Parental Cognitive Stimulation Research Articles

Enhancing early language and literacy skills for racial/ethnic minority children with low incomes through a randomized clinical trial: The mediating role of cognitively stimulating parent-child interactions.

Parenting is a critical mediator of children's school readiness. In line with this theory of change, data from the randomized clinical trial of Smart Beginnings (tiered Video Interaction Project and Family Check-Up; N = 403, treatment arm n = 201) were used to examine treatment impacts on early language and literacy skills at child age 4 years (nLatinx = 168, nBlack = 198, nMale = 203), as well as indirect impacts through parental support of cognitive stimulation at child age 2 years. Although results did not reveal direct effects on children's early skills, there were significant indirect effects for early literacy (β = .03, p = .05) and early language (β = .04, p = .04) via improvements in parental cognitive stimulation. Implications for interventions targeting parenting to improve children's school readiness beginning at birth are discussed.

Not built for families: Associations between neighborhood disinvestment and reduced parental cognitive stimulation.

Infants learn and develop within an ecological context that includes family, peers, and broader built and social environments. This development relies on proximal processes—reciprocal interactions between infants and the people and environments around them that help them understand their world. Most research examining predictors of proximal processes like parent-child interaction and parenting has focused on elements within the home and family. However, factors like the neighborhood built environment may also exhibit an influence, and may be particularly critical in infancy, as socioeconomic disparities in cognition and language emerge early in life. Moreover, influence from the built environment could independently exacerbate these disparities, as research indicates that neighborhood impacts may be especially relevant for families living in neighborhoods that have experienced disinvestment and therefore have been under-resourced. The current study examines these questions by determining the association of neighborhood vacancy rate and observed physical disorder—indicators of poverty, residential stability, and long-term structural discrimination—with parental cognitive stimulation among predominantly Black/African-American families in Flint, Michigan. Flint is particularly salient for this study because vacancy rates and disinvestment vary widely across the city, driven by its long-time status as a city struggling economically. Regression analyses controlling for caregiver education, mental health, and social support indicated that vacancy rate and physical disorder negatively predicted parental cognitive stimulation. Moreover, there were significant interactions between the built environment and social support, indicating that, particularly for parent-child shared reading, vacancy rate and physical disorder predicted reduced shared reading only when parents had limited social support. These results have important implications for public policy around vacant property demolition and neighborhood reinvestment programs, as they indicate that the neighborhood built environment is associated with parenting behaviors that have important impacts on infants’ learning and development.

Socioeconomic status, parental beliefs, and parenting practices as predictors of preschoolers’ school readiness and executive functions in chile

Parental beliefs and parenting practices in early childhood are fundamental for the development of preschoolers’ school readiness and executive functions. This study examined the role of socioeconomic status (SES), ethnicity, maternal self-competence, parental cognitive stimulation, and maternal supportive discipline as predictors of five-year-old preschoolers’ school readiness and executive function abilities in 70 families of low-SES homes with a Chilean majority or indigenous Mapuche minority background in Chile. Additionally, the mediating role of parental beliefs and parenting practices between SES and school readiness or executive functioning respectively was investigated as suggested by the Family Stress Model. Results show that maternal supportive discipline predicted school readiness above and beyond SES and ethnicity. Furthermore, maternal supportive discipline mediated the relation between SES and school readiness, whereby higher SES positively affected maternal supportive discipline, which in turn had a favorable effect on school readiness. All other associations were non-significant. The outcomes highlight that parental involvement of culturally diverse families from low-SES backgrounds is important for children's cognitive development. School readiness of Chilean preschoolers from low-SES homes might possibly be improved by enhancing maternal sensitivity and positive behavioral control strategies. These parenting skills have the potential to mitigate the adverse effects of low-SES environments to some extent. The findings of this study inform interventions integrated into early childhood education programs.

Profiles of family engagement in home- and center-based Early Head Start programs: Associations with child outcomes and parenting skills

