The Effects of Parental Language Input and Parental Knowledge of Child Development on Child Language Development

Abstract

Childhood poverty imposes serious risks to development in all areas, but none more severe than the risk to language development. Prior research has demonstrated that the amount and kind of parental language input affects language development. Relatedly, delays in language development associated with poverty have been attributed to for parental language input styles. Concern has been raised, however, that parental language input may simply reflect broader parental competencies, largely related to how knowledgeable parents are about child development and how to support it optimally. This study addressed this possible confound by examining how parental language input is mediated by parental knowledge of child development. Twenty three parent-child dyads across the socioeconomic spectrum participated. Five measures were collected: (1) parental language input amount and style; (2) parental knowledge of general child development; (3) parental knowledge of best practices in parenting; (4) child’s vocabulary knowledge; and (5) child’s auditory comprehension of language (a measure of syntactic knowledge). Low socioeconomic status associated with: (1) less parental language input and use of less effective input; (2) poorer parental knowledge of child development; (3) poorer parental knowledge of best practices in parenting; (4) poorer child vocabulary knowledge; and (5) poorer child auditory comprehension of language. Critically, parental language input style correlated with both measures of child language independently of parental knowledge of child development. This study shows that socioeconomic status correlates with parental language input, and this input accounts for child language development to some extent, but some variability is explained by parental knowledge of child development. These findings support the need for future research on the effects of parental knowledge to inform interventions for families in poverty.