Sabine Weinert

University of Bamberg · Institut für Psychologie

Die Grundlagen für den Erwerb mathematischer Kompetenzen werden sehr früh gelegt und können grundsätzlich durch anregungsreiche Lernumgebungen gefördert werden. Inwieweit durch Interventionen angereicherte institutionelle Lernumgebungen im Kleinkindalter auch den Entwicklungsverlauf der Kinder über das gesamte Vorschulalter hinweg beeinflussen, ist...

This study examines the impact of early childcare teachers’ professional development (PD) training in global and domain-specific interaction quality and its effects on children’s numeracy skills and mathematical language development. Previous studies have highlighted the importance of high-quality interactions, using tools like dialogic reading and...

Growing evidence reveals powerful associations between early learning environments and children’s later academic success. Besides the family, which has been shown to be a significant predictor of children’s development, the longer-term benefits of early institutional experiences in the preschool are also of interest, given the high participation ra...

The development of domain-specific competencies and the emergence of social disparities start well before school entry. These early developments have been suggested to be highly relevant to later developments, educational pathways, and participation in society. Longitudinal large-scale studies, in particular, provide important insights into relevan...

BiKS is an interdisciplinary longitudinal large-scale study on educational processes, competence development, and the formation of educational decisions. It consists of two panel studies: BiKS-3-18 started in September 2005 with 547 children at age 3 and followed these children till age 18 with 13 panel waves. BiKS-8-18 started in March 2006 with 2...

The educational development and achievements of children depend on individual prerequisites as well as on familial and institutional learning contexts. Data from the study BiKS-3-18 (Educational Processes, Competence Development, and Formation of Educational Decisions in Preschool and School Age) enables educational research on mechanisms and long-...

Given that social disparities evolve early in development (cf. Weinert and Ebert this volume), the main aim of this chapter is to learn more about how disparities in (majority) language skills develop in preschool children when their parents have a nonnative German language background. For this purpose, we refer to key findings from the longitudina...

The contributions to the open access volume are comprehensive summaries of important research findings from the two comprehensive interdisciplinary longitudinal studies BiKS-3-18 and BiKS-8-18 conducted by the research unit "BiKS" (“Educational Processes, Development of Competencies, and Formation of Educational Decisions”) funded by the German Res...

Zusammenfassung: Mütterliche Sensitivität und Anregung stellen zwei wichtige Dimensionen des mütterlichen Interaktionsverhaltens dar und sind zudem bedeutsam für die kindliche Entwicklung. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wurden verschiedene Einflussfaktoren auf die mütterliche Sensitivität und Anregung bei Familien (Mütter und ihre sieben Monate alten Kind...

This paper provides new evidence on inequalities in resources for children age 3–4 by parental education using harmonized data from six advanced industrialized countries—United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Japan—that represent different social welfare regime types. We analyze inequalities in two types of resources for y...

This study explored whether the directionality of the relation between majority language and various facets of socioemotional development (three to 5 years old) differs between children with different language backgrounds. 12,951 children (49% girls; 85% White, 6% Pakistani and Bangladeshi, 3% Black, 3% Mix, 2% Indian) from the British Millennium C...

The Newborn Cohort of the German National Educational Panel Study provides longitudinal data for about 3,500 newborns and their families. Starting in 2012, nine annual waves have been published until 2022. The data sets include information on domain-specific and general competencies from standardized tasks/tests with children, observational data on...

Background Research on factors underlying socioeconomic status (SES)-related inequalities in child development mainly focuses on single countries and specific influential factors. Only few studies scrutinize to what extent differences in children’s early behavioural outcomes vary across countries and whether the processes that account for them are...

Background There are significant cross-country differences in socio-economic gradients in later childhood and adulthood overweight/obesity; few studies assess whether this cross-national variation is evident from early childhood. Furthermore, the role of childcare in explaining overweight/obesity gradients might vary across countries, given differe...

