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Description
A child's earliest cognitive achievements are embedded in social context. Research shows that there is a strong relationship between mothers who respond promptly and contingently to their child and cognitive and social development. The effect of maternal responsiveness relies on the child's ability to elicit guidance as she acquires more sophisticated competencies. Further, children reared in home environments rich in literary exposure and shared-reading experiences are competent in a range of developmental outcomes. Of interest in the present study was the relation between maternal responsiveness and the home literacy environment (HLE) and preschool outcomes. More specifically, this longitudinal study investigates maternal responsiveness and the HLE in the second and fourth year of life as they relate to school-readiness and language development. Data were collected from 29 parent-child dyads (children's ages ranging from 4 years, 3 months to 5 years, 11 months) and compared with archival data from children's previous laboratory visits. Maternal responsiveness and child language complexity and diversity was assessed through a 10-minute observation of free toy play. The Home Literacy Environment (HLE) was assessed through parent report on the HLE Questionnaire (HLEQ). Language proficiency was evaluated from the following measures: language complexity, measured by mean length of utterance in morphemes; language diversity, measured by number of different word roots used in the first 50 utterances, and narrative complexity. Finally, school readiness was assessed by The Lollipop Test: A Diagnostic Screening Test of School Readiness. It was predicted that the HLE would be stable over time, and that the HLE and maternal responsiveness would be associated with language proficiency and school readiness. As predicted, the HLE was stable overtime. Surprisingly, the HLEQ did not predict school readiness or language outcomes. Maternal responses that guided conversation were negatively associated with school readiness, language diversity, and narrative complexity. However, maternal responses that asked more conceptual questions, tested the child's knowledge, classified objects into categories, discussed beliefs and needs of others, and answered the child's questions were significantly related to higher language diversity and language complexity scores. In addition, an indirect relationship between maternal responsiveness and school readiness was found; fostered by language diversity and narrative complexity. Directions for future research include exploring the multidimensionality of maternal responsiveness at different milestones as well as confirming the current results using a larger sample.
