Showing papers by "Marc H. Bornstein published in 1999"

First words in the second year: Continuity, stability, and models of concurrent and predictive correspondence in vocabulary and verbal responsiveness across age and context

Abstract: This prospective longitudinal study assessed children's and mothers' productive vocabulary and mothers' verbal responses to children's exploratory and vocal behavior in spontaneous speech, and evaluated multiple relations in those measures in two contexts (play and mealtimes) at two child ages (13 and 20 months). Continuity, stability, and several models of concurrent and lagged child-mother correspondences were evaluated. Child and mother vocabulary increased across the second year, but did so differently in the two contexts; vocabulary of both showed significant stability of individual variation across context and age. Developmental change in maternal verbal responses predicted child vocabulary (maternal vocabulary did not), and developmental change in child vocabulary predicted maternal responses. The results support a model of specificity in mother-child language exchange and child vocabulary growth.

Play in two societies: pervasiveness of process, specificity of structure.

Abstract: The present study compared Argentine (N = 39) and U.S. (N = 43) children and their mothers on exploratory, symbolic, and social play and interaction when children were 20 months of age. Patterns of cultural similarity and difference emerged. In both cultures, boys engaged in more exploratory play than girls, and girls engaged in more symbolic play than boys; mothers of boys engaged in more exploratory play than mothers of girls, and mothers of girls engaged in more symbolic play than mothers of boys. Moreover, in both cultures, individual variation in children's exploratory and symbolic play was specifically associated with individual variation in mothers' exploratory and symbolic play, respectively. Between cultures, U.S. children and their mothers engaged in more exploratory play, whereas Argentine children and their mothers engaged in more symbolic play. Moreover, Argentine mothers exceeded U.S. mothers in social play and verbal praise of their children. During an early period of mental and social growth, general developmental processes in play may be pervasive, but dyadic and cultural structures are apparently specific. Overall, Argentine and U.S. dyads utilized different modes of exploration, representation, and interaction-emphasizing "other-directed" acts of pretense versus "functional" and "combinatorial" exploration, for example-and these individual and dyadic allocentric versus idiocentric stresses accord with larger cultural concerns of collectivism versus individualism in the two societies.

Mothers’ attuned responses to infant affect expressivity promote earlier achievement of language milestones

Abstract: To investigate infants’ affective expressivity and maternal attuned responsiveness to infant expressivity in relation to early language achievement, 77 dyads were visited in their homes at 9 and 13 months, and mothers were interviewed about their children’s language between 9 and 21 months. Maternal responses that were attuned to infant affect, by selectively matching either the gradient features or the valence of infants’ affective expressions, were more predictive of children’s language achievement than maternal nonmatching responses; and maternal matching responses at 9 months were more predictive of children’s language achievements than maternal responses at 13 months. Moreover, maternal matching responses at 9 months predicted second-year language achievements over and above infant affect expressivity at 9 and 13 months, and over and above maternal matching responses at 13 months. Infants’ affective expressivity per se was not predictive.

Early cognitive development and parental education

Abstract: Relations between cognitive development in infancy and early childhood, and parental education were examined. Previous research has found little association between measures of the parenting environment, including parental education and socio-economic status (SES), and cognitive development in infants and children under 2 years of age. However, the earlier studies may not have reliably measured individual differences in cognitive abilities, thus, there is uncertainty as to what age elements in the parental environment affect cognitive development. Seventy-six infants were tested on a range of cognitive tasks at 3-month intervals between the ages of 9 and 18 months. Information on parental education (a component of SES) was collected. Seventy-one of the children returned at 27 months and completed the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, Mental Scale, which was used as an outcome measure for the earlier tasks. The findings present a clear indication that cognitive development in early childhood is affected by the parenting environment, at least from as early as 12 months. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Representational Abilities and the Hearing Status of Child/Mother Dyads

Abstract: Two representational abilities, expressive and receptive language and symbolic play, were assessed in multiple formats in hearing and deaf 2-year-old children of hearing and deaf mothers. Based on maternal report, hearing children of hearing and deaf mothers produced more words than deaf children of hearing mothers, hearing children of hearing mothers more words than deaf children of deaf mothers, and deaf children of deaf mothers more words than deaf children of hearing mothers. Based on experimenter assessments, hearing children in both groups produced and comprehended more words than deaf children in both groups. By contrast, no differences emerged among these groups in child solitary symbolic play or in child-initiated or mother-initiated child collaborative symbolic play; all groups also increased equivalently in symbolic play between solitary and collaborative play. Representational language and symbolic play were unrelated in hearing children of hearing mothers and in deaf children of deaf mothers, but the 2 abilities were associated in children in the 2 child/mother mismatched hearing status groups. These findings are placed in the context of a proposed developing modularity of verbal and nonverbal symbol systems, and the implications of hearing status in communicative exchanges between children and their mothers in diverse hearing and deaf dyads are explored.