This Open Access book presents the results of an interdisciplinary research program to utilize data from the multicohort German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), which included over 100.000 participants in six nationally representative panel studies. Renowned researchers from the fields of sociology, psychology, educational science, economic...

A lifespan perspective on development and education and corresponding longitudinal studies have long been proposed scientifically in many disciplines. However, even in the 2000s, little was known about education as a lifelong process or about the cumulative and interactive effects of learning that takes place in different educational settings acros...

Individual differences and disparities in educationally relevant competencies and skills evolve from the very beginning of a child’s life. This chapter focuses on early learning environments as an important basis for acquiring those competencies and skills that depend and impact on education. Drawing on the Newborn Cohort Study of the German Nation...

As one of few large-scale studies, the Newborn Cohort of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS SC1) used habituation-dishabituation tasks to assess early cognitive abilities in the first two survey waves, namely when the children were on average 7 months and 17 months. The survey paper provides an overview on the theoretical and empiric...

Bereits beim Eintritt in die Kindertageseinrichtung (Kita) gibt es erhebliche interindividuelle Unterschiede in frühen numerischen Kompetenzen von Kindern, die den Grundstein für spätere Kompetenzen legen (Lehrl et al., 2020). Neben der Kita-Qualität (Lehrl et al., 2016) und verschiedenen Hintergrundfaktoren (Jordan & Levine, 2009) gilt die sprachl...

Metacognitive processes are crucial components of self-regulatory ability. The study examined the developmental relationship between metacognitive monitoring and reading comprehension using longitudinal data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) in Germany. We used a cross-lagged panel analysis-in the framework of Structural Equation Mod...

Previous studies reported negative effects of financial deprivation on child development during early childhood. As already shown, child development, in particular language development, is associated with family background, e.g., educational level. However, less is known about the impact of (restricted) financial resources on early language skills....

Child outcomes vary by family’s socioeconomic status (SES). Research on explanatory factors underlying early SES-related disparities has mainly focused on specific child outcomes (e.g., language skills) and selected influencing factors in single countries often with a focus on individual differences but not explicitly on early SES-related gaps. Thi...

The majority of children acquire language effortlessly but approximately 10% of all children find it difficult especially in the early or preschool years with consequences for many aspects of their subsequent development and experience: literacy, social skills, educational qualifications, mental health and employment. With contributions from an int...

As mathematical competence is linked to educational success, professional achievement, and even a country's economic growth, researchers have been interested in early predictors for quite some time. Although there have been numerous studies on domain‐specific numerical abilities predicting later mathematical competence in preschool children, resear...

Maternal sensitive parenting behavior has been shown to account, at least partially, for the relation between family background and children's language and behavioral outcomes. Yet, as previous studies often used a rather global or domain-general measure of maternal sensitivity, it remains an open question whether different domains of child develop...

This study aimed to advance our understanding of 5-year-olds’ behavioral difficulties by modeling and testing both mediational protective and risk pathways simultaneously. Drawing on two national samples from different Western European countries—the United Kingdom (13,053) and Germany (2,022), the proposed model considered observed sensitive parent...

Deficits in language skills are a risk factor for later aggressive behaviour. However, previous research has mainly addressed clinical or high-risk samples and relations between language and aggressive behaviour in preschoolers and children in primary school. Based on a German longitudinal project with N = 547 typically developing children, the pre...

It is an alarming fact that – on average – children whose parents have a lower level of education do less well in areas of development and schooling than children of parents with a higher level of education1. These and other social inequalities start early and accumulate throughout a person’s life course2,3. In order to reduce the impact of social...

The comprehension of connectives, which still develops across primary school age, is an important facet of academic language proficiency. We investigated relations between the comprehension of connectives and school performance in primary school. Drawing on two cohorts with a total of 294 students and two measurement points either in Grades 2 and 3...

