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Influence of socio-economic status on play development in toddlers – a mother child dyadic interaction based study
Abstract
Purpose
The present study aimed to analyze the influence of SES on play skills in toddlers during a mother–child dyadic interaction.
Methodology
The study followed a cross sectional study design and included forty toddlers between the ages of 2–3 yrs, with their mothers. Participants were divided based on their SES into two groups as Group 1[Middle Socio-Economic State (MSES)] and Group 2 [Lower Socio- Economic Status (LSES)] with an equal number of participants in each group (20). Dyadic interaction between the mother and the toddler was recorded for 25 minutes for both the groups. The first and the last 5 minutes were excluded from the analysis and the middle 15 minutes were coded using the Play observation Scheme.
Results and conclusion
The present study findings indicate a strong social class effect on the play skills demonstrated by toddlers. The findings of the present study indicated that the occurrences of interactive play such as Associative and Cooperative play were higher in toddlers of the MSES group compared to the LSES group. Another interesting finding is the significant difference in the occurrence of Simple and Complex pretend play between the two groups, with the MSES group outperforming their peers in the LSES group. An insight into the play skills of toddlers from low-income household would be helpful in creating awareness about the importance of play for holistic child development. It could also aid in the development of play assessment and intervention for toddlers from these socio-economic strata.
... Similar findings were achieved in Mohan and Bhat's [25] study, in which family SES was found to be significantly associated with the types and proficiency of children's play. They argued that children from middle-SES families were engaged in more imaginative and cooperative play, compared with their counterparts from low-SES families. ...
... The majority of the families in our sample only had one child and the peer group at kindergarten was the primary socialization agent for these children [62] (pp. [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. Despite the differences in educational quality revealed in kindergartens, the socialization opportunities for children there do not differ significantly [63]. ...
Family socio-economic status (SES) is a significant predictor of children’s early learning performance, while little is known about the relationship between family SES and children’s play. This study aimed to examine how family SES was related to different aspects of children’s play behaviors and whether the home environment served as a mediator in this relationship. A total of 844 mothers of children aged three to six (Nboys = 431) from different SES backgrounds (Nlow-SES = 123, Nmedium-SES = 322, Nhigh-SES = 399) reported the situation of the home environment and their children’s play behaviors with self-developed questionnaires. Results of regression analyses showed that family SES significantly predicted the level of Imagination, Approaches to Learning, and Emotion Expression in children’s play and that the home environment partially mediated such relationships. The results indicate SES-related differences in children’s play behaviors and offer the possibility of narrowing such discrepancies by establishing a child-friendly home environment.
The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated school closures and movement restrictions that disrupted holistic development and adaptive coping in learners worldwide. Adaptive coping is also referred to as resilience. Holistic development covers the biophysiological, psychological, social, spiritual and educational domains of child development. Several researchers have explored the impact of developmental risks caused by school closures and movement restrictions on learner development. With this article we aim to present a synthesis of these reviewed papers. We reviewed 81 peer-reviewed papers that were published globally from 2020 to 2023. The focus of these papers was on biophysical, psychological, social, religious and academic development in learners. We did not develop a priori themes to guide us; instead, themes emerged from the articles that were reviewed. The findings show that although the lockdown restrictions were aimed at preventing the spread of the virus and saving lives, the imposed restrictions affected the development of learners in biophysiological, psychological, social, educational and religious domains. Furthermore, the findings show that the impact of the lockdown necessitated multisystemic interventions on different levels to enable learners to overcome backlogs and promote resilience.
Purpose
Language development in children aged 3–6 years is shaped by their pre-linguistic abilities, communication patterns and play behaviors along with parental communicative roles. Little is known about how these aspects are distributed among children with receptive expressive language disorder (CWRELD) in comparison to typically developing children (CWTDL). The present research explores these differences between the two groups using a video-based analysis with a belief that an understanding of these aspects may facilitate age-appropriate speech and language acquisition in children with language delay.
Methods
A video-based analysis of parent–child interactions was carried out for 10 children each with receptive expressive language disorder and typical language development, respectively. The two groups were compared for the child’s turn-taking skills, eye contact span, autonomous instances, communication patterns, play behaviors and parental communication roles.
