language competence scores compared to those with one organized attachment relationship (d = 0.23), and this difference was observed in older versus younger children in exploratory analyses. Mother-child and father-child attachment quality did not differentially predict language competence, supporting the comparable importance of attachment to both parents in predicting developmental outcomes. [This article was written by the Collaboration on Attachment to Multiple Parents and Outcomes Synthesis.]

Maternal sensitivity during an observed mother-child clean-up task at 18 months and maternal sensitivity during an observed mother-child free-play task at 18 months were tested as independent predictors of child internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, social competence, and language development at 24 months. Participants (n = 292 mothers) were recruited between 2015 and 2017, and were low-income (mean annual income = $19,136) and racially and ethnically diverse (43.8% Black; 44.2% Latinx). Maternal sensitivity during clean-up was a significant predictor of all social-emotional outcomes, and a unique predictor of child internalizing symptoms. Maternal sensitivity during free-play was a unique predictor of child language. Results suggest that context-specific subtypes of maternal sensitivity may differentially relate to early child outcomes.

This study investigates infants' neural and behavioral responses to maternal ostensive signals during naturalistic mother-infant interactions and their effects on object encoding. Mothers familiarized their 9- to 10-month-olds (N = 35, 17 females, mainly White, data collection: 2018-2019) with objects with or without mutual gaze, infant-directed speech, and calling the infant's name. Ostensive signals focused infants' attention on objects and their mothers. Infant theta activity synchronized and alpha activity desynchronized during interactions compared to a nonsocial resting phase (Cohen' d: 0.49-0.75). Yet, their amplitudes were unrelated to maternal ostensive signals. Ostensive signals did not facilitate object encoding. However, higher infant theta power during encoding predicted better subsequent object recognition. Results strengthen the role of theta-band power for early learning processes.

This study examined the association of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), prenatal, and postnatal maternal depressive symptoms with externalizing, internalizing, and autism spectrum problems on the Preschool Child Behavior Checklist in 2379 children aged 4.12 ± 0.60 (48% female; 47% White, 32% Black, 15% Mixed Race, 4% Asian, <2% American Indian/Alaskan Native, <2% Native Hawaiian; 23% Hispanic). Data were collected from the NIH Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program from 2009-2021. GDM, prenatal, and postnatal maternal depressive symptoms were each associated with increased child externalizing and internalizing problems. GDM was associated with increased autism behaviors only among children exposed to perinatal maternal depressive symptoms above the median level. Stratified analyses revealed a relation between GDM and child outcomes in males only. [This report was written with the program collaborators for Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes.]

Previous studies have found correlations between parent input and child language outcomes, providing prima facie evidence for a causal relation. However, this could also reflect the effects of shared genes. The present study removed this genetic confound by measuring English vocabulary growth in 29 preschool-aged children (21 girls) aged 31-73 months and 17 infants (all girls) aged 15-32 months adopted from China and Eastern Europe and comparing it to speech produced by their adoptive mothers. Vocabulary growth in both groups was correlated with maternal input features; in infants with mean-length of maternal utterance, and in preschoolers with both mean-length of utterance and lexical diversity. Thus, input effects on language outcomes persist even in the absence of genetic confounds.

The pathways through which exposure to maternal depressive symptoms in early childhood are linked to academic performance during adolescence are poorly understood. This study tested pathways from maternal depressive symptoms (age 2-5) to adolescent academic performance (age 15) through cumulative parenting risk (age 7) and subsequent child functioning (age 10), using multi-informant data from a prospective longitudinal community study spanning 13 years (N = 389, 47% male, 68% White). Structural equation models testing indirect effects revealed small associations between maternal depressive symptoms and increased cumulative parenting risk and poorer child functioning, and, via these pathways, with poorer academic performance. Thus, childhood exposure to maternal depressive symptoms may be associated with pathways of risk that could limit children's educational opportunities.

A prerequisite to anti-racist socialization in families is acknowledging ethnic-racial (power) differences, also known as color-consciousness. In a sample of 138 White Dutch families from the urban Western region of the Netherlands with children aged 6-10 years (53% girls), observations and questionnaires on maternal color-consciousness and measures of children's attitudes toward Black and Middle-Eastern ethnic-racial outgroups were collected in 2018-2019. Variable-centered analyses showed that maternal color-conscious socialization practices were related to less negative child outgroup attitudes only. Person-centered analysis revealed a cluster of families with higher maternal color-consciousness and less prejudiced child attitudes, and a cluster with the opposite pattern. The mixed results emphasize the importance of multiple methods and approaches in advancing scholarship on anti-racism in the family context.

