A socio-cultural perspective on children's early language: a family study

Abstract

This study examines the effect of certain socio-cultural factors of the family environment on the language of toddlers and children in early childhood. The sample included 86 families with one- to six-year-old children. The data on the social, economic, and cultural factors of the family environment, parental reading literacy, parental knowledge of children's development, children's exposure to shared reading, and child language were obtained in the family environment. Path analysis was used to verify the presumed structural model, which included social and economic factors of the family environment, parental knowledge of children's development, and parental reading literacy as independent variables, activities used by parents to encourage their child's language as mediating variables, and children's early literacy and language as a dependent variable. The analysis results showed that the presumed structural model fitted our data well. Parental education (PE), family financial conditions, parental knowledge of children's development, and parental reading literacy was able to explain 13% of the variance in child language. The obtained results confirm the significant effect of social, economic, and cultural factors of the child's family on language during toddlerhood and early childhood.