Results
Children with receptive expressive language disorder exhibited significantly fewer proportion of turns and autonomous instances along with a greater proportion of eye contact to objects than the parent. Majority of the children with language delay were at the “Requester” or “Early communicators” stage and demonstrated either “Exploratory” or “Functional play” behaviors. Most of the typically developing children were at the “Partner stage” of communication and exhibited “Functional”, “Constructive” or “Symbolic Play”. Parents of children with language delay mostly exhibited “Helper” type communicative roles while parents from typically developing groups showed “Partner” type communicative profile.
Conclusion
A quantitative planning and monitoring of pre-linguistic skills, determination of communicative patterns and play behaviors is important for clinicians working with children having a language delay. Assessing and modifying parental communicative roles are also crucial. Understanding the distribution of these research variables among CWRELD in comparison to CWTDL may help clinicians in planning precise treatment goals, monitoring specific linguistic progress, ensuring better parental participation and delivering better outcomes during language therapy.
Socioeconomic status (SES) is one among important indicators to evaluate the health status and nutritional status of a family. It is a position
attained by any individual within a system of hierarchical social structure. Various attempts have been done in past by eminent scholars and
medical scientists to formulate a group of composite indexes to determine SES of an individual or a family living in urban or rural areas. The
scales have included various composite indexes to take into account details pertaining to an individual or any family. Among all the available
SES, the most widely used and popular scale in our country is “Modified Kuppuswamy SES” which is mostly used for urban areas. In this
paper, we have aimed at revising and providing an “Updated Modified Kuppuswamy SES” for the year 2019. The scale was initially
developed by Kuppuswamy in the year 1976 including index parameters like education, occupation, and total income which was further
modified in later years to include head of families educational status, occupational status and overall aggregate income of the whole family,
pooled from all sources. The Kuppuswamy SES has included 3 parameters and each parameter is further classified into subgroups and scores
have been allotted to each subgroup which have been defined later in this paper. The total score of Kuppuswamy SES ranges from 3-29 and
it classifies families into 5 groups, “upper class, upper middle class, lower middle class, upper lower and lower socio-economic class.” Due
to limitations, the Kuppuswamy SES needs regular update for income levels which is based on changing CPI values which makes the scale
vulnerable to fluctuations over time.
Technology is a prominent way that young children choose to play. With new advents in technology, children are finding it easier to gain access to technology through parents’ cell phones and tablets. The influx of technology in the daily lives of children is putting into question whether or not children are spending too much time engaging in such play. In the current study, data were collected on how 3–5-year-old children played on a typical weekday and weekend. Of the weekday activities, parents (n = 31) reported 53.00 hours of technology play for an average of 1.71 hours per child per day. There was an increased amount of time spent on non-technology activities listed by parents for a total of 59.25 hours and an average of 1.91 hours per child. A smaller number of parents (n = 14) recorded outdoor play, totalling 17.50 hours with an average of 1.25 hours per child.
Pretend play is a form of playful behavior that involves nonliteral action. Although on the surface this activity appears to be merely for fun, recent research has discovered that children's pretend play has connections to important cognitive and social skills, such as symbolic thinking, theory of mind, and counterfactual reasoning. The current article first defines pretend play and then reviews the arguments and evidence for these three connections. Pretend play has a nonliteral correspondence to reality, hence pretending may provide children with practice with navigating symbolic relationships, which may strengthen their language skills. Pretend play and theory of mind reasoning share a focus on others' mental states in order to correctly interpret their behavior, hence pretending and theory of mind may be mutually supportive in development. Pretend play and counterfactual reasoning both involve representing nonreal states of affairs, hence pretending may facilitate children's counterfactual abilities. These connections make pretend play an important phenomenon in cognitive science: Studying children's pretend play can provide insight into these other abilities and their developmental trajectories, and thereby into human cognitive architecture and its development. WIREs Cogn Sci 2015, 6:249-261. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1341 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
The author has declared no conflicts of interest for this article.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Objectives To examine the associations between socioeconomic position (SEP) and multidomain self-reported and objectively-assessed sedentary time (ST).
Design Cross-sectional.
Setting General population households in England.
Participants 2289 adults aged 16–96 years who participated in the 2008 Health Survey for England.