Using the Early Head Start Family and Child Experiences Study (Baby FACES; Vogel & Boller, 2009-2012), the present study employed a person-centered approach to identify profiles of family engagement in home- and center-based Early Head Start (EHS) programs. We identified three profiles with different patterns across two structural dimensions (home involvement and program involvement) and one relational dimension (parent-staff relationships) of family engagement in both program types. We then examined associations of these profiles with child and parenting outcomes at age 3 and the outcome change scores from age 2 to 3. For home-based programs, children in profiles 2 and 3 indicating high home involvement showed significantly higher engagement/orientation skills than children in profile 1 indicating low home involvement and low parent-staff relationships. For center-based programs, a high home and low program involvement (profile 2) and a high involvement (profile 3) showed better child and parenting outcomes in the areas of child receptive vocabulary, parental sensitivity, stimulation of cognitive development, and intrusiveness as well as greater increases in parental cognitive stimulation than families in a low home and high program involvement (profile 1). Profiles 1 and 3 showed fewer child problem behaviors and greater increases in child engagement/orientation than profile 2, while profile 3 showed higher social competence than profile 2. In addition, profile 1 showed greater increases in child emotional regulation than profiles 2 and 3. This study contributes to advancing our understanding of the role of different dimensions and patterns of family engagement in home- and center-based EHS programs.

Links between Shared Reading and Play, Parent Psychosocial Functioning, and Child Behavior: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

To investigate pathways by which interventions that promote shared reading and play help prevent child behavior problems. We examined whether family processes associated with the family investment pathway (eg, parental cognitive stimulation) and the family stress pathway (eg, mothers' psychosocial functioning) mediated impacts of a pediatric-based preventive intervention on child behavior. The sample included 362 low-income mothers and their children who participated in a randomized controlled trial of the Video Interaction Project, a pediatrics-based preventive intervention that promotes parent-child interactions in the context of shared reading and play. Parent-child dyads were randomly assigned to group at birth. Three mediators-parental cognitive stimulation, maternal stress about the parent-child relationship, and maternal depressive symptoms-were assessed at child ages 6 and 36months. The outcome, child externalizing behaviors, was assessed at 36months. We used a series of path analytic models to examine how these family processes, separately or together, mediated the impacts of the Video Interaction Project on child behavioral outcomes. Intervention impacts on child behavior were mediated by enhancements in cognitive stimulation and by improvements in mothers' psychosocial functioning. A sequential mediation model showed that Video Interaction Project impacts on cognitive stimulation at 6months were associated with later decreases in mothers' stress about the parent-child relationship and that this pathway mediated intervention impacts on child behavioral outcomes at 3years of age (P=.023). Using an experimental design, this study identifies pathways by which parent-child interactions in shared reading and play can improve child behavioral outcomes. Clinicaltrials.gov: NCT00212576.

School readiness among children of Hispanic immigrants and their peers: The role of parental cognitive stimulation and early care and education

The present study estimated the independent and joint influence of early home and education contexts on three school readiness outcomes for children with Hispanic immigrant parents. These associations were compared to those for children whose parents differed by ethnicity and immigration status − children of non-Hispanic immigrants and children of Hispanic native-born parents − to determine if associations were distinct for children of Hispanic immigrants. Data were drawn from the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–2011 (ECLS-K: 2011) (N ≈ 3480). Outcome measures at kindergarten entry included direct assessments of math and reading skills, as well as teacher reports of approaches to learning (ATL). Results indicated that parental provision of cognitive stimulation and center-based ECE both predicted outcomes among children of Hispanic immigrants and their peers, with some variation in patterns by developmental domain and subgroup. Specifically, participation in center-based care predicted math and reading scores for children of Hispanic immigrant and Hispanic native-born parents, but not children of non-Hispanic immigrants. Furthermore, center-based care participation predicted ATL scores more strongly for children of Hispanic immigrants than their peers. Some trend-level evidence of moderation of early home and education environments emerged, again with patterns varying by outcome and subgroup. Findings highlight the importance of policies that seek to enhance both the home and ECE environments for young children with Hispanic immigrant parents and their peers.

Early childhood cognitive development and parental cognitive stimulation: evidence for reciprocal gene–environment transactions

Parenting is traditionally conceptualized as an exogenous environment that affects child development. However, children can also influence the quality of parenting that they receive. Using longitudinal data from 650 identical and fraternal twin pairs, we found that, controlling for cognitive ability at age 2 years, cognitive stimulation by parents (coded from video recorded behaviors during a dyadic task) at 2 years predicted subsequent reading ability at age 4 years. Moreover, controlling for cognitive stimulation at 2 years, children's cognitive ability at 2 years predicted the quality of stimulation received from their parents at 4 years. Genetic and environmental factors differentially contributed to these effects. Parenting influenced subsequent cognitive development through a family-level environmental pathway, whereas children's cognitive ability influenced subsequent parenting through a genetic pathway. These results suggest that genetic influences on cognitive development occur through a transactional process, in which genetic predispositions lead children to evoke cognitively stimulating experiences from their environments.