Academic language proficiency (ALP) is supposed to contribute to success across school subjects and to be a hurdle for students, in particular for those from families with a migration background. The present study investigated the effects of language use (i.e., use of the majority and/or a minority language) at home and at free time as well as of f...

Dieses Skalenhandbuch dokumentiert die Erhebungsinstrumente, die im Projekt „BiSpra-Aufgaben: Weiterentwicklung zu einem diagnostisch nutzbaren Testinstrument und Prüfung der Sensitivität für Fördereffekte (BiSpra-Transfer)“ eingesetzt wurden. Dies umfasst die Testinstrumente zur Erfassung der Kompetenzen der Schüler*innen sowie die Fragebögen der...

Empirical research repeatedly shows cross-country differences in the extent and distribution of socioeconomic inequalities in educational achievement. This observation is the starting point for the comparative DICE-project (Development of Inequalities in Child Educational Achievement: A Six-Country Study). It aims to improve the understanding of ch...

Four‐and‐a‐half‐month‐olds look longer at silent mouth movements corresponding to a language they previously listened to. The perceptual narrowing hypothesis suggests this general ability to decline as a consequence of experience with the infant's native language. We tracked eye‐gaze of German and Swedish infants longitudinally in an intersensory m...

It is well documented that the language skills of preschool children differ substantially and that these differences are highly predictive of their later academic success and achievements. Especially in the early phases of children’s lives, the importance of different structural and process characteristics of the home learning environment (HLE) has...

Bildungssprachliche Kompetenzen sind für den Schulerfolg unabdingbar. Jedoch mangelt es bisher an validen Instrumenten zu ihrer Erfassung. Im vorliegenden Beitrag stellen wir das Testinstrument BiSpra 2 – 4 vor, mit dem sich verschiedene Facetten des Verständnisses von Bildungssprache bei Grundschulkindern der Klassenstufen 2 bis 4 bestimmen lassen...

BiSpra 2-4 ist ein Test zur Erfassung bildungssprachlicher Kompetenzen von Grundschulkindern der Jahrgangsstufen 2 bis 4. Er umfasst drei Untertests, die sich auf das Verständnis bildungssprachlich anspruchsvoller Hörtexte (BiSpra-Text), das Verständnis von Satzverbindungen mit Konnektoren (BiSpra-Satz) und das Verständnis von allgemeinen (fächerüb...

In this study, we examined differential effects of facets of the home language and literacy environment that are known to be relevant to either language development (i.e., quantity and quality of language and literacy stimulation at home) or theory of mind (ToM) development (i.e., parental mental state language), on both children’s language skills...

Eine der wichtigsten Folgerungen aus der entwicklungspsychologischen Forschung der letzten 40 Jahre ist, dass die kindliche Entwicklung weit weniger synchron und homogen verläuft, als dies im Rahmen globaler strukturtheoretischer Stufentheorien, wie beispielsweise jener von Jean Piaget, angenommen wurde. Trotz einiger grundlegender, bereichsübergre...

It is well documented that children’s language skills already vary by socioeconomic status by the time they are about 2-3 years old. In addition, study results demonstrate that the frequency of language-stimulating interaction behavior - as an important aspect of the proximal familial learning environment - significantly predicts children’s later l...

Although many studies investigated the effects of the home learning environment (HLE) in the preschool years, the constructs that underlie the HLE in the years before the age of three and its effects on language development are still poorly understood. This study therefore investigated the dimensionality of the HLE at age two, its relation to the a...

Language development is not completed when children enter primary school. As the comprehension of connectives (such as although, despite) is important for understanding and producing academic texts and, thus, relevant for school success, we investigated its development and influencing factors across primary school age on the basis of a newly develo...

Das Nationale Bildungspanel (NEPS) untersucht seit 2009 Bildungsverläufe in Deutschland. In sechs Startkohorten werden bildungsrelevante Kompetenzen und Prädiktoren in regelmäßigen Abständen vom Neugeborenen- bis zum Erwachsenenalter erfasst. Im Rahmen der Schulkohorten (Startkohorte 3 im 5. Jahrgang; Startkohorte 4 im 9. Jahrgang) wurde eine Serie...