Outcomes Accelerometer-measured ST, and self-reported television time, non-television leisure-time sitting and occupational sitting/standing. We examined multivariable associations between household income, social class, education, area deprivation for each SEP indicator (including a 5-point composite SEP score computed by aggregating individual SEP indicators) and each ST indicator using generalised linear models.
Results Accelerometry-measured total ST and occupational sitting/standing were positively associated with SEP score and most of its constituent SEP indicators, while television time was negatively associated with SEP score and education level. Area-level deprivation was largely unrelated to ST. Those in the lowest composite SEP group spent 64 (95% CIs 52 to 76) and 72 (48 to 98), fewer minutes/day in total ST and occupational sitting/standing compared to those in the top SEP group, and an additional 48 (35–60) min/day watching television (p<0.001 for linear trend). Stratified analyses showed that these associations between composite SEP score and total ST were evident only among participants who were in employment.
Conclusions Occupational sitting seems to drive the positive association between SEP and total ST. Lower SEP is linked to higher TV viewing times.
The development of visual attention is a key component of cognitive functioning in infancy and childhood. By the time children in poverty reach school, deficits in attention are readily apparent; however, when these attention delays manifest is unknown. The current study tested attention longitudinally at 6, 9 and 12 months in infants from high-socio-economic status (SES) and low-SES families. Infants were tested in a free play attention task in both simple and complex conditions, and two measures each of attention and inattention were scored. High-SES infants showed greater attention overall and greater increases in attention when the stimuli were more complex. Low-SES infants showed higher inattention than their high-SES peers at all ages and were less likely to modulate their attention on the basis of stimulus complexity. Thus, by 6 months of age, low-income infants already show deficits in attention. Results are discussed in terms of adaptability, implications for social development and attention interventions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Asian and Euro-American parents of preschool-aged children were interviewed concerning their beliefs about the nature and purpose of play; they also completed two questionnaires and a diary of their children’s daily activities. The children’s teachers were interviewed and provided information about the behaviour of the children in preschool. The Euro-American parents were found to believe that play is an important vehicle for early development, while the Asian parents saw little developmental value in it. On the other hand, the Asian parents believed more strongly than the Euro-Americans in the importance of an early start in academic training for their children. These contrasting beliefs were instantiated in parental practices at home regarding the use of time and the provision of toys. At preschool, the Asian children were similar to the Euro-Americans on a standardised behavioural measure but they were described by their teachers as initially more academically advanced than the Euro-American children, and as showing different patterns of play and social interaction. The implications of these results for home–school relations and the design of early education programmes are discussed.
The primary goals in this chapter are to describe how and why parenting differs across socioeconomic strata. The authors begin the chapter by reviewing the history of research on SES and parenting, including the political and the scientific trends that have shaped that research. They then turn to the literature that describes the relations between SES and parenting, reviewing evidence that the goals parents have for their children, the nature of the emotional relationship parents establish with their children, and the particular practices parents use in rearing their children all vary as a function of SES. Conclusions suggest the evidence indicates that both external and internal factors influence parenting and that multiple causal variables work, separately and in concert, to effect SES-related differences in parenting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
40 infants, divided into 10 evenly spaced age groups between the ages of 7.5 and 21 mo, were observed playing with 2 sets of toys in their own homes for up to 30 min. Narrative records of Ss' behavior were coded in terms of a 12-step sequence of play development. Analysis of individual performance indicated that this level-of-play scale satisfied the requirements of a valid Guttman scale. Analyses of means revealed that frequency of mouthing and simple manipulation decreased linearly across the age period studied, whereas several types of pretense play increased linearly. Behavior that involved relating 2 or more materials and approximation of pretense behavior displayed curvilinear functions, which suggests that they are transitional forms of activity that link early exploration with more developmentally advanced pretense play. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Examined the phenomenon of imaginative play and its concomitants in unstructured play situations among 60 South African and Israeli preschool children of lower- and middle-class economic status. Results suggest that socioeconomic status was the overriding variable in determining the observed levels of imaginative play, and the contention is raised that the deficits in imaginative play among lower-class children were created not by the lack of experiences or stimulation per se but rather by the failure of the lower-class parents to help their children with the integration of the plethora of stimuli that confront them in everyday life. It was also found that a number of the specific home background factors thought to be particularly important for the development of imaginative play are culture-bound. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Examined the proposition that maternal age influences parental role performance and satisfaction. Mothers, ranging in age from 16 to 38 yrs, comprised 53 full-term and 52 preterm dyads. Perceptions of parenting role were assessed 1 mo after hospital discharge of infancts using the Satisfaction with Parenting Scale; interactive behaviors were observed when infants were 4 mo old. When other demographic factors and psychosocial variables were controlled, increased maternal age was significantly related to greater satisfaction with parenting, to greater time commitment to that role, and to more optimal observed behavior. Effects of maternal age on observed behavior were stronger in the term sample, whereas effects of maternal age on role satisfaction were stronger in the preterm group. Results indicate that maternal age should be accounted for in studies of mother–infant interaction and child outcomes; the suggestion of linear age effects argues against popular beliefs that adolescent and late childbearing represent unique categories of risk for poor parenting outcomes. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
We examined longitudinal associations among neonatal and socioeconomic risks, maternal scaffolding behaviors, and 24-month visual-spatial processing and working memory in a sample of 73 toddlers born preterm or low birthweight (PT LBW).