The first months of life are critical for establishing neural connections relevant for social and cognitive development. Yet, the United States lacks a national policy of paid family leave during this important period of brain development. This study examined associations between paid leave and infant electroencephalography (EEG) at 3 months in a sociodemographically diverse sample of families from New York City (N = 80; 53 males; 48% Latine; data collection occurred 05/2018-12/2019). Variable-centered regression results indicate that paid leave status was related to differences in EEG power (ps < 0.02, R[superscript 2]s > 0.12). Convergent results from person-centered latent profile analyses demonstrate that mothers with paid leave were 7.39 times as likely to have infants with EEG profiles characterized by increased higher-Hz power (95% CI, 1.9-36.9), potentially reflecting more mature patterns of brain activity.

This meta-analysis tested maternal responsivity as a mediator of the association between socioeconomic risk and children's preschool language abilities. The search included studies up to 2017 and meta-analytic structural equation modeling, allowed us to examine the magnitude of the indirect effect across 17 studies (k = 19). The meta-analysis included 6433 predominantly White, English speaking children (M[subscript age] = 36 months; 50% female) from Western, industrialized countries. All paths in the model were statistically significant, notably, the indirect effect was significant (b = -0.052), showing that maternal responsivity may be a proximal intervening variable between socioeconomic risk and children's language development. Moderator analyses found that the indirect effect was stronger for sensitive parenting than warmth and when parenting was assessed in the family home.

Although Latinx parents' perceptions of the climate of their children's schools may play a role in their children's academic adjustment, research examining this idea is sparse. Every 2 years beginning when children were in fifth grade (M[subscript age] = 10.86 years) until they were in 11th grade, Mexican-origin mothers (N = 674) reported on their perceptions of the climate of their children's schools; information on children's academic adjustment was collected from children and mothers. Multilevel modeling indicated that when mothers had more positive school climate perceptions, their children valued school more and performed better in school, but did not necessarily hold higher educational expectations. The findings suggest the importance of schools in creating welcoming environments for Mexican-origin parents.

Drawing on data from a longitudinal study of 204 Mexican-origin adolescent mothers, their mother figures, and their children, the current investigation examined (a) adolescent mothers' educational re-engagement and attainment beginning during their pregnancy and ending when their child was 5 years old; and (b) the influence of the family economic context on adolescent mothers' educational re-engagement and attainment and their children's academic and social-emotional outcomes. Findings detailed adolescent mothers' re-engagement in school after the birth of their child and revealed that family income during adolescents' pregnancies was directly associated with re-engagement and attainment, and also initiated cascade effects that shaped adolescents' economic contexts, their subsequent re-engagement and attainment, and ultimately their children's academic and social-emotional outcomes at age 5.

A double-blind randomized controlled trial of n-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid (n-3 LCPUFA) supplementation or matching placebo during third trimester of pregnancy was conducted within the COPSAC[subscript 2010] mother-child cohort consisting of 736 women and their children. The objective was to determine if maternal n-3 LCPUFA pregnancy supplementation affects offspring neurodevelopment until 6 years. Neurodevelopment was evaluated in 654 children assessing age of motor milestone achievement, language development, cognitive development, general neurodevelopment, and emotional and behavioral problems. Maternal n-3 LCPUFA supplementation during pregnancy improved early language development and reduced the impact of emotional and behavioral problems. The n-3 LCPUFA supplementation was in boys associated with the earlier achievement of gross motor milestones, improved cognitive development, and a reduced impact of emotional and behavioral problems.

Maternal responses to infant facial expressions were examined in two socioeconomically diverse samples of South African mothers (Study I, N = 111; and Study II, N = 214; age: 17-44 years) using pupil and gaze tracking. Study I showed increased pupil response to infant distress expressions in groups recruited from private as compared to public maternity clinics, possibly reflecting underlying differences in socioeconomic status (SES) across the groups. Study II, sampling uniformly low-SES neighborhoods, found increased pupil dilation and faster orientation to expressions of infant distress, but only in the highest income group. These results are consistent with maternal physiological and attentional sensitivity to infant distress cues but challenge the universality of this sensitivity across socioeconomic diversity.

