Talking, praising and teaching: How parent interaction during a learning task relates to children's early learning

Abstract

The foundational skills that children begin formal schooling with are subject to persistent inequities, and can have long-term academic, occupational and health consequences. Early learning is conceptualised as encompassing social, emotional, behavioral and motor functioning in addition to more traditional formal academic skills. Within a large, diverse, longitudinal child cohort - Growing Up in New Zealand - the aims of the current study were to examine: (1) how multiple indicators of children's social, emotional, behavioral, motor and cognitive development relate to one another at age four years prior to beginning formal schooling; and (2) whether parent behavior during an observed writing interaction at age 4 was associated with these early learning factors. Children (n = 4,697) and their primary caregiving parent were visited at home and completed the interactive writing task. Children completed direct assessments of language, executive functioning, self-regulation, writing (name and numbers) and emotion knowledge. The parent reported on the child's language, motor skills and social, emotional and behavioral functioning. Exploratory Factor Analysis indicated four early learning factors: literacy and numeracy skills; oral language and regulation; behavior difficulties; and interpersonal and motor skills. After controlling for multiple covariates, hierarchical regression analyses indicated that parent verbalisations during the writing interaction task predicted small but significant variance in children's early learning across all four factors. The current findings support holistic models of early learning and demonstrate associations with parent verbalisations during learning-based interactions.