Risk data were collected at hospital discharge and dyadic play interactions were observed at 16-months postterm. Abbreviated IQ scores, verbal/nonverbal working memory, and verbal/nonverbal visual-spatial processing data were collected at 24-months postterm.
Higher attention scaffolding and lower emotion scaffolding during 16-month play were associated with 24-month verbal working memory scores. A joint significance test revealed that maternal attention and emotion scaffolding during 16-month play mediated the relationship between socioeconomic risk and 24-month verbal working memory.
These findings suggest areas for future research and intervention with children born PT LBW who also experience high socioeconomic risk.
Socioeconomic status (SES) is one of the most widely studied constructs in the social sciences. Several ways of measuring SES have been proposed, but most include some quantification of family income, parental education, and occupational status. Research shows that SES is associated with a wide array of health, cognitive, and socioemotional outcomes in children, with effects beginning prior to birth and continuing into adulthood. A variety of mechanisms linking SES to child well-being have been proposed, with most involving differences in access to material and social resources or reactions to stress-inducing conditions by both the children themselves and their parents. For children, SES impacts well-being at multiple levels, including both family and neighborhood. Its effects are moderated by children's own characteristics, family characteristics, and external support systems.
All people derive their identities from the groups and social categories to which they belong in society, the roles they play out, and their personal characteristics they claim. Introduced more than fifty years ago, identity theory has become a central theoretical perspective in sociological social psychology. Now in a greatly expanded second edition, Identity Theory attempts to explain identities, their processes of operation, and their sources in and consequences for interaction and society. This book describes the origins of identity theory, its development, the research that supports it, and its future direction. It covers the central roles of meaning and resources in human interaction and purpose. It provides a detailed analysis of the nature and operation of identities. A central aspect of identities, identity verification, is discussed in terms of how it works, and its consequences for individuals. In addition, the book discusses the different bases of identities, and the multiple identities that individuals hold from their multiple positions in society. It also covers the way identities offer both stability and change to individuals. Coauthored by the originators of the theory, this book accessibly presents decades of research in a single volume, making the full range of this powerful theory understandable to readers at all levels.
Developmental differences in visual attention between infants of low and high socioeconomic status (SES) have been observed as early as 6 months of age. These deficits in low-SES infants may compound into the well-known achievement gap when children enter grade school. The current study implemented a novel intervention designed to boost early visual attention. The intervention, called Play for Success, was administered through the Early Head Start home visiting program and required all infants to practice focused attention with a caregiver for 10 min a day every day for 2 weeks. A total of 42 6- to 10-month-old infants were randomly assigned to one of three intervention groups: Social (unstructured direction), Teach Two (simple structured direction), or Teach Many (more complex structured direction). Infants' focused attention and inattention were tested three times: before the intervention, immediately following the intervention, and again 4 weeks later. The results demonstrated increased focused attention for both Teach Two and Teach Many. These results suggest that Play for Success is a promising new intervention, but only in the conditions that included parental structured direction.