Latent class analysis and multigroup mediation were used with 8,860 families in Chile to identify risk groups varying in socioeconomic status, family structure, and maternal depression, to determine whether profiles differed in children's development of externalizing problems (EP) from 35 to 61 months, and maternal parenting that predicted EP. Four groups were identified: one no-risk profile and three risk profiles, impoverished and undereducated, depressed and impoverished, and father-absent and impoverished. All classes differed in EP. Maternal emotional support and harsh parenting were differentially associated with the development of EP across the three risk groups, relative to the low-risk group. Thus, specific constellations of adversities differentially predicted children's EP and socialization processes mediating links between risk and EP. Implications are discussed.

Children from language minority homes reach school age with variable dual language skills. Cluster analysis identified four bilingual profiles among 126 U.S.-born, 5-year-old Spanish-English bilinguals. The profiles differed on two dimensions: language balance and total language knowledge. Balance varied primarily as a function of indicators of the relative quantity and the quality of their language exposure (amount of home exposure and maternal education in each language). Total language knowledge varied primarily as a function of indicators of children's language learning ability (phonological memory and nonverbal intelligence). English dominance was more prevalent than balanced bilingualism; there was no Spanish dominant profile, despite average Spanish dominance in home language use. There was no evidence of a tradeoff between English and Spanish skills.

In a representative longitudinal sample of 2,602 Australian children (52% boys; 2% Indigenous; 13% language other than English background; 22% of Mothers born overseas; and 65% Urban) and their mothers (first surveyed in 2003), this article examined if maternal judgments of numeracy and reading ability varied by child demographics and influenced achievement and interest gains. We linked survey data to administrative data of national standardized tests in Year 3, 5, and 7 and found that maternal judgments followed gender stereotype patterns, favoring girls in reading and boys in numeracy. Maternal judgments were more positive for children from non-English speaking backgrounds. Maternal judgments predicted gains in children's achievement (consistently) and academic interest (generally) including during the transition to high school.

Many Western industrialized nations have high levels of ethnic diversity but to date there are very few studies which investigate prelinguistic and early language development in infants from ethnic minority backgrounds. This study tracked the development of infant communicative gestures from 10 to 12 months (n = 59) in three culturally distinct groups in the United Kingdom and measured their relationship, along with maternal utterance frequency and responsiveness, to vocabulary development at 12 and 18 months. No significant differences were found in infant gesture development and maternal responsiveness across the groups, but relationships were identified between gesture, maternal responsiveness, and vocabulary development.

This study examined maternal support of children's math learning at 36 months (n = 140) as a mediator of the association between early childhood family income and children's counting and calculation skills at 4½ and 6-7 years. Family income was associated with this measure of children's math school readiness, but the association was almost entirely indirect and mediated by observed maternal support of children's numerical skills at 36 months. Maternal support of children's spatial concept and general learning (cognitive stimulation and sensitivity) were not significant mediators of this association. Results suggest that income-based gaps in counting and calculation skills at school entry may be due in part to the constraints that low family income places on early numerical learning support.

The evidence for negative influences of maternal stress during pregnancy on child cognition remains inconclusive. This study tested the association between maternal prenatal stress and child intelligence in 4,251 mother-child dyads from a multiethnic population-based cohort in the Netherlands. A latent factor of prenatal stress was constructed, and child IQ was tested at age 6 years. In Dutch and Caribbean participants, prenatal stress was not associated with child IQ after adjustment for maternal IQ and socioeconomic status. In other ethnicities no association was found; only in the Moroccan/Turkish group a small negative association between prenatal stress and child IQ was observed. These results suggest that prenatal stress does not predict child IQ, except in children from less acculturated minority groups.

To study effects of the gender-packaging of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) toys, mother-child dyads (31 daughters; 30 sons; M = 5.2 years) were randomly assigned to play with a mechanical toy packaged for girls ("GoldieBlox") or boys ("BobbyBlox"). When familiarizing themselves with the toy to prepare for play, mothers given "BobbyBlox" built more with toy pieces than did mothers given "GoldieBlox." During dyadic play, mothers with sons built more; mothers with daughters read the toy's narrative instructions more. Children's independent play likewise varied with game packaging. Girls learned the mechanical belt-drive principle better from playing with "BobbyBlox"; boys learned the principle better from playing with "GoldieBlox." Implications for gender-schema theories, STEM interventions, and toy marketing are discussed.

