Socio-cognitive engagement (but not socioeconomic status) predicts preschool children's language and pragmatic abilities.

Henrik SAALBACH,Cornelia SCHULZE

doi:10.1017/s0305000921000295

Abstract

Parental socioeconomic status (SES) strongly influences children's language abilities but less is known about its influence on pragmatic abilities (e.g., inferring intentions from relevance implicatures). Moreover, by focussing on SES, the role of socio-cognitive engagement (e.g., joint parent-child interactions) has been overlooked.We tested four- and six-year-old children (n = 92) with a communication task, a questionnaire assessed parents' SES and socio-cognitive engagement.Socio-cognitive engagement predicted children's communication abilities while the parental educational background and income did not. This emphasizes the notion that communication is a highly socio-cognitive task, one which children perform the better the more frequently they engage in socio-cognitive interactions.

Highlights

A strong influence of parental educational background and socioeconomic status (SES) on children’s language development has long been established
We aimed at analysing the influence of socioeconomic factors (SES) and socio-cognitive engagement (SCE) on children’s language and pragmatic abilities
We were interested in the effect of parental education, income, the number of people in the child’s home, and joint parent-child activities on 4- and 6-year-old children’s comprehension of direct and indirect communication

Summary

Introduction

A strong influence of parental educational background and socioeconomic status (SES) on children’s language development has long been established (for reviews see Pace, Luo, Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 2017; Rowe, 2018; Schwab & Lew-Williams, 2016). Children from high-SES families regularly outperform their peers from lower-SES families on standardized measures of language abilities (e.g., vocabulary, syntax). These better language abilities in turn are linked to the children’s (later) academic achievement (e.g., Hoff, 2013; Kempert, Saalbach & Hardy, 2011; Saalbach, Gunzenhauser, Kempert & Karbach, 2016).

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