This study investigated whether children learn from exploration and act as effective informants by providing informative demonstrations tailored to observers’ goals and competence. Children (4.0–6.9 years, N = 98) explored a causally ambiguous toy to discover its causal structure and then demonstrated the toy to a naive observer. Children provided more costly and informative evidence when the observer wanted to learn about the toy than observe its effects (Experiment 1) and when the observer was ordinary than exceptionally intelligent (Experiment 2). Relative to the evidence they generated during exploration, children produced fewer, less costly actions when the observer wanted or needed less evidence. Children understand the difference between acting‐to‐learn and acting‐to‐inform; after learning from exploration, they consider others’ goals and competence to provide “uninstructed instruction”.
This edited volume critically examines the link between area based policies, neighbourhood based problems, and neighbourhood effects: the idea that living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods has a negative effect on residents’ life chances over and above the effect of their individual characteristics. Over the last few decades, Western governments have persistently pursued area based policies to fight such effects, despite a lack of evidence that they exist, or that these policies make a difference. The first part of this book presents case studies of perceived neighbourhood based problems in the domains of crime; health; educational outcomes; and employment. The second part of the book presents an international overview of the policies that different governments have implemented in response to these neighbourhood based problems, and discusses the theoretical and conceptual processes behind place based policy making. Case studies are drawn from a diverse range of countries including the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Australia, Canada, and the USA.
emphasizes the importance of environment–individual transactions for models of development and developmental risk / from a systems perspective, . . . describes infant development as embedded within multiple layers of biological, interpersonal, and broader social influences / [argues that] continuities and discontinuities in infant development are a function of the genotype, the phenotype, and the environtype, and of their mutual regulatory influences on one another / the role of the clinician is to assist infants [at risk] and their families to find opportunities to use their capacities adaptively or to develop new capacities necessary to negotiate challenges (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This study examined parents’ developmentally appropriate beliefs about young children’s play and parents’ views on their child’s play skills. This exploratory secondary data analysis was drawn from data on low-income African-American and Latino parents and their children (n = 109) participating in Head Start programmes in the USA. Compared with African-American parents, Latino parents were more likely to endorse play as valuable (Play Support) for promoting preschool children’s social skills and school readiness, yet were also more likely to see play as not as important as academic readiness activities (Academic Focus). Parental endorsement of Play Support beliefs positively related to children’s interactive play skills; Academic Focus beliefs negatively related to interactive play. These relations emerged for African American, but not Latino, children. Implications for understanding how culture may intersect with parents’ play beliefs, opportunities to promote children’s play competence, and alignment with play-based pedagogies are discussed.
This study examined associations between parents’ developmentally appropriate beliefs about young children’s play and responsive parenting. Low-income parents and their children enrolled in Head Start programmes (n = 231) in the United States participated in the study. Responsive parenting skills (characterized by high levels of warmth and responsiveness, and lower levels of hostility) were related to parents’ beliefs endorsing play as valuable (Play Support) for promoting preschool children’s social skills and school readiness. Additionally, higher levels of parent depression were negatively associated with Play Support beliefs while higher levels of parent efficacy were positively associated. Parent education showed a positive relation with Play Support beliefs and a negative relationship with beliefs regarding focusing on academic readiness of children without playful learning (Academic Focus). Implications for understanding play-based approaches for promoting children’s developmental outcomes within early childhood programmes and family interventions are discussed.
This edited volume critically examines the link between area based policies, neighbourhood based problems, and neighbourhood effects: the idea that living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods has a negative effect on residents life chances over and above the effect of their individual characteristics. Over the last few decades, Western governments have persistently pursued area based policies to fight such effects, despite a lack of evidence that they exist, or that these policies make a difference. The first part of this book presents case studies of perceived neighbourhood based problems in the domains of crime; health; educational outcomes; and employment. The second part of the book presents an international overview of the policies that different governments have implemented in response to these neighbourhood based problems, and discusses the theoretical and conceptual processes behind place based policy making. Case studies are drawn from a diverse range of countries including the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Australia, Canada, and the USA. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. All rights reserved.