This study aimed to test a four-wave sequential mediation model linking mother-child attachment to children's school readiness through child executive functioning (EF) and prosociality in toddlerhood and the preschool years. Mother-child attachment security was assessed when children (N = 255) were aged 15 months and 2 years, child EF at age 2, prosocial behavior at age 4, and finally cognitive school readiness in kindergarten (age 6). The results revealed three indirect pathways linking attachment to school readiness: one through EF only, one through prosocial behavior only, and a last pathway involving both EF and prosocial behavior serially. These findings suggest that secure attachment may equip children with both cognitive and social skills that are instrumental to their preparedness for school.

This study tested implications of new genetic discoveries for understanding the association between parental investment and children's educational attainment. A novel design matched genetic data from 860 British mothers and their children with home-visit measures of parenting: the E-Risk Study. Three findings emerged. First, both mothers' and children's education-associated genetics, summarized in a genome-wide polygenic score, were associated with parenting--a gene-environment correlation. Second, accounting for genetic influences slightly reduced associations between parenting and children's attainment--indicating some genetic confounding. Third, mothers' genetics were associated with children's attainment over and above children's own genetics, via cognitively stimulating parenting--an environmentally mediated effect. Findings imply that, when interpreting parents' effects on children, environmentalists must consider genetic transmission, but geneticists must also consider environmental transmission.

This article assessed changes in the association between single motherhood and children's verbal cognitive ability at age-11 using data from three cohorts of British children, born in 1958 (n = 10,675), 1970 (n = 8,933) and 2000 (n = 9,989), and mediation analysis. Consistent with previous studies, direct effects were small and insignificant. For those born in 1958 and 1970 indirect effects, operating through reduced economic and parental resources, were associated with -0.107-"SD" to -0.156-"SD" lower attainment. Differences between the two cohorts, and by children's age when parents separated, were insignificant. For the 2000 cohort, effect sizes for children born to single mothers did not change significantly (-0.112-"SD") but attenuated for children whose parents separated in early childhood (-0.076-"SD") or while of school age (-0.054-"SD").

This study used Latent Class Analysis to identify groups of children exposed to similar Home Language and Literacy Environments (HLLE) and explored whether belonging to a given HLLE group was related to children's language and early literacy growth from prekindergarten to kindergarten. Participants were 1,425 Chilean mothers and their children (M[subscript age] = 52.52 months at baseline) from low-socioeconomic status households. Four HLLE groups were identified, which were associated with different trajectories of language and early literacy development. Children from groups whose mothers either read and talk about past events with them or teach them letters in addition to reading and talking about past events, showed higher relative vocabulary and letter knowledge. Implications for research and interventions are discussed.

Effects of child and environmental factors in moderating the course of bilingual development were investigated using longitudinal data, from age 2.5 to 5 years, on 126 U.S.-born children with early exposure to Spanish and English. Multilevel models of Spanish and English expressive vocabulary identified children's phonological memory ability as a significant predictor of both outcomes, while also replicating the effect of the relative amount of language exposure. In addition, nonverbal IQ was a significant predictor of English vocabulary; birth order and maternal education in Spanish were significant predictors of Spanish vocabulary. These findings expand our understanding of the sources of the wide heterogeneity in bilingual development and of the requirements that language acquisition makes of learners and their environments.

This longitudinal study investigated the effects of maternal emotional health concerns, on infants' home language environment, vocalization quantity, and expressive language skills. Mothers and their infants (at 6 and 12 months; 21 mothers with depression and or anxiety and 21 controls) provided day-long home-language recordings. Compared with controls, risk group recordings contained fewer mother-infant conversational turns and infant vocalizations, but daily number of adult word counts showed no group difference. Furthermore, conversational turns and infant vocalizations were stronger predictors of infants' 18-month vocabulary size than depression and anxiety measures. However, anxiety levels moderated the effect of conversational turns on vocabulary size. These results suggest that variability in mothers' emotional health influences infants' language environment and later language ability.