Academic language has been shown to significantly contribute to success across school subjects. However, to date, there are no empirical studies addressing its development across primary school age. The present study investigated the growth of academic vocabulary and influential conditions from Grades 2 to 4 based on a newly developed and validated...

Measuring achievement and skills is fundamental in educational research and practice. The usefulness and interpretation of different measures depend on the goals of the assessment, the underlying theoretical account and its methodological implications, and the quality of the assessment itself. Preceded by an introduction, the present chapter first...

The present study examines the longitudinal and differential impact of different dimensions of the early years home learning environment (HLE) on children’s reading and mathematical competencies in secondary school, while taking early developmental outcomes and HLE during secondary school into account. During the preschool years, 554 three-year-old...

Daten des Nationalen Bildungspanels (NEPS) zeigen geringe bis mittlere Assoziationen zwischen spracherwerbsrelevanten Struktur- und Prozessmerkmalen der häuslichen Lernumwelt von Kleinkindern. Sowohl strukturelle Merkmale (Bildung der Mutter) als auch Prozessmerkmale (Sensitivität und Anregungsverhalten in der Mutter-Kind-Interaktion, Betrachten vo...

The present study traces the trajectory of infants’ face-scanning behavior during the first year of life in same-rhythm-class languages and its impact on later expressive vocabulary in the second year of life.

International study results point to potential negative associations of time spent in early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres in the first 3 years of a child’s life and socio-emotional outcomes. However, the transferability of international results to the German ECEC system and the impact of characteristics of the home learning environmen...

Especially in the early years of life, interactions in the home learning environment play a major role for child development and later educational career. As one of only a few large-scale longitudinal studies, the Newborn Cohort of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) (Weinert, Linberg, Attig, Freund & Linberg, 2016) took up the challenge of...

Interaction quality and child temperament predict early and later child development. Research hints at transactional interrelations of both aspects but lacks adequate data to examine this assumption. Maternal psychosocial resources are suspected moderators in this context but rarely taken into account. Drawing on data of the German National Educati...

The newborn cohort study in the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) takes up the challenge of measuring education-relevant conditions and processes together with the development of competencies in the first years of a child’s life. The rationale for beginning “from the crib on” can be found in results of infant and early childhood resear...

Four-and-a-half-month-olds look longer at silent mouth movements corresponding to a language they previously listened to. The perceptual narrowing hypothesis suggests this general ability to decline as a consequence of experience with the infant’s native language. We tracked eye-gaze of German and Swedish infants longitudinally in an intersensory m...

Entwicklungspsychologie beschäftigt sich mit alterstypischen Veränderungen und Konstanzen im Verhalten und Erleben, im Lernen und Leisten über die Lebensspanne. Ein Verständnis der alterstypischen Veränderungen kognitiver und sprachlicher Fähigkeiten und Fertigkeiten vom Säuglings- und Kindes- bis ins Jugendalter sowie der beeinflussenden Bedingung...

The selection and measurement of competencies, reflecting educational effects in a lifelong learning perspective, represents a major challenge for the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). Data on the development of competencies serves as a central point of reference for all other parts of the study. These competencies have to be relevant...

The German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) covers educational processes during Kindergarten and elementary school age in two stages: “Kindergarten and transition to elementary school” and “elementary school and transition to lower secondary school.” One cohort covers both of these two stages. It started in winter 2010/2011 with a cluster sa...

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of 3‐year‐old children's language comprehension (operationalized by receptive vocabulary and grammar) and language production (operationalized by sentence production and ratings of productive language) on parent‐ and teacher‐rated cooperative behavior, physical aggression, and emotiona...

Investigating infants' ability to match visual and auditory speech segments presented sequentially allows us to understand more about the type of information they encode in each domain, as well as their ability to relate the information. One previous study found that 4.5- month-old infants' preference for visual French or German speech depended on...

