The Effect of Older Sibling, Postnatal Maternal Stress, and Household Factors on Language Development in Two- to Four-Year-Old Children

Previous literature has shown that family structure affects language development. Here, factors relating to older siblings (their presence in the house, sex and age gap), mothers (maternal stress) and household size and residential crowding were examined to systematically examine the different role of these factors. Data from mother-child dyads in a Singaporean birth cohort, (677-855 dyads; 52% males; 58-61% Chinese, 20-24% Malay, 17-19% Indian) collected when children were 24-, 48-, and 54-months old, were analysed. There was a negative effect of having an older sibling, moderated by the siblings’ age gap, but not by the older sibling’s sex, nor household size or residential crowding. Maternal stress affected language outcomes in some analyses but not others. Implications for understanding the effect of family structure on language development are discussed.

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The Effect of Older Siblings on Language Development as a Function of Age Difference and Sex

Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0956797619861436 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 30 (9) ◽

pp. 1333-1343 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Naomi Havron ◽

Franck Ramus ◽

Barbara Heude ◽

Anne Forhan ◽

Alejandrina Cristia ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Language Development ◽

Language Skills ◽

Age Difference ◽

Language Abilities ◽

Verbal Skills ◽

Moderating Factors ◽

Age Gap ◽

Negative Effect ◽

Older Siblings

The number of older siblings a child has is negatively correlated with the child’s verbal skills, perhaps because of competition for parents’ attention. In the current study, we examined the role of siblings’ sex and age gap as moderating factors, reasoning that they affect older siblings’ tendency to compensate for reduced parental attention. We hypothesized that children with an older sister have better language abilities than children with an older brother, especially when there is a large age gap between the two siblings. We reanalyzed data from the EDEN cohort ( N = 1,154) and found that children with an older sister had better language skills than those with an older brother. Contrary to predictions, results showed that the age gap between siblings was not associated with language skills and did not interact with sex. Results suggest that the negative effect of older siblings on language development may be entirely due to the role of older brothers. Our findings invite further research on the mechanisms involved in this effect.

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The effect of siblings on language development as a function of age difference and sex

10.31234/osf.io/fgpmd ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Naomi Havron ◽

Franck Ramus ◽

Barbara Heude ◽

Anne Forhan ◽

Alejandrina Cristia ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Language Development ◽

Language Skills ◽

Age Difference ◽

Language Abilities ◽

Verbal Skills ◽

Moderating Factors ◽

Age Gap ◽

Older Brothers ◽

Negative Effect ◽

Older Siblings

The number of older siblings a child has is negatively correlated with their verbal skills, perhaps due to competition for parents’ attention. The current study examined the role of siblings’ sex and age gap as moderating factors, reasoning that they affect older siblings’ tendency to compensate for reduced parental attention. We hypothesized that children with an older sister, especially with a large age gap, have better language abilities than those with older brothers. We reanalyzed data from the EDEN cohort (N = 1,154) and found that children with an older sister had better language skills than those with an older brother. Contrary to predictions, the age gap between siblings was not associated with language skills, and did not interact with sex. Results suggest the negative effect of older siblings on language development may be entirely due to older brothers, and invite further research on the mechanisms involved in this effect.

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Older sibling influences on the language environment and language development of toddlers in bilingual homes

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716412000379 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 35 (2) ◽

pp. 225-241 ◽

Cited By ~ 54

Author(s):

KELLY BRIDGES ◽

ERIKA HOFF

Keyword(s):

Language Development ◽

English Language ◽

Language Use ◽

English Language Development ◽

Complex Processes ◽

Language Exposure ◽

Household Members ◽

Language Environment ◽

Older Siblings ◽

Older Sibling

ABSTRACTTwo separate studies examined older siblings’ influence on the language exposure and language development of US-born toddlers who were being raised in bilingual homes. The participants in Study 1 were 60 children between 16 and 30 months who had heard English and another language at home from birth; 26 had older siblings, and 34 did not. The participants in Study 2 were 27 children, assessed at 22 and 30 months, who had heard English and Spanish from birth; 14 had school-aged older siblings, and 13 did not. Both studies found that older siblings used English more in talking to the toddlers than did other household members and that toddlers with older siblings were more advanced in English language development. Study 2 also found that the presence of a school-aged older sibling increased mothers’ use of English with their toddlers and that toddlers without a school-aged older sibling were more advanced in Spanish than the toddlers with a school-aged older sibling. These findings contribute to a picture of the complex processes that shape language use in bilingual homes and cause variability in young children's bilingual development.

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Input and uptake at 7 months predicts toddler vocabulary: the role of child-directed speech and infant processing skills in language development

Journal of Child Language ◽

10.1017/s0305000915000446 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 43 (5) ◽

pp. 1158-1173 ◽

Cited By ~ 52

Author(s):

ROCHELLE S. NEWMAN ◽

MEREDITH L. ROWE ◽

NAN BERNSTEIN RATNER

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Language Development ◽

Speech Segmentation ◽

Experimental Paradigm ◽

Language Outcomes ◽

Maternal Input ◽

Independent Effects ◽

Maternal Child

ABSTRACTBoth the input directed to the child, and the child's ability to process that input, are likely to impact the child's language acquisition. We explore how these factors inter-relate by tracking the relationships among: (a) lexical properties of maternal child-directed speech to prelinguistic (7-month-old) infants (N = 121); (b) these infants' abilities to segment lexical targets from conversational child-directed utterances in an experimental paradigm; and (c) the children's vocabulary outcomes at age 2;0. Both repetitiveness in maternal input and the child's speech segmentation skills at age 0;7 predicted language outcomes at 2;0; moreover, while these factors were somewhat inter-related, they each had independent effects on toddler vocabulary skill, and there was no interaction between the two.

