Manja Attig’s research while affiliated with Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories and other places

Infant research often struggles with selective samples, especially when focusing on behavioural measures, such as those drawn from habituation tasks. However, selectivity may threaten the generalizability and interpretation of results, which is why the current study investigates attrition in a habituation task administered in a household setting in 7‐month‐old infants. We used a large‐scale German dataset, focusing on the children's socioeconomic background, and investigated two aspects of attrition, namely, participation and task completion. The findings suggest significant effects of the children's socioeconomic background on attrition: Maternal education, parental occupation, household income and household language (German vs. other) were positively related to participation and task completion. The analyses indicate that multiple barriers may prevent parents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds from letting their children participate. The study concludes with a critical discussion of possible mechanisms of selectivity in behavioural measures as well as the household setting, in which the data were collected.

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 Kinder) untersucht, die in sozioökonomisch benachteiligten Stadtgebieten wohnen und an der Förderstudie „BRISE“ (Bremer Initiative zur Stärkung frühkindlicher Entwicklung) teilnehmen. Außerdem wurden Zusammenhänge zwischen der Teilnahme an frühen Fördermaßnahmen, wie beispielsweise dem Programm TippTapp, und der mütterlichen Sensitivität sowie Anregung in der Mutter-Kind-Interaktion analysiert. Einbezogen werden konnten Daten von 152 Müttern und ihren Kindern. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass insbesondere sozioökonomische Hintergrundmerkmale, wie die mütterliche Bildung, mit einer höheren Sensitivität verbunden waren, auch unter Kontrolle von weiteren Merkmalen, die für Mutter-Kind-Interaktionen relevant sind. Hinsichtlich des mütterlichen Anregungsverhaltens zeigten sich in diesem jungen Alter geringere Zusammenhänge mit potenziellen Einflussfaktoren. Die Befunde deuten zunächst an, dass die Teilnahme am Förderprogramm TippTapp positiv mit der mütterlichen Sensitivität assoziiert ist. Dieser Effekt bleibt allerdings bei Kontrolle von weiteren sozioökonomischen Variablen nicht bestehen.

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 semi-standardized parent-child-interaction, as well as data from parent’s and educational institution’s interviews/questionnaires. The data is accessible via the Research Data Center of the LIfBi and comprehensively documented (English, German) to be used, e.g., in research on child development, educational trajectories, as well as on facets of longitudinally assessed learning environments.

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 National Educational Panel Study (NEPS-SC1) and additional validation studies, we address and empirically evaluate different quality measures of parenting behaviour and extrafamilial childcare along with their effects on early child outcomes. Results highlight the importance of considering differentiated measures of early learning environments such as indicators of cognitive-verbal stimulation or parental responsive emotional support from the very beginning, because these relate differentially to various domains of early child development. Furthermore, although different facets of interaction quality are associated with socio-economic family characteristics (SES), they relate to each other only moderately. In addition, we report on the validity and effects of quality measures of early external childcare in the NEPS-SC1 and discuss the emergence of individual differences and SES-related disparities in early child development.

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 empirical backgrounds of these tasks. A detailed technical report on the stimulus material and testing procedure is given. In addition, there is an overview on what kind of information is available for the scientific community in the Scientific Use File. Finally, the survey paper provides information on task disturbances, missing data, and child characteristics that are useful for data selection and interpretation.

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. Therefore, the present study investigates whether family income, measured as a metric variable by net equivalence income, and poverty, operationalized as income groups based on official income thresholds, impact vocabulary and grammar skills of 2-year-old children even when taking the educational level of the mother as well as aspects of the home-learning environment (joint picture book reading) and other relevant variables into account. Drawing on a German sample of N = 1782, we found that especially poverty is significantly associated with early language skills over and above maternal education and joint picture book reading. Hence, our results indicate the relevance to consider the effect of (restricted) financial resources and especially poverty on child development during early childhood additionally to other indicators of social background.

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 development are influenced by the different facets of maternal sensitivity. Thus, this study investigated whether specific parenting behaviors differentially mediated the association between maternal education and children's language and social competence. Drawing on 2,478 mother-child dyads from the German National Educational Panel Study, we distinguished mothers' sensitive parenting behavior as cognitive-verbally stimulating and socioemotionally supportive parenting behaviors. These two observed specific parenting behaviors at 26 months were modeled as separate pathways linking maternal education and children's language outcomes at 26 months as well as children's social competence at 38 months. All analyses controlled for family net income, single parenthood, migration background, mother's depressive feelings, and child's negative affectivity. The results indicated that the mother's cognitive-verbally stimulating parenting behavior was specifically related to the children's language skills, whereas mother's socioemotionally supportive parenting behavior specifically predicted children's later social competence. Furthermore, these two separable parenting behaviors differentially mediated the association between maternal education and toddler's language and social competence. Most notably, children's language additionally mediated the relation between maternal education and children's social competence. The findings suggest that domain-specific intervention programs have the potential to promote early language and social development efficiently. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).