Investigating infants' ability to match visual and auditory speech segments presented sequentially allows us to understand more about the type of information they encode in each domain, as well as their ability to relate the information. One previous study found that 4.5-month-old infants' preference for visual French or German speech depended on w...

Quality of early home learning environment, especially of maternal interaction behaviour, strongly influences child development. The study investigated whether this quality is reduced by difficult child temperament in presence of cumulated strains of maternal coping capacities. We draw on 2190 cases of the Starting Cohort 1 of the German National E...

Zusammenfassung. Lange vor Schuleintritt sind bereits vielfältige bildungsrelevante Entwicklungsunterschiede im Zusammenhang mit dem jeweiligen familiären Hintergrund der Kinder (z.B. Bildung, Familienstatus, Einkommen) beobachtbar und dokumentiert. Anhand von Daten der Säuglingskohorte des Nationalen Bildungspanels (NEPS; LIfBi, 2016 ) wurde die E...

Investigating infants’ ability to match visual and auditory speech segments presented sequentially allows us to understand more about the type of information they encode in each domain, as well as their ability to relate the information. One previous study found that 4.5- month-old infants’ preference for visual French or German speech depended on...

Research Findings: This study investigated the long-term interrelations among children’s language competencies, their home literacy environment (HLE), and 3 aspects of socioemotional development from ages 3 to 8, controlling for characteristics of the child and family. For this sample of 547 typically developing German children, parents and teacher...

Individual differences in preschoolers’ theory of mind (ToM) development were studied in relation to parents’ preferences for using mental state language in conversations with their child in 121 German families from two different socioeconomic (SES) levels in a 3-phase longitudinal design. We also cross-sectionally tested 47 Australian mother-child...

If children fail to understand test instructions, measurements of their competence may be unfair and invalid. This is especially relevant for students with special educational needs (SEN) because they face greater challenges in comprehending instructions. Two interventions were designed to facilitate the comprehension of test requirements by presen...

Soziale Disparitäten in der rezeptiven und expressiven Sprachkompetenz sind bereits im Alter von drei Jahren gut dokumentiert (Weinert & Ebert, 2013; Vasilyeva & Waterfall, 2011). Hingegen ist weniger klar, wann diese Ungleichheiten zum ersten Mal in Erscheinung treten. Bio-ökologischen Ansätzen zufolge prägen Interaktionen eines Kindes mit seinen...

The distinction of interaction behavior along the dimensions of stimulating and emotional supporting interaction behavior has been found to be fruitful, as both aspects are shaped differently and associated with different background variables. Application of this differentiation has been expanding from older children to the age group of toddlers in...

Listening comprehension, the ability to understand the meaning of words, sentences and texts, is an important skill for participation in educational processes and a significant predictor of learning outcomes. Therefore, listening comprehension is measured in different starting cohorts within the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). In th...

While academic language is often assumed to impact children's school success, evidence for this claim is still limited. One reason is the lack of empirically sound test measures for academic language that are based on clear conceptualizations. In a study with 173 German fourth graders we investigated whether academic vocabulary knowledge predicts c...

This study investigates long term consequences of early theory-of-mind abilities on different measures of school achievement. A group of 86 children (50% girls) completed theory-of-mind tasks and standardized tests on working memory, language, and nonverbal abilities at the age of 4 years. In Grade 1 and Grade 2, they were presented with a test on...

Self-regulation is an essential ability of children to cope with various developmental challenges. This study examines the developmental interplay between emotional and behavioral self-regulation during childhood and the relationship with academic achievement using data from the longitudinal Millennium Cohort Study (UK). Using cross-lagged panel an...

Quality of children’s early home learning environment, especially the quality of interaction in terms of sensitive and stimulating behavior, is one of the most important and long-lasting predictors of a advantageous child development. However, various study results point to a reduced parental ability to provide high quality interactions, when emoti...