Although teacher-student relationships are assumed to in part reflect early caregiving quality, their social provisions also undergo notable normative change over the course of primary school, shifting from a secure base for social exploration to an instrumental relationship centered on achieving academic goals. This report leveraged prospective, longitudinal data from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 1,306, 52% male, 77% White/non-Hispanic) to investigate whether the association between early caregiving and subsequent teacher-student relationship quality remains stable or diminishes in magnitude over time. Associations between early maternal sensitivity and teacher-student closeness faded from Kindergarten to Grade 6. In contrast, associations between early caregiving and teacher-student conflict endured and were partially accounted for by child externalizing problems.

The maternal language input literature suggests that mothers with more education use a greater quantity and complexity of language with their young children compared to mothers with less education although race and socioeconomic status have been confounded in most studies because of small sample sizes. The current Family Life study included a representative sample of 1,292 children, oversampling for poverty and African American, followed from birth. This study found no race differences within maternal education levels on five measures of maternal language input from 6 to 36 months. Maternal language input variables of number of different words, mean length of utterance and number of wh-questions were partial mediators of the relationship between maternal education and later child language at school age.

Questioning is a core component of formal pedagogy. Parents commonly question children, but do they use questions to teach? This article defines "pedagogical questions" as questions for which the questioner already knows the answer and intended to help the questionee learn. Transcripts of parent-child conversations were collected from the CHILDES database to examine the frequency and distribution of pedagogical questions. Analysis of 2,166 questions from 166 mother-child dyads and 64 father-child dyads (child's age between 2 and 6 years) showed that pedagogical questions are commonplace during day-to-day parent-child conversations and vary based on child's age, family environment, and historical era. The results serve as a first step toward understanding the role of parent-child questions in facilitating children's learning.

Manual skills slowly develop throughout infancy and have been shown to create clear views of objects that provide better support for visually sustained attention, recognition, memory, and learning. These clear views may coincide with the development of manual skills, or that social scaffolding supports clear viewing experiences like those generated by toddlers during active object exploration. This study used a head-mounted eye tracker to record 5- to 24-month-olds' object views during repeated mother-infant play sessions (Ns = 18). Results show an early beginning of scaffolding in which parents generate views similar to those of older infants and toddlers, resulting in increased fixations to objects. The finding implicates parents as early scaffolders of object attention and learning.

This article examined longitudinal relations among socioeconomic risk, maternal language input, child vocabulary, and child executive function (EF) in a large sample (N = 1,009) recruited for a prospective longitudinal study. Two measures of maternal language input derived from a parent-child picture book task, vocabulary diversity (VOCD), and language complexity, showed variation by socioeconomic risk at child ages 15, 24, and 36 months. Maternal VOCD at child age 24 months and maternal language complexity at child age 36 months mediated the relation between socioeconomic risk and 48-month child EF, independent of parenting sensitivity. Moreover, 36-month child vocabulary mediated the relation between maternal language input and child EF. These findings provide novel evidence about mechanisms linking socioeconomic risk and child executive function.

This study examined the associations among maternal depression, mothers' emotional and material investment in their child, and children's cognitive functioning. Middle-class Chilean mothers and children (N = 875; 52% males) were studied when children were 1, 5, 10, and 16 years (1991--2007). Results indicated that highly depressed mothers provided less emotional and material support to their child across all ages, which related to children's lower IQ. Children with lower mental abilities at age 1 received less learning-material support at age 5, which led to mothers' higher depression at child age 10. Mothers' low support was more strongly linked to maternal depression as children got older. Findings elucidate the dynamic and enduring effects of depression on mothers' parenting and children's development.

Everyday activities are replete with contextual cues for infants to exploit in the service of learning words. Nelson's (1985) script theory guided the hypothesis that infants participate in a set of predictable activities over the course of a day that provide them with opportunities to hear unique language functions and forms. Mothers and their firstborn 13-month-old infants (N = 40) were video-recorded during everyday activities at home. Transcriptions and coding of mothers' speech to infants--time-locked to activities of feeding, grooming, booksharing, object play, and transition--revealed that the amount, diversity, pragmatic functions, and semantic content of maternal language systematically differed by activity. The activities of everyday life shape language inputs to infants in ways that highlight word meaning.