This study examined the effects of nine toys on the play of 60 3- and 4-year-old children in culturally diverse preschool classrooms. The toys, which varied in their features and intended uses, were selected from a list of those that were nominated by teachers and parents as being developmentally beneficial. Each toy was video recorded for 240 h during free play time in four different classrooms. Researchers coded 828 two-minute segments of children’s play with these toys using a play quality with toys (PQT) rating instrument developed in a previous investigation. Toys were found to vary significantly in their impact on play quality. PQT scores were also found to vary for each toy depending on the gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity of the child playing with it, and the length of time it was available in the classroom. Implications for selecting toys for classrooms and observing children’s play with them are presented.
This descriptive study, undertaken in Nicosia, Cyprus, sought to examine the beliefs and attitudes of Greek/Cypriot parents (n = 142) toward play and learning. The research findings revealed that Greek/Cypriot parents valued play over and above academic training and considered it important for the development of their young children. However, this emphasis on play was not instantiated in the daily after-school routines of their children, which incorporated more hours spent on academics and organized lessons than any other activity, including play, per day. Other findings revealed more inconsistent attitudes regarding play and learning expressed by the Greek/Cypriot parents, placing them closer to the academically oriented formal and direct instruction side of the education and play spectrum, with little time available for play.
Abstract Children seem to learn about the causal structure of the world even in the absence of formal training. One possibility is that children,can ,learn ,causal ,relationships from ,evidence generated in the course of their spontaneous, exploratory play. In this study, we looked at whether the pattern of children’s free play with a toy ,is affected by the ,quality of evidence,they ,observe. When ,children ,received ,fully disambiguating evidence about the causal structure of a toy, their free play was largely restricted to the most convenient, effective actions. However, when children saw confounded evidence about the toy, their pattern of free play was more variable and exploratory. These results suggest that children’s exploratory,play ,can ,provide ,evidence ,to support ,causal learning. Keywords: Causal learning; exploratory play; ambiguous
In this small-scale preliminary study, we compared the correlation between assessments based on short videorecordings and infant observation. Five mother–infant dyads were assessed when the child was 1 year of age according to the Parent–Child Early Relational Assessment method (PCERA, 65 items) developed by Roseanne Clark (1985), using both observations covering 1 year and a 5-min videorecording. The agreement between two video raters was sufficient (κ = 0.41–1.00 or proportion of agreement: 4/5–5/5) in 54 items. In 42 (78%) of these items, there was at least moderate agreement (κ = 0.41–1.00 or proportion of agreement 4/5–5/5), and in another 7 (13%) items fair (κ = 0.21–0.40 or proportion of agreement 3/5) agreement between the video and observation ratings, and both methods revealed the areas of strength and areas of concern of the dyads. Only a few items describing negative interactive style were assessed as identifying concern, but such items identified the dyad which was assessed to have the most constant problems. Most items describing positive interactive style and identifying the areas of concern in the interactive style according to both observation and video assessment were connected with the parental and dyadic engagement in the interaction. Five items with slight or poor (κ ≤ 0.20 or proportion of agreement 1/5–2/5) agreement between video rater and observer gave rise to questions about how the videorecording situation affected the behavior of the dyads, and about the limits of assessment methods and assessment of dyads with children of different ages and dyads from different cultures. ©2005 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.
The Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) is a nationally representative, internationally comparable household survey implemented to examine protective and risk factors of child development in developing countries around the world. This introduction describes the conceptual framework, nature of the MICS3, and general analytic plan of articles in this Special Section. The articles that follow describe the situations of children with successive foci on nutrition, parenting, discipline and violence, and the home environment. They address 2 common questions: How do developing and underresearched countries in the world vary with respect to these central indicators of children's development? How do key indicators of national development relate to child development in each of these substantive areas? The Special Section concludes with policy implications from the international findings.
"We estimate the relationship between maternal age and child outcomes, using indices aimed at measuring overall outcomes, learning outcomes and social outcomes. In all cases, we find evidence that children of older mothers have better outcomes. Not only do children born to mothers in their twenties do better than children born to teen mothers, but children born to mothers in their thirties do better than children born to mothers in their twenties. However, when we control for other socioeconomic characteristics, such as family income, parental education and single parenthood, the coefficients on maternal age become small and statistically insignificant. The only exception is an index of social outcomes, which is positively associated with maternal age, even controlling for socioeconomic factors. For cognitive outcomes, young motherhood appears to be a marker, not a cause, of poor child outcomes." Copyright (c)2010 The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research.
Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with cognitive achievement throughout life. How does SES relate to brain development, and what are the mechanisms by which SES might exert its influence? We review studies in which behavioral, electrophysiological and neuroimaging methods have been used to characterize SES disparities in neurocognitive function. These studies indicate that SES is an important predictor of neurocognitive performance, particularly of language and executive function, and that SES differences are found in neural processing even when performance levels are equal. Implications for basic cognitive neuroscience and for understanding and ameliorating the problems related to childhood poverty are discussed.
Nuptiality norms in rural Bangladesh favour birth during the teenage years. An appreciable proportion of teenage births are, in fact, second births. This study examines the relationship between teenage fertility and high infant mortality. It is hypothesized that if physiological immaturity is responsible, then the younger the mother, the higher would be the mortality risk, and the effect of mother's ‘teenage’ on mortality in infancy, particularly in the neonatal period, would be higher for the second than the first births. Vital events recorded by the longitudinal demographic surveillance system in Matlab, Bangladesh, in 1990–92 were used. Logistic regression was used to estimate the effects on early and late neonatal (0–3 days and 4–28 days respectively) and post-neonatal mortality of the following variables: mother's age at birth, parity, education and religion, sex of the child, household economic status and exposure to a health intervention programme.
The younger the mother, the higher were the odds of her child dying as a neonate, and the odds were higher for second children than first children of teenage mothers. First-born children were at higher odds of dying in infancy than second births if mothers were in their twenties. Unfavourable mother's socioeconomic conditions were weakly, but significantly, associated with higher odds of dying during late neonatal and post-neonatal periods. The results suggest that physical immaturity may be of major importance in determining the relationship between teenage fertility and high neonatal mortality.
The hypothesis was tested that children whose families differ in socioeconomic status (SES) differ in their rates of productive vocabulary development because they have different language-learning experiences. Naturalistic interaction between 33 high-SES and 30 mid-SES mothers and their 2-year-old children was recorded at 2 time points 10 weeks apart. Transcripts of these interactions provided the basis for estimating the growth in children's productive vocabularies between the first and second visits and properties of maternal speech at the first visit. The high-SES children grew more than the mid-SES children in the size of their productive vocabularies. Properties of maternal speech that differed as a function of SES fully accounted for this difference. Implications of these findings for mechanisms of environmental influence on child development are discussed.
Characteristics associated with disadvantaged social position, such as low socioeconomic status (SES) and female gender, may play a significant role in the development of internalizing symptoms among adolescents. Indeed, theories of "double jeopardy" suggest that these disadvantaged status characteristics interact to produce particularly harmful mental health outcomes. We tested the hypothesis that lower SES places adolescent females at greater risk for internalizing symptoms than males. We used data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods collected from a 15-year-old adolescent cohort (n=640) at baseline and at two-year follow-up. Female gender predicted internalizing symptoms cross-sectionally and prospectively, whereas household income and caretaker education generally were not associated with internalizing symptoms. Findings overall did not indicate interactive effects between gender and SES indicators. However, subgroups of females at the lowest levels of caretaker education and household income displayed increased risk for specific outcomes, including higher internalizing symptom levels at follow-up and maintenance of severe symptom levels from baseline to follow-up.
This longitudinal study examined, in a sample of Chinese children (initial mean ages = 9.5 and 12.7 years, N = 505), how the peer group contributed to social functioning and academic achievement and their associations. Data on informal peer groups, social functioning, and academic achievement were collected from multiple sources. Multilevel structural equation modeling revealed that group academic performance made direct contributions to children's social development. Group academic performance also moderated the individual-level relations between academic performance and later social functioning. Whereas high-achieving groups strengthened the positive relations between academic achievement and social competence, low-achieving groups facilitated the negative relations between academic achievement and social problems. The results indicate the significance of the peer group for social functioning from a developmental perspective.
The ludic model: Play children with physical disabilities and occupational therapy
- Ferland
Advanced maternal age
- Mills
SES status updated 2017
- Singh
Assessment of language development
- S Lakkanna
- K Venkatesh
- J S Bhat
The Play Observation Scale (POS)
- Rubin
Play in children's health, development and well-being
- Goldstein
Contributions of play and toys to child development Key studies
- Goldstein