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The impact of older siblings on the language environment and language development of bilingual toddlers

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716420000570 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-20

Author(s):

Danai Tsinivits ◽

Sharon Unsworth

Keyword(s):

Language Development ◽

Language Proficiency ◽

Language Use ◽

Receptive Vocabulary ◽

Family Constellation ◽

Language Environment ◽

Bilingual Parenting ◽

The Impact ◽

Older Siblings ◽

Older Sibling

Abstract Previous research has suggested that the language development of bilingual children benefits from more exposure and opportunities for language use. Typically, this research has used aggregated measures of exposure and use. The role of specific interlocutors and in particular older siblings has received comparatively little attention. In this study, we examine the impact of having an older sibling on the language environment and language development of a group of 31 bilingual Greek–Dutch toddlers aged 16 to 30 months growing up in the Netherlands. Approximately half (n = 14) of the toddlers had an older sibling. With respect to language environment, toddlers with older siblings were in general found to hear and use more Dutch at home than their first-born peers. There were however no differences between the two groups of toddlers in terms of parental language use. With respect to language development, toddlers with older siblings were found to score higher than first-born peers on measures of Dutch receptive vocabulary, productive vocabulary, and morphosyntactic complexity. For Greek, no such differences were observed. The findings are discussed in light of factors including family constellation, parental language proficiency, bilingual parenting strategies, and the wider sociolinguistic context.

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The Interruption of Young Children's Responses by Older Siblings

Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders ◽

10.1044/jshd.4702.204 ◽

1982 ◽

Vol 47 (2) ◽

pp. 204-210 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Constance Wellen ◽

Patricia Broen

Keyword(s):

Language Development ◽

Difficulty Level ◽

Older Children ◽

Normal Children ◽

Younger Child ◽

Normal Language ◽

Older Siblings ◽

Older Sibling

A group of language-delayed children, a group of older children with normal language development, and a group of younger children with normal language development served as subjects in this study. Questions were asked after a story was read to a younger child in the presence of an older sibling. The older sibling's interruptions of the question-answer dialogue was scored by frequency, type of interruption, and difficulty level of the questions being interrupted. Older siblings interrupted the question-answer interactions of the language-delayed children with a frequency that was similar to that observed in siblings of younger normal children but the interruptions of the language-delayed children were qualitatively different. Older siblings tended to directly answer questions addressed to language-delayed children rather than to provide prompts or rephrasings of the question as they did for young normal children. Siblings of both the flanguage-delayed and the young normal children interrupted more frequently as the questions increased in difficulty.

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The Role of Children in Building Parents’ Social Networks

Social Economics ◽

10.7551/mitpress/9780262035651.003.0013 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Odelia Heizler ◽

Ayal Kimhi

Keyword(s):

Social Networks ◽

Number Of Children ◽

Age Gap ◽

First Child ◽

Negative Effect ◽

Males And Females ◽

Parents Involvement ◽

Demographic Attributes ◽

Positive Effect

This paper analyzes the effect of children on the parent's social networks using Israeli Social Survey data for 2002-2006. Additional demographic attributes of the household, such as the age gap between the oldest and youngest child and the age of the youngest child are also examined. We found that the first child decreases social networking of both males and females. The number of children has a U-shaped effect on parents' involvement in social networks, with substantial differences between fathers and mothers. The negative effect is dominant on the mothers’ involvement in social networks, while the positive effect is dominant on the father's involvement in social networks. The age gap between children has a positive effect on both parents’ involvement in social networks, while the age of the youngest child has a positive effect only on the father's involvement in social networks.

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The Colorado Journey Towards Optimal Outcomes for Children With Hearing Loss

Perspectives on Hearing and Hearing Disorders in Childhood ◽

10.1044/hhdc20.1.3 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 3-11 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Christine Yoshinaga-Itano

Keyword(s):

Hearing Loss ◽

Language Development ◽

Hard Of Hearing ◽

Diverse Population ◽

Language Outcomes ◽

Maternal Bonding ◽

Level Of Education ◽

Optimal Outcomes ◽

Outcomes For Children ◽

Children With Hearing Loss

Abstract It is possible for children who are deaf or hard of hearing to attain language development comparable to their hearing peers, but these outcomes are not guaranteed. The population of children with hearing loss is a diverse population and although the variable of the age of identification is less variable, there are numerous variables that could potentially and have historically impacted language outcomes of children who are deaf or hard of hearing. Variables such as hearing loss, maternal level of education, and maternal bonding can overcome the benefits of earlier identification and intervention.

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The Role of the SLP in Autism Spectrum Disorder Screening and Assessment

Perspectives on Language Learning and Education ◽

10.1044/lle15.2.50 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 15 (2) ◽

pp. 50-59 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Amy Philofsky

Keyword(s):

Language Development ◽

Critical Role ◽

Children With Autism ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Children With Asd ◽

Prevalence Estimates ◽

Notable Increase ◽

Screening Assessment ◽

Critical Components

AbstractRecent prevalence estimates for autism have been alarming as a function of the notable increase. Speech-language pathologists play a critical role in screening, assessment and intervention for children with autism. This article reviews signs that may be indicative of autism at different stages of language development, and discusses the importance of several psychometric properties—sensitivity and specificity—in utilizing screening measures for children with autism. Critical components of assessment for children with autism are reviewed. This article concludes with examples of intervention targets for children with ASD at various levels of language development.

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