Abstract
Receptive vocabulary develops rapidly in early childhood and builds the foundation for language acquisition and literacy. Variation in receptive vocabulary ability is associated with variation in children's school achievement, and low receptive vocabulary ability is a risk factor for under-achievement at school. In this study, bivariate and multivariate growth curve modelling was used to estimate trajectories of receptive vocabulary development in relation to a wide range of candidate child, maternal and family level influences on receptive vocabulary development from 4–8 years. The study sample comprised 4332 children from the first nationally representative Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Predictors were modeled as risk variables with the lowest level of risk as the reference category. In the multivariate model, risks for receptive vocabulary delay at 4 years, in order of magnitude, were: Maternal Non- English Speaking Background (NESB), low school readiness, child not read to at home, four or more siblings, low family income, low birthweight, low maternal education, maternal mental health distress, low maternal parenting consistency, and high child temperament reactivity. None of these risks were associated with a lower rate of growth from 4–8 years. Instead, maternal NESB, low school readiness and maternal mental health distress were associated with a higher rate of growth, although not sufficient to close the receptive vocabulary gap for children with and without these risks at 8 years. Socio-economic area disadvantage, was not a risk for low receptive vocabulary ability at 4 years but was the only risk associated with a lower rate of growth in receptive vocabulary ability. At 8 years, the gap between children with and without socio-economic area disadvantage was equivalent to eight months of receptive vocabulary growth. These results are consistent with other studies that have shown that social gradients in children's developmental outcomes increase over time.
Highlights
Our uniquely human capacity for language is one of the most important developmental accomplishments of childhood
The present study investigated receptive vocabulary growth from 4–8 years in the nationally representative Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC)
This model has an overall fit of 0.53. This showed that more than half of the variance in receptive vocabulary growth was explained by time
Summary
Our uniquely human capacity for language is one of the most important developmental accomplishments of childhood. Education, and employment [1,2, 3,4,5,6]and is one of the major pathways that supports human capability formation [7]. Early childhood (birth to 4 years) is the focus of global and national public policy frameworks for human capability expansion[9,10,11]. It is well known that language acquisition is not robust for all children and that disparities in language acquisition emerge early and foretell persistent low levels of language abilities. Results from the first Australian national census of child development conducted in 2009 illustrated the extent of disparities in language abilities in children in the first year of formal school at
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