Children's exposure to book reading is thought to be an influential input into positive cognitive development. Yet there is little empirical research identifying whether it is reading time per se, or other factors associated with families who read, such as parental education or children's reading skill, that improves children's achievement. Using data on 4,239 children ages 0-13 of the female respondents of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study applies two different methodologies to identify the causal impact of mother-child reading time on children's achievement scores by controlling for several confounding child and family characteristics. The results show that a 1 SD increase in mother-child reading time increases children's reading achievement by 0.80 SDs.

To understand spoken words, listeners must appropriately interpret co-occurring talker characteristics and speech sound content. This ability was tested in 6- to 14-months-olds by measuring their looking to named food and body part images. In the "new talker" condition (n = 90), pictures were named by an unfamiliar voice; in the "mispronunciation" condition (n = 98), infants' mothers "mispronounced" the words (e.g., "nazz" for nose). Six- to 7-month-olds fixated target images above chance across conditions, understanding novel talkers, and mothers' phonologically deviant speech equally. Eleven- to 14-months-olds also understood new talkers, but performed poorly with mispronounced speech, indicating sensitivity to phonological deviation. Between these ages, performance was mixed. These findings highlight the changing roles of acoustic and phonetic variability in early word comprehension, as infants learn which variations alter meaning.

Efficient attention control is fundamental for infant cognitive development, but its early precursors are not well understood. This study investigated whether dyadic visual attention during parent-infant interactions at 5 months of age predicts the ability to control attention at 11 months of age (N = 55). Total duration of mutual gaze (MG) was assessed during free play at 5 months, while infant attention control was measured in a gap-and-overlap task at 5 and 11 months. MG predicted attention disengagement at 11 months. Infants who spent more time in MG at 5 months showed better attention control at 11 months. These results provide important insights into developmental pathways linking visual behavior in dyadic interactions with infants' subsequent attention skills.

This study investigates the relationship between early maternal employment history and children's vocabulary and inductive reasoning ability at age 5, drawing on longitudinal information on 2,200 children from the Growing Up in Scotland data. Prior research rarely addresses dynamics in maternal employment and the methodological ramifications of time-variant confounding. The present study proposes various measures to capture duration, timing, and stability of early maternal employment and uses inverse probability of treatment weighting to control for time-variant confounders that may partially mediate the effect of maternal employment on cognitive scores. The findings suggest only modest differences in the above ability measures between children who have been exposed to very different patterns of eary maternal employment, but with similar observed covariate history.

The study investigated whether age at attainment of 20 developmental milestones within the areas of language, walking, eating, dressing, social interaction, and toilet training was associated with adult intelligence. Mothers of 821 children of the Copenhagen Perinatal Cohort recorded 20 developmental milestones at a 3-year examination, and all children were administered the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale when they were 20-34 years old. Later attainment of a number of milestones was associated with lower adult IQ with the strongest associations found for those related to language and social interaction. The adjusted full-scale IQ means were 107.0, 101.8, and 100.6 for being able to form a sentence at less than 24 months, at 24 months, and later than 24 months.

This article examined parenting styles and prosocial behaviors as longitudinal predictors of academic outcomes in U.S. Mexican youth. Adolescents (N = 462; Wave 1 M[subscript age] = 10.4 years; 48.1% girls), parents, and teachers completed parenting, prosocial behavior, and academic outcome measures at 5th, 10th, and 12th grades. "Authoritative" parents were more likely to have youth who exhibited high levels of prosocial behaviors than those who were "moderately demanding" and "less involved." Fathers and mothers who were less involved and mothers who were "moderately demanding" were less likely than "authoritative" parents to have youth who exhibited high levels of prosocial behaviors. Prosocial behaviors were positively associated with academic outcomes. Discussion focuses on parenting, prosocial behaviors, and academic attitudes in understanding youth academic performance.

To evaluate which features of spoken language aid infant word learning, a corpus of infant-directed speech (M. R. Brent & J. M. Siskind, 2001) was characterized on several linguistic dimensions and statistically related to the infants' vocabulary outcomes word by word. Comprehension (at 12 and 15 months) and production (15 months) were predicted by frequency, frequency of occurrence in one-word utterances, concreteness, utterance length, and typical duration. These features have been proposed to influence learning before, but here their relative contributions were measured. Mothers' data predicted learning in their own children better than in other children; thus, vocabulary is measurably aligned within families. These analyses provide a quantitative basis for claims concerning the relevance of several properties of maternal English speech in facilitating early word learning.