Parental Involvement, Parenting Behaviors, and Children's Cognitive Development in Low-Income and Minority Families

The study examined the longitudinal association of parental involvement in Head Start parent-focused programs, parenting behaviors, and the cognitive development of children by specifying two longitudinal growth models. Model 1 examined the longitudinal effects of the parental involvement in three Head Start parenting programs (parenting classes, group socialization, and support groups) on parenting behaviors (home observation of parental linguistic and cognitive stimulation, video recordings of parental cognitive stimulation, parental sup-portiveness, detachment, and intrusiveness). Model 2 analyzed the longitudinal effects of those parental behaviors on children's Bayley MDI scores. Using Early Head Start Research and Evaluation (EHSRE) study data and longitudinal multilevel analysis, the study also took various ethnic and language differences among families into account. The results revealed that mothers who participated in parenting classes or socialization meetings provided more linguistic and cognitive stimulation at home. Participants of parental support groups were found to have high levels of parental supportiveness and low levels of parental intrusiveness over time. Higher Bayley MDI scores were found for children whose mothers had high levels of parental involvement in Head Start parent programs and provided more at-home linguistic and cognitive stimulation. The African American families, in particular, benefited from attending socialization meetings: attendees displayed fewer parental detachment behaviors and provided more linguistic and cognitive stimulation, resulting in higher Bayley MDI scores of children. The study's findings are theoretically significant and policy relevant.

Children’s Television Viewing and Cognitive Outcomes

To test the independent effects of television viewing in children before age 3 years and at ages 3 to 5 years on several measures of cognitive outcomes at ages 6 and 7 years. Using data from a nationally representative data set, we regressed 4 measures of cognitive development at ages 6 and 7 years on television viewing before age 3 years and at ages 3 to 5 years, controlling for parental cognitive stimulation throughout early childhood, maternal education, and IQ. Before age 3 years, the children in this study watched an average of 2.2 hours per day; at ages 3 to 5 years, the daily average was 3.3 hours. Adjusted for the covariates mentioned earlier, each hour of average daily television viewing before age 3 years was associated with deleterious effects on the Peabody Individual Achievement Test Reading Recognition Scale of 0.31 points (95% confidence interval [CI], -0.61 to -0.01 points), on the Peabody Individual Achievement Test Reading Comprehension Scale of 0.58 points (95% CI, -0.94 to -0.21 points), and on the Memory for Digit Span assessment from the Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children of -0.10 points (95% CI, -0.20 to 0 points). For the Reading Recognition Scale score only, a beneficial effect of television at ages 3 to 5 years was identified, with each hour associated with a 0.51-point improvement in the score (95% CI, 0.17 to 0.85 points). There are modest adverse effects of television viewing before age 3 years on the subsequent cognitive development of children. These results suggest that greater adherence to the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines that children younger than 2 years not watch television is warranted.

Relation of maternal cognitive stimulation, emotional support, and intrusive behavior during Head Start to children's kindergarten cognitive abilities.

The current study examined how parental cognitive stimulation, emotional support, and intrusiveness measured during children's prekindergarten year were related to children's verbal and nonverbal abilities 1 year later. Participants were 110 Head Start children and their caregivers from primarily rural and low-income backgrounds. Analysis of children's scores on the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities confirmed the predictive utility of cognitive stimulation, emotional support, and intrusive behavior for perceptual scores (20% of the unique variance) as well as the predictive utility of emotional support and intrusive behavior for verbal scores (15% of the unique variance). Parental emotional support during guidance of problem solving (positive feedback) explained statistically significant unique variance in children's perceptual scores beyond other measures of emotional support. Cognitive stimulation moderated the relation between positive feedback and perceptual scores. Although other syntactic forms of maternal utterances such as commands did not explain statistically significant unique variance in children's scores beyond emotional support and intrusive behavior, mothers' questions did. Specific policy implications of the effects are discussed.

An examination of genotype- environment interactions for academic achievement in an U.S. national longitudinal survey

We examined whether genetic and environmental effects on academic achievement changed as a function of the quality of the children's environment. The study included a variety of observed environmental measures such as parental cognitive stimulation and poverty level, longitudinal information about previous environmental conditions, and a larger than average number of children who grew up in deprived environments. The sample consisted of 1664 pairs of full siblings, 366 pairs of half siblings, and 752 pairs of cousins who were on average 9.58 years old. Both a simple descriptive approach as well as significance tests performed with multilevel regression analyses showed little evidence for genotype-environment interactions. There was only a slight trend consisting of a linear decrease of total variance or nonshared environmental effects from deprived to good environments.