Spatial thinking, an important component of cognition, supports academic achievement and daily activities (e.g., learning science and math; using maps). Better spatial skills are correlated with more spatial play and more parental attention to spatial concepts. Tested here was whether informing mothers about spatial thinking and ways to encourage it would increase the spatial guidance they provide to their preschool children (N = 41; M = 5.23 years) during dyadic block play. Mothers given such instructions indeed produced more spatial language and spatial guidance than mothers asked to play as usual. In instructed dyads, children also used more spatial language; both mothers and children engaged in less pretend play. Findings offer support for designing interventions to encourage parents to foster their children's spatial skills.

One-quarter of the Head Start population has a mother who participated in the program as a child. This study uses experimental Head Start Impact Study (HSIS) data on 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 2,849) to describe multigenerational Head Start families and their program experiences. In sharp contrast to full-sample HSIS findings, Head Start has large, positive impacts on cognitive and socioemotional development through third grade among the children of former participant mothers, including improved mathematics skills and reductions in withdrawn and aggressive behavior. Evidence suggests that differences in program impacts between single- and multigenerational Head Start families are driven largely by differences in family resources and home learning environments.

The primary goal in this study was to examine maternal support of numerical concepts at 36 months as predictors of math achievement at 4.5 and 6-7 years. Observational measures of mother-child interactions (n = 140) were used to examine type of support for numerical concepts. Maternal support that involved labeling the quantities of sets of objects was predictive of later child math achievement. This association was significant for preschool (d = 0.45) and first-grade math (d = 0.49), controlling for other forms of numerical support (identifying numerals, one-to-one counting) as well as potential confounding factors. The importance of maternal support of labeling set sizes at 36 months is discussed as a precursor to children's eventual understanding of the cardinal principle.

This study tested the prediction that, with age, children should rely less on familiarity and more on expertise in their selective social learning. Experiment 1 (N = 50) found that 5- to 6-year-olds copied the technique their mother used to extract a prize from a novel puzzle box, in preference to both a stranger and an established expert. This bias occurred despite children acknowledging the expert model's superior capability. Experiment 2 (N = 50) demonstrated a shift in 7- to 8-year-olds toward copying the expert. Children aged 9-10 years did not copy according to a model bias. The findings of a follow-up study (N = 30) confirmed that, instead, they prioritized their own--partially flawed--causal understanding of the puzzle box.

This study assessed the links between early maternal employment and children's later academic and behavioral skills in Australia and the United Kingdom. Using representative samples of children born in each country from 2000 to 2004 (Australia N = 5,093, U.K. N = 18,497), OLS regression models weighted with propensity scores assessed links between maternal employment in the 2 years after childbearing and children's skills in first grade. There were neutral associations between maternal employment and children's first-grade skills in both countries. However, there was a slight indication that more time away from parenting was negatively linked to children's behavioral functioning in Australia and employment begun between 9 and 24 months was positively linked to cognitive skills for U.K. children of low-wage mothers.

A child's first words mark the emergence of a uniquely human ability. Theories of the developmental steps that pave the way for word production have proposed that either vocal or gestural precursors are key. These accounts were tested by assessing the developmental synchrony in the onset of babbling, pointing, and word production for 46 infants observed monthly between the ages of 9 and 18 months. Babbling and pointing did not develop in tight synchrony and babble onset alone predicted first words. Pointing and maternal education emerged as predictors of lexical knowledge only in relation to a measure taken at 18 months. This suggests a far more important role for early phonological development in the creation of the lexicon than previously thought.

Academic socialization by low-income immigrant mothers from Mainland China was investigated in two studies. Immigrant Chinese mothers of first graders (n = 52; M[subscript age] = 38.69) in the United States (Study 1) and kindergartners (n = 86; M[subscript age] = 36.81) in Hong Kong (Study 2) tell stories that emphasized achieving the best grade through effort more than did African American (n = 39; M[subscript age] = 31.44) and native Hong Kong (n = 76; M[subscript age] = 36.64) mothers, respectively. The emphasis on achievement was associated with mothers' heightened discussion on discrimination (Study 1) and beliefs that education promotes upward mobility (Study 2), as well as children's expectations that a story protagonist would receive maternal criticism for being nonpersistent in learning (Study 2).